Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The hours counted down minute by minute, and all the audience watched in anticipation.

With only 3 more hours left before the round was over, not a single one of the alchemists had produced a pill that they had registered, let alone a Pill Cloud.

Silvermist sat in his seat with his fingers crossed against his palms and his leg bobbing without stop. His eyes only looked at Alex and his closed eyes.

The other three had been doing things, making stuff, all to get any idea. But Alex alone sat in deep thought. It worried Silvermist that Alex wasn’t even close to forming any idea at all.

Grimsight looked toward Silvermist with a raised eyebrow. “Surely you are worried about your disciple and not the 15 thousand Divine Spirit stones that you put up as a bid.”

Silvermist turned toward Grimsight, a look of shock on his face. “Do you believe me to be so lacking in morals and grace?” he asked.

Grimsight smiled. “I was merely joking,” he said. “Getting your thoughts away from the situation.”

“Don’t do that,” Silvermist said seriously. “I don’t care about that money. I only went up so high because that damn Wineweed was there. I was perfectly fine with betting just 3 thousand Divine Spirit stones otherwise.”

“Just 3 thousand, huh?” Grimsight commented, shaking his head. Silvermist was quite out of touch with what was an acceptable amount of spirit stones. Since he had been a great alchemist for thousands and thousands of years, it had been a long time since he had ever lacked spirit stones.

As a result, to him, three thousand Divine Spirit stones were just some money.

“You’re distracting me. Let me focus,” Silvermist said, turning back toward the stage. The few seconds where his emotions had moved away from worry came back once again, and he felt horrible yet again. Maybe he should have continued talking to Grimsight. It had been a nice change of pace.

Silvermist’s eyes opened wider when he noticed movement. He saw Alex open his eyes and pull out the ingredients from his storage bag.

“Look, he’s done it,” he said quickly, bringing the focus of the others onto the stage where Alex was.

Momo sighed in relief, and so did Pearl and Whisker.

Unlike the others, Alex only made his pills when he was fully done with the recipe. So, at any time now, they would know the result.

* * * * * *

The pill Alex made was another Discordant Duality pill. As a result, it had to be made with two ingredients refined at the same time. It was slightly more difficult than normal pills, but having made nearly a dozen of them at this point, Alex wasn’t tripped by any portion of the new recipe.

The fact that he came up with the recipe meant it was just that much easier for him to make the pill.

There was, of course, still a part of him that didn’t want to make this pill—the part that considered pills like these failures. However, he was able to put away the qualms for that side by considering the fact that he was making the failure of a pill on purpose.

Alex did wonder at some point if this was ever going to come back to haunt him as an Inner Demon—worried that he would consider himself a failure of an alchemist for choosing to make this pill even though his beliefs were different.

However, Alex felt that he was fine so long as he understood that what he was making was, in fact, a failure, and the only reason he was making the pill was because the tournament demanded it.

Alex began refining the ingredients. Considering the ingredients in use, he was much weaker than the overall energy in the cauldron. As a result, he needed to force his Intent upon it to make the energy within the cauldron follow his commands.

The pill wasn’t dissimilar in strength to the Heavensent Invincibility pill, and that was something Alex had made at 80% back when he was in the early Immortal Ascendant realm over a century ago.

Now, he had a much better cultivation base and a far stronger Intent. So, while he would have to use up his Intent, the pill itself caused him no issue.

The refinement process took about 10 minutes as Alex took his time with the pill. He could not afford a single mistake, so he focused all his attention on making the pill.

After some time, he was done with refining everything.

Alex quickly completed forming the pill and felt the sky stir awake above him. The clouds swarmed into the sky out of nowhere and gathered as purple lightning began flashing around.

He could only imagine just what would happen if this lightning bolt were to strike his pill. Considering the state of the pill, it was likely to cause cracks in Memory if he let it explode.

It was just that strong.

When the first pill lightning struck down, Alex blocked it easily. The energy from the lightning went into the pill, forming a pill vein and making it stronger.

Alex watched that and paused a little.

Was he perhaps wrong in his thoughts of such pills being a failure? Surely, if they weren’t part of alchemy, the heavens wouldn’t arrive to strike them down.

It caused some doubts inside him to grow at that moment.

Alex placed his Qi on top of the cauldron as the second lightning bolt arrived. Unlike Momo, he wasn’t going to get distracted by his own thoughts.

He wouldn’t let the pill lightning destroy his pill and his cauldron.

Alex blocked the second lightning and prepared for the next. Even as he did, he continued his thoughts from earlier.

Was his approach to finding the Dao of Alchemy perhaps mistaken? Could pills be considered successes even if they did nothing to the person who consumed them?

The pill Alex just made, for example, would simply dissipate inside a person, releasing Water and Fire energy that could cause issues inside the person—not by design, but more as a side effect.

There would be no difference if the person ate the raw ingredients by themselves either. At that point, it couldn’t be considered to be the effect of the pill.

Alex blocked the third pill lightning.

Still, the doubt remained within him. If these pills were not pills, then why did the heavens come down to stop their perfection?

Was he truly wrong in his thought process? Should he change it while he had the time and go on the path that everyone who had come before him had gone through?

Or was there something everyone else had missed? Was there something he himself had missed with the pill?

What if he was correct in what he thought, but the only reason he didn’t know he was right was because he couldn’t see the answers right before his eyes?

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It was a frustrating situation to be a part of, and it was something Alex wanted to think about.

However, that would need to wait until after the tournament was over. For now, he needed to win this whole thing.

Alex stopped the fourth and final pill lightning and sent away the pill clouds.

His ninth pill for the tournament was ready.