Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The leader swung his ax at Pearl.

The ax was a two-handed ax, with a meter-long wooden shaft that was so polished that the wood grains were no longer visible, and an ax head that was in a circular shape of half a meter in diameter.

The leader was still a good 20 meters away from Pearl, but the swinging of the ax sent out an earthen-colored illusory ax of the same shape as his own.

Pearl understood this was a strong attack, but he didn’t back away. Instead, his right paw glowed goldenly and he swung at the ax-shaped energy.

The energy dissipated as soon as Pearl hit it, with Pearl taking barely any damage himself.

Pearl was a little surprised. Was the human in front of him not strong?

The leader frowned as well. He had clearly sent out an attack that had the power of a 9th Mind Tempering realm cultivator, but somehow the cat had easily stopped it.

It looked like he couldn’t hold back at all. 

Suddenly, Pearl started running towards the leader. His feet flickered with golden light and before the leader could see it, he split into two.

It was impossible to tell which one was real.

He remembered that it was the left one that was real last time when it had attacked the girl with the arrow, so, he targeted it.

An earth spike rose from the ground right underneath where Pearl was. It struck through Pearl, but then Pearl disappeared into many golden motes of light.

He had chosen wrong.

The Pearl on the right jumped at the leader and attacked with his paw. 

The leader didn’t move away, however. Instead, his body turned brown and he used it to block Pearl’s attack.

Pearl swung his paw onto the Leader’s right biceps. The leader was sent back a couple of meters and looked in shock.

There were thin cuts on his arm where the robe had been torn open and he was bleeding slightly.

’I was fully defending it too,’ he thought. He was finally starting to feel scared for the fight. It was a good idea he sent the others away. Had they stayed, he realized they would’ve likely died.

’Good thing I sent them away. Now I will have to fight properly,’ he thought. 

The ground shuddered around his feet and Pearl sensed it. Immediately, Pearl backed away in caution.

The earth climbed up around the leader’s feet and started covering part of his body like it were armor.

He now had an extra layer of security that would also increase his strength.

So, he rushed up ahead and started attacking Pearl.

The 4 of the others looked at the battle from the side.

”Is… brother holding back?” the girl with the saber asked.

”I don’t think so,” the man that was heavily injured said. He had taken a healing pill by now and was healed enough to stand up. There were still cuts and bruises all over him, but that wasn’t something he cared about for now.

The girl with the bow and arrow looked around and asked, “why is it taking so long?”

The other man looked around and asked, “Did brother Yun not set it up properly?”

”He must have,” the girl with the saber said.

The 4 of them continued watching the battle unfold for another 5 minutes. Both the kitten and their brother seemed to be fighting with full strength, and somehow neither was winning.

They never expected the kitten to lose, but seeing their brother have a hard time winning, was the most shocking aspect of the fight.

Pearl’s body flickered into two as both Pearls ran towards the leader. 

The leader had already tried hitting either of the Pearls during the multiple times Pearl had used this technique. So, he didn’t choose either of the Pearl this time.

Instead, he sent out multiple earth spikes towards both of the Pearl.

The attack reached the Pearl on the right who vanished into golden motes of light. When it reached the Pearl on the left, Pearl’s body glowed a bit, but he a step late and the earth spike hit him.

It didn’t manage to pierce him or anything, not even cut him a little, but Pearl still took some damage.

He landed on his feet a looked at the leader. How was the late just now? He was fully prepared to block the attack.

Just then, he felt a sense of weightlessness. As if his brain floated in nothingness before suddenly experiencing gravity.

Pearl stumbled a little to the right and shook his head.

The leader smiled. The formation he had set up while the other 4 kept Pearl busy was finally working.

Usually, the formation would work in just a minute or two for low-level True beasts, but even after 5 minutes, this beast wasn’t down.

The leader couldn’t help but feel happy about their luck in finding the beast.

He fought for a few more minutes, but it was soon apparent that the beast couldn’t keep up for much longer.

Pearl huffed heavily as whatever was happening to him made it really hard to focus. He couldn’t even see the enemy properly as his vision twisted into 3 separate images for everything around him.

Even when using his Spiritual Sense, he couldn’t keep the direction in check.

The leader threw a net at him and it landed on Pearl. But he easily destroyed the net with his claws. 

”Tsk,” the leader felt annoyed. He needed to quickly catch the beast before his precious True spirit stones lost their energy in the formation flags.

He had to finish this quickly, and the only way he saw was to knock the beast out. 

The Leader dashed forward towards Pearl, with his ax glowing with bright earth color, and swung it onto Pearl.

Suddenly, a flash of gray moved in front of him as his ax came to a halting stop.

Not only did the ax stop, the leader felt pain in his hands from the rebound as well as the skin between his thumb and index finger nearly splitting with the force.

When he looked up to see what had appeared, he saw an almost skeletal man in a grayish robe stand in front of him with a gentle-looking smile on his face.

The leader followed his ax to see how it had been stopped when he nearly lost his eyes when they popped out of his socket with pure shock.

1 finger.

The man in front of him had stopped one of his strongest attacks with a single finger, and there was not a single scratch on him.

”May I ask why you are attacking my brother?” Alex asked.

The leader felt his heart sink to the bottom of his stomach. He immediately let go of the ax, and before it could even fall to the ground, he did. 

The leader slammed his head onto the ground and started screaming. “Forgiveness, senior. I— I didn’t know the cat belonged to you,” the leader said.

”He doesn’t belong to me. He is my brother. He belongs to no one,” Alex said.

The leader sunk deeper into his fear, not understanding what he should do now.