Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

“Did you obtain all of your spirit roots by the time you left?” Alex asked after Xue Yu’er completed her story.

“Yes,” she answered.

“And you didn’t improve any of the new ones you received? Surely there had to be opportunities for you to improve them, right?”

“No, I haven’t,” she said. “The only opportunity I did receive was to improve my Fire root once, but I couldn’t do that for fear of weakening my overall talent.”

“Does this have something to do with this information that was in the talisman?” Alex asked.

“It’s the interaction between spirit roots,” she answered. “A stronger Fire root would’ve conflicted with my Water root, thus making it worse overall. To keep my Water root strong, I needed to strengthen my Earth and Wood roots. Only then could I move on to the other two.”

Alex nodded slowly, taking in her words. “Let me ask you a

hypothetical question. If there’s someone with strong Yang and Metal roots. They suddenly gain a strong Wood root. How would that interaction go?”

“A strong Wood root?” she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly in thought. “Wood creates an immediate conflict with the Metal, instantly dragging the person down. If the Yang root is strong enough, it should help the Metal overpower it in the end, but overall, there should be a downgrade.”

“Incredible,” Alex said with a look of amazement. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“To you? No, someone you know,” she said.

Alex nodded. After evolving, Pearl’s Wood spirit root had reached the

Supreme grade, and somehow because of that, his overall cultivation speed had dropped by a bit. Considering Wood and Metal elements were like Fire and Water, he had a guess that it was why that had happened. But he hadn’t realized that the Yang root had a hand in not letting it get too bad.

“What would your suggestion be in this situation?” Alex asked. “Mind you, it will be difficult to find other spirit roots that are as strong.”

“It’s hard to answer,” she said, taking a moment to think through it. “In a way, it’s Yang and Metal against the Wood root. If you empower the Wood root, it will weaken the other two even further and ruin the overall state even more. The thing that would be better for you to do here would be to either take the Wood root out of the picture or find a way to weaken it so it doesn’t weaken the Metal root at all.”

Alex thought slowly. “Earth root,” he said.

“Yes, that will work.”

Alex scratched his chin. “This is enlightening. If you don’t mind, could I ask you to make me a copy of this information? I would like to learn it at my leisure.”

“I don’t mind,” she explained. “You already have the main part. It’s better if you have the knowledge to go alongside the method so you don’t end up ruining things too much. Spirit roots can reject the cultivator if you make them clash with the other roots too much.”

Alex nodded. Establishing the required connection for the spirit root to ‘belong to the person it was grafted onto became harder if there were other parts of the person trying to actively reject it.

The woman quickly handed over a talisman with a copy of everything she had learned. Alex took a brief glance over the information before placing it away to read later.

“Is that all you came to meet me for?” she asked.

“Mainly, yes. There’s something else I wanted to ask, but I’m not sure if you’ve experienced it or not,” Alex said.

“I’ve lived over 25 thousand years at this point, so you might as well ask and see.”

“Has anyone ever tried to take over your mind?” Alex asked.

The woman blinked. “Okay. No, I haven’t experienced something like that,” she said. “Have you?”

“Sadly, more than I would be comfortable with,” Alex said with a light chuckle. If no one had tried such a thing on her, then she likely wouldn’t have any understanding of her Unity. The better the Unity became, the more likely it became for someone to fight another soul’s influence.

Alex really wanted to find the connection between the spirit roots and that.

“Was everything you said about Xue Kuangren really true?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Alex said.

“Well… that’s truly a shame then,” she said with a sigh. “If I ever return to the lower realm, I might try to help raise the sect again. But at this point, I don’t think I have a reason to go there at all.”

Alex could understand.

“What about you?” she asked.

Alex paused for a moment, wondering what she meant. “Do you mean

if I want to go to the lower realm?” he asked.

She nodded.

Alex thought for a bit. “I wouldn’t be averse to that idea. It has only

been close to 2 millennia since I left, so many of the people I know will be there if they haven’t ascended yet. Having said that, however, all of my family left the lower realm, so I’m not in a hurry to visit there

again.”

She chuckled lightly. “At this point, I might return just to see what sort of changes there have been since I left,” she said. “If I remember

correctly, the rulers should have switched recently, right? I wonder if there is an active ruler on the northern continent.”

“The Heavenly Beasts did swap with the old rulers,” Alex explained. “But I don’t believe much has changed from how things were in the past.”

“The Eastern Continent’s royal family is still the Dragon Emperors, right?” she asked.

“It is. There was a new one on the throne before I left. I wonder how

he’s doing.”

“Long Tiankong? He only just became an emperor?” she asked.

“No, his son,” Alex explained.

“Oh. Did Long Tiankong ascend as well?” she asked.

“Well… he did become an Immortal,” Alex said with a wry smile. “But I

killed him before he could ascend.”