Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex went to another sect the next day and received the same treatment. Those people knew who he was and had been hoping for him to come for a while. An elder even tried to invite him into the sect, hoping to befriend him.

Alex, of course, refused. He was here to fight and nothing else.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel glad about how everything had turned out. Given his popularity, he wouldn’t get into needless situations where he had to prove his strength so the sect took him seriously.

The grand elder of that sect came out and fought him, empowered by their battle array that improved his strength and speed. Alex had seen such an array before, but he wasn’t sure if this was the same one or not.

The battle lasted a bit over 2 hours, during which Alex fought as best as he could. Still, the grand elder of that sect proved to be more than a worthy opponent.

Even with his Sword Qi, Alex was pushed by the grand elder until he was defeated in the end. The increased speed and strength were too much for Alex to keep up with.

“Thank you for the battle,” Alex said as he handed over the storage bag with the Elixir to the old man.

The man took it and looked toward Alex. “If you wish, I could fight with you every day. Is that not what you want, wanderer?” he asked.

Alex paused for a moment, finding the proposal quite enticing. The man was strong enough to defeat him, so training with him for a few days wouldn’t be that big a loss.

But, Alex wanted variety in his battles. He wanted to fight different people with different fighting styles. He wanted to improve his Sword Intent by placing himself under different scenarios and doing his best.

So, in the end, he refused the old man.

“Will you ever return?” the old man asked.

“I will go on to fight more sects as I currently am for the foreseeable future. Should there come a time where there aren’t enough sects to fulfill my hunger for battle, I shall return to the ones that I struggled against. That is all I can say for now.”

That was all the grand elder really wanted too. As long as the man carrying the Elixir came back, they would all be happy.

Alex left the sect and walked far enough away to meet Whisker. Whisker climbed onto his shoulders and looked back.

“There are people following you,” he said quietly.

Alex didn’t look back. It was obvious to him that they would do this. Anyone would want to know about the mysterious figure that they saw once a day in a random sect.

If he were one of them, he would want to know more too.

Alex walked into the city, and turned around the corner. As soon as he did, he turned invisible. The people that then came around the corner could no longer see him.

They ran ahead of him, trying to see where he had gone to, to catch up with him if he was far away. But, they never found him again.

Alex casually trailed outside of the city and made his way toward the other city to find his next destination.

In the span of the next two weeks, Alex fought every sect he came across, heading downriver. There were 14 sects in total, of which he won 7. He lost to 3 very clearly, and the last 4 were too close to count as a victory for either one.

Winning only half his battles was a far cry from the initial performance he had shown on the other end of the river where the people were much weaker. Everyone was stronger here, their battle arrays fascinatingly powerful too.

After 2 weeks of battle, Alex decided to take a break and cultivate for 2 weeks. With the pill, his cultivation grew at a steady rate, but since he had broken through only recently, it would take a long time before he could break through once again.

2 weeks of fighting and 2 weeks of cultivation felt like the perfect way for Alex to spend his time. He used the downtime between travel and fighting during those first 2 weeks to help Whisker with becoming a better battle master, or with coming up with answers to his long-sought questions.

More than a few months passed with Alex never straying from this routine. People seemed to have realized this as well, so everyone was ready to fight when he was.

As Alex kept moving up the river, each sect he fought was stronger than the rest. The improvement from sect to sect over the course of a day wasn’t so different at all. But when viewed through the lens of weeks, it was clear that the sects downriver were always stronger.

Alex didn’t understand why that was. Was it the proximity to the core region of the desert? Or was it because of the Endless Night sect, which was hidden away in a region closer to the center, allowing everything that came out of it to trickle down to these sects first?

Alex also believed this had to do with something about how the sects were during the time of the Hell Emperor and how the regime’s impact had helped these sects more than the other ones.

The sects became harder and harder for Alex to beat each day, which made him excited more and more so that he could actually fight with his full strength soon enough.

By now, Alex’s reputation had grown much more than he could ever imagine. Sects waited days just to watch him arrive. Wherever he arrived, every single person within the sect would have already come outside to watch him fight, the main fighter ready with their weapon too.

They had even given him various names by now.

The Crimson Wanderer. The Red Phantom. The Elixir Gifter.

But there was one he liked more than the rest.

The Blood-soaked Warrior.