Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

After a day of sitting down and meditating, Pearl was able to improve himself enough that they could move some dozen or so meters ahead and sat down closer to the starting point of the gorge.

Alex was now about 100 or so meters away from the tip of the gorge and was around the same area as most other cultivators that were just starting as well.

Barring the experienced Saint realm cultivators, there were only a few that were further than them and they had been here for a while as far as Alex could tell.

Alex felt the aura and intent land on his body and simply brushed it off as if it was nothing.

Having sensed the aura and intent close to the tip of the gorge, Alex was sure he could handle anything about 10 meters away from it. They were but an inconvenience for him at this point.

Beyond the 10-meter area, however, was a location that most cultivators weren't sitting in, so Alex too felt a little reluctant to check that.

He didn't think there would be anything harsher there, but just to be safe, he kept his spiritual senses from reaching beyond that point.

As for the sides of the gorge where the Saint cultivators were apparently staying, he had no intention of going there yet. That was a place where only those who either had a very high cultivation base or understanding of the sword went. Usually both.

In order to wait for Pearl to be ready to move forward, Alex stayed where he was and started cultivating.

Time slowly passed by as he sat there, cultivating. Alex cultivated his eyes, his Undying physique, his spiritual sense, and his Qi.

Pearl in the meanwhile was getting ever so closer to understanding a new dao, but he simply couldn't force himself to understand it.

He still needed some time, so he focused on improving his fighting power over the physical and mental pain that constantly bothered him.

He hadn't expected the aura and intent together to be this strong, this far out. But, he knew that Alex was staying behind just for him, so he felt determined to fight this out and become strong enough to move forward.

If he could not, he would only be dragging Alex back with him.

So, the two, man and beast continued their own things for the next few days.

Every so often, Pearl would let Alex know that they could move forward and they would move a step closer.

It wasn't just them. Many other cultivators would move forward after some time of getting used to the aura and intent.

They all wanted to get closer to the gorge and understand its true mysteries, and if possible, learn the sword strike that made this gorge.

It took a month for Pearl to move about 50 meters closer to the gorge, but there was still 50 meters or so left.

However, he couldn't do it anymore. He had learned the mysteries behind the cut as much as he could, and now he simply had to wait for the Dao mountain to open up so he could learn another Dao.

As for improving his Intent, he was taking too long.

"I'm sorry," he said. He knew that Alex was blind in the current situation and that he was his only eye. However, he couldn't keep dragging him any longer. He was just slowing down his progress.

"You don't have to be sorry," Alex said. "I'm just glad that you did the best you could. I'm sure you'll soon figure out the entire Dao."

With that, Pearl went into the beast space, and Alex stood up to walk up front.

His spiritual sense diminished as he walked forward so as to not harm himself by accidentally seeing too much.

Some people noticed him walking quite far, but most ignored him. Only a few of them showed a surprised look on their face when they saw him suddenly move over 30 meters at once.

Alex walked even further and stopped at around 15 meters of distance. This to him felt like the perfect spot where his body was constantly assaulted by the aura, but it wasn't strong enough to cause him pain.

So, he sat down and started looking into the mysteries that were now so close to him.

Not even half a day later, Alex understood what it was exactly he had to do. He had to use his Sword Intent to generate more Sword Qi and then condense it using his Sword Intent again.

That was how he could improve it.

Since Alex had skipped a step in learning Sword Qi, his idea of how sword Qi could be improved was almost non-existent.

And since Sword Qi itself was quite rare to see on the Western Continent, he had no place to learn how it was trained.

It was only now that he was learning how one properly learned it.

Alex brought out a sword to test this and the moment he took it out, the sword started glowing all white.

Little flickers of light appeared from the sword, shooting outside as it always did.

All of a sudden, the little flickers of light that rarely stayed shaped like a sword, started maintaining their sword shapes more often. They still flickered back to being a mote of light, but they did remain, even if just for a while, in the shape of what a Sword Qi really should be.

Alex felt excited. If only he knew this was all he had to do. He forced himself to create even more of the Sword Shaped Qi, and to his surprise, it worked.

The method to turn raw sword Qi into Sword Shaped Qi was simply the intent behind it. So, the more he focused on his Sword Intent, which was now acceptable to be in the same category as Sword Aura, his Sword Qi naturally started improving as well.

Alex focused on that and only that, oblivious to the fact that there were people around him, looking at him with awe.

The relative ease with which he had gone from having almost no Sword Shaped Qi to almost all of the Sword Qi being Sword Shaped Qi was mind-boggling for them.

The rate of improvement was just too much, and some even began to think that he was just showing off, putting on a fake performance.

However, those that understood Sword Qi better, and especially those that understood Sword Aura, could see the terrifying speed at which he was approaching the limit of Sword Qi.

Alex's Sword Intent was not just creating more Sword Qi around his sword, but it was also starting to create some Sword Qi here and there all around his body.

The surrounding cultivators kept looking with shock, expecting to see a miracle.

However, in the end, Alex stopped. "God, this is so draining," he thought. Using so much intent at once gave more mental fatigue than he would have liked to admit.

He sighed, and unknown to him, so did the others.

A True realm cultivator learning the Sword Aura was a feat that was rarely precedented, and learning it so quickly was surely unprecedented.

However, now that Alex had stopped, they couldn't help but sigh in disappointment. Just a little more and they could've seen history, and yet he just had to—

Alex's Sword Intent burst back into action, forcing Sword Qi in the shape of a Sword to appear not just on his sword but also all around him.

He had understood what he had needed all this time. Shen Jing had hinted at it, but he had likely never told him because he needed to learn this on his own.

Everything stemmed from intent.

Whether it was the intent to use a technique, intent to use a weapon, or intent to use a Dao.

Without intent, none of these things were usable.

Without Intent, a cultivator would just be a mindless husk, incapable of doing anything.

Without Intent, cultivators wouldn't exist.

It was only their Intent to grow stronger and live longer that made the mortals cultivate in the first place.

As such, using Intent as a base, one would be able to do anything so long as they had the potential for it.

In the case of cultivation, as long as there was Qi around them, a normal person could start cultivating.

In the case of a Dao, as long as one understood the dao, they could use their Intent to use the dao.

In the case of swords, as long as one had a sword, using the Sword Intent as a base, one was able to generate Sword Qi.

Previously, he was using his Intent to 'keep moving forward' as an indirect method of creating Sword Qi. That resulted in the Sword Qi rarely being sword-shaped.

However, now that he had learned the actual method, he was able to use Sword Intent to force out a lot of Sword Qi that he normally wouldn't be able to.

His sword glowed ever so brighter, forcing out the Sword Shaped Qi in all directions around him.

However, Alex didn't stop there. He used his Intent to make even more Sword Qi, and before long, his Sword was too overwhelmed to handle more Sword Qi.

In that instance, his body started creating more Sword Qi, all of which were influenced by his will to 'keep moving forward', and would act accordingly.

As such, when there was enough of them hanging around him in unison, Alex understood that at this moment, he had learned Sword Aura.