Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

It was a long time before Steelmind returned from the hilltop, tear stains still somewhat visible on his cheeks. He wiped them even as he came down and found Shen Yaojia standing in wait for him.

He watched her from a distance and stopped when he arrived before her.

“How were his final days?” he asked.

“Peaceful,” she said. “He didn’t want me to see him pass away, so he entered closed cultivation during the last two days. That letter was written around five days before he died.”

“You got to spend time with him during those other days?” he asked.

Shen Yaojia nodded.

“That’s good. I would’ve hated the thought of my brother passing away without getting to say his goodbyes,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

Shen Yaojia smiled faintly. “It’s been many years now. I’ve more or less found peace with his death. It still stings to remember he’s not around any longer, but I’ve accepted that he’s moved on to better places.”

Steelmind nodded. He held the letter up, waiting for a moment. “Have you read this?” he asked.

The woman shook her head. “It wasn’t meant for me,” she said.

“But you have an idea of what it says,” he said. “Regarding you.”

Shen Yaojia paused for a moment, her eyes narrowing in on Steelmind. “We discussed something during those last few days. I would guess he wrote something related to that.”

Steelmind nodded. “You still want to leave this world and be elsewhere?” he asked.

Shen Yaojia nodded. “It feels wrong to say as much, but I think I’m wasting my talents acting as a sect leader here. I could be spending it focusing on my artifact-making skills.”

Her expression changed, appearing more aggrieved.

“Your guidance has been a lot of help, but I need an actual teacher who is willing to spend some time with me and teach me properly. And as far as I can tell, all of them are out there in the other realms, helping with the war.”

She looked toward him.

“Unless I go there myself, I cannot see myself improving any further, and before I know it, my skills will rot, and I will die here, just like my parents did.”

Hearing the woman say that, Steelmind was about to say something when he paused. He tightened his fist and took a deep breath.

“Your father’s last wishes were for me to keep you away from the war,” Steelmind said. “I don’t know if he told you stories of the war, at least the ones where he saw the true horror of it, but it is not good. You should understand his wishes to keep you away from it.”

“No, I do,” she said. “I really do. But still, I should have a say in my own life, shouldn’t I?”

Steelmind nodded. “You should. And you do. Tell me, why haven’t you left already?”

Shen Yaojia sagged a little. “I was going to. I had sold just enough artifacts in the auction to buy myself a ticket away from this world. But before I could make the decision to leave, my mother was wounded during her Immortal Tribulation, and I… I couldn’t leave then.”

“After that, I stayed because my father was alone, and… and I still haven’t been able to leave.”

Steelmind sighed. “And he’s asked me to keep you safe. That means keeping you away from the war.”

Shen Yaojia’s face fell. It was bad that she couldn’t make a decision for herself, and worse still that she couldn’t argue back against the decision her father made. How could she bring herself to go against his last wishes? His dying wishes.

“Then what do I do? You told me my talents were exceptional. Do I just let myself rot?” she asked.

“No, you can flourish your skills from here,” Steelmind said.

“I don’t have a teacher,” she said.

“I can be your teacher.”

“You already are, but you won’t stay here for long.”

Steelmind found himself chuckling. “I don’t know. Maybe I might.”

Steelmind hadn’t realized how true those statements would turn out to be soon.

He started with a simple test to see how great Shen Yaojia’s understanding of artifact creation had become and then started teaching her more and more after that.

Soon, Shen Yaojia became too busy to lead her sect, so she passed along the title to someone else, and she left the sect to train in peace in a much more rural location.

Steelmind got busy as well, teaching Shen Yaojia all the things she either was bad at or had completely missed. This was completely different from work for him, and he even thought of it as a vacation of sorts.

It also gave him some time to be away from all the work and even some time to cultivate freely. It had been so long since he had last cultivated for decades at a time.

The freedom to teach and also do what he wanted was something that had been missing for some time from his life. After considering it for a bit, Steelmind decided to take a much-needed break.

He sent a message to the people of his workshop that he wouldn’t return for at least a few centuries, maybe even many millennia. The peace was just something he couldn’t give up on.

His workshop would be fine. Even without him, there were plenty of other Divine Realm artifact makers who could do his share of the work. Since most of his work had been repairing in the first place, those were things the others could easily do.

The location he had found for himself and his goddaughter to train was also remote enough that no one would bother them, so they trained with each other without any worries.

Shen Yaojia’s talent in artifact making was exceptional, and she flourished quite a bit under his direct teaching. Soon, the two master and disciple had spent centuries upon centuries in each other’s company, completely removed from the outside world and war.

At the same time, in a place far away, another man had gained the title of an Artifact Sage.

Better known as the Sage of Ten Thousand Treasures.