Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

by Stayrr

Through an array of coincidences, Alex comes to learn that making pills is one of the best ways to earn money in the game, 'Eternal Cultivation.' So, he decides to join a sect that prioritizes the way of Alchemy. How far will he go with his incredible talents and luck? Read and Find out. Not for people who want a fully developed MC from the very first chapter.

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Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

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Through an array of coincidences, Alex comes to learn that making pills is one of the best ways to earn money in the game, 'Eternal Cultivation.' So, he decides to join a sect that prioritizes the way of Alchemy. How far will he go with his incredible talents and luck? Read and Find out. Not for people who want a fully developed MC from the very first chapter.

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Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy #Chapter 1: Eternal Cultivation - Read Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy Chapter 1: Eternal Cultivation Online - All Page -

Chapter 1:Eternal Cultivation

A young man walked out of a train in Oakleaf city. 'Woah!' he looked at the surrounding train station and was surprised at how glossy and expensive-looking it was. His black hair, fair skin, and child-like face made him look so very naive and simpleminded.

He followed some signs to get out of the train station and finally saw the Oakleaf city in its full glory. He stopped in his tracks amazed at how big the buildings were, how many vehicles there were on the road, and just how well dressed everyone looked.

"So, which way is the Oakleaf University?" He wondered as he took out his cheap-looking phone and started looking up the map.

After learning the directions, he started walking. He had a suitcase with him that he dragged along the city. Throughout the city, he would see giant billboards and posters promoting a single thing, making him wonder just what was Eternal Cultivation?.

"Hmm… is that a new movie? Looks good. Maybe I will get to see what a big city's cinema looks like. " His countryside village also had cinemas, but the screen was small, so he usually preferred watching the movies on his family computer.

He finally reached the university and asked a few people to find his way to dormitory A. He walked up to a register table and got his key for his room.

His room was numbered 205, so he walked into an elevator and got up. As he came out of the elevator, he got a phone call. He looked at the caller and realized his mom was calling him. He accepted the call.

"Alex? Where are you? Did you reach the university?" a worried voice came from the other side of the phone.

"Yes, mother. I am currently in the dormitory, look for my new room." Alex replied.

"Oh good, good. Here, your father wants to talk to you."

"Hey son, how are you doing? Was the train ride okay? You didn't find it discomforting, right?" His father asked him in a worried voice.

"No, father. It was fine. In fact, it was amazing. I never knew trains went that fast." Alex said.

"Haha," his father laughed from the other side of the phone, "That's what you get when you live your entire life on a farm. We shouldn't have home-schooled you either. Fortunately, you will be getting new experiences now."

"It's okay father. The school was in the town. It would've been hard for you to take me there regularly on a 2-hour ride." Alex said.

"Alright. Remember what I told you okay. Don't be friends with bad people. There are a lot of different people in the big cities. Learn to figure out which people are good and which are not. You should be old enough to know what to do and what not to do. Oh yeah, and just because you are 18 and you can, don't go to those stupid clubs, I hear they are just a waste of money."

Alex smiled a little and replied, "I understand, father. Oh, I'm in front of my room now. I will call you guys later, bye. "

"Alright, I will end the call then. Oh, right! Call Hannah and let her know you have arrived." "Bye," his father and mother said at the same time and ended the call.

Alex walked up to Room 205 and opened the door using his key. When he opened the room, he was surprised.

He didn't expect his room to already have people staying in it. Inside were 3 young men. 2 of them were up and talking, while one was seemingly sleeping. The room had 2 bunk beds and 4 closets. Aside from that, Alex couldn't see anything there.

"Hello, are you guys staying in this room as well?" he asked as he walked in.

"Yes, Are you our new roommate?" one of the people asked.

"Ah, yes," Alex said as he showed the key numbered 205. "Hello, my name is Alex Benton." He said as he walked in.

"Oh, hi. My name is Eric and this is Matt" Eric said introducing himself and the other person.

"Hi," Matt greeted as well.

"You just arrived right? So, I assume you haven't eaten anything yet. It's nearly 3 pm. Why don't you freshen up and we can go get some afternoon lunch in the cafeteria."

Alex nodded and changed to a normal shirt and pants. He went to the bathroom attached to the room and cleaned himself. By the time he got out, the third man was already up.

"I'm sure you can do it next time. Just buy a pill if you can't."

"I know, but those cost money. And I'm not really playing to make money."

"Then you just gotta hope you breakthrough next time."

The man finally saw Alex. "Hey, you the new guy? Hi, I am Logan. What's up?"

"Hello, my name is Alex," he replied too. Afterward, all of them went to the cafeteria to get some food. The 3 started talking about the same thing they were talking about in the room and it made Alex confused. He didn't know the context.

"What are you guys talking about exactly?" he asked.

"Eternal Cultivation," Matt replied.

"Oh, the new movie? I saw posters of it on the streets." Alex said with a face of understanding.

Matt, Eric, and Logan looked at him with a look of confusion. Logan then said, "it's not a movie. It's the best VR game in existence. Don't you know about it?" he asked.

"A VR game? I didn't know about that. I only heard about the name today." Alex said.

"It's already been out for a month and is already the most played game of all time. How come you've never heard of it?" Matt was surprised.

"Oh, that's probably because they don't have any billboards and posters near the farm. And I don't really get to be on the internet since I have to help my father with the work." Alex said.

"Well, you can play now. You really must experience it." Eric said.

"Is that so? but I don't have a VR helmet or money to buy one." Alex said.

"Don't worry about that, Eric here had got an old one, you can use that," Matt said.

"If that is so, then I will try it."

Alex and the 3 walked back to the room and Eric handed him the old helmet that he was keeping in the closet. Now that he looked at it, 3 of the 4 beds all had VR helmets in them.

"They must've been playing before I came," Alex mumbled a little.

"Just plug it in the socket there and you can start playing. Be sure to log out before 7 or you will miss dinner." Saying that Matt and the rest got into their beds and put on their helmets. After that, they went asleep.

Soon a light started shinning from inside the helmet and he finally heard something.

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Chapter 2:Tutorial

A voice sounded in Alex's head. He slowly opened his eyes to look at the white nothingness in front of him.

'Where am I? Is this the game?' he thought.

A customization menu appeared in front of him. He looked at the different options possible and got easily overwhelmed. He saw a Randomize button at the top and clicked it without hesitation.

It created a new character with long, silky black hair, a lean body, and blue eyes. "This doesn't look bad," he said to himself.

He clicked OK.

He didn't want to set Alex as his username, but also couldn't think of one. So he simply chose the Randomize option once more.

'Doesn't sound bad,' he thought as he pressed OK.

Suddenly, everything turned white.

Alex found himself surrounded by trees on all sides. Everything so vivid and real and colorful.

"Is this really a game?" he thought.

He looked down on himself and saw that he was wearing a simple robe and pants similar to what his character looked like.

"So, this is what a VR game looks like, huh." He was amazed at the surrounding. His senses all told him that it was real. That he was in a real place.

"What do I do now?" he wondered and started looking around. There wasn't a map or a health bar that told him it was even a game.

Not long after, he found a small pouch tied to his sash. He tried to pick and see what it was when suddenly, a holographic panel appeared in front of him.

The panel had a bunch of boxes in it, with only 2 boxes being filled up. "What is this?" he wondered as he touched the first box.

[Tutorial]

[This game mostly works through voice commands. Say 'Settings' or 'Status' to open up settings or your info. Your first job is to make time and HP bar visible for your HUD from the settings. Say 'Settings' ]

"Settings"

A new screen appeared once more that had a bunch of little settings in it. He didn't know what most of them did as they were turned Off, but he quickly found 2 settings related to HP Bar and TIME. He turned both of them ON.

