Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex went through the knowledge he had learned, trying to understand what new thing was not available for him to understand. He started accessing the new knowledge he had acquired from the Alchemy god.

As he went through his mind, he realized that there were exactly 2 new things that he had no idea about before, that he now knew.

There was also one other thing that he had learned. It was similar to his ability to improve common pills just by making them but for True pills.

However, this time, it didn't just happen, but rather he knew a bit more about how pills worked.

Alex chuckled a bit when he realized that the Alchemy God was slowly giving him bit-by-bit information about Combinations and Structure.

He would likely only learn about it fully when he reached the Immortal realm.

The other 2, however, were something he wasn't expecting to learn anytime soon.

The first one was a knowledge skill. It wasn't a skill that was used using Qi, but using one's understanding of alchemy, like how one would solve a math problem using formula.

The thing he had learned was how to figure out all the ingredients used in a single pill.

Alex could do this with pills he was used to, but he didn't know how to do it if he was ever given a new pill he had no idea about.

There were a set of rules that Alex could use to determine the ingredients. That included knowing the different energy types that are in harmony in a single pill, then going from there to figure out the rest of the ingredients that would have such energy.

Along with that, the color, smell, taste, and mainly the effect of the pill were used to determine the ingredients.

At first, Alex didn't think much about the knowledge he had just received. After all, how many times would he have to worry about finding out the ingredients behind a pill?

There would certainly be some moments when he came across new pills that he wanted to learn about, but those would be rare, even if they were important.

However, when he gave it a bit more thought, he started realizing the significance of the situation.

Yes, he could analyze the ingredients using the energy interaction, color, smell, taste, and its effects. But if he could do that, then the reverse was also certainly possible, right?

Sure he would fall into some fallacies here and there, but he didn't want the exact information, just a possibility. If he was given a random set of ingredients, and he knew that he could make a pill that did some specific thing using those ingredients, that alone would be quite amazing for him.

Alex understood that just because something worked one way, it didn't necessarily work the other way too.

Just because he found ingredients using all those information, didn't mean that by using those ingredients, he could come to an inevitable conclusion on what its resulting pill would do.

After all, any given set of ingredients could have as many pills as permutations were possible, which was only amplified by the change in energy released from each ingredient.

But, if he could look at a list of ingredients and say that this ingredient can be used to make that sort of pill, he could worry about finding the exact recipe later on.

He looked more into this information and frowned a little.

'That's going to be tough,' he thought.

It seemed the Alchemy god was done holding his hands for now and wanted him to do everything by himself.

Alex now had knowledge of what color, smell, taste, or effect was related to which ingredient. Since he already knew the elemental composition of every ingredient out there, there was that for him to take knowledge from too.

However, he would no longer get instant answers as he did with everything before. Instead, Alex would have to now go through his knowledge base and figure it out on his own.

It was like the Alchemy God was giving him homework and would not teach him how to complete it beyond the textbooks and formulas he was given. Everything else, he had to figure out himself.

'Very well, let's test it out then,' Alex thought and brought out a random True rank pill. It was one of the few True rank pills that he had no idea about as he had gotten it from the hands of the people he killed back in the Demon realm.

Alex looked at the bluish-green pill and closed his eyes to use his senses on it. Since he knew the color, he went with the scent.

For some reason, he got a distinct idea that smell wasn't the best way to figure it out at all, but he couldn't tell why. After all, every single pill had a fragrance to it, right?

Maybe it was because of how little variations smells could have. But then, that was true of color too.

Alex didn't understand why, but he didn't dwell on it for very long.

After learning the color and the smell of the pills, the number of ingredients he could choose from had reduced drastically, but there were still so many different names floating in his head.

Some of which he had never heard before at all. It wasn't just the names too, he could distinctly visualize every single plant-type ingredient even though he hadn't seen it ever before.

The next task was to check the harmony in the pill between the different energies.

Overall, it looked like the pill was just a simple pill with water energy, but when looked deeper, there was a different answer.

He could see water energy through his senses, but he could also see 9 different other energy hiding behind the overall water energy.

'10 different energy,' Alex thought. '10 different ingredients.'

He was getting somewhere now. He focused on the pill's water energy and focused on it even further. He focused so much that the water-energy no longer looked like water, but rather 6 different energy.

'A True rank ingredient,' Alex understood. It was an easy guess given that it was the energy at the forefront, but that was still good to know.

However, what surprised Alex even further was that he could see the minute differences in energy now.

'So this is how it manifests huh?' Alex thought. He hadn't expected much from it, but he was glad that his Dao of Five Elemental Interaction was coming to some use here.

He could now see, in vague ideas, the general composition of energy for that ingredient based on the single energy type.

While the energy was mostly water, it also included the other type of energy, and now he could tell how much of the other energies were present in the ingredient.

Yang and Yin barely counted for anything in the energy, and even if they did have a large part, Alex would be blind about it for the most part.

There was also some fire, a little more earth, and a little less metal. Overall, those accounted for less than 1% of the entire energy which was just water.

That composition of energy helped him vastly narrow down the list of ingredients until there were but 3 different ingredients in mind.

He cross-referenced that with the color and smell, and one of the ingredients was immediately disqualified from his mind.

Between the last two, it was a hard choice, but he would find his answers when he ate the pill and saw its effect.

For now, he focused on the other 9 energies and tried to figure out their ingredients.

By the time he was all done with the energies, he had a list of about 17 ingredients, out of which there was a contention between 7 pairs, while he was sure the final 3 were confirmed.

Finally, he placed the pill into his mouth and swallowed it without hesitation.

The pill entered his stomach and slowly dissolved before… doing nothing.

"Oh… right," Alex remembered. He was now a Saint realm cultivator, so a True pill wouldn't work on him anymore.

"Well… that was a waste," he thought. He was a little disappointed that the pill didn't affect him at all, but he still brought the list of ingredients for the pill down from infinity to just 17, out of which 10 were correct.

"I will see that as a win for now," he thought and moved on.