Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex wanted to go find answers, but answers would have to wait, for there were others who had waited for him all this time, and he couldn’t just leave them.

Pearl and Momo were both busy cultivating all this time and had made significant improvements.

Pearl was still in the middle of cultivation, so Alex went and met with Momo first, seeing what she had accomplished in the past few years while he was cultivating.

Momo looked different now, not in her appearance but in her bearing. Less than a decade had passed, and yet perhaps because she had gotten a chance to interact with others under Silvermist’s purview, she had grown as a person.

She was in her mid-30s now, and she felt her age.

“Master?” she called when she finally saw him. Her face broke out into a wide smile. “Master, you’re finally out!”

Alex smiled. Not all of her had changed. There was still a teenage girl in there, hidden in her excitement.

“I thought you would need some more time, but you keep surprising me,” Alex said. “Congratulations on breaking through to the Saint Realm.”

Not only had Momo entered the Saint Realm in the time Alex was away, but she had also managed to reach Saint Condensation 3rd Realm. That was quite surprising. He hadn’t expected her to become so strong in just eight years.

“Grandmaster helped me,” Momo said. “He made me make a lot of cultivation pills for training and had me eat the good ones to cultivate.”

Alex frowned a little. “He didn’t train you, did he?”

“Training? No. It was more like… chores. He would give me tasks and tell me how I had done. The training was entirely done by me on my own. He wouldn’t even answer questions I had because of something about the tournament.”

Alex nodded. “Only I can teach you alchemy during the period of the tournament,” he said. “No one else is allowed to, or else I fail immediately.”

“Oh,” Momo said, her face taking on a serious expression. “I didn’t realize it was that serious. I had thought that was just Grandmaster’s way of teaching.”

“We can talk about your training later. I will check on it in a day or two,” Alex said. He asked her how she had been and checked her physique to see how it was going.

As he had told her before going into closed cultivation, Momo had been very careful about how she improved her body. Her body’s poison was weaker than she was, allowing her to control it easily. Any stronger, and she would find it difficult not to affect every aspect of herself with poison, from body to Qi to mind.

“Your poison is a bit too weak, isn’t it?” Alex asked. “You’re Saint Realm now, so you can try using some Saint poison. The weaker ones, of course. I will prepare you a list once I am done.”

“I have the list, Master,” Momo said. “I asked Grandmaster for one, and he gave it to me. I just haven’t gotten around to consuming the poison because I didn’t want Moss to feel left behind.”

Alex gave a thoughtful look and nodded. “How’s that lizard doing? Is he Saint Realm yet?”

Momo shook her head. “Very close, though. He should reach it before the tournament in a year.”

“That is good,” Alex said. “I don’t have much time to test you now. Tomorrow, I will test both your alchemy and the other techniques I provided you with. Hopefully, you haven’t slacked.”

Momo grinned. “Test as you want, Master. I won’t disappoint you.”

After talking to Momo, Alex left the mansion to go around the Court. The last time around, he had been forced to stay within the mansion, not meeting anyone. This time, he had greater freedom, so long as he didn’t leave the premises of the Court or go over to the grand hall at the front where the trades happened.

Outsiders would be there, coming to purchase pills and ingredients from the Court, and it was impossible to say what any one of them would do should they see him.

The rest of the Court was much safer, albeit Silvermist still feared there would be people who wished to do bad against him.

Shi Quanli stood before the mansion, the beast woman who had been placed as Alex’s maid-cum-assistant during his stay in the Court.

“Congratulations on the breakthrough, young brother,” the furry woman said. “Each time I see you breakthrough, I tell myself you will slow down this time around, and then you go and break through once again.”

Alex smiled. “All thanks to Master’s pills,” he said.

“More than just the pills, surely,” she said. “At this rate, you might just reach the Divine Realm in…” she did a quick calculation in her head and continued, “500 years.”

“500?” Alex asked. “Do you really think I will be that fast?”

“Actually, I thought 400 at first. Then added 50 years for Origin and Transcendence, and then added another 50… just because.”

Alex shook his head. “No, that wouldn’t happen,” he said.

“You say that, and yet you managed to reach the Immortal Origin Realm so quickly. With good pills and a lot of free time to cultivate, that wouldn’t be impossible.”

Alex supposed there was truth in those words. His cultivation speed was fast after all; there was no denying that. Still, could he reach the Divine Realm in 500 years?

‘Not anymore,’ he thought. ‘My Origin and Transcendent Realm will take much longer.’

Even so, how much longer could they really take? Another 100 years? 200 years?

Even if it did take him 800 years in total, it was a very short time. He still wouldn’t have lived a full millennium by then.

‘Scarlet would be back home by then, wouldn’t she?’ Alex thought, finding it funny. He would be in the Divine Realm when he finally went to find her, and she would still only be a new Immortal due to her lack of cultivation.

He tossed those thoughts away, focusing on the now. “You are my guide, are you not?” he asked Shi Quanli. “Shall we leave?”