Suddenly on the top left of his vision, a green bar appeared representing his current HP amount. On the top right, a bunch of numbers appeared representing the current time.

It seemed the time in the game matched the real-life time.

[Tutorial]

[Congratulations on using the settings. You can later change the different settings as you see fit. Now, to check your info say 'Status']

"Status"

Another blue screen appeared in front of him. This time it had a bunch of information about him.

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Mortal (1 Qi : 100%)

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 Elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: None

Qi: 0

]

"Oh, is this my info?" Alex looked at the status with curiosity in his eyes. He didn't understand what most of it meant though.

The tutorial screen popped up again.

[Tutorial]

[Congratulations on opening your status. Here is an explanation of what each of these means.

Cultivation is your current cultivation realm and level. It shows you how much Qi you have to invest to increase cultivation, and what your chances of breaking through are.

Body: is your potential in cultivation. It determines how far you can cultivate. Special bodies also give other benefits.

Talent is your talent in cultivations. It determines how fast you can cultivate.

Spiritual Roots: Spiritual Roots represent your spiritual affinity towards the element. You can learn and use elements you have an affinity to more freely than the rest.

Cultivation Method: is the technique you use to cultivate. It teaches you how to gather Qi and use the Qi to increase your cultivation.

Qi: is your source of energy. The more Qi you have, the stronger you can become. The speed at which you gather Qi can depend on your location, your cultivation method, and your talent.]

Alex was truly overwhelmed now. He couldn't understand half of what was happening right now. He had decided to play this game because his new friends had told him it was the best out right now. So, why were there this many explanations?

Once he read it all, he clicked on 'next'. A new set of texts popped up from the tutorial panel.

[Tutorial]

[you can use the following commands.

Logout: to logout

Cultivation methods: to see all the cultivation methods you have learned.

Pills: to see the list of pills you have.

Techniques: check the different techniques you have.

Inventory: to see your inventory. (shows items from all of your different spatial bags or rings)

Finally, congratulations on completing the tutorial. You can now open the chest in your inventory to obtain a random technique, weapon, pill, and cultivation method.]

He closed the Tutorial by clicking the 'X' on the top. He tried saying all the commands, except log out, to see if they worked. As expected, all the commands worked.

Every single panel those commands brought up was empty, except for the inventory.

"Alright then, let's see what the chest gives me. Hopefully, it's something good." Alex clicked on the chest and a notification popped up.

He clicked 'Open'.

"Weapons" he decided to check weapons first.

The weapons panel now had a new addition to it. From the icon, it looked like a sword. Alex clicked on it and the option to equip or description popped up. He chose description.

[Steel Sword

Grade: Mortal

]

There were no more descriptions than that.

"What's the mortal grade? Is that good or bad? Also, is there no attack bonus or anything? How is this a game if the item has no stats on it?" Nothing of what Alex had learned from the little video games he played on his home computer helped him at all right now.

He then checked the pill.

[Qi providing pill: 10%

Gives you 10 Qi]

"This is not bad. Didn't my status say I need 1 Qi to level up?" Alex was quite happy to find this pill.

"How do I use the pill though? Is there a button to use it?" Alex looked into the options that popped up but didn't realize what to do.

"Since this is a pill, like a medicine. Do I just eat it?" he wondered.

"Whatever, here it goes."

POP

He put the pill into his mouth. As soon as it entered his mouth as if the pill melted, it slid down his throat before he even noticed.

"Oh. I was right". He quickly opened his status page to check the change now. He had indeed gotten 10 Qi now.

Now that he had enough Qi, he had a new [Breakthrough] option in his Cultivation.

"Ah, there it is. So I can become a cultivator now? Is that what it is?" Alex wondered as he pressed the [Breakthrough] button.

"Oh! I need a Cultivation Method eh. Let's check my Cultivation method then." Alex opened his Cultivation method page and saw the book icon in the panel.

The Cultivation method had a separation in the panel that divided the panel into 2 sections. 'Learned' and 'Ready to Learn'. The book was in the 'Ready to Learn section.

He clicked it and two options popped up. 'Learn' and 'Description'. He clicked on the description.

[Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method:

Grade: Heaven

Absorb 20 Qi every minute. Amount doubles during the night]

"Woah. 20 Qi every minute? That's crazy," Alex thought. "Wait? Does that mean the pill I ate wasn't actually good.?" he was starting to regret even eating that pill now.

"Do I learn It now?" he thought. He quickly went back to the same panel and clicked learn.

"Nice. Now I can breakthrough right?" Alex quickly set the new method as his cultivation method. After that, he clicked [Breakthrough]

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Chapter 3:City

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Skin Tempering 1st Realm (500 Qi: 100%)

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 9

]

"Huh, I need 500 Qi now? That's …" Alex quickly did some calculations in his head, "25 minutes. That's a lot."

"Do I have to use that technique for 25 minutes just to level up once? Isn't that a really bad system? What about later on? Will the time increase again?" he wondered.

"Hmm… I should find some pills to give me more Qi. However, at this rate, I will need 50 of those previous pills just to level up once. That should be harder than just using the ability for 25 minutes.

"Whatever, I will just look around for now. This looks so darn realistic. Maybe I should get rid of the health bar, for now, to let me see more."

Alex walked around the jungle looking at the greenery. He quickly found a small path and took it. Coincidentally, within 5 minutes, he was out of the jungle, looking at a big perimeter of wall, blocking off an entire city in front of him.

He looked to the side of the wall to see a gate with people and carriages lined up near it. There were guards waiting near the gates taking something from the newcomers before letting them in.

'Do I need money?' he wondered. Just then, someone else walked out from the forest. It was a man wearing a yellow robe with green in the linings.

He saw Alex looking around blankly and especially, noticed his plain robes. So he asked, "hello brother, are you new around here?"

"Yes, I just arrived here today, and don't know what to do to get inside," Alex replied.

The man heard that and softly asked, "Are you a player?"

"Yes," Alex said excitedly. 'So he was a player all along huh.'

"Well, just cultivate for an hour or 2. After that, once you breakthrough, you can go hunt some weak monsters in the jungle, and sell their bodies to one of the merchants that always run through here."

"That should get you about 5 or so silver coins, enough to enter the city." The man said.

"Cultivate? What's that?" Alex questioned.

The man looked at him weirdly. "You learned your cultivation method right?" Alex nodded.

"Then, just sit around and meditate. Your cultivation method will kick in on its own," said the man. After that, he bid farewell and left the place.

"Hmm… since I already broke through, I should just go and kill some animal." He walked back to the forest he had just come from. However, it didn't take long for him to find an animal.

The creature he met had a name floating on top of it.

"Woah, it's a level higher than me. Can I even fight it?" the fox was definitely stronger than him. Alex was worried and wondered if he should change his targets.

"I'm only level 1, so there should be a protection mechanic in the game that doesn't let me die, right?" Alex decided to fight the fox.

He quickly opened his weapons panel and equipped his sword. The sword was about 2 meters long in length and was very precious looking.

He tried to go forward, undetected by the fox, but that was all a dream. There were way too many things in the jungle that made noises when one walked.

The fox immediately lunged at him the moment it saw him. Alex tried to swing his sword at the fox, and ended up hitting it right in the face.

The fox whimpered and backed off. An angry look appeared on its face as it started growling. It once more jumped at him.

This time instead of using the sword as a sword, Alex swung it down hard like he was back home chopping woods with an Axe.

