Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The shock lasted for just long enough before Alex knew he had to continue. There were other questions he needed answers to.

From what he had learned so far, he could infer what had happened next. Killersky joined the tournament, did the best she could. When she realized she was failing, she took over Windborn.

Windborn must have been too strong for her to properly control, which must have been the cause of the episode that she went through during the Replacement test. She had made the wrong choice as a result.

Once she realized Windborn had failed as well, she began searching for new candidates to take over. Had she not slipped due to speaking as Killersky while being Windborn, Alex would have never realized this was the case at all.

He might have even been captured by Fairy Xin without any trouble and taken over just as easily. In a way, he had been quite lucky.

‘All this trouble for what?’ he wondered. He needed to find out.

He asked the woman the question, and despite the woman’s reluctance to answer, he could see everything she thought of.

Alex saw a man sit in a circle of other men, his eyes completely white as he spoke some words. He saw blackness all around him, with hundreds of thousands of men fighting each other. He saw a swarm of men in a room, sitting around, grinding ingredients into a paste.

He saw weak and feeble men with pastes on their bodies that remained in bed. He saw the image of the current Alchemy God. He saw the pills and their effects.

He saw the Book of Endless Recipes.

With images alone, Alex would’ve had a slight difficulty deciphering what the woman was thinking of. But thankfully, along with those images, he gained vague feelings as well, helping him understand more or less what was happening.

The demons were worried about the war. They could tell there was one on the horizon, perhaps thanks to a seer. The demons knew that should they get into war this time, they would most likely lose.

The humans had the power of pills that could do far more than their pastes could. As a result, they needed that power as well.

Alchemy was a thing in the demon realms, but none of it was as advanced as it was on the human side. And the one who stood at its peak was the Alchemy God.

Their plan, from what Alex could tell, was to infiltrate the tournament with an Alchemist of their own and do just good enough that the Alchemy God would want them under him.

After that, they could slowly siphon away knowledge of alchemy from him, improving themselves and improving alchemy for the demons. Once that happened, they could fight the humans without worrying about the wounded and injured.

And if they got lucky somehow, they could even steal the Alchemy God’s book.

“That’s a bold plan,” Alex thought as he went through the images. “And it might have worked too, if you just asked the Alchemy God to take you in.”

Alex could see why they were so desperate now. The livelihood of many demons, should another war happen in the future, relied solely on this. And the reason why they had failed was because of him.

Alex didn’t know how to feel about that. He felt somewhat guilty, but considering the other choice was to die, the guilt washed away quickly.

He shook his head, shaking away all the thoughts, and delivered another Heaven’s Impact on the woman who was just beginning to gain her wits. She fell into a lull again, and Alex thought of what he wanted to ask next.

He asked about Shumi.

The images that flashed then were beyond Alex’s comprehension.

He saw an image of Shumi standing at the center of a large conference. He saw people bowing toward her, throwing flowers at her feet. He saw her flying in the sky while the people on the ground cheered.

Her face was covered in a veil the entire time, and yet people were still excited to see her.

At first, Alex thought that she was being treated like a queen or an empress. But the devoted faith he felt from the memories painted a different picture.

She was no royalty to these people at all. She was a deity. She was their god.

Her image was associated with the moon in these memories, so Alex could only guess that these people already knew of her identity. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

The Moon Goddess was being treated like a god for all demons to pray to, while he had to hide from everyone.

Alex didn’t want what Shumi had. It was too much for him. But if he could at least not have to hide himself at every turn, it would be quite nice.

“Where can I find her?” Alex asked.

The images flashed too many times for Alex to get a clear picture of the world she was from.

He saw a world where the moon eclipsed the sun each day, spreading its shadow upon the land. He saw a world where lava flowed like rivers from mountaintops, with people living close by without a care in the world.

He saw a world filled with snow, with houses built high upon them. He saw a world with a silver palace, built deep into the walls of a mountain, its towers reaching for the sky.

He saw a world with a forest that spanned as far as the eyes could see, and another with an ocean spread until the vast horizon.

He saw a world with three moons in the sky.

There was nothing Alex could gain from this, except that none of these worlds could be in the same realm. Which meant that Shumi moved through the Demon realms far too much for any of them to be considered her home.

Given the way she was treated by them, it was possible that wherever she went, she would find a home.

“Where would she go now?” he asked, but the answer was too confusing for Alex to decipher. Perhaps the woman didn’t know.

Alex asked a few other questions, trying to gather what little information he could from the woman. The woman was close to being knocked unconscious, so there was only so much he could learn from her.

Nothing of what he learned next was of much importance to him. And after a while, he couldn’t even ask anything else.

The woman had grown too tired now to remain conscious. Without any Divine energy within her Divine sea, she would remain unconscious for a while. Not that she had that sort of time.

The world around Alex began to shake as cracks formed in the ground below and the sky above. Yellow fog seeped in from all around, devouring everything around him.

Piece by piece, they consumed everything within this world, right until it came before him.

Alex had the fog stop for a moment to stare at the woman’s unconscious avatar before him. Whether as Killersky or Dumei, even if for just a few years, she had been a friend.

He paid his respects to her one last time and let the yellow fog devour this last remnant of her.