An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

”Cheng Haichang, right? Lift your head and look at me.”

Cheng Haichang stopped kowtowing. His forehead was swollen, proof of how hard he had been knocking it earlier. Even with an Initiate’s tempered body, the impact had still left him slightly bruised. He looked at Luo Chen, yet what met his eyes was no longer icy coldness, but gentleness. The feeling was strangely familiar, as though he were standing before the old man who had personally taught him in his youth. In front of those kind and wise eyes, he could keep no secrets, and neither did he need to keep any. After all, this person had always treated him like a son.

”From here on, I ask. You answer.”

”Yes! I’ll tell you everything, absolutely everything!”

Luo Chen’s gaze remained steady, and his voice was calm and clear. ”Which force do you belong to?”

”The Cheng family of Black Swan Island. It’s one of the thirty-six islands of the Flying Swallow Archipelago, under the Blue Sea Alliance.”

”Do you have a map on you?”

”I do.”

”Hand it over.”

Cheng Haichang obediently took out a map and respectfully handed it to Luo Chen. When it landed in Luo Chen’s hand, it felt smooth and supple, almost like fish skin.

Luo Chen unfolded the map and examined the densely packed terrain markings. Under Cheng Haichang’s guidance, his gaze settled on a region in the lower-right corner. There, a tiny seabird seemed poised to spread its wings. At the most remote edge of that bird’s wing, a tiny black dot was marked. That was the location of the Cheng family’s ancestral land, Black Swan Island. Tracing outward from that point and then looking back across the map, the Flying Swallow Archipelago appeared quite vast, yet across the entire map, places with detailed markings that were larger than the Flying Swallow Archipelago were too numerous to count.

People had always said that the Northern Sea was boundless, immeasurable even. Now, merely from a map obtained from an Initiate, Luo Chen could instantly confirm the truth of that claim. In his view, even if the Great Million Mountains of the Eastern Wilderness were fully explored, they would still fall short to the Northern Sea.

Along the edges of the map, many stretches of sea were still marked as unknown. As Luo Chen asked his questions, he checked Cheng Haichang’s answers against the map in his hand.

”How many cultivators are there in the Cheng family? What levels? And what about the Flying Swallow Archipelago as a whole? How strong are its cultivators? Is there an Adept? And this Blue Sea Alliance... what kind of alliance is it? Why have I never even heard of it?”

Cheng Haichang answered each question in turn, holding nothing back. He truly spoke without concealment. But the more words left his mouth, the more Luo Chen’s eyes widened.

”That’s absurd,” he said sharply. ”Wasn’t the Northern Sea’s Holy Land the Primordial Devil Sect?”

Cheng Haichang said sincerely, ”A hundred years ago, the Northern Sea fell into chaos. The Primordial Devil Sect’s stronghold, the Heaven of Northern Yama, was besieged by hundreds of millions of sea demons. Several Ancient Demons took action personally. In the end, it was completely destroyed.”

”Nonsense!” Luo Chen still could not believe it. ”The Heaven of Northern Yama is the most impregnable forbidden land under heaven. It has the Sunken Sea behind, and Primal Magnetic Auroras on both sides. How could it have been driven to such a state?”

”I don’t know the details. That battle turned everything upside down. There were even Divine Transformation beings who fell into it.”

Luo Chen was shaken to the core. Divine Transformation beings... fallen? That sounded like a joke. They were only a step away from ascension, yet they perished in battle?

He forced himself to steady his thoughts and asked, ”Then what exactly is the Blue Sea Alliance?”

Cheng Haichang replied without hesitation. ”The Blue Sea Alliance was founded after the Northern Sea chaos by an Ascendant surnamed Li. They say he was a member of the Primordial Devil Sect in his early years, but his conduct was upright, unlike the devil lords. Unwilling to see the human cultivators of the Northern Sea reduced to prey for sea demons, he established the alliance and linked the islands together so that they could stand together and protect themselves. Hence, the Blue Sea Alliance is also known as the Righteous Blue Sea Alliance.”

”The Blue Sea Alliance... linking islands together? You mean with formations?”

”Yes. That Ascendant is extremely proficient in formations. As long as the local human cultivator community wishes to become a member of the Blue Sea Alliance, he will selflessly give out the island-linking formations.”

Luo Chen felt a dull ache forming in his head. This information completely shattered his former understanding of the Northern Sea. This newly revealed landscape threw his thoughts into disarray, leaving him unsure where to even begin sorting it all out. He could only assume that with the fall of the former rulers, the already fragile order maintained by a devil sect’s iron fist had teetered on the brink of collapse. Then, an Ascendant had personally intervened and established a new order in its place. Though it still looked precarious, no matter how fragile it was, order remained order.