"Core? What is that?" he wondered. He took it out from his inventory and looked at it. It was a small reddish-brown sphere that felt a little coarse to the touch.

"Is this like that pill I ate earlier?" he wondered. It looked like it, so he assumed it was. So, without any hesitation, he put the core in his mouth and swallowed it.

"Oh wow, so it was a pill. Maybe I should go find some more of those foxes."

He was already near the city, so he decided not to. Instead, he decided to breakthrough.

He opened his status and as expected, a [Breakthrough] button had appeared in his cultivation line.

He clicked the button.

He was now a level higher. He looked at his status again and realized the [Breakthrough] button was still there. So, he pressed it once more.

He opened his status page once more.

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Skin Tempering 3rd Realm (1500 Qi: 100%)

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 509

]

Alex picked up the fox's corpse and walked out of the forest. Along the way, he realized he could put the corpse inside his inventory. And so he did.

He found his way to one of the merchants waiting in line. He read the name, 'Victorious Snow Merchant Group'.

The merchant there traded his corpse for 10 silvers. Alex took it and went to the gate. The gatekeeper asked him for an identification or 2 silvers to enter the city.

Alex didn't have anything that could identify him, so he simply paid the fee and entered.

He tried to log out after entering the city, but the game told him that he wasn't in a very safe place to log out.

Only after renting a room in a tavern did the game tell him that it was safe to log out.

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Chapter 4:Alchemy

Alex opened his eyes and slowly felt the helmet as he pulled it off. He had logged out a little early because he didn't know what to do in the game any longer and decided to leave.

He tried to stand up quickly and hit his head. "Ow," he looked at what he had just hit and said in realization, "Oh, that's right. I'm not in my room." This made him feel a little sad and started to miss home.

Seeing that the others were still in the game as it was still quite a bit away from the 7 pm they said they would log out at, he decided to call his parents and tell them he had settled.

"Did you message your cousin?" his father asked from the other side.

"Oh, I forgot. I will message her right now," said Alex. After ending the call with his parents, he sent his cousin a simple message.

Soon, his three roommates logged out as well, and they went to the cafeteria to have dinner.

"So, how did you like the game?" Matt asked from the side curiously.

"It was good. I mean, I didn't like that you have to meditate around for forever just to level up, but the realistic senses make up for it more than enough."

"Oh, that? You will get used to it," Logan said from the side. "Everyone complains about the slow leveling at first. But you will soon find why that is at an appropriate speed."

Eric chimed in from the side saying, "Deva corp did earn over 2 billion dollars just in the first month of release of Eternal Cultivation. That should tell you how good that game is."

Matt said, "You will soon get used to it. Although I think it's better if you drop your ideas of this being a game. This is another world that Deva Corp has made for us to live in. They do say, You don't play Eternal Cultivation, you live it."

That statement struck Alex in a way he hadn't expected it to. 'So I should just stop caring leveling up and just enjoy the world, huh. Guess I can do that.'

Together they went back to their room. Alex was about to go to the bathroom when he saw every one of them putting their helmets back on.

"You guys are going to play again?" he asked.

Matt laughed and said, "We play every moment of waking and sleeping hour. It's just that fun."

"Sleeping hours? Do you guys play instead of sleeping? Isn't that bad for your health?"

Logan said from his bed, " No, we sleep. But the VR helmet makes it so that we can play even when asleep. You should try it today."

Eric added, "You should play it too. Maybe you can earn enough money to buy your own headset."

"Earn money? How?" Alex questioned. 'They must be joking with me right?' he thought.

"Oh, you can earn money by converting in-game currencies to dollars. We make some good bucks, enough for our monthly pocket change" said Logan. "Alright, we are logging in, you should go too, Alex." All 3 of them logged in afterward.

"Me? Earn money with the game?" that concept was quite funny to him. A kid who barely played any video games could never earn money from it.

He quickly freshened up and went back to his bed. He saw that his phone had a notification and checked it.

His cousin, Hannah, had replied. He put down his phone and put on the helmet. Before he knew it, he was back in the game.

He opened his eyes in the room in the tavern. As soon as he did, he heard the rumbling of his stomach.

"I can get hungry as well?"

Thankfully, he was already at a tavern, so he walked down to the ground floor and ordered himself a bowl of stew. It cost him one Silver, but he didn't care for the money right now.

He listened to the conversations of different people in the tavern and came to a piece of information that interested him. Hong Wu sect was holding an entrance exam tomorrow.

During dinner, the 3 guys have told him that he should find a sect as fast as possible. 'If they are really taking a test, then I should try in it as well.' He thought.

He walked to the people who were talking about this and asked, "Hello, can you tell me where this examination is taking place exactly?"

"I would suggest you don't bother, brother. Hong Wu Sect is an alchemy sect, so they are very hard to get into. But, if you still want to know, it will take place at around 8 am in the Hong Wu Sect."

'Alchemy?' he was confused as he had never heard that term before. 'I should check what it is tomorrow morning.'

He went back to his room after eating the food and thought, "It's already so late at night. So, I probably shouldn't go out, right? Why don't I take this chance to cultivate instead."

He sat cross-legged in the bed and started to meditate. Slowly, he started getting drowsy, and before he knew it, he had lost consciousness and entered a trance-like state.

.

.

.

Alex suddenly woke up. He didn't realize when he had fallen asleep in the game, but by the time he was awake, it was already 6 AM in the morning.

"Where am I?" he got confused for a second before he realized that he was still in the game. "But, I fell asleep, how am I still in the game?" he was confused. After he stopped thinking about it, he logged out.

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Chapter 5:Entrance Exam

Alex came out of the game and realized his body was not tired at all. In fact, he felt very well-rested. 'So sleeping in the game does in fact work.' He was very surprised.

He washed up and waited for the guys to log out. During the time, he decided to check up on what exactly alchemy was. According to the Internet, Alchemy in Eternal Cultivation was the process of making pills.

"Hmm… Along with artifacts, Pills are one of the most expensive items in the game, Eternal Cultivation." He read what the information outlet was telling him. He closed his phone as his roommates started waking up and went to have some breakfast.

After breakfast, he wanted to go back into the game, so he did. He looked at the time and realized he only had 45 minutes to make it to the Hong Wu Sect.

He hurriedly went down to the tavern and asked the keeper for directions. The keeper's directions were simple. Hong Wu sect to the North and Tiger Sect to the south of Scarlet City. When Alex asked him what the Tiger sect was, he found out that it was a place where normal cultivators went to join.

"So there are 2 sects in this Scarlet City, huh. I still like the idea of joining the Alchemy sect, rather than the other normal one." He said to himself.

Quickly he made his way north, asking for direction to the Hong Wu sect along the way. When he finally reached the Hong Wu sect, he was surprised.

Alex was now outside of a gate. Beyond the gate, he could see a tall mountain with many houses on it. The mountain was the sect ground on the Hong Wu sect.

Time was running out, so he quickly registered himself at the gate and was directed to a large tent inside the gate. Alex looked at his piece of paper that was the registration slip. It simply had a number 174, along with his name Yu Ming and age 18.

He had almost reflexively said Alex but caught himself in the last second. He walked into the large tent and sat in an open spot on the ground, among the many other people who were all sitting in a symmetrical fashion.

Very soon, an important-looking man, in his late 20s walked inside the tent. He was wearing a green robe with silver linings. Soon after he entered, a few dozens of younger-looking men and women walked in.

"Everyone listen up," the man said as he stood upon a podium of sorts. " I am your examiner, and I will be taking your test here. " The man gestured to the side.

