Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"And the Sundering Sanctum is crumbling, you said? It\'s not safe anymore?" Alex asked. He was quite curious about what he had heard.

"No, it is safe, as long as you make sure that you don\'t go to certain places. It\'s easy to figure out once you\'re in there," Yao Ning said.

"I see, I suppose I should go and see for myself when it opens up someday soon. I can, right?" he asked.

"As long as you are not over 200 years old, you can enter. If you are, then you have to be a Saint realm cultivator to go in. It\'s a general rule we made to limit the number of people that would want to enter," Liang Shufen said.

"Ah, you made the rules? I see," Alex said.

"Yes, we make all the decisions for this continent after all," Gong Liuxian said. "Although, we should stop talking about the Sundering Sanctum and talk about that lightning pill. What do you think about the pill? Can you make a good one?"

Alex looked at the ingredients again and said, "the ingredients seem common enough. This Jade Starwood resin might be a little hard to obtain, but I\'ve seen the others being used in the association. As long as we can get the resin, I can make them."

"Don\'t worry about the resin, we have gathered enough in the five millennia we\'ve spent here," one of the 10 said. "We have all the ingredients you will need."

"Oh," Alex got a little excited when he heard that. "How many ingredients would you say you have exactly? If there are more than you need, then I might have a way to further improve the pill."

​ "Oh, these are all the Jade Starwood resin we have, so given this amount, that is the number of ingredients we have," Tan Yang said.

Alex took the massive jar and looked inside to see the resin filled to the brim. He calculated a little and smiled. "I will have to waste a bit of this for testing purposes, but after I\'m done, I think I can make about 15 or maybe even 20 pills. I can\'t be sure about the amount right now."

"Oh, as long as you can make 10 of them, we will be fine," Ren Guanting said.

"Only 10? One each?" Alex asked with a confused look. Why would you only want one? Wouldn\'t you want as many as you can have?

Just then a thought came across his mind and his eyes narrowed. "Are you going to be using this pill eventually when you are ready to break through to the Immortal realms and will have to survive the lightning tribulation?" he asked.

"Oh, you know about it? That makes things easy. Yes, we are requesting this pill in preparation for breaking through to the Immortal realms," the 10 said.

"Aren\'t you guys still quite far away from reaching the point of breaking through?" he asked. As he looked around, he was only met with smug looks from every one of them.

"No way," Alex said. "Are all your cultivation bases in the Upper Saint Transformation realm?"

"You shouldn\'t ask other people their cultivation base so easily young man, it\'s considered rude," one of them said with a smiling face, which was anything but a \'no\' to his question.

Alex couldn\'t help but be surprised at the fact that he had been sensing their cultivation base wrong this entire time. Either that or they were deliberately letting him sense their cultivation base was weaker than it actually was.

"How close would you say you are to breaking through to the Immortal realm? 10 years? 20?" he asked.

The 10 in the group suddenly started laughing out loud when they heard that question. "Young man, we were already in the late Saint Soul realm five millennia ago when we formed the council. We have slowly improved our cultivation base, but it will certainly take at least a thousand more years before any of us can try and breakthrough at all," one of them said.

Alex was still in awe. After all, he never thought he would be in the presence of 10  different Saint Transformation realm cultivators.

After all, neither the Western Continent nor the Northern continent had such a cultivator.

Western Continent was a weak continent, so it was obvious why it wouldn\'t have one. As for the Northern Continent. Alex remembered the madman talking about the many ancestors from the other sects he had to kill because they attacked him so many times.

It was likely that the Northern continent would also have the same, if not more cultivators in the Saint Transformation realm, had it not been for the madman\'s terror.

"Are you sure this pill will work for lightning tribulation?" Alex asked. "As far as I understand this only works for normal lightning."

"We... can\'t be sure, but we are hopeful that it will work," one of them said. "After all, how different can a tribulation lightning really be from normal lightning?"

Alex\'s eyes narrowed. "It\'s very different," he said. "Have you never tribulation lightning?"

"How could we? We\'ve never tried breaking through to the Immortal realms before. And as far as we know, no one has in the last 10 thousand years," another one said.

"Why do you ask it like that? Have you seen tribulation lightning?" Yao Ning asked.

"I have," Alex said. "After all, I had to go through the tribulation after learning a dao before entering the Saint realm."

"WHAT?!" the 10 of them were surprised. Even Huang Chen, who was trying to not speak at all to not influence Alex\'s decision to make pills, couldn\'t help but shout in surprise.

"You\'ve gone through lightning tribulation before?" they couldn\'t help but ask to confirm.

"Yes," Alex said. "Anyone who learns a dao must go through it before they can enter the next major realm, right?"

"That\'s true, but... you learned a Dao before entering the Saint realm?" another person asked.

"Yes, Heat dao," Alex said. "It\'s what has helped me partly in making such good pills."

"Woah, amazing," they couldn\'t help but say. "Wait, so are lightning tribulations really that different from normal lightning?"

"As far as I\'m aware, yes," Alex said. "Although I cannot say with confidence that what you are trying to do won\'t work. It\'s possible that this pill can fend off a bit of damage from the lightning. But I suggest preparing as if there was no pill anyway."

"I suppose we must do that now," Kang Xuefeng said. "Sigh, we were probably expecting breaking through to the Immortal realm to be easy somehow. Of course, it won\'t be."

They all shook their head in disappointment.

"Anyway, I will still make this pill," Alex said. "What other pills do you want?"

"Is it possible to have a pill that will help you in learning dao?" they asked. "Something that will improve your comprehension or talent in general."

Alex frowned a little. "I don\'t think I can improve your comprehension ability regarding some dao. Even if it were possible, I don\'t have that capability, but..." he paused a little.

"But what?" the 10 got curious.

Alex thought for a bit. "I can\'t say right now as I don\'t want to give you hope. I can think of an effect that will help you in learning dao that you are close to learning, but I do not know how I can make such a pill. I will definitely need quite a long time."

Alex was imagining a pill that when consumed would put one in a trance the same way the flower scent back in the dao mountain did. As long as he could put that effect into a pill, people would no longer have to worry about problems in learning Dao.

"Sigh, this is definitely going to be one of my most ambitious tasks yet. I may even be trying to chew what I can\'t swallow," Alex said softly. It was a similar feeling to trying to learn the Dao of techniques, as he didn\'t even know where exactly to begin.

However, considering that he was making steady progress in that, he believed himself capable of at least getting somewhere with the Dao teaching pill too.

"Take all the time you need," the 10 said. "We have hundreds of years to live still."

"Thank you. I will see what I can do about it," Alex said. "Do you have any other pill requests? Feel free to ask."

The group shook their head as they were done with the requests. However, just then, Lei Zhong spoke up.

"Actually, I do have one question," he said. "I wouldn\'t even be asking this to you had you not proved yourself to be a master Alchemist."

"Is it a hard question? Please ask freely as long as it is related to alchemy. If I can\'t answer you, I will tell you," Alex said.

"So..." the man hesitated a bit. "Is there a way to improve one\'s spiritual roots?"

The others were surprised at the question as they never even thought about it.

Alex\'s eyes narrowed a bit. "There are ways to improve one\'s spiritual roots with pills, but I am not aware of them," he said. "The recipe I have only worked for people in the True realms."

"So you can\'t do it?" the man asked.

"No," Alex replied.

"What if you had half a recipe?" the man asked.

"Half a recipe?" Alex got curious. "Do you have one?"