Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex and the women went through the secret realm, finding more people to fight and train against. Over time, they had noticed that many of the weaker cultivators had either grouped together, gone into hiding, or simply left the realm.

The ones the women were fighting were generally stronger than them in most scenarios, so they were mostly losing stars during their travels.

By the time 22 years in total had passed, Helen was down to her final hundred.

”That’s 10 more days if I’m lucky. Less if we run into a bigger community,” Helen said with a sigh.

She had been training really hard over the past two decades and had grown a lot as a fighter. She had thought she was going to have much longer to train, but with the final 100, it felt as though nothing mattered at all. She was beginning to earn less and less anyway, so there wasn’t a point to it all. Soon, she would have lost everything, and she would have to finally leave the secret realm.

The other two tried to console her, while Alex decided she had trained enough.

”Since you have this few stars, I think it’s only fair that we drop the restrictions for you now. Do whatever you want,” Alex said.

Helen’s eyes widened in surprise. ”Are you saying I can fight however I want?”

”Better. I’m saying you can do whatever challenge you’re doing.”

Alex didn’t believe that would be of much help to Helen, but who knew? Maybe she might have a resurgence in the near future.

The others were excited as well, realizing this might be the one chance to enjoy the secret realm as it was intended to be.

Not long after Helen said as much, someone came and challenged her. Instead of fighting that person with her newfound skills, Helen took the opportunity to choose an option she had never gotten to choose in a long time.

”The challenge will be... Alchemy. Whoever makes the best Immortal pill wins.”

Her challenger happened to know a thing or two about Alchemy, so he made his pills while Helen made hers. However, his pill had nothing worth noting.

Then, Helen humbled the man by making a pill that was easily one of the greatest pills she had ever made. Despite not having made pills for such a long time, she was stunned herself.

The sky rumbled with energy as her pill was ready to form.

”You win. Take it,” the man said and tossed in his star. There was no way he was going to do anything close to what the woman was doing.

The pill lightning came down for a while, helping her make a 6-veined pill.

The challenger left.

Helen was excited to have finally participated in challenges she wanted to, and not ones she was forced to. She was more than excited about it all.

Slowly, she began earning stars over the course of the next few months, going from having just 100 stars to a couple thousand by the end of it. In that time, Liz and Ronron lost enough of their stars to reach 100 as well.

Alex gave them the same freedom he did Helen.

They immediately began using their advantages to help themselves and earn more stars. By the next 3 years, they earned quite a few stars. However, as those years passed, most of the people that were still left in the secret realm were extremely talented and strong as well.

That caused the women some problems. Whenever one of them chose something they were good at, the challengers learned to change the actual challenge by betting their stars for it. Very few among those people ended up losing. Most of those people won, as their cultivation base alone was much higher than anyone else’s.

The women were also beginning to be forced to challenge others as people remained wary of others, not directly challenging them. That forced them to fight many battles that they could not win.

Slowly, they began losing more stars than they were winning.

Only Alex, with his nearly million stars, got to stay around without much change in the number of stars he had.

The group reached the West End Marker at some point, where a group of communities had divided the Marker among themselves, forcing the others who came to join one of them. Alex allowed the women to do whatever they wanted, and they chose to join the community, albeit temporarily.

That didn’t stop them from bleeding out stars. Before they knew it, they were losing more and more stars.

A few more years passed with it fluctuating up and down every single day, until one fateful day when Liz lost the final battle she could afford to. It was a battle of physical strength against someone in the Immortal Spirit 3rd realm. She had no option but to lose.

Once she was done, she was fully out of stars.

”You can’t give me any, can you?” Liz asked Alex, half jokingly, and Alex could only shake his head.

Liz sighed. ”Alright. It was going to happen soon anyway. I just didn’t expect me to be the first,” she said.

She looked at the group and nodded. ”I’ll see you all outside soon.”

Helen nodded as well. ”I will be coming out in a few months as well.”

Liz left the secret realm, and the group returned to traveling and challenging again. Each day, their stars depleted more and more. And just as Helen had said, she too lost her final star just 3 months later.

Helen sighed as she turned toward Alex and Ronron.

”I’ll be leaving now. I’ll go meet up with Liz. How much longer will you two be staying?” she asked.

”I should be out soon,” Ronron said. ”Father might stay for longer.”

Alex shrugged. ”I don’t think I’ll stay here for much longer either. Once Ronron loses her stars, I will most likely leave as well.”

Helen gave a nod. ”I see. Then I’ll see you outside soon.”