The group of men and women who had entered walked around the place and handed each of them a storage bag and a slip of paper.

"You have one hour to name all the 100 ingredients inside. If you can name more than 50, you pass. Makes sure the talisman you answer in also has your registration number and name." Saying that the man left the tent. The other people, however, stood there, watching the different examinees taking their exams.

Alex tried to take out each of the ingredients to see what it was called, but each time to took it out, it only said [?????????]. The game wasn't helping at all.

"They did say the exam was hard," he sighed as he stopped thinking about the exam and instead started looking at his settings through the different things. He wasted another 15 minutes in that.

Suddenly, he remembered something. 'Isn't my inventory supposed to show everything I have? What if I look at the ingredients using the inventory and not from the outside?'

"Inventory," he said in a low voice. A blue panel popped up in front of him that indeed had over a hundred items. He randomly picked one to see if it was named, but it was still called ??????.

'Sigh,' he was about to close the inventory when he noticed something. At the very first box of the inventory, there was an icon for a book.

"A cultivation method?" he wondered. He tried to click on the description but accidentally clicked on learn.

"Huh, Alchemy?" he was stunned.

"Cultivation Method," he said and the list of cultivation methods popped up. There was only one. 'But it was a book?' he was confused.

'Ah right, didn't the treasure give me a technique as well. I completely forgot about that. Is this a technique?'

He opened the techniques panel, and there in the learned section, he could see a book icon. He clicked on it and opened the description.

[Alchemy God's Manual: Level 1

Grade: Mortal (Growth)

Unlocked: You have knowledge of all alchemy material.

Unlocked: Can learn any alchemy recipe instantly.

Unlocked: 50% chance to produce an extra pill during alchemy.

Level 2 required to unlock more

]

" Growth? What is that supposed to mean? This technique can level up?" he wondered, but he didn't care about that for the moment. The thing that attracted his attention was the first thing that was unlocked,

' Unlocked: You have knowledge of all alchemy material.'

"Does that mean…?" he started to have a sliver of hope and anticipation brew up deep within him. He took out an inventory and saw its name.

[Bluethorn Leaf]

"Yes," he shouted softly.

[Horn Root Grass]

[Aquatic Berry]

It was working. He picked up the paper to start writing down the names. There was no pen, but he realized he could write in it what he wanted just by thinking about it.

As he started writing down the name, a weird-looking pattern started to appear on the piece of paper. It took him a few minutes to name all the materials in the bag.

At 9 o'clock exactly, the man returned to the tent and shouted, "Time Over, Everyone put your answers in the bag and pass them to your seniors."

After handing the bag, Alex walked out. He heard that they could come by tomorrow at 8 to see their results.

Alex took his time walking back to the tavern and logged out when he reached his room. It had taken him an hour to return, so by the time he logged out, it was nearly 10 am.

Just as he got up from his bed, he heard Logan shouting, "Yes. I did it. I broke through to True realm."

"Did you use any pills?" Eric asked.

"Nah. Those cost too much. The alchemists take about 50 dollars for even the lowest ones. I'm not wasting my money on that unless it's extremely necessary.

Alex didn't get in on the celebration. Instead, he looked at his phone that had a new notification on it. It was a message from his cousin.

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Chapter 6:Breakthroughs

It was 1 PM during the day. The sun was past the zenith, and there were no clouds visible in the sky.

Alex arrived at the university's east gate. He looked around and quickly found Hannah standing in the shade, and walked up to her.

Hannah was wearing a yellow sundress with a white hat on. She was about 170 cm tall and had a lean body. She took off her sunglasses when she saw Alex walking towards her.

"Alex? Oh my god, look at you… you have grown up so much. How long has it been since I saw you last? 2 years? 3?" Hannah was astounded to see him so tall.

"Hello, sister. I believe it's been 2 and a half years since you guys last visited us. How are you?" Alex replied with a greeting.

"Oh, look at you being so formal. If you have to ask, I am perfectly fine. How are you? How are aunt and uncle? " She started inquiring about Alex's family's well-being.

"I am good, sister. Father and mother are fine as well." He replied.

"Come, let's go to a cafe or something. It's too hot out here." Hannah said as she brought Alex to a nearby cafe.

Alex was astonished to see all the cool little things the city had. He was amazed to see how many people there were constantly on the street, even during the hot day. The many cars and vehicles, some he had never seen before. The tall buildings that made you nearly break your neck just to see the top of it.

Alex felt very overwhelmed by everything. After they reached the cafe, Hannah entered it, and Alex followed behind her.

'Woah,' feeling the hot air from the outside immediately shift to the cold air from the air conditioning in the cafe, nearly made him vocalize his amazement.

He had rarely been to places with air conditioning, never one this fancy. Most of the places he visited back home had fans instead of air conditioning.

Hannah walked up to an empty table and said, "Sit here, I will bring us some food, what do you want to eat?"

Alex didn't know what to say. " I don't know what's good. Maybe some burgers would be fine?"

"Okay," she left for a bit and came back with 2 sets of burgers and drinks. They started eating.

"So, you are staying in a dorm, right? Made some friends yet?" she asked.

" Yeah. I have 3 roommates. They are friendly." Alex replied

"Good. Good."

Alex and Hannah talked for quite a while. Alex learned a few things about Hannah. It seemed she was currently in her third, and last year of college. She was renting a place a few blocks away from the university, where she and 2 other friends of hers lived together.

After finishing their food. They stayed there and talked for a bit. After catching up, at around 3 PM they both said their goodbyes and left.

In a few short minutes, Alex made his way back to the dorm. He was about to enter the room when he heard someone call his name.

"Hey Alex, where have you been?" Logan asked.

From the looks of it, Logan, Matt, and Eric were just returning from the cafeteria.

"I went to meet with my cousin. She studies in the university as well." He said.

"Oh. Cool. You had your meal? If not, you should probably go to the cafeteria before they close." Matt said.

"I already ate outside. Oh right, can I keep the VR helmet for a bit longer?"

Matt looked at him and laughed, "You got hooked as well, didn't you? Hahaha. Eternal Cultivation does that. Go ahead, keep it as long as you like." Eric was very generous about the VR Helmet.

They all went into their rooms, put on their helmet, and went back to the game.

Alex opened his eyes back in the tavern room. He slowly stood up. He looked around the room, and thought, 'Hmm… the sun is still up, should I just go fight some monsters and level up?'

The level system in this game was a little weird, it had names, instead of numbers one could remember.

"What level am I at again?"

He then opened his Status to check. What he saw shocked him.

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Skin Tempering 3rd Realm (1500 Qi : 100%) [Breakthrough]

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 131709

]

'What? How do I have so much Qi?' he couldn't understand. ' If I remember correctly, I had around 500 after eating the pill from the fox's body. So how come I have so many now? I don't remember eating any more pills or even cultivating at a-wait, did I actually cultivate last night when I fell asleep?'

Millions of thoughts were going through his mind. He didn't understand how he gained so many Qi. He did vaguely remember starting to cultivate last night, but he had fallen asleep immediately.

'Maybe I did cultivate during my sleep. They did say you can play the game while sleeping. Maybe I did just that.' He thought.

'Either way, since I have so much Qi, why don't I level up?' Alex decided to press the [Breakthrough] button.

He lost 1500 Qi. The next level-up requirement was now at 2500 Qi. He pressed the [Breakthrough] button again.

And again.

And again, and again.

'Oh. A new name.' Alex stopped breaking through when he reached 'Muscle Tempering: 1st Realm'. He looked at his status and realized he had used up 23,000 Qi, and the next requirement for a breakthrough was 10,000 Qi.

