Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex stepped out of the mountain for the next part of his tests. He didn’t want to destroy parts of the hill on the inside, so he took the Immortal Tribulation out of the region surrounded by the barrier.

Shumi came along with him and had planned on helping him just as well as she had for the past year.

“Let’s not do it the first time around,” Alex said. “I’ll see what I can learn on my own at first, and then we can have you jump in the second time around.”

Shumi nodded and waited patiently to the side while Alex went away to start the Immortal Tribulation.

Considering it hadn’t even been two thousand years since he became an Immortal, his next Immortal Tribulation wouldn’t have appeared on its own for the next eight thousand years. But the current situation forced his hand, requiring him to start it.

That was, in a way, the story for every single individual.

Because the aftermath of an Immortal Tribulation left one with plenty of Qi to cultivate with, in places where there wasn’t as much Qi, people used it to gain it.

Due to the growing lack of Divine Qi, Divinities especially were forced to go through Immortal Tribulation at least once every few centuries to progress with their cultivation base at a steady rate. As such, even though one could technically live over six hundred thousand years as a peak Divinity, the true lifespan of someone like that ended up being so much less.

In a way, Alex was giving up on eight thousand years of life just for this one chance to learn about the Heavenly Clouds.

Understanding as much, Alex couldn’t help but breathe out a long sigh. If he didn’t learn anything very soon, he might end up having to waste tens of thousands of years of his lifespan on this.

‘I have to figure out something,’ Alex thought and quickly ate the three mind pills. As soon as the pills entered his body, he felt his mind grow stronger and more alert.

Then, there was only one thing left for him to do.

He sat down in a cross-legged position and willed the Immortal Tribulation to start.

The clouds appeared out of nowhere, somehow overshadowing the smog in the sky, revealing themselves to Alex, while Shumi stood off to the side, not interrupting.

Alex’s spiritual sense cut through the smog and arrived at the clouds, quickly trying to discern what was so different about them. At a glance, he couldn’t see anything different, so he looked further in.

The same feeling of something trying to discern his identity came back from the Immortal Tribulation clouds as well, and just as before, he couldn’t gain any sort of access to the clouds themselves.

Alex kept his spiritual sense on the clouds while they prepared their first strike.

Alex could see the concentrated zones of energy, the majority of which was once again Wood energy. Lightning formed out of the gathered energy and struck down at Alex.

Since this was his first Immortal Tribulation, this was meant to test the might of someone at the Immortal Ascendant 2nd realm. Basically, so long as one was stronger than a new Immortal, they should have the chance to pass it.

With how weak that attack was, Alex didn’t even have to bat an eye toward it. His body alone could handle it without any part of him needing to defend.

His focus was entirely on the clouds.

Over the course of the next few minutes, the clouds gathered energy over and over, striking down with their lightning bolts. Over and over,

Alex sensed the same thing. The same cloud. The same composition. Either this was all too new for him to tell a difference, like a human failing to tell the difference between two beasts from the same species at a glance, or he was missing something.

But he was certain he wasn’t wrong.

This was the same cloud as the Pill Clouds. Not a single part of it was different, not a single deviation between the two clouds’ composition.

Even the way the lightning formed was practically the same.

But then… Why was the result of the lightning bolt so different?

All nine tribulation lightning strikes hit Alex, failing to leave a single mark upon him. As they faded away, Alex lay in silent thought, going through everything he had learned.

After some consideration, he relayed his discoveries to Shumi. “The same?” Shumi asked. “Surely not. They act so differently, after

all.”

“But they are the same,” Alex said. He considered for a short time longer, trying to gather the difference between the two.

The pill lightning would almost always destroy the pill unless stopped, in which case it would give the pill the exact sort of energy

it required.

The tribulation lightning would do something similar to the person going through it, leaving behind a plethora of Qi for them to convert. They seemed similar enough in what they did overall, but practically, they were different enough that the clouds that formed them should have been different.

As Alex considered that, he thought about the other heavenly lightning that existed.

There was the Heavenly Judgment for anyone who broke an oath or attempted to use their powers in a realm that was below their

cultivation base.

There was also the Artifact Tribulation lightning, something that Memory had gone through.

Unfortunately, Alex couldn’t see how he was ever going to find a chance to go through those two types while he was on this island. Artifact Tribulations were so rare that even the Artifact God himself couldn’t make it happen more than once in his life. And Memory was the only other tribulation Alex had seen happen.

And it was far too dangerous to try and get the Heavenly Judgment to come down upon anyone just to fulfill his curiosity.

As Alex thought about it silently for a while, he suddenly thought

about something. There was technically a fifth type of heavenly

lightning that he hadn’t considered.

Dao Lightnings.