Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex only needed Bladedance to explain that one part for the rest of his confusion to get sorted out all on its own.

Qi at a higher cultivation realm was a scarce resource. Even for Divinities, they needed a lot of Qi in order to properly cultivate and breakthrough. As a result, they either had to gather a lot of resources to acquire the Qi from, or they could just have heaven do it for them.

After each completion of a tribulation, the Qi left behind by the heaven would be more potent than gathering treasures. As a result, most people felt a need to call upon Heaven when they needed Qi to cultivate.

It was a risky method of cultivating, as each tribulation would be stronger than the last. And since a tribulation came every 10 thousand years, if you ended up calling a particularly strong tribulation lightning in that time and failed to improve, you would end up dying.

Alex didn’t know how many tribulation lightning Bladedance had called upon by now, but if any of them were strong enough to threaten a Celestial, she would be in danger.

But she didn’t appear nervous at all, so Alex could only believe that was not the case.

The ship stayed a distance away from the mountain where they were going to go through their tribulations, and Battlesage was the first to leave as planned.

He landed atop the mountain, still feeling the constant watch from the sky above. He took a deep breath and then called upon the heavens.

The sky grew dark in an instant and minor thunderclaps were heard all around. Lightning crackled here and there, tendrils of light sparking the dark insides of the cloud.

Battlesage prepared himself and the first lightning bolt struck down from the sky.

Battlesage had a cultivation base in the middle of the Immortal Origin realm. He was even weaker than Alex in terms of his cultivation even after being alive for over 700 thousand years.

But just like Alex, he also had a physical body in the Divine realm.

He struck the first lightning bolt with relative ease, not even a scratch left on his fist.

Bladedance narrowed her eyes.

“Immortal Transcendence 9th realm,” she said with a clear understanding of the strength behind the strike.

“That’s weaker than I would’ve assumed,” Alex said with some surprise.

“Same. I expected his lightning to be stronger, given how many dozens of these he’s missed. But then, I suppose heaven is trying to be fair. He had no resources to cultivate with during his time in Hell, so it wouldn’t try to kill him.”

Alex nodded slightly, finding Bladedance’s words to spark some thought in him.

Did heaven care whether one lived a long time or not?

All evidence said that was true, but Bladedance’s words made him wonder if he had been thinking about it too simply.

What if he were to assume the opposite? What if Heaven didn’t care whether one lived a long time or not?

If so, why was there such a thing as Immortal tribulation?

Alex mulled over the question. Was it possible that instead of attacking someone for living a long time, the heaven attacked them because they kept their Qi for a long time?

To cultivate was to gather Qi. What if Heaven was against that more than anything?

Qi was scarce, and it could be that Heaven didn’t want someone to hog all of it to themselves. Then it would have nothing to do with someone living a long time, just that they cultivated, or at least intended to cultivate.

’Then what about when they left Hell? How would the Heaven know they cultivated when they were out?’ he wondered.

But the answer there was simple. It didn’t.

That’s why it attacked. Since Heaven couldn’t know what someone did outside of it, the only thing it could do was attack them. It assumed one guilty to begin with.

But if they weren’t guilty, like Battlesage who had only cultivated a little in the hundreds of thousands of years since he had gone weak in Hell, it was lenient.

Despite their age, it let them live.

’Could that be true?’ Alex wondered. He brought up the topic to Bladedance as the second lightning bolt struck Battlesage.

This bolt carried with it a strength at the Immortal Spirit 1st realm.

“That’s an interesting theory,” Bladedance said. “But we have no way of telling, do we?”

Alex frowned. “No, I fear we don’t.”

Maybe if they found another primordial and talked to them, they would know. But that was a long shot.

That also made him wonder at the same time, if someone were to reach the Immortal realm, and completely give up on cultivating, would they live forever?

What if they suffered a Qi deviation and got weaker than before? What then?

The questions were sadly going to go unanswered as Alex had no way of figuring out the information just then.

The third bolt hit Battlesage a few seconds later, which he blocked with ease as well. It carried with it a strength at the Immortal Spirit 2nd realm.

“It’s growing in strength by an entire realm,” Bladedance said. “His last bolt will be at the Immortal Spirit 9th realm.”

“He can handle it,” Alex said. “His body is in the Divine realm.”

“Yes, but unless the old man has some good talent, he’s going to be in trouble 10 millennia later,” she said. “He will either need a way to improve his body to become stronger in these 10 thousand years, or find a way to cultivate past Divinity.”

She looked up in the sky. “If he fails to do either, his safest choice would sadly be to go back to Hell.”

Alex looked at the old man and the invigorating smile he had, fighting the tribulation lightning.

“I’m sure he can do it. He consumed an entire one of those fruits that both you and Whisker could only eat half of,” Alex said. “He’ll be fine.”