He still had enough Qi left, so he pressed [Breakthrough] once more.

"Oh," Alex realized something when he looked at his status once more. It looked like the requirement for each realm in this level was increasing by 5000 Qi. The next requirement was 15000 Qi.

'Wow, the requirement went up by a lot,' he thought

He broke through once more.

He once again checked and found the requirement for the 4th level to be 2000. He still had half of his original Qi left, so he proceeded to click [Breakthrough] multiple times once more.

He couldn't break through anymore after that.

'Woah,' Alex got a weird feeling from his body. It didn't feel like his body anymore. The skin was smooth and shiny, and he could see the muscle definitions inside his body, even though he vividly remember not having as much muscle before.

He also felt unusually hungry. 'Do I have to eat in-game as well?' he thought. Thankfully, he was staying in a tavern, so he could go down to eat anytime he wanted.

For now, He checked his status once more.

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Muscle Tempering 6th Realm (35000 Qi: 100%)

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 8709

]

'Wow, that's nice,' he thought. He didn't really understand how good or bad, having the 6th realm of Muscle Tempering was, but he assumed it had to be good.

He believed he was essentially around level 15 in the game. But, he couldn't tell how much further he had to level up since he had no idea about the higher levels.

He decided to put those thoughts to the back of his mind and went downstairs to have a meal. He got a good meal for a silver and ate it with enjoyment.

After he finished eating, he got out of the tavern. 'Man, if the game requires me to eat, and food costs 1 silver every time, I am going to go broke in no time.'

'I should probably go hunt those monsters more.' He thought. He walked to the city gates and saw the guards there checking the people going in and out.

He walked up to one of the guards and asked if he needed to pay another 2 silver for leaving the city for a few hours. Unfortunately, he did.

'Oh, well. I can pay them after I earn from the monsters I will kill.' He thought and went towards the forest.

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Chapter 7:Forest Hunting

Alex walked out of the eastern gate of the Scarlet city and soon realized that he had come to the wrong place accidentally.

It was an evening last time when he had entered the city and had gone straight to a tavern to look for lodging to log out, and not bothered to remember any of the interior landscape of the city.

Now that he had randomly come out of the eastern gate, he realized that he had actually entered the city through the western gate. But that shouldn't matter to him that much.

'Whatever. I just need to hunt some monster that's all,' he thought. The east side of the city was also covered in forests, the same as the west side, so he should have no problem in finding the monsters.

He walked into the forest and started looking for any signs of a monster. Suddenly, he saw something.

It wasn't a monster, but a small tree. For some reason, the tree was nothing special. It was easily overlooked in this large forest, but he couldn't do so. Something about this tree called to him.

So, he did what his heart told him to and slowly walked towards the tree. The tree itself was about Alex's height, making it look like a little growing tree. But it already had big leaves and was sprouting a little fruit.

Alex saw a name appear on top of the tree when he came close to it.

[Dwarf Berry Tree

Bears the 'Dwarf Berry']

"The dwarf berry?" Alex looked at the only fruit sprouting in the tree. He reached his hands forward and touched the berry.

[Dwarf Berry]

He didn't get any more information than that. This felt the same as when he touched all those materials in the entrance exam for the Hong Wu sect.

'Is this an alchemy material? Is that why I know the fruit's name?' he thought. He believed his conjecture to be correct. So, he plucked the fruit and kept it in his inventory.

He couldn't tell how good this material was, or if it even made anything useful, but he still decided to keep it.

He found a few more alchemy materials along the way. So he picked whatever he could and kept it in his inventory. After walking a bit longer, he finally found a monster.

It was a deer with blood-red fur on it. It had dark black eyes and sharp thorn-like antlers on it. Alex got a little frightened when he saw it. Then he looked closely to check what level it was at.

[Carmine Coated Deer: Skin Tempering 6th realm]

The deer was 4 levels higher than the fox he fought in the western forest. But, that didn't matter to him anymore. After all, he was 16 levels higher than when he fought the fox.

He quickly brought up his weapons panels and equipped his sword. The steel sword gleamed brightly in the scattering sunlight in the forest.

The deer saw him, and turned towards him, preparing to charge. Alex got his weapon ready.

The deer suddenly started running towards him, directing its antlers towards him. This monster was much faster than the one he had fought yesterday.

But, for some surreal reason, it didn't feel like the monster was very fast. In fact, he almost thought the deer was running in slow motion.

Alex realized at that moment all of his senses were amplified. He could hear the trees and leaves in the forest rustle in the wind. He could smell the different plants and even the ground in the forest.

He could feel the subtle change in air pressure and temperature that he couldn't normally be able to tell. He could see the colors in the forest much more vividly than he could just a minute before.

Similarly, his sense of time was amplified as well. The deer that was charging intensely, felt so very slow for him.

He slowly raised his sword. It was only slow for him. In reality, this action was very fast.

As soon as the deer reached him, he swung the sword down.

Swish

The deer's left half split, and fell away from its right half. It was cut precisely through the middle in one hit. Alex was used to seeing farm animals butchered so he didn't get disgusted seeing the innards of this monster.

'I don't get the pill I got from the fox yesterday?' he thought. He was looking forward to getting the pill that gave him 2000 Qi yesterday.

He proceeded to open his inventory and check the antlers. He brought them out but didn't see their names pop up.

'Is this not an alchemy material?' he thought. That must've been why there was no name to it. He put it back into his inventory and kept the deer corpse with him as well.

After there was nothing left to do, he started to wonder, 'what happened to me during that fight? Is it because I'm a cultivator now?'

Along the way, he found few more alchemy materials and some other monsters. He managed to kill every single one he fought in one strike.

None of the monsters he fought were above the Skin tempering realm, and whenever he got into combat, he started to get into this bizarre experience where all of his 6 senses amplified. So, he easily killed those monsters.

Sun was starting to go down, and the moon was coming up. It was time for him to leave the forest, and return back to his lodging. But on his way, he saw something. In a small ground that looked like a natural flower field, there was an unusual flower, growing amid a bunch of other normal flowers.

He only thought the flower was unusual because he felt something unusual about the flower. 'Is that an alchemy material? Is that why I can tell it's different from the other flowers?' he thought.

He decided to pick it up, so he went closer. Suddenly, he heard something moving along the ground. He immediately turned to look behind him, but there was nothing there.

He slowly looked to his left and started scanning the land with his eyes. But, aside from plants and trees, he could see nothing else in the forest.

Rustle. Rustle.

The sound was still there. He looked towards the ground and saw a small brown snake slithering among the fallen leaves. He immediately jerked back.

Having worked on a farm did not mean he was no longer afraid of snakes. A game was no exception. Especially one as realistic as this.

But, he couldn't back away. There was something about that flower that made him think it was too important to skip out on. So, he readied his sword.

The slithering snake finally showed itself fully and was now looking straight at him. Alex looked at the name floating on the snake and frowned. The name itself wasn't the problem, it was the cultivation.

[Earth Snake: Muscle Tempering 3rd Realm]

It was only 3 levels lower than him. He didn't know how much difference each level made, so he started to get worried. Still, the flower was way too captivating for him.

So, he took a deep breath and focused. Suddenly, he felt the time slow down once more. All of his senses worked in overdrive.

The snake however didn't seem to be slowed down. It slithered towards him at nearly regular speed. 'Is the snake too close to my level, so it's just as fast as me?' he thought.

He swung the sword down once more, but the snake easily slid out of his attack path.

