Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Pills were a curious bunch of things when it came to rules.

The rules were very weird, making little to no sense when it came to how they had to be. Some of the weird rules included the fact that pills needed to be symmetrical.

Other weird rules included that if two pills had the same amount of energy, but one energy was more condensed than the other, and it would have less Harmony. Thus making the pill with the condensed energy appear as the worse pill. When in reality, they both had the exact same amount of energy, with the only difference being a bit of powder remaining stuck in one’s body.

Another weird rule was that pills didn’t have an exact requirement for what was considered a pill or not in terms of size. There was a general range of size between which any pill could be considered the same as any other pill, even though it was clear that a smaller pill with no empty space was no doubt going to have less energy than a larger pill with no empty space.

And yet, they could have the same harmony as long as they were filled with energy completely.

These were rules that Alchemists usually thought were weird only when starting out. After a while, that was just the way of the pill, so they didn’t give it any more thought at all.

However, at this very moment, these very weird rules came back to Alex, giving him a brilliant idea.

At this very moment, the powder of 9 different sets of ingredients was inside of Memory. If he were to separate it all into 10 different sections, he could make 10 different pills, each about nine-tenth the size of what the original pill was going to be.

And since 90% of the original size was acceptable as a pill for some reason when it came to making pills, Alex could use that to his advantage and turn the 9 sets of ingredients into 10 pills.

Under normal circumstances, there was no advantage to doing this. Making extra pills wouldn’t magically give him extra points. Making 10 pills from 9 sets of ingredients and 10 sets of ingredients gave the exact same amount of points.

However, in this particular circumstance, it was going to help Alex.

The pile of powder split into two, separated into their own section of the cauldron, where Alex then used the 5-Way Pill Splitting Qi.

Over the course of the centuries, he had slowly improved his Pill Splitting technique to go from working on 2 pills to just 1, then to 3. And now he could convert the set of powders into 5 pills at once.

He could’ve made even better versions of the techniques had he not had to spend most of his time on other issues.

The two piles of pills quickly moved into action, all separating themselves into 5 neat piles where they began forming a solid spherical ball. That only took a small time before the energy rushed into the pills all at once. It took no more than a few seconds after that for the pills to finalize and the task was complete.

Alex looked at the time in the sky, shocked by his own speed. There was still a minute and a half left.

“How fast did I make this?” he thought to himself. How slow had time become?

The relief that came with no longer having to focus on anything else was quite an incredible feeling. Alex took in deep breath, feeling his body refresh just as his mind felt.

He looked down at the 90 different pills he had gathered. Not a single one of them had been below 90% in harmony.

‘Together, they will give me 8305 points,’ Alex thought. ‘But…’

He looked at the final set of ingredients he hadn’t used. Not making that pill was 100 fewer points.

‘8205… that’s still not bad,’ Alex thought. It was much higher than what Killersky had gotten anyway. And others would no doubt fail to reach this high. He was set to move on no matter what.

And yet, it didn’t sit right with Alex. ‘I can’t lose 100 points,’ he thought. When it came to Alchemy, his pride was high and his ego was boundless. His stubborn mind did not want to lose out on the 100 points.

He wasn’t sure if he would get any points in return for making a pill that wasn’t on the list, but so long as he didn’t lose any points, that would be enough for him.

Alex looked at the sky, seeing the time remaining.

1 minute and 22 seconds.

If he were to make multiple pills, there was no time at all. But if he needed to make just a single pill…

“A minute is already enough.”

The flames under Memory roared up and Memory itself expanded in front of Alex to become twice the size.

The 13 ingredients for the Twilight Consuming Pill teleported into the cauldron, including the mutant Sky Gold Jade Leaf.

Alex had no time to imagine what sort of reaction the energy would have. He just needed to do what he could.

The 13 ingredients hovered inside Memory, forming a straight vertical line with enough distance between them. Then, the space surrounding the 13 ingredients suddenly split into 13 different sections, each for the 13 ingredients to be used at once.

The strip of metal around the space where the ingredients hovered began heating up individually at a different rate, and the ingredients moved around on the inside, being refined individually, releasing their energy into the isolated sections of the cauldrons.

Alex focused his attention on the Sky Gold Jade Leaf that released a weaker Metal ingredient. His mind, now free of any other burden, sprinted to find the reasonable rate at which it could be mixed in with the other energy that would reach it.

He could see glimpses of what he was going to make, glimpses of the end when all of these energies would come together into one single pill.