Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex could think of nothing.

The blankness of his mind was a void that he could not fill with any idea at all. Anything he tried to put there himself would be marred by that void, swallowing it, turning it all blank once again.

At least he had an idea of what he wanted for the previous round. This time around, he didn’t even have that.

He could try to make an explosive pill again, sure, but he had already used four of the five major ingredients in the previous explosive pills. And as per the rules, he could not make another exploding pill with that same recipe.

That was to say, Alex couldn’t even make pills he considered a failure this time around.

The world around him was silent once again, so he had no distraction, and even then, his mind continued to remain blank. The ideas hid behind a fogginess he could not clear up.

Alex knew by now that the fogginess he experienced had nothing to do with his lack of spiritual energy. It was something far more abstract that couldn’t be solved by regaining his lost spiritual energy.

Still, Alex wanted something, anything, to get him out of the current predicament.

He tried using his various techniques to see if that would solve it. Spiritual Providence, Spirit Reversal Technique, and even the Spiritual Conjunction Pill did not help him with it.

Alex then searched for other methods to help with his situation, mostly through pills. He thought of what he could use to help eliminate this fogginess from his mind, and while he did not know what pill could help him at this moment, he immediately thought of a dozen different pills that he could use and see if they affected him.

As he thought of the various pills, he was reminded of one that he had. It was the pill he made during the very first competition of this tournament.

The Grand Tranquility Pill.

Alex had made that pill after over a decade of searching the world for its ingredients. Having found it at the end, he had completed the pill with three pill veins.

The Grand Tranquility Pill was a pill that helped one get closer to understanding a Dao or an Intent; however, that was not its only use case.

Unlike many other Dao pills, it did not put a person in a trance. It simply elevated their mental capacity, helping them think faster while being in control of all of their thoughts.

This made the pill a perfect thing to use in tense situations where one needed to make quick decisions or needed to think through a lot of things at once without feeling mentally drained by the end of it all.

All this time, Alex had kept the pill with him in hopes of using it to learn a difficult Dao. However, now that he had reached this point, it appeared that maybe it was the best situation to use it.

Alex reached into his Soul Space and brought out a dark green pill with specks of gold littered around it. Three black pill veins scarred its surface and helped the pill hold in most of its aura instead of leaking it outside.

Alex looked at the pill, which had, in a way, been the start of this entire competition. He was now going to use it at the very end.

After taking a deep breath, Alex took the pill and ate it.

As the pill dissolved in Alex’s stomach, he felt a soothing energy flow through his body and reach his mind. Upon the energy reaching his mind, Alex felt the world slow down.

The slowness was just something he experienced with his mind. His body was still as slow as the outside world. The situation he was in was one he had never been in before.

Aside from the slowness, there was also the added strength of his spiritual energy. It was as though his mind had been fortified far stronger than any other mental pills he had ever eaten before.

He felt his spiritual sea overflowing.

The effects of the pill, which had both the Golden Mind Chrysanthemum and the Seven-Colored Angel Rose, were just as extreme as one would expect from it.

The strength of the pill gave Alex a clarity in his thinking that he never had before. With this, he may not need to worry as much.

Alex turned toward the timer and saw the second change nearly twice as slow as before. He saw the bracket and saw that both Aethersage and Leafheart were still going at it.

The single hour of the round was still not over, but they were still later than Alex.

Alex ignored the two and focused on himself. He wondered how long the effects of the pill would last. He couldn’t waste any second of this effect, so he began thinking about the next pill he was going to make.

To his horror, he couldn’t think of anything.

‘Huh?’ The shock of it was apparent on Alex’s face. Even after eating the pill, he could not think of the next idea so easily.

Alex could not understand why this was happening. He had done all he could. He had even eaten this incredible pill, and yet, he was reaching nowhere.

Just what was going on?

Still, Alex tried. He forced himself to think of some idea. Given his current situation, he hoped for a breakthrough of some sort.

More than an hour passed during which Alex did his best to think of the various ingredients and how they would interact with each other. By that time, a change had happened in the competition outside.

The second person to enter the final had been decided.

* * * * * *

Aethersage stared at the board, dumbfounded. Without the extra ingredients after the hour’s passing, he had failed to make a pill with pill veins. In fact, he had only managed to make a 98% pill.

With such a result using nothing but the base ingredients, Aethersage was certain that he would lose.

However, Leafheart had shocked him. She had ended up making a pill with only 97%.

Aethersage had won by a single percent. That single percent had decided that he would be the one who would go to the finals, while Leafheart would try for third place.

The barriers surrounding him vanished after the result, and everything that was blocked out for him for the past 12 days struck him from all sides. The sudden flood of senses was confusing for a moment.

Aethersage looked around and saw all three of the others who were busy inside their barriers. He saw tears dripping down Leafheart’s face, which she wiped away before continuing on.

She could not afford to waste any time there.

The Alchemy God appeared next to him.

“Congratulations on entering the finals,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Like a man who managed to swim away from the current in the ocean and realized that he needs to go back through the current to get to the shore.”

“Your opponent has gone back to the currents already,” the Alchemy God said. “What about you?”

Aethersage sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to follow him then. Would it be okay if I start preparing my final pill, Your Majesty?”

The Alchemy God smiled, and all distractions disappeared from Aethersage once again.