Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex walked out into the hallway and knocked on the old man's door.

From the looks of it, it was already past midnight. He had been working on this for so long that he hadn't even noticed time's passing.

The old man opened the door, a sense of loss clear on his face. The old man had resigned to fate. "And I thought I looked shit," he said before fully opening the door to let Alex in.

"I assume you need another one," he said, his hands reaching for his stomach. "Should I grow it now?"

"Yes," Alex said. "But not to take it out."

He pulled out the pill bottle and showed it to the man with a wide grin on his face. "It's done."

The old man looked at the bottle, then at Alex's smile. Only then did the words register.

"The pill?" he asked.

"Yes," Alex said, handing the pill over to the old man. "I worked quite hard for it, so let us hope for both our sake that it works."

The old man's hands trembled as he held onto the pill. He slowly pulled out the stopper and looked at the pill inside. The scent of it caught up to him first, evoking in him a feeling of fire and sunlight. "It's heavy with Fire energy, huh?" the old man said. "I suppose you would need that to combat my—"

His words stopped midway through and his expression changed.

"Where are the pill veins?" he asked. "I thought you needed to get me pill veins."

"Yes, but not for now," Alex said. "Ignore the lack of veins. Just think of it as a trade secret. Do you really care if it has veins or not as long as it works?"

The old man narrowed his eyes. "As long as it works."

Alex snickered at the reply.

"What's the quality of this pill then?" the old man asked.

"The harmony? 74%," Alex said. The Harmony number didn't really matter here as the purpose of the Pill Fusion was to condense the energy of 3 pills to work as one. In such a case, the worse the harmony was, technically, the better the pill was. Still, there were other issues with pills that were low on harmony, so most pills weren't taken to that extreme.

Alex wished he could fill up the rest of the Harmony in that pill, but it didn't work like that. The energy in the pill was so much stronger now that with his current level of Qi, there was no hope of using Divine Elemental Accord to improve the pill. Using the technique would just wreck his body instead of pulling out all the energy needed to condense and pour into the pill.

In such a case, the worse the harmony was, technically, the better the pill was. Still, there were other issues with pills that were low on harmony, so most pills weren't taken to that extreme.

Alex wished he could fill up the rest of the Harmony in that pill, but it didn't work like that. The energy in the pill was so much stronger now that with his current level of Qi, there was no hope of using Divine Elemental Accord to improve the pill. Using the technique would just wreck his body instead of pulling out all the energy needed to condense and pour into the pill.

He wasn't so keen on dying like that just yet. "Don't worry about the low harmony. Something else is happening with this pill that I can't talk about."

"I'll trust you," the old man said.

"Yeah, if this doesn't work, I'll go back and make a regular pill with pill veins. So don't worry," Alex said.

"Sounds fair to me," the old man said. "It will take some time for my spiritual root to grow back. I'll test it once it's done."

Alex nodded and sat by the side, letting his tired body rest a little. Half an hour of resting was enough for his body to not feel so tired anymore. A few minutes after that, the old man stirred to action. "It is time," he said. "My spiritual roots are back."

Alex got alert. "Go ahead. Eat it."

The old man nodded and took in a deep breath, feeling the nervousness of the situation seep back into him. How long had it been since he had tried something like this? He had given up on fixing his situation tens of thousands of years ago.

8 thousand years ago when the final lightning bolt gave him the scar on his right shoulder, he knew the next 10 thousand years would be his last, and he had lived it that way. And yet, here was one young Alchemist who claimed he could do what many Divine realm cultivators could not. It was time for him to check if there was any confidence behind that claim or just ignorance.

The old man pulled out the pill and ate it in one fell sweep.

He swallowed the pill and Alex looked at him intently. With each passing second, the pill traveled to his stomach where it began dissolving, the energy within it finding the proper channels to deliver itself to the Water Spiritual Root.

The old man gasped as the energy entered the root, the air in his lungs expunged out from the shock of hot meeting cold. His eyes remained wide and open for the entirety of the duration as he looked down at his own body, trying to understand the changes that happened within it.

The coldness within the root fought the heat that came with the pill. The energy clashed, fire and ice contradicting each other, trying to destroy one another. The coldness of ice was one that was very strong, and at first, it seemed that it was winning. However, the heat was a fighter that didn't fight head-on. It defended, slowly letting the ice tire itself out. It chose not to win at once, but to draw out the battle, to tire out the ice. With each passing second, the ice got weaker and weaker, while the pill's hot energy remained relatively stronger throughout the duration, inching out a victory for itself.

When the last bit of ice aura disappeared, the pill's energy disappeared along with it, and all that remained was a stable Water Spiritual root.

The old man refused to believe what had happened. He did not want to celebrate just yet. It was going to go bad. He knew it. Whenever things looked to be on the upswing, it always got worse for him.

And yet… nothing happened. As an entire minute passed, the old man had to trust what had happened, and so a smile broke out on his face along with some tears.

"It… it worked," he said. "It actually worked."

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