Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

In the corner of the secret realm within his Soul Space, inside the giant rockface mountain, was the tiny sun that still burned. Alex had completely absorbed the entirety of his Sun Creation, so the Sun had been staying idle for a while, doing nothing.

Now that Alex had the idea to move the Nine Yang Divine Tree, its absence wouldn’t be that bad since there would always be a Sun for him to use.

Of course, he had to ask Ray if that was possible at all, which he did.

“Moving the sun around as though it were the regular sun?” the bird asked with some thought. “It should be possible. But do you really need to do that? I can manipulate the Life aura inside my Sunfire to help grow anything that needs to be grown. That’s how I prepared all the poison islands.”

Alex paused for a moment, not having taken that into account until now. With what Ray said, the plants wouldn’t really need sunlight to grow.

“Still, there needs to be a sun for the normalcy of things,” he said in the end. “Some plants just don’t react well in the absence of a proper day and night cycle, and it’s important for the people inside too.”

Ray agreed in the end. “In that case, I shall prepare for it to encircle the island as the true sun would. When shall I start?”

“Not yet. There’s still some time before everything is dealt with. Battlesage and Whisker will need some time to come up with the proper plan, and then they’ll have to execute said plan. Not to mention, I still have to relocate the people inside the Playground as well. It will be a while before you have to do anything.”

“I shall wait for your order then,” the bird said.

Alex turned toward Battlesage and Whisker, who had been waiting patiently for his response.

“I like the idea. You can go forward with it,” he said.

Battlesage smiled. “And the issue with the trees?”

“I’ll move them when it’s time. Don’t worry, I’ve more or less dealt with the issue that will appear in their absence.”

Battlesage nodded. “In that case, you should work toward something else while we devise the scripts and formations we will be using.”

“What else do I need to do?” Alex asked.

“Do you plan on adding any more land to the secret realm?” Battlesage asked.

“Not really, but I cannot say for certain. Why?”

“Because we need to think about the scalability of the whole thing,” Battlesage said. “What if you someday want to add a few islands on the outside? How will we get the aura to extend to that region?”

Alex wasn’t sure. “How will you?”

“I’ve had a thought,” the old man said. “I’ve seen how the humans use their formations. They use these metal rods that they place at a certain distance to activate a formation. Somehow, despite not being placed in the same metal, the formation somehow accepts it as a single thing.”

Alex nodded. “Yes, that’s how formation flags work.”

“Scripts and runes aren’t like that though. You will not find part of a script etched into different sections,” the old man said. “At least, that’s how I learned it. I can’t say how the Demons work around it.”

Alex wasn’t sure what the old man was getting at. “You want to use a formation instead of a script?” he asked.

“No, I want to use a script, but I want to use it in a way a formation would,” he said. “Meaning, I want the single script to be made from many different parts.”

Alex’s eyes shone with understanding. “I see. So you want something akin to formation rods, right?”

“Yes,” the old man said excitedly.

Alex nodded. “I can probably prepare some. Tell me how they should be, and I’ll make them. Do they have to be long and slender like a formation flag?”

“No,” the old man quickly shook his head. “The scripts aren’t as strict about the uniformity of the object they are drawn into as they are with the formation. Instead, the size of the runes and their placement matter more. So even if you were to draw on rocks themselves, it would work.”

Alex frowned. “So I can just prepare rocks?”

“No, rocks won’t do,” the old man quickly said. “The power flowing through this script would be so high that a regular rock couldn’t possibly handle it. Rocks are also not as durable as metals are, so we really should get metals instead.”

“Okay. What sort?” Alex asked.

The old man thought for a bit. “You’ve got those formation plates, right? The small ones that are no bigger than a hand span?”

Alex nodded, bringing out a formation plate. It was a little larger than his palm, with a complicated formation etched onto its upper side and a space created for Spirit Stones to be kept on the lower side.

“Like this one?” he asked.

“Yes, but blank ones. Or at least without any formations carved into them,” the old man said.

Alex laughed. “Obviously,” he said, placing the formation plate back into his Soul Space. “How many will you be needing?”

“A lot,” the old man said.

“Give me an estimation,” Alex said.

“Hmm,” the old man thought. “I want it to be possible to just move the runes around to expand the size of the formation, or add more whenever we need to. For the size of your current realm… let’s say 5000. It might be more or less, but 5000 is a good number to start with.”

Alex stared at him with wide eyes, unable to blink. “You need 5000 formation plates?” he asked.

The old man nodded. “Is that difficult?”

“Well, it depends. What quality of metal do you need?” he asked.

“The best you can get. It needs to be durable, of course, but it also needs to be able to conduct Qi as much as possible,” the old man said. “Can you do it?”