Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex wasn’t sure what he expected the Artifact God to teach him, but it certainly wasn’t a technique.

She handed him a book with no name and asked him to study the technique written within it. Alex flipped through the book to see what it was, and barely understood that it was a spiritual technique that helped one understand the properties of a material they were working with.

She had told him that he needed to be able to tell the properties at a glance, but that turned out to be an exaggeration in the end. It was an actual technique.

”What is this called?” he asked, as he saw no name anywhere on the book.

”I call it the Trait Spectrum Analysis technique, but it doesn’t have a name of its own. I don’t know where Master got it from, but this is what he gave me,” she said.

”And this will help me understand what properties the materials have?” Alex asked as he looked up at her.

The woman stood next to the blue-white scale, not really looking toward him. She merely gave a shake of her head. ”Not really. What you have right now is a blank canvas in your mind. With this technique, you can start filling in the canvas bit by bit. Over time, your canvas will become so detailed that should you come across something else you have never seen before, you can still match it to a part of the canvas and be able to tell just what it is that the material does. Does that make sense?”

Alex took in her words for a few seconds and slowly nodded. ”I think it does. I’m guessing I will get answers when I use this technique on something, but I won’t know what that answer is right from the start. I will need to go through many to gain an understanding of what everything means. And when I have done it enough times, I will know exactly what I am sensing.”

”Yes,” the woman said. ”So you should start working on learning the technique. The sooner you do it, the sooner we can start.”

Alex nodded. He found a place at the corner of the workshop and had just sat down when the Artifact God spoke again.

”What are you doing?”

Alex paused and looked up. ”I’m sorry. Did I do something wrong?”

”No. I’m just asking what you are doing,” she said.

Alex lifted the book. ”Learning the book. Was there something else I was supposed to do beforehand? I’m sorry if I missed an instruction.”

”No, that is what you’re supposed to do. But why are you trying to learn the book here?” she asked. ”Go back to your own courtyard and learn it. I don’t want you to be around when I’m done understanding this scale and need to start working on it. Things will get very dangerous by then.”

”Oh,” Alex reacted, calming a little. ”Will you do that quickly?”

”As quickly as I can. Maybe a month or so and I’ll be ready to start,” she said.

Alex nodded. ”Then that should be fine. I will learn this technique and you can start teaching me tomorrow. I will leave in a month when you are ready to start working on the artifact, Senior.”

The woman shook her head. ”I’m not teaching you anything until you learn that technique first.”

”Yes, I understand. That’s why we’ll start tomorrow,” Alex said. He was beginning to understand what the woman was getting at.

The Artifact God frowned a little. ”Are you saying you will have learned the technique by tomorrow?” she asked with a scoff. ”It isn’t so easy a technique, you know.”

”I understand it is not, but I haven’t really needed much time to learn techniques in my life. I’m sure I can learn it by the end of the day. Then we can start tomorrow.”

The woman could hardly believe what Alex was saying, but the curiosity of it all made her take back what she was about to say.

”Alright then,” she said in the end. ”Do what you want. If you really can learn techniques in less than a day, then I am more than willing to be a witness to it. If you don’t, you will leave the moment the sun rises tomorrow.”

Alex smiled. ”As you say, Senior.”

He ignored the Artifact God after that, flipping through the book as he read up on the technique more thoroughly. The technique was a strange one at first, but the more he learned, the more he found it partially familiar with one of the techniques he already had.

It was the technique to replicate aura that was present in something already. He had mostly used it for making energy to fill his Origins when the original source didn’t have a lot of energy.

Using this technique, one started their spiritual sense with a certain type of aura at one point, and then changed it quickly, like flipping through a book, until they landed on the aura that matched the aura inside of the material.

If this technique were a book, it would have thousands and thousands of pages one needed to go through, which made the Artifact God’s naming of the technique as Trait Spectrum Analysis quite obvious.

It did exactly what the name said it did.

By late afternoon, Alex fully understood the concept behind the technique. By evening, he managed to produce the spectrum of aura from his spiritual sense, and by the time night rolled around fully, he was able to use the technique without making a mistake.

It would take him a lot more tries before it stopped being something he had to use his full concentration on, but that would happen sooner or later.

For now, he was happy enough with the fact that he had learned the technique.

When he told the Artifact God that, she could not believe it at all. And yet, when she tested it, the truth became obvious.

She understood now why the others had called him talented.