Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The feast ended some time later, and everyone began returning to their own huts to sleep. A few men, under the order of the chief, came to return Alex’s bed into the room, but Alex requested that they keep it outside.

“I’d like to stay outside tonight,” he said. “I don’t know if I will be sleeping at all.”

“Outside?” the chief asked with a confused look. “It’s quite dangerous to stay outside in the night.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Are there beasts that come at night?”

“No, not the beasts, the cold.”

“Ah! That’s alright. I can handle the cold,” Alex said.

The chief wanted to argue, but Alex gave him no chance. In the end, the man had to return to his large hut to sleep the night, while Alex alone stayed outside in the deep night, his only companion the howling wind and the splashes far along the shore.

He lay on his bed, looking at the vast emptiness in the sky. All day, he had seen the sky shimmer, but once the sun was done, the shimmering had stopped. He expected the moon to show the shimmering again, but to his surprise, there was no moon.

Alex frowned a little. The pale silver moon, also sometimes called the true moon, was supposed to be visible from every world. And yet, it wasn’t visible here at all. Why was that?

Alex thought the situation had something to do with the moon itself when he realized that something else was missing.

The stars.

None of the sparkling pinpricks of light that covered the night sky in every other world were visible here at all. ‘So it’s not just the moon that’s hidden from this world. Even the other worlds can’t be seen.’

For a moment, Alex wondered if he had come to a spatial pocket, but even spatial pockets let one see the stars and the moon. This was something else entirely.

‘Is it because of my lack of senses?’ Alex thought but refused the idea almost immediately. ‘No, my senses are still better than a mortal’s, and even mortals can see stars at night.’

That made him quite curious about how things were so different in this world.

Alex wished he could just fly into the sky and see everything for himself, but that sadly was beyond him at the moment. ‘I need more Qi,’ he thought. The sole source of Qi he had found until now was the bits of fish and herbs in his soup.

If he got more of those, maybe he could do something about it.

‘It’s too dark right now, and my senses aren’t that good just yet,’ Alex thought. ‘I should wait until tomorrow.’

He also needed to let his body heal.

Alex tried cultivating again on a foolish hope that he could find some Immortal Qi, but there truly wasn’t any here at all.

‘If I want Immortal Qi, I should make use of the many spirit stones in my Soul Space,’ Alex thought. There was so much Qi for him to use, barely out of reach.

The lightning seal around his Spiritual Sea and his Soul Space was the only thing stopping him from cultivating right at that moment.

Alex took a deep breath, got up from his bed, and sat on it cross-legged. He prepared himself mentally for what he was going to do next. He knew the pain and knew it would be one of the worst pains he had ever felt.

And still, he had to do it.

After solidifying his resolve, Alex took his Spiritual Sense and attacked the Storm God’s seal.

The pain was instant.

Alex grunted and gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to scream in the slightest. The pain was akin to someone taking a thousand tiny needles and using them to stab his brain a thousand times each.

He could feel his resolve shattering slowly as the Storm God’s seal forced its intent upon him. It was a dangerous thing that Alex was doing.

Alex stopped a few seconds later, unable to handle the pain anymore. As an Immortal, fighting against a seal left behind by a Celestial should have been a death sentence. However, it seemed that the Storm God was not intent on killing him at all, just discouraging him by hurting him so much that he might as well wish he were dead instead.

Alex was breathless at the end, huffing somewhat loudly, while his entire body was covered in beads of sweat. He couldn’t tell how long it had been since he was in pain.

Was it a few seconds? A few minutes? Or had an hour even passed?

He felt his current level of awareness and discerned that only a minute should have passed at most. And yet, it had felt so different.

He wondered at that moment if he should stop for the night and continue tomorrow.

‘No, I need to leave as soon as I can,’ Alex thought. ‘I should do all I can right now.’

He closed his eyes and tried again.

Alex came out breathless and in sweat once again a minute later. The pain hadn’t lessened at all. He had expected himself to get a little more used to the pain, but nothing had changed. He was going to continue to feel this pain for a long, long time—perhaps even until the day when this seal remained.

If it didn’t lessen in the slightest, then Alex would have to suffer the same pain for as long as it took for him to pierce through the seal. He felt annoyed at his upcoming fate, but there was nothing else he could do but continue trying.

After resting for a few minutes, Alex tried once again.

By the third time, Alex was out of all of his Spiritual Energy. His mind was abuzz from the lack of Spiritual Energy and he felt himself go woozy. In the end, there was nothing more left for Alex to do except lay on his bed and fall asleep.