An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

A month later, Luo Chen shook out his arm, and a small black flood dragon wriggled free from his sleeve, dropping lightly onto the floor. He rubbed the spot where Black King had been coiled and gave him a helpless look. ”Black King, stay here and keep an eye on everyone for me. And will you please not cling to my arm like that?”

Black King felt a bit sad at the rebuke. For some reason, ever since abandoning the modern path of cultivation for that of the Titan Beast, his attachment to Luo Chen had grown noticeably stronger. After advancing to the fourth tier, he no longer wanted to return to the Primordial Unity Cauldron, nor was he willing to stay inside a spirit beast pouch. Given the choice, he would rather shrink himself down and spend the entire day curled around Luo Chen’s arm. It was almost as though simply staying close and breathing in Luo Chen’s aura somehow benefited his cultivation.

Still, his disappointment quickly gave way to curiosity. ”Master, where are you going?”

”Up there!”

Luo Chen pointed toward the roof of the carriage, though he made no move to leave just yet. The Six Restriction Cloud Carriage and the rest would continue traveling east while he was gone, and he had no idea how long his trip would take. If he left without making any preparations, finding the carriage again afterward would be hard.

With that in mind, he began laying down restrictions throughout the carriage. Streams of mana flowed from his fingertips, condensing into complicated patterns that crossed and interlocked until they formed a complete fourth-tier formation. It was a variation of the Nine Heavens-Ten Earths Formation, but he had stripped away its teleportation function and replaced it with a fixed location tag anchored to the carriage. No matter how far the carriage traveled while he was gone, that tag would serve as a beacon guiding him back.

Once the final restriction rune settled into place, Luo Chen swept his hand over the formation and covered its glow.

”All right. Keep them safe. I’m off.”

Before leaving, he took one last look around the carriage. Zhang Jingqing stood near the front, letting the breeze stir her hair as she gazed into the distance with a somewhat sad expression. Heavenjade was meditating nearby, recovering the mana she had spent piloting the carriage, while Sang Jinghe had taken over at the formation core. He fed spirit stones into the carriage from time to time, keeping it moving steadily eastward, yet somehow still had a book open in his other hand. Every so often, he lowered his eyes and read a few lines. That book was one of the many texts on spirit planting he had copied during his stay in the Central Continent.

Quite the scholar, huh?

Luo Chen chuckled to himself and quietly slipped out of the carriage without disturbing anyone.

The moment he emerged, he let his Nascent Soul resonate with the world. The next moment, ambient spirit energy gathered and lifted him up, and he shot rapidly upward. Before long, even the sea of clouds had fallen far below.

His destination was the Nine Firmaments, the highest reaches of the sky, also known among cultivators as the Nine Heavens or the Azure Darkness. At such an altitude, almost no ordinary living creature could survive, and that was why the stretch was all but uninhabited. Yet at the same time, it was not entirely barren. Strange creatures still wandered through, and rare treasures drifted through the expanse, including the spirit essences Luo Chen needed to practice the Myriad Transformations of the Firmament.

With that goal in mind, he continued upward at high speed. Clouds and mist tore past him, fierce winds howled around his body, and sheets of rain lashed past almost as quickly as they appeared. To anyone watching from the sea below, he would have looked like a shooting star racing toward the heavens.

At this speed, he could normally cross ten thousand li in little more than a moment. But for some reason, once he reached an altitude above ten thousand li, he began to slow down.

Is the ambient spirit energy getting too thin?

He reduced his speed and carefully sensed his surroundings. Sure enough, the higher he climbed, the scarcer the ambient spirit energy became. There was less and less power available for him to borrow from the world around him, and even the air had thinned to the point that breathing was becoming difficult.

Still, that was not a big problem for him. He opened his mouth and drew in a long breath. His chest and abdomen contracted sharply before swelling again as a rush of air poured into his body. Once he had taken in enough, he closed his mouth and sealed it within himself. That alone could sustain him for at least three years.

A faint smile appeared on his face. Qi Absorption is still as useful as ever!

He was still nowhere near the upper reaches of the Nine Firmaments, however, and with the ambient spirit energy growing increasingly sparse, continuing to fly up like this would not be efficient.

In spite of all the myths and legends, a Sage had little reason to travel by riding on clouds. By resonating with the spirit energy of a compatible attribute, they could draw upon the power already present in the world and use it to carry themselves along. It was not always the fastest way to travel, but over long distances, its efficiency made it far preferable to anything else. Much like the Nascent Soul Domain, this ability to draw directly upon the world was one of the clearest distinctions between a Sage and cultivators of lower realms.

