Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

　　Alex opened his eyes to a gentle feeling of serenity. He looked around his surrounding at the sight of ice everywhere, but there was no cold he could feel at the moment.

The sun shined bright and the rays hit his body directly, yet he felt no heat from it.

Alex closed his eyes again and sent his senses into his body. The Yin orb and the Yang fruit were nowhere to be found again. However, he could feel pure Qi coming out of his naval area.

A Qi that was far stronger than his normal Yang Qi. Alex moved his Qi through his body, and this time there was no sluggishness, no pain, nothing.

It was as if water flowing down a clean creek. 

Finally, Alex thought to himself, ‘how long have I been here?’ 

He could tell that it had been a while, but it was quite impossible for him to tell the exact period of time he had been cultivating for.

Either way, he knew it had been quite a while since he had started cultivating, so there were surely some problems that accumulated, that he needed to take care of before they got too troublesome.

Alex took a deep breath and suddenly found himself in his spiritual space where the spiritual sea was far and wide below, while the silver mountain hung in the sky.

It had been more than 7 years since he had acquired the mountain, and finally, he saw some difference. 

Had Alex not had a photographic memory, he wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but there were some spots on the mountain that were visibly smaller than before.

It was negligible when compared to the entire mountain, but this at least told Alex that the mountain would disappear in the future.

He then moved his attention to the millions of silver threads that flew in the sky and went up the mountain to absorb them.

As he did, he also noticed the massive black goo that covered the artifact’s spirit. Alex hurriedly devoured that too until the crystal remained.

Ignoring the spirit, he went back to gathering the silver threads, which took at least half an hour. 

After he was done, Alex looked at the surroundings to see no other problem that required his help. So, he left the place and arrived back in his body.

Finally, he stood up from the frozen lake he was on and checked his body one last time. After seeing nothing wrong with it, he tried to fly.

Since his Qi was working fine now, he could also fly perfectly well. Alex flew to the top of the cliff that was closest to him, but he had no way of telling if this was the place he had fallen from.

From the regular snowfall and blizzards, the place changed daily. So, all Alex could do was try to judge the direction using the sun.

He stood on the ice for a few minutes and watched the shadow slightly shift direction. From that, he could tell which direction he needed to go in.

Before leaving, Alex changed his tattered clothes for a better ones and flew away.

He searched for the jaguar, hoping he was close by, but of course, he wasn’t there. After flying a little further away, Alex took out his talisman and let his mother know that he was okay.

Helen was beyond rejoiced to hear that and asked him to quickly return back.

As Alex flew, he checked his body once more and was happy to find out that there was almost no yang coming out of his body. 

Sure he could create some if he wanted to, but it never released on its own. This gave Alex some hope that it would continue to do the same from now on.

After a little while, Alex brought out the flying boat and rode it all the way back to the DawnSpring city.

When he finally reached back, he went straight to the Flowing Brush sect and then directly to his mother.

”You are alive,” Helen started crying the moment she saw and hug her son.

”I’m sorry I worried you mother,” Alex said. “I was forced into cultivating to save myself so I couldn’t switch my attention to anything else.”

”Brother, are you okay?” Pearl asked from the side.

”Yes, I am fine,” Alex said. “How about y— wait, what? Pearl, how are you in True King 9th realm already?” 

”Hehe, mother made me cultivate every day so I can be strong enough to protect brother one of these days,” Pearl said.

Alex moved away from his shocked eyes from Pearl and looked at his mother. She too was as True King 3rd realm, which was 2 realms more than what she was when he left here.

”H-how many weeks was I gone?” he asked cautiously.

”Weeks?” Helen said incredulously. “You were gone for nearly 8 months.”

”8… months?” Even in his wildest dreams Alex could never have imagined to have disappeared somewhere for 8 months.

”We tried searching for you the day you had disappeared, but we couldn’t find you. What exactly happened?” Helen asked.

Alex proceeded to explain as well as he could. “After the orb entered me, I don’t have many memories aside from forcing myself to cultivate. I did feel them entering my naval area, and only after that did I gain proper consciousness again,” he said.

Qin Shan arrived not long after and was beyond shocked to see Alex still alive. Alex told him what had happened, but kept the important details to himself.

Alex was surprised when he found out that the empire thought he was dead now. He thought of letting them know he was back, but then he would have to fulfill his promise of the Alchemy lesson that so many of them had very much likely been waiting for.

So, he decided to keep the facade a little longer.

After speaking with his mother and reassuring her that he was alive and okay, Alex walked out of her room to go to his own house.

However, he stopped in his tracks halfway through when he realized that he was sensing something in him.

’A spiritual sense?’ he thought as he spread his own spiritual sense around to find the individual. However, this spiritual sense came from way too far away for him to track down the source.

’A saint realm?’ Alex thought. In just a few seconds of thinking, a thought came to his mind and he flew away from the location to the outer edge of the sect towards the empty mountains.

The spiritual sense got stronger and stronger and Alex knew he was in the right direction.

”Senior,” Alex called out. “You can come out.”

He waited for half a minute before a beast arrived in front of him. It looked at him up and down for a moment before opening its mouth to speak.

”You don’t seem that dangerous when you don’t have the spirit fighting for you,” the beast said.

Alex recognized the leopard from back when he went to rescue Pearl from the beast realm. Aside from the jaguar and the puma, this leopard was the third saint realm beast he saw that day.

”Thank you senior, for looking after Pearl and my mother,” Alex said.

”I was just doing as I was ordered. Besides, looking after the young lord is my honor,” the leopard said.

”Can you let senior jaguar know that I’m alive now?” Alex said. “He must’ve thought I had died in the Icy Hell region.”

”He knows you are alive. He’s been going there to look after you frequently. You probably just missed him by a couple of hours. Once he realizes you aren’t there, he will come here directly,” the leopard said.

”I see,” Alex said.

Suddenly a spiritual sense landed on Alex that was different from the Leopard’s spiritual sense.

The black jaguar appeared in front of the two and looked at Alex in surprise. “You really survived?” he asked.

”I did. Thank you for looking after me, senior,” Alex said.

”You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “I nearly killed you instead of protecting you.”

”No, it was my fault mostly,” Alex said.

”Since you are fine, we haven’t failed at our job,” the jaguar said. The jaguar turned to leave, but Alex stopped him.

”Wait senior, I need to ask you something,” Alex said. “Are you planning on taking Pearl back for the ritual?”