Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

“You’re right,” Alex said. “I am a liar. You can’t trust what I say. So, why do you trust me when I say I’ve killed your kin?”

The dragon paused for a moment. “What are you…”

“I never killed anyone. I just lied to get you to fight me.”

The dragon was even more confused now. Her thick brows almost became a unibrow as they pressed together.

“I smelled a dragon’s blood,” she said.

“I was gifted it,” Alex said. “Tell me, how long have you been in this place? How many years?”

The dragon frowned. “Some forty years. Why?”

“Have you met the new dragons that arrived from outside?” Alex asked. “Preferably in the last few months.”

“Yes. What about it?”

“Did they tell you about the hybrid that was born of two Heavenly Beasts?”

The dragon fell silent. A different glimmer of light seemed to shine in her eyes as she looked at Alex. “You know of the hybrid,” she asked. “You’re… not the hybrid, are you?”

“No, I’m not. But I’m trying to help him. I won’t go into much detail, but I’m in need of as much dragon blood as I can,” Alex said. “I was given what I had as a gift from his grandmother, but that won’t be enough for me, which is why I took yours too. But that alone sadly won’t be enough for me either, so I want to give you this pill, not as a gift, but as a trade.”

“A trade for what?” the Azure Dragon asked.

“I wish to examine your body and bloodline. I need to learn how it works,” Alex said.

There was perhaps nothing else Alex could have said to get a Heavenly Beast more offended than telling them that he wanted to learn their secret. The dragon immediately let out a piercing screech that contained some sound attack within it.

Alex grimaced slightly, his eardrums nearly torn wide open.

The dragon’s entire body glowed bright, crackling with electricity as it readied its strongest attack.

Alex turned to the side, looking toward Pearl again, noticing how his fight had devolved into him being on the run for most of it. Sadly, he couldn’t help him. If he wanted Pearl to grow, Pearl had to fight on his

own.

The dragon let out its lightning strike, and Alex turned, his sword pointed toward the incoming lightning dragon.

Time seemed to slow for just him as he took a deep breath, focusing on the Sword Intent he formed around the sword.

An Intent to use the sword. An Intent to keep attacking without stop. An Intent to endlessly sever everything.

‘Closer,’ he thought.

The Sword Intent changed by a minuscule amount that only Alex could sense.

It was now an Intent to use the sword to attack. An Intent to keep attacking endlessly. An Intent to sever everything without stop. ‘Closer!’

The Intents grew closer upon his command, becoming firmer. Instead of three Intents, the threshold between them began to vanish as they slowly merged with one another.

It was still distinct enough that Alex could sense all three, but they were on the verge of becoming one.

Time grew even slower as he pushed everything he had into speeding

up time for himself. The world around him came to a crawl, even the lightning dragon being nothing more than a figure that crawled through the air like a snake through mud.

Alex took a deep breath and released it, giving it his all to push it a step further.

However, even as he tried, it didn’t work. Something firm stood right before the finish line, stopping him from pushing it forward.

Time returned to normal, and Alex swung his sword. With his level of strength, his sword attacks were enough to threaten a peak-stage Immortal, so the dragon was nothing against him.

The sword slash traveled through the lightning dragon, destroyed it, and then struck the dragon that released it. Dragon scales were strong, but Alex’s attack tore through them with ease, nearly cleaving the dragon’s entire body in half.

The dragon fell to the ground, blood gushing from the open wound. She could barely keep her sanity as the pain overwhelmed her, and she struggled to quickly bring out her healing pill.

Alex ignored the dragon, staring at his sword with a profound frown on his face. He stared at the sword for a long time, questioning what had happened earlier when he realized something very important.

“Ah! I see.”

He had nearly merged the three Intents in that moment and formed the singular, true Sword Intent. However, there was an obstacle that had shown itself at the last moment that stopped it from happening. It took a while, but Alex understood what that obstacle was.

“It’s me,” he said. “It’s always going to be me.”

He swung his sword around. “While I exist, I cannot have the Sword Intents merge into one. Either by instincts or by things beyond my understanding, the three Intents will forever be a part of me. So as long as I try to merge them together, with me as the crux, it can never

become one.”

Alex took a deep breath. “I need to remove myself. To form my Sword Heart, the Intents need to move away from me.”

He remembered Bladedance’s words.

During the formation of the Sword Heart, the man and the sword

must be separated. Only when the many Intents are merged into one core Intent and separated from the man would one truly learn the

Sword Heart.

His eyes shone with understanding.

“So, all that remains is for me to move the Intent away from me. Then,

I will have learned my Sword Heart.”

Alex put away his sword, no longer needing it. It was unlikely he

would truly need a sword for what remained in progressing to the

next stage of the sword, or even the one after that.

The only time he would truly need his sword again would be when he merged the Sword Heart back into himself, reaching the final stage of the sword-finally becoming one with the Sword.