Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Before Alex thought of anything else, he tested the Origins to confirm what he understood, mostly to make sure that he wasn’t getting ahead of himself.

He willed two of the Origins on the left to collapse back together. They fell back, returning to the same tiny Origin they always were. Alex paused for a long moment before giving them the command again.

“Divide!”

The Origin separated into two, returning the total number to four. Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He was worried for a second that the secondary Origins wouldn’t separate again after joining together. He tested the other one as well and was satisfied to learn that the Origin had no issue either.

Then, he tested them all together. He conjoined them all back into a glowing sphere the size of a marble. It remained in constant flux, and Alex could tell that all four different Origins were in the single swirling orb of light.

He split them all back into four Origins and got back out.

As soon as he was out, Alex felt a sudden burst of heaviness in his mind, like the discomfort he had felt previously quadrupling. Instead of just being something he could ignore, it was now a bother.

He willed it simply, and the four Origins went back to being just two. As soon as there were only two, he felt much better than before—to the point that it took him a moment to even realize that the discomfort actually hadn’t gone away completely. It was still there.

Only when the two Origins became one did the discomfort truly vanish.

Alex took a moment to gather himself and thought for a bit. From his understanding of the technique, he could, in fact, improve it even further, but doing so might come at a genuine cost of hurting himself. He couldn’t do something so drastic as to wound himself in an attempt to get more Origins.

Seeing as how the split Origins got harder to handle exponentially, Alex began wondering if it might be a good idea to stop at four. Four Creations were way better than what anyone else got, so he wondered if he should stop there.

But, even as he told himself that was the right thing to do, his heart didn’t accept it. He wanted to push further. He wanted to do more.

And as a cultivator, one couldn’t ignore what their heart desired. Not following what you wanted was the easiest way to fail, after all. So, without any other thought, Alex made preparations to continue splitting his Origins even further.

Of course, he needed to take caution here, so instead of splitting them one after another, Alex only did one half at a time to see how much he could handle. He started with two Origins at first and added more energy to those to see how it changed his discomfort.

It increased a bit but not significantly. It also seemed to be countered as he improved his own cultivation base as well as his Spiritual Energy.

Alex then split the Origins into three, keeping one half whole and then splitting the other half into two. He improved them that way.

There were two benefits to doing things this way, it seemed. First, Alex could cultivate without the burden of having multiple Origins working at the same time. That way, he could manage his mental pain and continue using his technique to change the Origin.

Secondly, the Origins were equally empowered regardless of their size. So, if he had 3 Origins at once, the technique empowered those 3 equally, putting equal energy into them, making it not feel like a waste.

This helped Alex focus on just parts of his Origins at a time so he could go about this experimentation at a slow rate.

There was one problem Alex noticed soon enough. As it turned out, if one improved the larger Origin too much, the smaller ones that made up that Origin would begin losing their effects, no longer able to split.

That meant Alex couldn’t focus on just one half of his Origin all the time and had to continuously keep switching it around. It wasn’t that big of a deal, though. He just needed to switch around for a bit. That was all.

As long as he returned to the other Origins before he poured too much energy into them, it would be fine.

Alex continued cultivating with the technique for a long time and checked how he could handle the splitting of the Origins.

A single Origin was no problem.

Two Origins were a bit uncomfortable.

Four Origins were headache-inducing.

And Eight Origins were frankly unbearable.

Alex did not think he could go beyond eight, but given how the pain lessened each time his mind had the least bit of improvement, he wondered if there was any benefit.

The only thing he needed to make sure of was that he had to slowly improve them all, with only a couple of Origins split off at the same time. As long as that was the case, he could continue.

After another year of doing this constantly, Alex finally made the decision to go with eight Origins. He could handle a bit of pain for now, for a whole lot of happiness in the future.

Once he realized what his path moving forward was, Alex took some time to think about things. He needed to make a decision now. A very important decision.

If he was going to have eight Origins in his Spiritual Sea, what were his eight Creations going to be?

“I have decided on Sun and Sword,” Alex thought. “So I need six more. What do I want as my Creations, though?”

It was a question Alex needed an answer to as soon as he could, but perhaps not right now. Given that he needed to improve eight Origins at the same time, the process of transcending those Origins could, and most likely had to, wait.

Impressed by his own technique and how great it was, Alex decided to name it something appropriate. After a long thought, he came up with a simple name:

Provenance Duality: Division