The snake jumped at him, baring its two fangs, but he too was pretty fast and easily dodged it.

Once more he tried to attack the snake, but once more it dodged him. The snake was just way too fast on the ground. He couldn't hope of touching it as long as it was slithering in the ground.

'Hmm… if it is impossible to catch this snake while it's slithering, then what about when it's not on the ground,' he thought. He felt like he had come up with a perfect plan.

He once more attacked the snake in order to aggravate it to attack himself. The snake did as expected, and lunged at him once it got to a close enough range.

Alex immediately sidestepped and swung his sword at the mid-air snake. It couldn't dodge while jumping, so it took the sword right to its neck.

Thud.

The snake hit the ground with a large thud, scattering a lot of trees and dust. But, Alex felt unsatisfied. He hit the snake with a sword, but there was resistance on his swing, unlike the other times.

Rustle. Rustle.

The snake slithered out of the place where it was sent to, with only a small wound on its neck. It would seem that Muscle Tempering realm monsters weren't that easy to deal with.

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Chapter 8:Outer Sect Disciple

The snake started to change its attack pattern once it got hit. Instead of lurching at Alex, it started going for his legs.

Alex didn't know exactly how strong a Muscle Tempering 3rd realm monster could be, so he was apprehensive about going on the offensive and risk getting hurt.

Alex also didn't know if it hurt inside the game, the same way it did outside. They had told him the developers wanted to make the game realistic, so pain might have been added to add realism to the game.

He kept trying to hit the snake, but the snake was just too agile. It constantly weaved and dodged his attack while simultaneously going on the offensive from time to time.

After a while, the snake targeted his neck and attacked him once more. Similar to last time, he dodged the attack and hit the snake once more.

Thud

The snake only got a minor cut once again. Alex started to get worried. 'I don't have any abilities. I should have waited until I got my class or whatever equivalent this game has before coming here.' He thought.

The snake was getting cautious now. It wasn't attacking any chance it got any more but was rather waiting for the perfect moment.

Alex decided to do something. He didn't care he if died. This was a game, so he probably would just respawn somewhere.

Thinking that Alex unequipped his sword. He had never learned to use a sword, so doing it now was just not the right choice. Instead, he would fight with his hands.

Seeing Alex keep away his sword, the snake must've thought it was its opportunity, and lunged at Alex. Seeing it jump at him, Alex immediately caught the snake with both his hands, around its neck and started choking it.

The snake started to fidget around now that its head was immovable. It wrapped its body around his hands trying to squeeze him, but it didn't work.

He was after all 3 realms higher than him. Alex put his hand to the ground and started stomping on the snake's head. After a few vigorous stomps, he got a notification.

'Finally' he thought. He took out his sword once more and looked at it. "This is kind of a bad sword huh. Guess I'm not very lucky." He put the sword back.

He took the snake's corpse and put it into his inventory as well. He then looked towards the flower.

If it wasn't for the feeling he got, he would be completely incapable of telling apart the flower from its surrounding ones. It had 5 petals, was yellow in color, and completely ordinary.

He got closer to the flower and touched it. A name popped on top of it.

[Spirit Cleansing Lily]

'Woah,' he slowly plucked the flower from the plant and took a closer look at it. 'This must be a very good alchemy material for me to get this fantastic of a feeling.'

He quickly kept the item in his inventory. His inventory was getting full, and he would have to do something about it soon.

He looked at the time, and it was half-past 6. He ran his way back to the city. He didn't bother selling any of the animals today and kept it for tomorrow.

After he reached the tavern room, he logged out.

Alex got out of his bed and waited. In a few minutes, all 3 of his roommates woke up too, and together they went and had dinner.

After returning from dinner, the rest of the 3 went back to the game. Alex however didn't. Tomorrow was the first day of university, and he wasn't used to playing overnight.

So, he called his parents, talked for a bit, went onto the internet for a bit, and then went to sleep.

He woke up around 7 AM. Logan and Matt were already awake, so they waited for Eric, and went to get breakfast.

After returning he looked at the time. It was about 7:20 AM. He remembered the person in the game asking him to return tomorrow to check his result.

'Should I go play the game right now? The orientation starts at 11.' He turned to look at the other 3, but they were already in the game.

'Whatever,' he said as he entered the game as well.

He logged in to the tavern and quickly left the room. Within 15 minutes he was at the gate of Hong Wu Sect.

He had arrived a bit early and had to wait around 10 minutes for the results to be posted. There were many other youths hoping to get a chance. They were practically begging to get into the sect.

After the result got posted, there was a massive crowd around it. Alex weaved his way into the crowd to see the results.

The results were very simple. They were simply numbers on the list. The numbers were the same numbers everyone had on their registration slip.

He didn't remember his number so he took out his registration slip to look at it. After seeing his number, he started looking for number 174 on the result sheet.

The numbers were written in ascending order, so it was very easy to find the numbers. Very soon, Alex found his.

He looked around and saw a few people walking up to a person, and showing them their registration slip. He too walked up to them and asked, " Hello, I have passed the test, what should I do now?"

The men asked for his registration slip, and after confirming his number, they sent him to a group of other youths who had just passed.

After an hour and a half or so, around 27 people were gathered in the group. These were all the people who had passed the test.

The man who took their test yesterday walked up to them and introduced himself.

"My name is Lang Shun. You can call me elder Lang."

"Greetings elder Lang." Everyone greeted. Alex hastily greeted too.

"Since you have all passed the test, you are now a disciple of the Hong Wu Sect. Though you are still an outer sect disciple, if you do well in alchemy, you will be promoted to the inner sect. And who knows, you may even end up being a core disciple."

Elder Lang continued, " In Hong Wu Sect, your cultivation matters not. Only your talent, knowledge, and passion will get you forward here. You may have true Qi, but if you can't form a mortal grade pill, you will forever stay as an outer sect disciple."

He then turned around and went forward. "Follow me," he said after going a bit ahead.

They soon followed the elder to a residential area in the mountains. Alex wondered if these were the homes he could see from the gate.

The elder then assigned a single-room cottage to each of the 27 disciples. There were thousands of these small cottages on the mountain range, so they had no problem assigning one to each.

The elder then took out 27 different small pouches, and in a single wave handed it to every single one. He then proceeded to explain.

"These bags have 2 sets of sect outfit, 1 handbook that has all the rules and regulations of the school, a map of the sect grounds including the places you are forbidden to go to, and an alchemy introduction book to get you started on the theory of alchemy. Read them when you have time."

Alex was startled to hear his name. Still, he raised his hands and said, "I am called Yu Ming."

"Show me your registration card." The elder asked.

Alex took out his registration card and handed it over to the elder. After confirming he was in fact 'Yu Ming', the elder took out a weird-looking metal coin.

"Everyone else but him, leave, and go to your cottage." He said sternly. After everyone left, he looked at Alex and handed the metal coin he was holding.

"This is a library token, your reward for the test results. Take this to the library, and you can borrow 1 Earth grade or lower book for free. Do well." The elder then left.

Alex looked at the metal coin, and was confused, "Earth Grade or lower? " He didn't know what that meant. He walked to his cottage and closed the door.

He opened the bag he had just got and was stunned. He was about to open everything inside when he realized, he had completely forgotten about something.

It was nearly 10 AM now, and he had to leave. It was the first day of the University after all.

He put everything back into the storage bag, including the library token. Once everything was gone, he logged out.

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Chapter 9:Cultivation Mechanics

Alex logged out of the game and went to eat his lunch at 10 am with his other 3 friends. After lunch, all of them started to get dressed for the Orientation.

