Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex looked at the robe for a long while before turning toward the Artifact God.

”The Spirit,” he said. ”There is a Spirit inside the robe.”

The Artifact God raised an eyebrow. ”A Nascent one or an actual Spirit?”

”An actual one,” Alex said. ”Though it isn’t talking back to me at all.”

The Artifact God nodded slowly, clearly unsurprised by his words. ”Well, I expected nothing less from this.”

”You expected a Spirit?” Alex asked.

”I made an artifact with materials from a Primordial Beast. What else could I expect? Even Divine-rank artifacts regularly skip past the Nascent Spirit stage and form actual Spirits,” she said.

”Really?” Alex asked, taken aback. ”Then why isn’t it acting like a Spirit? I can feel it, but it’s not really communicating back with me.”

The Artifact God looked at him with a strange expression on her face before seemingly realizing something. ”Oh, right. Your understanding of what a Spirit is is completely twisted. It is normal for a Spirit not to reply at all. They are mostly only good at obeying commands.”

”Isn’t that true only for a Nascent Spirit?” Alex asked.

”It’s true for all Spirits,” she said. ”You only don’t think that because the Spirits you’ve gotten used to are the strange ones. You’ve only either communicated with your cauldron, which formed from the Artifact Tribulation, or you’ve communicated with Godslayer, which is something else on its own and had also gone through an Artifact Tribulation.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. That couldn’t possibly be true, could it?

”I’ve seen a few other artifacts that are different from that,” Alex said. ”I have a tower inside my Soul Space. You’ve seen the one that blinds the Yang tree. It has a Spirit inside as well, and it is just as advanced as any other I’ve seen.”

”That giant thing? Yeah, I can believe that. The size of the artifact also has something to do with the intelligence of the Spirit. I can’t explain how or why, but if you make a decently large artifact and its Spirit ends up maturing, it can communicate quite well too.”

She looked down at the robe. ”But for smaller items, the Spirit generally tends not to be as intelligent,” she said. ”Although, I must warn you not to conflate a Spirit’s ability to communicate with its intelligence. There are plenty of Spirits that can’t directly communicate but are still quite advanced.”

Alex thought for a while and slowly nodded before looking down at the robe. He couldn’t quite feel the power of the robe itself, but he could feel the strength of the Spirit and could almost tell that it was asking for his command.

He reached out and grabbed it, feeling a slight heat coming from the robe. He looked through it.

”Try wearing it with your thoughts,” she said.

Alex looked up. ”With what?”

”Just think of wearing it. Or tell your Spirit that you wish for it to be worn,” she said excitedly. ”See what happens.”

Alex didn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but he was willing to try it out.

”Robe, I want to wear you.”

Suddenly, the yellow robe glowed brightly as it came alive. Before Alex could say anything, the robe seemed to come apart at the seams, floating away like embers as it turned into thousands of glowing motes of light that moved around his body in an instant before quickly reforming around him.

He didn’t have to wear the robe.

The robe wore him.

Alex was very much taken aback to see the robe act that way. ”What... what just happened?” he asked. ”It came apart like fireflies.”

”Like the feathers of a bird,” she said. ”Well, I guess not. But that was my inspiration for it.”

”Really?” Alex asked. ”You went that far just to make it easy to wear?”

The Artifact God narrowed her eyes. ”Do you think I would do such a thing for something so simple?”

”Well... I don’t see how else it would be useful except to quickly put it on and take it off.”

Alex tried to think of some other use cases for the robe coming apart and getting back together quickly, and while he could think of some very specific cases, they were far too niche to try and account for.

The Artifact God suddenly laughed out loud. ”I made the robe do this especially because I knew who was going to wear it and what they would need it for.”

Alex was even more confused. ”I must be blinded by something because I cannot see how this could be useful just for me.”

The Artifact God nodded and brought out her crystal hammer. Alex looked at her Creation, wondering what she planned to do.

”Lift your arm,” she said.

Alex did as she asked, lifting his arm.

The Artifact God raised her hammer and looked toward him. ”You won’t die, right?”

Alex narrowed his eyes but slowly shook his head.

Before he could ask anything, the Artifact God swung her hammer with a speed and strength that made it impossible for Alex to even try to dodge the attack.

Before he could say anything, his arm was blown to smithereens, the wound reaching all the way up to his shoulder. Sharp pain came from the wound, but Alex handled it and looked back at the Artifact God.

”What was that about?” he asked.

”Let your arm heal.”

Alex did as she asked and let it heal. As he healed and his bones, muscles, and skin formed, so did yellow motes of light around it, slowly taking on the form of the robe.

Seeing that, Alex immediately realized what was happening.

”This robe reforms too?” he asked, his eyes wide in shock.

The Artifact God grinned. ”Instead of a single tear making it useless, I’ve formed the robe by linking tens of thousands of tiny pieces of material. Those materials can tear and reform as many times as needed. This way, no matter how many times you die and come back to life, the robe will come back right alongside you.”