Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex dipped his fingers to start with, licking it to see just what the ‘Elixir’ did to his body.

The fluid had a slightly earthy taste, like licking dirt or the bark of a tree. None of those elements seemed to float out in the air, since he could smell none of it.

Alex swallowed just the tiny bit he licked and waited to see if just that amount would do anything. He hadn’t expected much, but having nothing noticeable happen within his body still made him a little disappointed.

“I guess I’ll have to consume a lot more then.”

He took a mouthful of Elixir, feeling the slight thickness of it as though he was drinking a juice, and swallowed the whole thing. He did not care for the earthy taste, keeping his focus only on the effect of the liquid.

He closed his eyes and focused his senses within his body, seeing what the liquid did to him. As he kept track of the liquid in his stomach, it almost immediately reacted.

The fluid flowed out of his stomach, as if burrowing an invisible hole out to the rest of the body and began spreading to every space it could find.

Alex tried to keep track of it all, but given how many different directions it was constantly expanding to, it was impossible to keep track of every change.

Thankfully, it seemed he didn’t need to keep track of it through his senses since his body could now feel the Elixir’s effect.

Alex thought it would burn or cause pain to his body, but instead, all that happened was that it started itching. He tried to scratch it, but it was the type of itch so bone-deep that no amount of scratching could get rid of it.

He simply had to stay there and endure it.

After what felt like an hour, the itching finally stopped. When it did, Alex quickly sent his senses throughout his body again and was surprised to find that the liquid he had consumed had remained in his body unchanged.

It had simply stayed as it was in all of the organs, bones, and muscles, doing absolutely nothing that Alex could understand.

‘Why is nothing happening?’ Alex thought.

He looked at the jar before him with more than 4 gulps of Elixir remaining and wondered if he had to eat the whole thing before he noticed any proper changes.

He didn’t think that was the case, but who really knew. He could only try.

Alex drank the whole thing in one go and had to suffer through 4 hours of intense itching that he could do nothing about but stay put and wait.

4 hours of the liquid moving through his body, finding places for itself to settle.

All the while, Alex continued to try and figure out what improvements his body had gone through. There was nothing he had sensed just yet, so he waited.

After the itching was gone, he could finally check his body much better than before. And yet, there was nothing.

‘Have I been lied to?’ Alex thought. This had been 4200 Sunhearts worth of Elixir. How could it not do anything?

The Elixir had simply deposited itself in various parts of his body, making absolutely no changes or improvements he could sense.

“How can there be nothing?”

It was unlikely that he had been lied to about the Elixir. The greater possibility was that it didn’t work on him.

“Dammit!” Alex grumbled, making a fist in anger. Suddenly, he paused.

He looked down at his fist and slowly opened it. Then, he clenched it right back, stronger than before.

Slowly, his eyes widened.

“I’m stronger? How?”

There had been absolutely no physiological changes throughout his body. His muscle density hadn’t improved, his bones hadn’t gotten stronger. All that had happened was that the Elixir had deposited all around his body.

“Is that really enough to make me stronger?” he thought in surprise.

In the last decade and a half he had spent eating the meat of the beasts, he had noticed that he had gotten stronger, but the change had been so small that the lack of physiological changes he had gone through was within the margin of error.

However, this time around, his strength had increased, perhaps by 2 entire realms, and yet nothing had changed.

“What is this strength? Immortal Transcendent 1st realm?” Alex thought.

His rate of improvement had suddenly jumped by 4 times in the last few hours compared to what improvement he had seen in the past decade and a half.

‘So the beasts have this liquid in them too, but in small quantities?’ Alex thought. ‘How many beasts had to die to make this Elixir, I wonder.’

It started making sense finally why everyone was strong despite never having a good physical shape. Proper body cultivators had strong-looking bodies with musculature that was very well defined.

And yet, just about anyone had body cultivation in Hell.

Alex now understood that this wasn’t really body cultivation. It was simply the Elixir making everyone stronger.

‘If it’s the Elixir making you stronger, then…’

He wanted to do an experiment but worried that he would have to be wasting a bit of the Elixir.

“Whatever, it should be worth it.”

Alex quickly flicked his palm with his index finger and judged the strength it produced. Then, he chomped on that finger and spit it out. His finger fell before him, while a new finger grew out from where he chewed it off.

Immediately, he flicked his palm again.

As he had expected, this flick was much weaker.

‘So if I get wounded, I lose the Elixir in that part of the body,’ he thought.

There was movement in his body just then, and the Elixir in his body moved in an attempt to fill the new finger.

Every part of his body had Elixir again, but as a whole it was now much less.

Alex paused for a moment, trying to think.

Was that really worth 4200 Sunhearts?