Today was the unofficial first day of University where they would be welcomed, and get to choose their subjects and class schedule.

After getting ready, all 4 of them went to the University. Since they lived in the dorm, it was a 5-minute walk at best. They just had to leave the dorm, and walk a few minutes away to the main building.

They were quickly shown their way to the main hall where the orientation was going to take place.

They sat around and waited, as the main program started to take place.

The dean of the university got on to the stage and started giving a speech about how important university studies are, how good Oakleaf University is, and how they have a legacy to uphold.

Alex wanted to focus on the speech but quickly lost focus. A few more people came onto the stage to speak about some more things.

2 hours went by before Alex even noticed it. A clean-shaven man in his late 20s got onto the stage and said,

"The Orientation program is now over. An email has been sent to your address with your username and password, for the university website."

"You can either use the website to select your courses and schedule, or you can go to the reception to do it. Good luck, I look forward to teaching you all."

The man walked out. Alex opened his phone and checked his email. There really was a new mail from the university. He quickly used the given credentials to log in to the school website.

He chose 3 business and economics courses, and 2 technology-related courses, one of them being a VR-focused course. He was looking forward to them.

He managed to get an easy schedule. From Monday to Thursday, he had classes from 11 am to 3 pm. There would be 3 classes every day, each an hour-long, with a 20 minutes break between each class.

There was one problem he quickly realized, however. Given that he had taken 2 technology courses, he would sooner or later need a computer.

He might also require a VR Helmet, but he had one for now so he didn't care about it.

"Do I need to ask my parents for money?" he started to regret taking the technology classes. His parents had sent him to university only because they were free. But they hadn't thought about the extra needs he might have had.

'Oh! What about making money from the game? If making pills really is the best way to make money in the game, then I should learn more about it.' He thought.

"Alex, you done?" Matt asked from the side.

"Huh, oh yeah, I'm done. Are we leaving?" he asked.

"Yeah. Let's go to the cafeteria. By the way, what classes did you choose?" Matt asked.

Alex opened his phone and showed him the schedule.

"Woah, you got lucky. I think I might have to cut down on my games from now on. The schedules are so erratic for me." Matt sighed

"Me too. I have classes at 7 on Fridays. University is going to somehow make me hate Fridays, isn't it?" Logan said from the side.

"Well, sucks to be you guys, cause mine is pretty good," Eric said from the side. His schedule seemed somewhat similar to Alex's.

They went to the cafeteria to have their afternoon lunch and quickly returned to their room.

As if doing anything else would be sacrilegious, the 3 friends jumped onto their beds the moment they got to their room and started playing their games.

Alex changed his clothes to something freer and sat on his bed. He wanted to immediately go into the game as well. But, he couldn't.

Previously, he was just fascinated by the game and wanted to play it casually. Afterward, when he learned about pills earning a lot of money he wanted to play the game because he wanted the money.

But now, things were different. He could no longer 'want' the money. He needed it. So, he could no longer stay ignorant about the games.

The game and the game developers made almost no effort to teach the players about the game except for the bare-bones stuff so that the players could experience things on their own.

However, the players weren't as inconsiderate and openly posted stuff about what they learned or found. In fact, there was an entire forum about it.

There were a few pinned forum posts, but the very first one caught Alex's eyes. It simply had 2 words in the title, 'Don't Die.

Curious he opened the post and learned shocking stuff, if you died in the game, your character would be deleted, and you would have to start all over again. Some comments said this might have been to give the players a 'reincarnation' feeling.

The next thing he learned was about cultivation. The cultivation was the level equivalent of these games. From what the players had learned, the cultivation realms were divided into 3 parts.

The self tempering realm, or also commonly knows as the common Qi realm. The second was the True Qi realm, where one's common Qi elevated to become True Qi. The third one, being mostly hearsay, was the saint realm.

The true Qi realm had 5 realms each with 9 levels as well. They were True Disciple, True Master, True Lord, True King, and True Emperor.

The players did not know the saint realm as of yet. The highest known cultivation among the players was True Master 5th realm. Of Course, many were hiding their cultivation, playing in secret.

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Chapter 10:More Learning

The next thing on the list was the grading system. The post gave general information about the different grades the cultivators used in 'Eternal Cultivation'.

There were 4 grades known to the public as of yet. They were Mortal, Earth, Heaven, and Immortal. Mortal was the lowest of the grades, and Immortal was the highest.

These grading systems applied to different items, formations, artifacts, pills, cultivation methods, techniques, and even a cultivator's talent itself.

"Huh? Talent too? But my talent is of 'God' grade. Is the existence of a God grade not known to the public yet?"

He looked through the comments but saw nothing about a God grade. There were however some comments that said they knew a higher grade existed, just that they didn't know the name of it.

"That must be the god grade. It can't be I am the only person with a God grade, right? There must be other people who have it. They must be keeping quiet about it for some reason."

Alex decided to not reveal anything about it either.

Alex remembered there not being a grade for the pill, but he might have been wrong about that. No one in the comment was contradicting the poster, so he was probably mistaken.

The last thing he decided to look at was about the alchemy itself. The game didn't allow recordings, so most of what was written here were hearsay.

They said alchemy was similar to cooking. You took a pot, lit the fire underneath, and put all your ingredients at a specific time. You took care of the temperature, and timing and a pill would be formed at the end.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. You also needed to know alchemy techniques as well to properly mix together all the Qi and energies in the ingredients so as to not burn them, or in worse cases, explode them.

Once you were successfully done, a pill would be formed.

Alex decided to check what pills usually sold for, but found the information unhelpful at the moment since he didn't know what any of the pills were or did.

"Guess I will check after I learn a bit more in-game."

After checking a few more things in the forum, he logged in to the game.

Alex opened his eyes in his small cottage. It was nearly 4 pm, so he sat down and decided to look at the different items he got from elder Lang.

There were 6 new items in the inventory now. The first 2 items were clothes. He decided to change into the sect's outfit.

He was now wearing a light green robe with bronze linings along the sides. He then looked at the other 4 items. One of those items was the token for the library.

The other 3 looked like a rectangular piece of paper, not unlike the one he wrote his answers in during the entrance test.

The system seemed to call it a talisman. He took one of the talismans out and decided to read it. The talisman had the same unreadable squiggly lines that had appeared on the talisman he wrote his answers in.

Just as last time, a panel popped up in front of him with all the information in the talisman. It seemed he had taken out the map of the Hong Wu Sect.

Hong Wu Sect had 6 mountains under it. Of the 6, the one closest to the gate was the outer disciple mountain.

The adjacent mountains to the outer disciple mountain were the Inner disciple mountain on the left, and the core disciple mountain on the right.

Opposite to Outer Disciple mountain was the mountain where the sect leader lived. The sect leader's mountain was surrounded by two other mountains that were named the alchemy gardens.

At the center of all the 6 mountains was the valley, which was the main grounds of the sect. This was where the sect disciples went to learn, train, make pills, buy pills, etc. The elder also lived in the valley.

"Wow, do I have to walk so much all the time? Going up and down the mountains would take a lot of time."

He was worried about how much time he would waste just walking around the sect.

He put back the map talisman and took out another talisman. This was the rulebook for the sect.

There were 4 rules for the outer sect disciples.

The outer sect disciples were not allowed to visit the inner sect and core disciples mountains without strict permission from the Elders. If they were found wandering in any of the other mountains, they would be punished accordingly.

The outer sect disciples were not allowed to go into the forbidden alchemy gardens and the sect leader's mountain. If they were found anywhere close, they would be immediately expelled.

