Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex stood next to a woman he only half recognized from the previous times. She was to be his opponent for the first four rings.

He ignored her. He ignored everyone else around him. He had no opponent here that mattered to him. His opponent was Aethersage and his record time of 19 minutes and 27 seconds.

His senses were inside his storage bag at the moment, streaming through the many ingredients inside of it. Everyone else was the same as well.

His eyes were on the Divine Realm cultivator far in front of him, nearly 20 meters away, at the edge of the narrow hedge wall that connected the two rings. The Divine Realm cultivator stood with a pill tester in his hand, ready for whoever would come to him first.

The Alchemy God shouted the words ‘Begin!’ from the back, and the competition started.

Everyone sat down on the soft grass immediately, pulling anywhere from one to five cauldrons before them. They brought out their ingredients as well and began placing them into the cauldrons to make their pills.

Alex pulled out Memory and placed it on his palm, holding it in the air. The cauldron immediately heated up, faster than even Alex could possibly do it on his own, thanks to Memory itself helping him.

The 11 different ingredients of his first pill flew out and teleported into the cauldron, where they were separated into 11 different spaces, each of which would then individually be refined at the same time.

As he did that, he also used his intent to slow down time as best as he could. Unlike a decade ago, his Intent was far more aligned with the Dao of Temporal Stagnation this time around, which made things much easier.

If it was 5% aligned last time, it had only increased to 10% now. In the grand scope of things, he still had a long way to go. But, looking at it from his perspective alone, he had doubled the efficiency.

Time slowed for only him and the cauldron, and nothing else. Then, he simply followed the recipe to make the pill.

All of this happened almost simultaneously. Within seconds of the competition starting, Alex had pulled the cauldron out, poured the ingredients in, separated them into spatial layers, slowed down time, and then began refining them.

And throughout all of this, he didn’t sit down. He remained standing while holding the cauldron as there was one last thing left for him to do.

Alex started walking.

He had realized something very important while watching the others take part over the past month, that the others either hadn’t realized or didn’t have a way to circumvent around it.

And that was the fact that walking from the outermost ring to the innermost ring took time.

Even for people who made all the pills at once and then went in, walking through 20 rings took time. Each ring was about 20 meters apart in distance, and then there were a few turns to be taken in places where the paths merged, which increased the overall distance to easily over 500 meters.

Even if a cultivator ran through these, they still easily wasted a dozen or so seconds on it. Alex didn’t want to waste those seconds.

Alex carried Memory on his palm since he didn’t want to burden his Qi or Mind with it. And he walked toward the Divine Realm cultivator slowly while the pill quickly formed inside the cauldron.

Alex couldn’t focus on more than this, so while he did feel as though over a minute had easily passed, he wasn’t sure how much actual time had passed outside.

He walked at just the right speed that by the time he arrived before the staff member, he had the pill ready.

The pill flew out of the cauldron and landed in Alex’s hands. But before he even handed it over to the Divinity before him, the next set of ingredients were already out and into the cauldron, ready to be refined.

Alex handed the pill over and waited for the person to place it in his pill tester and check the harmony.

Even in that small act was time wasted. And yet it was not something many could do much about as they needed absolute focus to make their pills. It took a few seconds for the man to let Alex go, but each second he took was a second wasted.

Alex had decided to make the most of it.

He was easily the first to make his way past the first ring and into the second. And even here, as he walked, the pill was being made with time slowed all around it.

This was the method Alex had realized would fit the best for him. If one were to be made to just sit in one place and make the pills, one could argue making many at once was a better method. But as it was, Alex went with this method.

The pills took him only a bit more than a minute to make in each instance, though he couldn’t tell what the true time was outside where time flowed normally.

Alex passed through the next 3 rings and then turned left at the intersection where the pathway merged to form the 5th ring. And yet, he too was here before everyone else.

By the time he walked over to the staff there, another pill was already made.

There was absolutely no time wasted during which pills were made. Alex made one pill after another in a speed he had barely managed to previously. He passed through the rings one after another as well, which he could imagine was a shock for the people outside.

Alex fell into a routine soon enough where he nearly forgot how many pills he had even made. It wasn’t until he pulled out a set of ingredients, put it into the cauldron, and then sent his senses to find the next set that he realized he had made all of them.

19 pills had been made. 19 rings had been crossed.

And with this final set, he would be done.