Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex performed the same test with the same amount of water treasures, using cultivation pills for this turn.

As the test progressed and came to an end, Alex could tell there had been significant improvements to his cultivation session this time around, which the formation below him made clear for him.

This time, the lowest amount came to be 1382, the highest 6324, and the average 2621.

Alex took some time off to compare the numbers to all that came before it. Compared to the actual tests, it was a massive improvement, but compared to the control, there were some strange differences that he tried to make sense of.

In contrast to the baseline, just using Water root with water aura had been on average twice as slow.

However, to the baseline while using a pill, the current value was closer to four times as slow.

While the low and high values fluctuated, the average was what told Alex the real truth, so that was what he focused on.

”While I had 1758 average for regular baseline, my Water root only managed to get 755. But when I did the same test with pills, my average shot up to 9611 for baseline, but with Water root, it only shot up to 2621.”

If the values were meant to be kept the same, the pill should have improved it to at least 3000. But it hadn’t. That probably meant that the pill was more than just a strict multiplier on their cultivation speed. It did more for people who were already more than good enough.

”It does open up our meridians and allows our body to absorb more Qi and faster. That is probably why the change is so drastic,” Alex believed.

This meant that cultivation pills were biased toward helping those that didn’t need it in the first place. There was a certain sense of irony hidden in there somewhere.

With the Water root still the only root he had, Alex performed two more tests. One was a test where he forced his Water root to become weaker thanks to a pill he ate. And the other one was where he made it temporarily even better.

Making a Superior grade spirit root was quite difficult, so Alex didn’t expect to get much answer from there. But from the test where it was weaker, he hoped to gain a lot.

Just as he thought, improving the spirit root barely added any improvements to his overall scores. While weakening it drastically lowered it. His average nearly reached 250, which was 3 times as low as his average with his regular Water root.

Alex would test it a few times more, but he was more or less certain now that having a Superior spirit root was way more necessary than he could’ve ever been led to believe.

Alex did the same test with cultivation pills as well and got similar results.

Alex also did the same test but with a regular root on top of it this time around, and there were slight improvements. The water aura in the room helped, but so did the regular Qi, which his regular root could absorb all on its own.

On average, the score Alex received for that test was 823. He was now close to reaching half as high as his average for baseline. With pills, however, the gap was much wider.

Finally, 2 years since he started doing the tests, he came to the final set of tests he was ready to perform for Water root with no other elemental spirit roots working alongside it.

Alex had created 3 types of pills for the Unity test.

The first were a set of pills that suppressed a singular spirit root, which Alex had already tested.

The second were a set of pills that helped empower a singular spirit root, which was also something Alex had already tested.

The third and final set of pills were special compared to the two. Instead of suppressing or empowering any specific root, they transformed a person’s neutral root entirely. Based on a seed of an idea from a pill Alex had made many years ago in his only alchemy competition against the Dragon Emperor, the third set of pills could give Alex an additional spirit root.

Alex ate one of the pills he had prepared for this test, and within seconds, his neutral spirit root gained an elemental affinity, slowly becoming a Water spirit root. Now, Alex had two of them.

And he couldn’t help but wonder just how that would change his cultivation speed. Would that improve it? Or would it make no difference?

He wasn’t sure how long the pill’s effects would last, so he started cultivating the moment the changes occurred.

As Alex cultivated, he gained a strange feeling he had never gained before. The two roots, now both Water roots, seemingly fought each other to take in the Water Qi that flowed through his meridians.

Alex felt an immediate drop in his cultivation speed, and for a bit wondered if this would be his worst result just yet. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad as when he had no Water treasures, but not that much better.

However, after the first week of cultivation, the two roots began changing. They no longer fought each other, seemingly understanding what the situation was and that they couldn’t change it. His body slowly adapted to the fact that he had two spirit roots and worked accordingly to provide each with the Water Qi he took in.

By the next week, his speed was much better than before.

Another month passed and Alex finally came to an end of that particular test. He looked down at the result and couldn’t help but be surprised.

At the lowest, the score was at 211, more than half of what he gained with just one Water root.

At the highest, however, his score was 1922. That was a 50% increase from a single root score.

On average, the score had gone up from 755 to 1026.

For the first time during this entire test, Alex had finally managed to gain a score that was more than half of his baseline.