Luo Chen was highly adaptable. Where order existed, there were rules to rely upon. As long as he adapted, he could thrive like a fish in water. If it were truly a lawless place, he would have no choice but to find a remote corner and devote himself to bitter cultivation, grinding his cultivation little by little. After all, conflict was not what Luo Chen desired!

Luo Chen rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. With a casual wave of his hand, he turned and headed into the cabin. ”Take me to Black Swan Island.”

A moment later, Cheng Haichang suddenly shuddered, snapping out of his daze. He turned his head to look and saw that the others were still standing there, stunned and unresponsive. At that moment, fear surged through his heart. These really are the methods of a devil lord, bewildering people with illusions!

He hurriedly cast a mental cleansing technique to rouse the others. Moments later, everyone on deck came back to their senses with their faces pale in shock. The oldest among them, Cheng Ji, went to take control of the demon-hunting ship. Yet before leaving, he could not help transmitted a message with his spirit consciousness. ”Haichang... bringing someone like that back to the base... Won’t that cause serious trouble?”

”If we set sail, we might cause trouble later, but if we don’t, we’ll die now. And our Black Swan Cheng family is just a Foundation Establishment family. That senior probably wouldn’t even spare us a glance.”

Cheng Ji asked again, ”He asked for your name earlier, and he’s skilled in illusion arts. Do you think he might also know the Primordial Devil Sect’s deathly curse techniques?”

In an instant, Cheng Haichang’s face turned deathly pale. He swallowed and said, ”Probably not... If he wanted me dead, why bother with some costly curse technique? He could’ve just slapped me to death.”

That did make sense. Cheng Ji nodded and looked at the cabin deck littered with corpses, sorrow showing in his eyes. ”I’ll go get the ship moving. You all clean this up.”

Though sorrowful, he looked as if he had long grown accustomed to such scenes. After he left, Cheng Haichang fell silent as well. Under the gazes of the younger members, he suddenly took out that white banner from his storage pouch and his expression turned ruthless. ”So many souls... it’d be a waste to let them go to nothing. At the very least, these people and demons should die with purpose.”

As he spoke, the banner unfurled completely, and streams of ghostly energy surged forth. The deck instantly filled with wails as lingering souls—sea serpents, mortals, and even Cheng family cultivators—were all drawn into the banner.

As those souls streamed inside, the glow of the white banner grew noticeably denser and more brilliant. With this infusion of power, it seemed to have reached the supreme grade among enchanted artifacts, with only the slightest bit left until it became an enchanted treasure.

***

Inside the cabin, Luo Chen silently watched the Water Mirror before him. Cheng Haichang’s actions were all laid bare, including his brief spirit transmission with the other man earlier. None of it escaped Luo Chen’s powerful divine consciousness.

That Initiate had been fearful and submissive just a minute before. Yet the moment he had to make a decision, he had cast aside all familial sentiment and drawn the souls of his own kin into the soul banner. Such conduct truly embodied the words ”fickle” and ”capricious” to their fullest extent.

”Is this the way of Northern Sea cultivators?” Luo Chen murmured to himself.

By observing just this one person, he could already glimpse the broader atmosphere of the Northern Sea cultivation world. He also understood why the man had been so terrified earlier when asked his name, to the point where he’d risked angering Luo Chen rather than answering directly.

”Deathly curse techniques? I think the Primordial Devil Sect really did have a strange technique like that... the Seven Doom Curse, was it? It’s hard to master, costly to use, and you need to know your target’s actual name. But the power’s no joke. You don’t even need to see the person. From thousands of li away, a single word can decide life or death. Well... at least I know something now. If I’m going to move around the Northern Sea, I’ll have to be a lot more careful about my identity.”

As Luo Chen muttered to himself, he did not dispel the Water Mirror. Although all of his mana had been converted into fire due to the Heavenly Phoenix Nirvana Scripture, and spells pertaining to other elements were consequently less effective, a low-tier art like Water Mirror was still easy to use. He had long practiced it to Perfected Mastery, after all, not to mention that his eyes could still cast Mirror Flower Water Moon just as well as before.

Moreover, they were far away on the sea, which was obviously rich in water-element spirit energy. Even though his core converted it to fire-element mana, he could also use it in its raw state, before conversion. Some other low-tier spells could also be used this way if the environment was suitable and his mastery was high.

However, how far this approach could be taken was something he would need to test carefully in the future. Otherwise, if he instinctively tried to use spells he’d once excelled at only to find they could not be cast, that would be disastrous.

As thoughts flowed through his mind, he was also monitoring the movements of the ship.

He closed his eyes, and his divine consciousness spread through his entire body. It was time to take stock of his gains. Earlier on the open sea, he had burned and refined over ten thousand first-tier sea serpents with the Withering-Flourishing True Fire. The life force he had absorbed was vast beyond measure. Though the quality was lacking, the sheer quantity was terrifying. With only a brief sense of it, Luo Chen could not help but break into a grin.

”Sea of Demons... this might be exactly the place for me!”