Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

At first, Alex didn’t think much of the hard surface, as it was only another layer of the ground for him to go through. However, when he finally arrived next to it, his technique failed.

Alex couldn’t go any further.

‘Huh?’

Alex was doing his best to keep the Yin from affecting him, so it took him a moment to realize what was happening. When he finally understood, he frowned.

‘Just what the hell is this?’ he thought.

His senses had no answer for him at all. He tried to sense beyond the wall, but his senses were stopped right at the front of it. It couldn’t penetrate through the opaque object.

There was no light for Alex to see, so he tried to feel with his fingers, but that gave him nothing at all. It felt smooth to his fingertips, slippery even. But he couldn’t tell if those properties belonged to the wall or if that was caused by the slime.

Its surface at least was not rugged or filled with grooves. It was more or less flat and smooth.

‘Is it some sort of metal?’ Alex wondered.

That would answer why he couldn’t travel through it. He needed a very different movement technique to travel through metal, and he wasn’t even sure if it was possible in the first place.

He had never seen such a technique, so even if it was possible, he wouldn’t be able to come up with one.

‘I must have come across a metal vein,’ Alex thought with some confusion. That still didn’t answer anything, but he at least knew what was at the depth of Hell now.

As he was just thinking that, his senses felt the Yin around his body slowly be dragged toward the hard surface. Alex waited with his senses keeping an eye on everything.

He felt the Yin energy disappear into the hard surface, going somewhere else. Beyond that, he sensed nothing. He waited for a moment, thinking of what could be happening.

After many days of research, Whisker had all but confirmed that the Yin being dragged down here had something to do with the formation of Elixir. So he searched for Elixir around him.

Elixir was tasteless and odorless and couldn’t be sensed either. It wasn’t distinguishable from other liquids in that regard. However, it did have a viscosity to it that could not be replicated by plain water.

Alex felt around the sludge, wiping his palms against the hard surface or each other. He could feel the thickness of the liquid coating his skin. He could feel the viscosity.

Elixir was definitely present in this location, and in a higher quantity too. This was more proof of his hypothesis being true. This metal wall underground was the cause for forming Elixir.

It wasn’t confirmed, but at the same time, he had yet to find any evidence against it either.

‘How far does this wall extend to?’ Alex wondered. He was about to leave for answers, but he remembered Whisker staying above him. If he didn’t return the exact same route he had come from, Whisker would stay here searching for him.

‘I need some more time,’ Alex thought. ‘I know I can survive here. If I improve my body some more and make my Intent stronger, I should be able to browse this wall safely.’

At the moment, he was doing everything not to let the Yin fill him, and that too was at a moment when Yin was at its lowest. If he wanted to roam this place, he would need to become stronger.

Maybe then he would find out what sort of wall this was.

With the thought of attempting this again later, Alex went back up.

Alex emerged from the sand with Whisker and began explaining to Whisker what he saw. Whisker took in the information and gave his own hypothesis.

“Maybe it’s an old spirit vein. Are you sure it’s metal?” he asked.

“I couldn’t tell if it’s metal or not, but it felt that way. I couldn’t use my technique through it, so I want to believe it isn’t some sort of rock. If it is, I can’t understand why my technique isn’t working on it. As for being a spirit vein that has mutated somehow into becoming this… maybe. I can’t say anything for certain.”

Whisker suggested a few more possibilities, but none would work for what Alex had encountered.

“I’ll take you with me next time. Maybe you can sense something,” Alex said.

“I don’t know if I can,” Whisker said. “The Yin is too strong for me to sense anything.”

Whisker appeared saddened at not being able to help him.

“That’s alright,” Alex quickly said. “Once I’m stronger, I’ll go and see what it is. Maybe by then I’ll be strong enough to take a piece of it out too. We could then have our own Elixir-making metal.”

Whisker liked that idea.

Alex left the region, leaving Whisker behind to go get some more sludge at night. He fell back into cultivation again, now with the hope to get as strong as he could possibly get in a small amount of time.

A few weeks passed quickly, and Alex went back to fighting more sects.

The stronger members of the remaining sects had returned from the Night Assembly by then, so Alex fought through them, struggling at each step. There were 6 stronger sects after the Azure Hawk sect in this region, and Alex lost to every single one.

He was excited about his losses though, as each battle came with a heap of improvement to his Sword.

There was something else he gained from these remaining sects.

An idea.

One of the sects had prompted Alex to fight many of their members at once instead of just a single someone. They were far too strong for him then, but he had gotten the idea to ask more people to join the fight should the battle be too easy.

With that idea in mind, he decided to return back to the previous sects and fight them all over again.