Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Whisker returned to Alex.

He wasn’t sure how long it would take Alex to find a way into his Soul Space, and thus had to be there just in case he needed to go in.

Alex himself couldn’t go into his Soul Space, and because of how small the radius of a person’s Spiritual sense was in this world, Whisker worried that Alex couldn’t reach every part of his Soul Space at once.

When he returned, Alex had just brought back the formation plate, upon which he had placed a decaying Sunheart and started using it. The formation was one that introduced a lot of mental anguish, which Alex couldn’t deal with in any other way than to actually struggle through it.

He could use his Intent to lower the effect of the formation upon himself, but that was completely counterintuitive to his need to improve his pain tolerance, so that wasn’t an option.

This close, Whisker could somewhat sense what Alex was going through. Even though Alex had hid all of his emotions in the bond, some still leaked to Whisker.

Sensing it, Whisker could almost imagine the pain Alex had to go through at the moment. He felt how hard he was working in order to save the others.

Whisker stayed by Alex’s side for a while, handing him a few pills he needed in the few moments of respite he got during his training. After a while, though, Alex asked for pills less and less.

At some point, he completely stopped.

Whisker continued staying by his side, but as days passed, he realized that things wouldn’t happen any time soon.

During one of the few moments where Alex took a break from his training, Whisker talked to him.

“How far along are you, brother?” he asked. “Will you be done soon?”

Alex shook his head. “I’m making steady progress, but it’ll still take a few years even at my current rate.”

Whisker worried for the others. “Is the Seal stronger than we thought it was?”

“No, it’s about as strong as we thought. I had initially believed it would take a few decades to finally make my way through it, so at my current speed, I’m way ahead.”

Whisker nodded. “So you won’t be needing me for a while, right?” he asked.

Alex thought for a moment and nodded. “I should have sent you away much earlier. You must have felt every emotion I went through. I can’t put you through such a thing.”

“No, it was okay,” Whisker said.

“Go,” Alex said. “I won’t make any progress soon enough anyway. Go do whatever it is you need to do.”

Whisker nodded.

Once Alex went back to training his Intent again, Whisker left.

Alex slowly improved his pain tolerance through the use of the formation and started increasing its intensity the more he improved as well. He was currently using the formation at about half its effectiveness, so he improved it.

As soon as he increased it, the pain became unbearable again.

Alex stumbled down onto the metal slab that was the formation, doing his best to hold onto his sanity. The pain was enough to make an Immortal go mad.

There were many times where Alex should have gone unconscious during his training, but he continued keeping at it, never faltering. Days passed by, soon turning to months.

Whisker returned once more and stayed in the corner for a while before leaving.

Alex wondered what the little mouse was doing. He had some guesses, but he didn’t have the luxury to consciously think about Whisker’s actions. He needed to focus every little bit of his attention on training.

Whisker was keeping everything to himself anyway, likely to not distract him.

Once this situation had been dealt with, Whisker would likely tell him then.

Whisker’s coming and going became common while Alex continued to use more and more of the formation to train his mind. After nearly a year of doing so, Alex could now comfortably sit around inside of the formation at max effectiveness for nearly 5 days in a row before he had to take a rest.

It was incredible how quickly his pain tolerance had improved in just a year.

Since the day he chose to improve his mental pain tolerance, Alex had stopped doing anything to the Seal. So, after a year of it, he finally decided to test how much he had improved.

His Intent had unintentionally improved during this time as well. It would’ve been hard to get subjected to days of mental pain and not come out of it stronger than ever.

It was difficult to say how much he had improved on that front, so all he could do was test.

The last time he had done this, Alex lasted 15 attempts at breaking through his Seal, at the end of which he would be at the edge of unconsciousness.

Given that he had improved, according to his plan, he should last much fewer attempts.

Alex started assaulting the Seal around his Soul Space, continuing as the Seal fought back by hurting his mind. As the pain continued to ramp up, it reached a point where he would have stopped just a year ago.

Currently, he could go on for much longer.

Alex stuck with the pain, surviving it as it continued to grow. Then at a certain point, he finally stopped.

Taking a moment to let his mind relax, Alex realized that he had improved quite a bit. On the front of pain tolerance alone, he had improved by more than half.

In fact, he was certain he could go on for slightly longer as well if he tried to.

So, after a short break, he went for it again.

The pain slowly built up in his mind to the same point as before, but this time Alex used part of his Intent to fight back against the pain-delivering aspect of the Seal.

As he did so, it allowed Alex to fight back even harder, giving it his all to break open the Seal. The pain continued to grow.

And right as he was about to stop, for the first time since he started, Alex could almost feel the Seal flex a little under the attack.