Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex’s fight with a man came to an end when a spear made of leaves struck him on his shoulder before he could stop it. Alex raised his hand, showing defeat.

”You got me. Here’s your star.”

He tossed it to the man.

The man seemed a little distressed, finally calming down now that the fight had come to an end. He looked at Alex before nodding. ”You know, I have no idea what you did there, but that was pretty frightening. You are much stronger than you look, aren’t you?”

Alex gave a hint of a smile. ”You wouldn’t be wrong to think that,” he said before going back to where the others waited for him.

”You did well,” Helen said as Alex walked up beside her.

Before them, a group of 2 men and a woman looked at their comrade returning from a successful fight. Once they congratulated him, the woman turned toward Alex and the rest.

”Is this all the people you have?” the woman asked.

Liz tilted her head in confusion. ”What do you mean? Do you think we have people waiting in hiding to challenge you?” she asked.

”No, that’s not what I meant. I was asking if you perhaps had formed a community. Given your friend’s strength, we were hoping to move along with you,” the woman said.

”A community?” Liz asked, looking toward Alex.

Alex slowly shook his head. ”I don’t think we know what that is. Could you help us understand?”

”A community?” the woman asked. ”People are starting to gather up in larger groups to deter others from challenging them. It’s been happening all around for the past month. Considering you are asking me this, I will assume you didn’t know about it.”

Alex nodded. ”We are just finding out about this.”

”Since you are strong, should we join?” the woman asked. ”We can slowly build a community of our own and last longer in this secret realm.”

Alex didn’t have to think or talk to the others for an answer.

”No,” he said freely. ”We are focused on training more than staying for long, so we will be going around challenging everyone regardless of whether they are weak or strong. Or if they are part of some community. You would likely not want to be with us in that case.”

The woman grimaced slightly. ”That does sound correct. In that case, we will take our leave.”

The group of 3 walked along.

Ronron turned toward Alex. ”Are we really going to find these communities?” she asked.

”Of course,” Alex said. ”Why wouldn’t we? It sounds like a brilliant idea.”

”No, it doesn’t. That sounds horrible. We will have to challenge dozens of people at once. Let’s not go there,” Ronron pleaded.

Alex shook his head. ”If you want to get stronger, you’re going to have to overcome such hurdles.”

Ronron was beginning to grow tired of fighting every day for the past month. And so was everyone else. But Alex knew that this was the point where they truly needed to continue doing what they were doing. Giving up when it became hard was the easiest thing to do. To grow, one needed to struggle through the most difficult part. That was how one became stronger.

”We should do that,” Helen said. ”But first, we need to cultivate properly. We haven’t rested more than a few hours each day for the past month. We need to take some time to cultivate.”

”Well... you can cultivate,” Alex said. ”But are you willing to spend 100 stars for each day to not get challenged?”

”We’re hardly fighting 100 people a day anyway, so we can just concede to every challenger that comes our way,” Liz said. ”And if we hide properly, no one will even find us.”

”But what about the challenges? It’s 1000 stars if you don’t participate in any challenge each day,” Alex said.

”We challenge each other. It’s not like we’re not opponents in this place,” Helen said.

Alex smiled slowly. He was hoping they wouldn’t realize this easy method, but that would be severely underestimating their intelligence.

”That’s most definitely what the communities are doing too. Just challenge each other, and you are free to cultivate without worrying about anything,” Ronron said.

Alex could only agree in the end and followed them through 2 more battles before arriving at a rock structure that seemed good enough to hide and cultivate in. It was getting darker too, so they quickly hid inside a cavity in the structure and began cultivating.

Finally cultivating for more than just Qi made them enjoy the cultivation session so much more than normal. Not just that, the constant use of Qi had refined their physical bodies so much that cultivating through that phase became much easier, improving their speed for a short span.

Alex began cultivating as well. As he cultivated, he started absorbing the aura of the Yellow Fog to add to his Origin. It was steadily growing at this point, and would continue to do so for some time.

No one came by to challenge them in the night. When morning came, the women kept on cultivating without waking up. This was the best moment to spend the 100 stars to not get challenged for the day, but that wasn’t necessary if they were planning on being challenged anyway.

They waited throughout the day, during which 2 small groups came by to challenge them. Overall, everyone lost 7 stars each, except for Battlesage, who took on their challenges and only lost 3 stars.

Then they continued cultivating as if not a single thing had happened at all. Once they did it for a single day, they understood that they could continue doing it over and over every day without having to spend a lot of stars.

Around 9 days passed that way, with no more than 10 stars being lost each day. They had ended up spending fewer stars that way than they would have if they had spent 100 stars to not get challenged for a single day.

However, on the 10th day, things changed.