At this altitude, however, there was simply too little spirit energy left to draw upon, so Luo Chen stopped relying on the world around him. Mana surged from his body and flames gathered beneath his feet, condensing into a blazing cloud that carried him upward with renewed speed.

Ten thousand li, twenty thousand, thirty thousand...

But as he continued ascending, another force soon began pressing against him. At first it was so faint that he barely noticed it, but the pressure steadily intensified until it seemed to bear down on his body from all directions at once.

By the time he reached sixty thousand li, he recognized what he was feeling. Gravity?[1]

At this height, the pressure alone was enough to stop most cultivators from going any higher. Even if an Adept somehow managed to reach this point, maintaining flight would rapidly drain both mana and physical strength. Once they could no longer keep themselves in the air, the fall itself might be enough to kill them. A Sage could endure far more, but even a Sage would have to burn through a considerable amount of mana simply to continue rising.

No wonder anything from above the Nine Heavens is so hard to come by. Just getting up here would be enough to stop most people, and even a Sage would burn through an enormous amount of mana on the way up. Oh well, that’s not enough to stop me.

Rather than pour even more mana into the blazing cloud, he dispersed it altogether and withdrew the mana barrier surrounding his body.

Swoooshhh!

Crimson light flashed behind him as a pair of wings swept open with a gust of wind.

The Moonbreak Wings had once been one of his finest flying treasures. Back then, an artisan master in Skysail City had crafted them specifically for him, though they began as nothing more than low-grade enchanted treasures. After a century of nurturing, followed by the tempering of his Nascent Soul lightning tribulation, they had risen all the way to the top grade. Although the limitations of their materials ultimately prevented them from advancing to the level of a True Artifact, they remained exceptional enough to rival some ordinary True Artifacts.

Despite this, Luo Chen had little reason to use them anymore. He possessed no shortage of powerful treasures, and after forming his Nascent Soul, his own speed had long since surpassed what the Moonbreak Wings could provide. As a result, they hadn’t really appeared in any of his recent battles.

Here, however, they were exactly what he needed. Flying with an enchanted treasure consumed far less mana than sustaining the cloud, and the Moonbreak Wings were more than capable of carrying him through the remaining distance.

With a powerful beat of the crimson wings, Luo Chen surged upward once more. The pressure around him continued to increase, but without the mana barrier shielding him, its full force now bore directly against his flesh. Even so, it barely slowed him. Wisps of crimson light flowed across his skin as his formidable physique eased the pressure, allowing him to force his way through the final thirty thousand li.

Then, the moment he crossed ninety thousand li, the resistance vanished, and his body suddenly felt light. Luo Chen instinctively raised his head, and for the first time, he truly saw what lay beyond the heavens: an endless darkness stretching into the distance, where countless stars shone across, and he could not even see where their boundaries lay.

Against that immeasurable expanse, he suddenly felt indescribably small, and a strange feeling rose from deep within him. So what if I am a Sage? What if I become an Ascendant? Compared to the vastness of the universe, I’ll still be nothing more than a speck of dust. And they say that one day, even this entire universe will be swallowed by the Abyss of Extinction. If that’s true... then what exactly is the immortality we’ve been chasing? Can it really be called eternal life? But if true immortality doesn’t exist, then what have these past centuries been for? What was the point of everything I’ve gone through? And if there is still so much suffering waiting for me on the road ahead... why am I walking it at all?

Luo Chen stood motionless in the Azure Darkness, his white robes drifting around him as confusion clouded his eyes.

Then a sharp cry exploded through his sea of consciousness. ”WAKE UP!”

The voice crashed into his divine soul like the toll of a great bell.

Luo Chen jolted violently. ”Haaaaa... haaaaa... haaaaa...”

He bent forward slightly, breathing hard as cold sweat rolled down his forehead. What just happened? I completely lost myself for a moment. I couldn’t even snap out of it.

The realization sent a chill through him. All he had done was glimpse the boundless universe for a moment, yet that single sight had nearly shaken the conviction he had carried for close to three hundred years. If the two subsidiary souls within his sea of consciousness had not intervened, his Dao Heart might have suffered lasting damage.

In particular, the subsidiary soul that had reached the early-stage Sage level reacted immediately and cast the Open Thatch Art to wrench him out of that dangerous state before those doubts could take root. Had they lingered any longer, they might have given rise to a Heart Devil and become a lasting obstacle on his path of cultivation.

Only after understanding how close he had come did he finally regain his composure. Within his sea of consciousness, the subsidiary soul fell silent once more.

Luo Chen exhaled and murmured, ”Han Zhan, you’ve saved me again.”

With that, he gathered his thoughts and continued into the Azure Darkness until his figure completely disappeared into the eternal night.

1. Yes, gravity increases with altitude. The Earth is flat. Sigh. ☜