Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"If your Majesty is an alchemist as I\'ve heard, surely you would want to come visit the Thousand Blossom Valley in our kingdom, right?" the king of the Emerald Kingdom asked. "It\'s one of the most remarkable places in the entire continent; definitely one of the two most highly sought-after places alongside the Endless Shadow Abyss."

"Oh," Alex responded. "Then I must visit that place."

"We do have the Cavern of Eternal Frost where one can improve their Yin arts. Even if your Majesty does not have any Yin arts, surely your subordinates do. You must come to visit us when the time is right," the white-robed Queen of the Ivory Kingdom spoke.

"Yin, huh? I\'ll have to think about it," Alex said. "I will most definitely like to see what sort of place it is though."

"Hehe, you should, your Majesty," the Queen said before turning to the peach-robed Queen of the Silver King. "Sister Yingtai, do you not wish to call His Majesty to your home domain?" 

"I do wish to request his majesty visit us as well, but our kingdom boasts nothing worth visiting for at the moment at all. The Transcendent Martial Ground require another decade or so before they can open up, and they happen to be our only attraction," Mao Yingtai, the Queen of the Silver Kingdom spoke.

"Even if that is all there is for your Kingdom to offer, I will still visit it, Queen Yingtai. I will not discriminate amongst any of you," Alex said.

"Then I shall be waiting for you too, your Majesty," Long Weiyuan, King of the Azure kingdom said.

"You will definitely have to visit here first, your Majesty," the Crown Prince said. "The Azure Lake and the Boundless Enlightenment Domain are two places you want to go to as early as possible."

"I believe I have heard of the Boundless Enlightenment Domain before, but what importance does the Azure Lake hold, if you don\'t mind me asking," Alex said.

"The Azure Lake is at the heart of the Eastern Continent, made by the first Azure Dragon to commemorate their arrival and stay in this empire, or so the record says," the Dragon Emperor said. "It holds nothing other than a historical importance and an artificial beauty that you will be hard-pressed to find in this entire realm."

"I see," Alex said. \'Then I must visit this place as well."

Queen Meifen of the Ivory Kingdom was quite excited talking about all of this. "You should visit the Gold Kingdom too, your Majesty. Not only does it have the Golden Mountain range where 90% of the continent\'s gold comes from, but it also holds the Realm of Trials which alchemists such as you and other non-combat professionals can go through to improve yourself."

Tan Qiu looked toward Alex and bowed. "My kingdom also holds one of the most prominent auctions in all of the empire every 10 years, your majesty. The next one should be in less than half a decade. I would be honored if you do in fact come to the Gold Kingdom," he said.

"I will," Alex said. "I am very much excited about the prospects of visiting all of your Kingdoms."

"I\'m not sure how much his majesty would be interested in the Celestial Peak or the Harmonious Balance Haven, but I would also appreciate it if you could come to the Ebony kingdom as well," Wan Deming said.

Alex affirmed to everyone that he would come to each and every one of their place in the future. While his words seemed like they were spoken for courtesy\'s sake, Alex truly did want to visit all of those places.

Not only did he want to visit those locations and secret realms, but he also wanted to go there as a method of distraction.

Alex\'s main purpose, outside of finding his cousin, was finding what happened to Pearl\'s parents. As a result, the first place he had to visit was the Beast Paradise.

However, going there directly would most definitely arouse suspicion, so he had decided to go to every single kingdom as a way to disguise the fact that he wanted to get to that particular location.

At the very least, the royal family shouldn\'t get suspicious that he had ulterior motives for coming to this place.

"Oh!" 

"Wow!" 

"So many!"

A bunch of soft murmurs sounded behind Alex, which he managed to hear clearly. He quickly looked up to see what they were talking about and saw that aside from Jai Heiyun and her opponent, everyone else had missed the current question.

There had been moments before when they had failed to recognize some ingredients, but the results had been scattered. Not everyone didn\'t recognize it all at once, but rather sporadically.

This time, however, 38 of the 40 people had messed up on the ingredients. 

They were all devastated, but now wasn\'t the time to care for those things. They focused back on the task and continued naming the ingredients.

Every 3 seconds the scoreboard started changing numbers in a very chaotic fashion. Instead of everyone\'s number changing at once, now it was only a few people.

The difference between people who knew about the unique ingredients and people who had no idea what they were looking at was staggering.

Jai Heiyun and her opponent hadn\'t missed a single ingredient, naming all 11349 ingredients that had come before them. While the lowest number belonged to someone from the Southern Continent with only 8 thousand points.

8 thousand was an amazing achievement under a normal scenario, but it still meant that he had not recognized more than 3 thousand different ingredients. 

He wasn\'t as alone as he felt though. His opponent, a girl, also had a terrible score, scoring barely 50 more points than him. 

The competition continued even as night fell and the conversations around the stage stopped as everyone stared at the boards, looking for anyone\'s mistakes.

At the moment, the Eastern Continent was ahead by a very slight margin, but there was plenty of room for a comeback.

However, as time went on, the margin got wider and wider as Alex\'s alchemists made more and more mistakes. 

He understood that the alchemists in the Eastern Continent specifically learned the ingredient names to pass these level tests, so they had a lot more knowledge than his alchemists did in general, but he still wanted them to pass.

At least Jai Heiyun hadn\'t made a single mistake until now. Even the rest of the Saint Alchemists had only made 20 mistakes among the four of them. 

After all 20 thousand ingredients were given to them to name, the competition finally came to an end.

The Eastern Continent won against the Southern Continent with over 6 thousand difference in points by the end of it.

Alex was a little sad that they lost, but he was still happy in knowing that when just considering the 5 Saints, his alchemists had gotten a better result.