Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The Intercontinental teleportation formation wasn’t just a single formation, but a bunch of formations working together to bring a single result.

Alex had half expected the teleportation formation to be the same size as the teleportation script from the Demon realm, so he was surprised to see them easily 10x the size of the teleportation scripts.

“Wow! It’s so large,” Alex said as he hovered a few meters away from the stage that was also the formation.

“Yes, it is big. Most people are surprised by how big it is,” the sect master Bai said. “They were very generous when they made it and they made it so large even.”

“Sorry… they?” Alex asked curiously. He had in fact never heard who exactly made this teleportation formation. His first guest was the humans, but they were too weak and too lacking in knowledge to do it.

His second guess was the Demons but they only knew Runes, and they had made a teleportation script made up of runes anyway.

That left behind 2 other candidates, and Alex had a guess which one it was.

“Before I tell you about who made the teleportation formation, I must tell you about a great war that took place nearly a hundred thousand years ago,” the sect master said.

“They say that hundreds of heavenly warriors came down to rid the world of demons and left behind 4 rulers when they were gone to make sure the demons never return.”

“The 4 rulers ruled the four different continents and thus decided to make their meetings easier by adding teleportation formations to each other.”

“That was how the formation was created,” the sect master said. “Now that’s a little history you didn’t know.”

Alex wanted to tell the sect master that it was him who knew nothing of history, but he decided not to. Instead, he simply looked at the massive size of the teleportation formation and asked, “what exactly does it need to run? From what I can tell it’s working.”

“It is working,” the sect master said. “It accepts teleportations whenever they come around. It has been ages since someone has used it, but it still waits for them.”

“What about using it then? Has anyone used it?” Alex asked. “More specifically, is there a way for me to access it?”

“Do you want to go back to the Western continent?” the sect master asked.

Alex was surprised he knew about it for a split second before remembering that his aunt’s master had told the man everything about him, so there was a lot that he knew about Alex that even he didn’t know could be known.

Alex nodded back at the sect master and asked, “I hear it’s hard. Is it really impossible?”

The sect master hesitated for a bit. “I’m not that well known about this since it hasn’t been used in my lifetime. As far as I do know, there needs to be a landing platform on the Western Continent’s end if I were to try and teleport you there, which they don’t have at all.”

“Even if they did work somehow, the cost of using the teleportation formation across the two formations would be about 2 Saint ranked spirit veins. No one is willing to do that for you now that the hub is gone,” the sect master said.

Alex sighed and nodded. He knew this was exactly the answer he was going to get, and yet he still expected to get a different answer. Alas, he couldn’t change reality at all.

“It would’ve been not as wasteful if the formations in the central continent still existed, but some stupid beast’s breach of peace destroyed it all.

Alex didn’t say anything and just continued nodding. He knew more about the situation, but that came with explaining things that either made the Northern continent one of the bad guys or made it look like he was hateful towards the other continents. So, he did nothing but looked around with his spiritual sense.

Alex spent the next half an hour looking more carefully at the formation, trying to learn how they worked exactly.

There were concepts put into work here that he was only vaguely familiar with. The more he looked at it, the more confusing it got for him to the point where he felt like he knew nothing about formations at all.

He found some truth in his own thoughts as there were likely intricacies in the other profession as well that was as deep and vast as the inner workings of Alchemy.

He was just so much of an outsider to the professions that he didn’t know them well enough at all. All he was good at was copying what others had done before him.

Alex shook his head to send away the thoughts. He didn’t need such rogue thoughts in his mind as he never considered himself that good in formations and talismans, nor did he want to.

He was perfectly content with just following other men’s works if it mean he could do what they did just as well, or maybe even better.

“They must’ve been worried about the teleportation formation being damaged when they made this since they made it so big that stealing just wasn’t possible anymore,” the sect master said.

Alex nodded as he looked around. It was quite amazing that such a large formation was just out in the open like that.

The two of them talked for a while longer before Alex was done looking at the Intercontinental teleportation formation. Since there was no way to use it to get back to his mother and friends, Alex lost all interest in it.

“I’ve seen everything I wanted to, sect master,” Alex said. “We should leave now.”

“Do we return now?” the sect master asked him curiously.

“Ah, no. I’m planning on continuing west,” he said. “Is this the furthest you will go, sect master?”

“I’m afraid so,” the sect master said. “I cannot just leave my sect for days without prior notice.”

“I see,” Alex said. “This is farewell then. Let us meet again in a few months when I return. Hopefully, my aunt will return by that time.”

“Yes, let us meet then,” the sect master said his goodbye and left.

Alex too left for the western lands. He took a deliberate, slow flight west, going over many towns, cities, and villages.

He looked at the green hills towards the north that were snowcapped at the top. He saw the ocean towards the south, so blue that he didn’t know where the water ended and where the sky began.

Bird beasts flew close to him, threatening to hurt him for using the same space as them, but with a single roar from Pearl, these measly beasts always left the area.

After nearly a day of travel, Alex arrived at the border to the State of Bing where the landscape once again changed to that of ever snow. There was even a small snowstorm that he had to fly through before coming up to a city a few hours north.

Alex landed outside the city and entered it. He paid no fee since he was a Saint realm cultivator, and he also got rid of his white mask since he wanted to remain anonymous in this location as he was planning something.

The city was called Ghostbane city, named after one of the most common poisons out there. In fact, every city in the State of Bing had a name that had something to do with poisons somehow.

It was a decree put forth by the Nether Poison sect to change their part of the continent after the fall of the Snow Immortal sect.

Alex was quite happy that he had finally arrived in Ghostbane city. There wasn’t anything unique about the city itself but rather the hill that was just north of here where there were 9 different wells with water that never froze and people lined up to drink it all day long.

That was the location of the 9th wonder of this continent, counting the Lightning Peninsula he had seen from far in the distance.

The Nine Wells of Time.