Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

　　Alex was quite surprised to see how many books there were. 

’Do these people not want to write in talismans or what?’ he thought. It was true that a normal talisman didn’t have as much space to keep the information as a book did, but then one could use 2 talismans.

’Maybe they are influenced by most cultivation skills being in books?’ he thought. He was looking forward to seeing what sort of techniques these people had and opened the first book he had.

It was a nameless book and so Alex flipped to see what it was about.

[With the same amount of power, you can do significantly more damage to a person if your arrow is sharper than normal. In fact, if the tip of your arrow is incomparably sharp, you can destroy most things you previously could not with your arrow.]

Alex was a little confused. “That’s not a technique. Is this not a technique book?” he thought and continued reading.

[Physically forged arrows can only ever have tips that are so thin. Even the best of artifact forgers can’t make the arrow’s tip too sharp or it breaks during the forging process. So, I will have to find some other ways of making my arrows sharp. I have begun looking into using Qi to create a fake exterior on the arrows that I will make sharp. I will record if this results in any progress]

As Alex continued reading, he learned more and more about what the person was doing. Soon, he had to close the book.

”This man was trying to find a dao, wasn’t he?” Alex thought. He was fortunate that the man wasn’t too deep into the book, or he might have learned what the man had understood in the process of his dao and thus not have the chance to acquire it as his own dao.

After all, the heavens never helped someone who didn’t do the brunt of the work themselves. And then they kicked the ones they did help, but that was an entirely different matter.

”I can’t read these insights,” he told himself. A little here and there was good, and maybe a discussion itself was also good. But if one only received the information without doing anything, Dao was unachievable.

Alex looked at the book and wondered who it belonged. A person who had acquired the dao or the person who was searching for the dao.

If the saint realm who had owned this book was in fact the person who was on the verge of acquiring a dao, then Alex was lucky that he had killed the man, or Godslayer did.

If not, and this was a man that was reading somebody else’s insights, then he was never going to have a Dao in the first place.

’Is that why there are so many people with no Dao at all?’ he thought. He wondered how many people in the Western continent had dao.

He knew of 3 including himself. And of what he had asked of the jaguar, even it didn’t have any dao. Although it did mention to Alex that it was close to one.

’Does the emperor perhaps have a dao? Maybe regarding to poison?’ Alex wondered.

He kept aside the book. It was a little sinister, but he could also sell the book to some fool who wanted to learn dao. Alex wasn’t yet sure if he would ever need to reach that level of desperation.

He checked a few of the other books and realized those were full of insights too. ‘No way all these people grasped this much of Dao and never had any,’ he thought. ‘They were definitely reading other people’s insight.’

Alex saw that there were more insight books than there were corpses in his memories. Meaning that some of these people were reading more than just one.

’Is the information about Dao not very widespread even amongst the Saint realm cultivators?’ Alex wondered. He couldn’t help but thank the god who sent Shen Jing to his aid. If he wasn’t there, Alex would’ve likely read all of these books in an attempt to find a dao.

After quite a few books, he finally landed on a proper technique book. Unfortunately, it was a movement skill book, and one not as good as his own.

’No point in reading that,’ he thought and kept it aside. 

Then, he read a book with a water-elemental skill. It was a skill that allowed him to create floating icicles that he could later hurl at people with Qi manipulation.

The most impressive part of this technique was that while it did use up a lot of Qi and time for the icicles to appear, each one that was created had quite a high damage.

While Alex, unfortunately, had one of the worst Water Spiritual roots amongst anyone, he was lucky enough to have one.

”What was the last water technique I learned again?” he thought to himself. There were two nameless techniques he learned but they were simply water projectiles and water slash techniques of mortal grade that he hadn’t used in ages because of how useless they were.

”Well, this is not bad,” he thought and decided to read it.

Infinite Heavenly Ice spears. The name made the technique sound better than it really was. It wasn’t lying in any way, but it also wasn’t telling the whole truth.

It called them ice spears, when in fact the thing that was made was simply icicles. The heavenly part was just to denote that the skill was of Heaven grade, but what was truly baffling was that whoever made this technique dared claim it was infinite.

Was it infinite? In an ideal world, yes. You could make one spear after another without stopping while you split your attention into using your Qi to keep around you.

This meant that as long as you had infinite Qi and were never in a hurry, you had infinite ice spears. But that was never the case, was it? 

One would have to throw out an icicle in the middle of the battle and couldn’t keep it to themselves while an opponent was upfront.

Besides, in the same sense, every other technique could be considered infinite since the cultivator could continue using it forever.

Alex finished learning the technique and crafted an ‘ice spear’. The icicle landed on his hand with a rather pointed tip and he suddenly slammed it onto his left hand.

Alex wanted to see just how much damage he could do, but to his surprise, his body managed to fend off the attack without a single scratch.

”What the hell?” Alex thought. ‘Did my body cultivation perhaps increase again after going through the inheritance?’ 

One did need a rather strong body to use the Undying God’s physique, so Alex wouldn’t be surprised if he was indeed stronger than he had been just… how many days ago was it again?

Alex shook his head and created another icicle before throwing it on the ground. The explosive sound of the strike made Alex understand that he had indeed learned it well.

Although, given how weak his spiritual root was, the icicle likely was going to be one of his weakest attacks.

’It will only be useful against fire and earth users. Even then I have my metal skills for those both,’ Alex thought.

Alex continued on to other books. He simply ignored anything that had to do with weapons that weren’t swords or whips at the moment.

The defensive techniques were commendable but mostly useless for him. They were earth or heaven-grade skills, and Alex already had a similar one for it.

He wanted a defensive mental skill, but he supposed that sort of thing wasn’t readily available even amongst the Saint realm cultivators.

He wondered if the old man he trapped in the Timeless Palace had those sorts of techniques. He was after all one of the strongest Saint realm cultivators of the Western Continent, barring the Beast realm.

Also, he was the one with the many mental skills, so Alex did become a little hopeful. Only he would have to wait quite a few years before he was capable of killing that old man.

Alex shook his head and continued reading through the techniques, many of which he didn’t care about, and finally ended up on one that he did.

The 21 Sword Array technique.