Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

“A Yang physique that could let him absorb Yang as Qi?” Alex asked, his brows raising in surprise.

“Yes,” the old man said. “Without it, he would’ve never become a Celestial.”

“Did he only absorb Yang? Or could he absorb other things too?” Alex asked.

“What other things is he supposed to be absorbing?” the old man asked with a confused look. “He just stayed around in a pile of Decaying Sunheart and let the Yang in it flow into his body, and then turned it into Qi.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. While it sounded partly like his own physique, it still seemed quite different. His was better since Yang was not the only thing he could absorb.

“Do you know how weak he was when he arrived here?” Alex asked. “I wish to learn how long a time it took for him to become a Celestial.”

“He wasn’t so weak like you. He was already in the third Divine realm, the one you call Divine Domain realm. He needed to break through 5 more times in order to reach the Celestial realm. And that took him about 40 thousand years.”

Alex paused for a long moment. “40… thousand years for 5 breakthroughs?” he asked.

“Yes, although the breakthroughs alone only took about 15 thousand years. The rest of the time was spent elsewhere,” the old man explained.

“Where else?” Alex asked. “What took 25 thousand years of his other time?”

“When he first arrived, the man didn’t know he could cultivate Yang energy at all. It took him a while to realize that, and many years after that to utilize it properly. That was around the time I met him and took him under my wings, teaching him what I knew.”

“He also needed intense Yang, and couldn’t just rely on his surroundings, so we needed to head into the desert where the Yang was stronger. We progressed slowly, taking a long time there as well.”

“When we reached as deep as we could, we stopped and realized that the beasts in there weren’t enough to sustain his needs. So instead, he formed his empire, mostly as a way to gather Decaying Sunhearts for him to start cultivating. And that of course took a while.”

Alex was quite surprised to hear that. “The Hell Emperor became a monarch so he could get Decaying Sunhearts from everywhere?”

“The more the better,” the old man said with a shrug. “Well, cultivation was a major part of the reason I suppose. The other reason was his unending fascination for Elixir. He wanted quite a lot of it, so he had to have Decaying Sunhearts for it.”

The old man paused for a moment and turned toward Alex. “If I’m remembering correctly, the report mentioned that you had a lot of Elixir as well. Did you steal them off my sect members or can you actually make them?”

Alex grinned. “I can make them.”

The old man looked surprised. “Can you really?”

“I just need to go down to the depths and gather the dark liquid and refine it, right? It’s simple enough,” Alex said. “Although, I can’t take the credit for discovering the method. My beast did. He’s quite talented.”

Alex pulled his robe and revealed Whisker that had been hiding inside until now. Whisker looked at the old man and raised his tiny paw to wave at him.

“Greetings.”

The old man looked around for a moment, before looking back at Whisker. “Wait, was that you? Did you just speak?”

“Yes,” Whisker said.

“Wow,” he said, reaching toward Whisker.

Whisker looked a little worried, but he let the man grab him nonetheless.

“A beast in the Immortal realm,” the man said with a hint of surprise in his voice. “How long has it been since I’ve seen one of you?”

“You’ve met Immortal beasts before, senior?” Alex asked.

“Some of the outsiders came with them,” the old man said. “But it has been a long time since outsiders came at all. After little Dai left, this world stopped being a prison to the outsiders and they stopped sending as much.”

“I see,” Alex said.

“You found out about Elixir?” the old man asked Whisker.

Whisker nodded. “I was trying to understand the beasts’ habit in this world of why they go in and out of the sand all the time, and accidentally discovered Elixir at the bottom.”

“Oh!” the old man said. “How long did it take you?”

Whisker thought for a moment. “A few months or so.”

The old man suddenly started coughing out of shock, and didn’t stop for a while. “Wait, did you say a few months?”

Whisker nodded.

The old man’s face changed as if he wanted to cry. “It took us thousands of years to figure out where Elixir came from.”

“Thousands?” Alex was taken aback by the number.

“To be fair, I always believed the Elixir had something to do with something deeper in the desert, which was how the beasts became stronger the deeper they went. It took us that many years to make our way deep into the desert. By we, of course, I mean the empire. We were unifying the desert under the Hell Emperor’s name.”

Alex nodded. “So you knew what Elixir was before you even found it?” he asked.

The old man grinned. “I did.”

“How?”

“How indeed?”

Alex narrowed his eyes at the old man’s lack of answer. He continued.

“The people believe that the beasts are how you extract Elixir. Was that an intentional lie that you spread around?” Alex asked.

“Not really,” the old man answered. “We knew beasts had Elixirs, so we tried extracting it from them first. When we finally found the correct source, the wrong information had already spread. And we didn’t bother rectifying it since it helped us.”

“I see. That was an incredible find,” Alex said. “So if you know that much about Elixir, do you happen to know what makes it?”

“What makes it?” the old man turned toward Alex.

Alex nodded. “More precisely, I found a metal wall down there that seems to be responsible for creating Elixir. Do you know what that is?”