The outer sect disciples had to earn at least 20 contribution points a week from the sect. Anything less, and they would be expelled.

Finally, the outer sect disciples were only allowed to perform alchemy at night time, when the inner sect disciples and core disciples would not be hindered.

"Wait, so I can't perform alchemy during the day at all?" he was surprised. He wanted to earn money through making pills, but if he could only do it at night time, when would he sleep?

"Oh wait, they did say you sleep outside while you play the game at night. Maybe this won't be a problem at all."

He was worried for a moment before sighing with relief. Another thing that confused him was the mention of 'contribution points'.

"What are contribution points? If I go by the name, they must be points I get by contribution to the sect. But what could an outer sect disciple do that counts as a contribution? I hope I won't have to sweep and pick up garbage."

There were a few other things in the handbooks that mentioned how everything in the sect cost contribution points, and that one would even go hungry without them.

He decided he would learn about it once he went to the sect valley.

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Chapter 11:Alchemists

After learning about the different rules and information in the rules talisman, he put it back into his inventory. He then took out the last talisman in the inventory.

The first thing it taught was how alchemy is performed. It went in-depth into the action behind the alchemy than what he had found on the Internet.

Basically, Alchemy was about the synergies between the various ingredients as they are slowly converted into a pill in the cauldron. The better the harmony between the different synergies in the ingredients, the better the quality of the pill would be.

He also learned why he hadn't seen a grade in the pill he had got.

"So I was right, there are no grades, but just unofficial grades." He thought.

A pill's efficiency was based on how well the harmony in the pill was. Pills below 10% harmony between the ingredients were called a failure.

At 10% harmony, a pill would be considered a mortal grade pill. They would barely be a pill and were considered the worst of the worst. Alchemists who could only make Mortal grade pills were called Mortal Alchemists.

At 25% harmony, a pill would elevate to earth grade. Once you started forming earth-grade pills on a regular basis, you were called Earth Alchemist. You were considered a proper alchemist once you became an Earth Alchemist.

At 50% harmony, a pill would elevate to heaven grade. Any alchemists that made even 10 heaven-grade pills were considered Heavenly Alchemists. Heavenly Alchemists were revered by everyone and were very hard to come by.

At 75% harmony, a pill would be considered an Immortal grade pill. But that was just a myth. It was near to impossible to form an Immortal grade pill, so Immortal Alchemists were nonexistent as well.

There were also other classifications to pills as well. These classifications were based on which realm of cultivators could use the pill.

The different types of pills were common pills, True pills, and saint pills. Only self tempering realm cultivators could use Common pill. Similarly, only True realm users could use True pills, and Saint realm users could use Saint pills.

He did not learn about the pills for the other realms. One would need to be in the realm or have crossed it to form those pills.

A True realm alchemist could make True Pills, and they could also make Common pills, but they could not make Saint pills. Forming pills required one to infuse qi into the ingredients to create harmony between them, and without having that Qi, one couldn't possibly make the pills for that realm.

There was a few other information in the talisman, such as different names and images for different alchemy materials. But Alex didn't need those.

Once he was done learning everything he could from the talisman he put it back. He took out the final item in the inventory. The metal token.

"Guess I should go and get a book from the library, huh. It's free after all. Such a shame I can only take an earth-grade book."

Alex stood up and got out of his cottage. There were dozens of different disciples walking around with different shades of green robes. Most of them were wearing the same light green robe as him.

'This must be the robes that outer disciple wore.' He thought to himself. He wondered if the other people wearing the different shades of green were the inner disciples and core disciples.

He didn't ask. He took out the map once more from the inventory and checked the direction to the valley.

Even though most of the way was just a dirt path, the way was very smooth. And since it was mostly downhill, he had no problem reaching the sect valley without losing a single breath.

There was a special scent in the air that he couldn't put a finger on. It was a weird mixture of flowers and a medicine-like scent.

"Is this from all the alchemy that is being done he-… Woah"

He was shocked to see how many people there were in the sect valley. It was almost like a festival was currently going on in the valley. There were hundreds of green robe-wearing disciples walking around in the valley.

There were dozens of large buildings, some spanning more ground than his massive University. He was truly shocked to see the sects valley.

"If the valley alone is this big, then how big is the entire sect?" he wondered.

He looked at his map again and found the direction to the library. After a short walk among the crowd, he quickly reached the library.

The library was a massive tower that went up at least 10 floors. The library was circular in design and was very wide as well.

He walked into the tower but was quickly stopped by the elder who was in charge of the library. The elder wore a dark green robe with silver linings. He was short and bald but had a long white flowing beard.

"Give me your nameplate before entering." He asked. Alex was startled. 'What is a nameplate?' he wondered.

"Good afternoon Elder. I am a new disciple who only entered the sect today. I do not know what this nameplate is. I wasn't given something like that." He truthfully answered the elder.

"Hmm… you only entered today, yet you are coming to the library already? Go away, kid. Go get your nameplate from the Disciple hall first before doing anything else in the sect." The elder said in an indifferent manner.

"Thank you for the information, Elder," Alex thanked the elder and walked away. Soon more disciples arrived at the library, and the elder went back to doing his job.

Alex opened his map once again and searched for the Disciple Hall on it. Once he found it, he went there as fast as he could.

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Chapter 12:Disciple Hall

Alex made his way to another large building in the valley. This was the Disciple hall.

When he reached the Disciple Hall, once again, he was simply shocked at the scope of it. This building only had 3 floors but took up an enormous area.

He walked towards the building but stopped. In front of the building was a massive block of black stone at least 10 meters tall and wide, and 2 meters thick.

He looked at the front side of the block, and there were many little carvings on it. It looked like they were a list of names. At the top, in big letters, it said 'Contribution Ranking'.

Below it was the list of names. At the First spot on the ranking was someone named Wan Li, at the Second spot was someone called Zhou Mei, at the Third spot was someone called Fan Ruogang, so on and so forth.

There were quite possibly more than thousands of names in the block of black rock.

"Hmm… does Contribution Ranking mean this is a ranking based on how many contribution points a disciple has gotten?" he wondered.

He was truly surprised at seeing the rankings of the students in the sect. However, that wasn't what surprised him the most. The most surprising thing in this piece of ranking was the constant update.

The big black rock seemed to have magical properties as the rankings on the rock constantly changed, even changing the carvings magically.

"I wonder how they made a stone change forms so constantly like that." The game was truly amazing he thought.

After looking at the rankings list for a bit, he walked into the gate to the disciple hall behind it. There were dozens of people walking in and out of the disciple hall.

He didn't know what he was to do here, so he walked up to an elder and asked, "Good afternoon elder. I am new to the sect and require a nameplate. Would you mind showing me the way?"

The elder was a woman in her 40s. She wore the same green robes with silver linings as the other elders did. She seemed to be on the way out of the disciple hall when Alex met her.

"New disciple?" she looked at Alex up and down for a bit and said, "go stand in that line and tell the disciple working in the room that you need one." She said and walked out.

"Thank you, elder." He said even as she left and was already quite a distance away.

He went to stand in one of the lines. He saw quite a few darker green-robed disciples walk up and down the stairs, but not a single light-green-robed disciple like him went there.

"The upper floors must be for the inner sect disciples and core disciples." He assumed.

Soon, it was his turn to enter. He walked in and saw a small room with only one desk. Behind the desk was a disciple with an interest looking medallion on his hand.

However, when Alex realized that the green on his robe was darker than his own, he was shocked.

'An inner sect disciple?' he didn't think an inner sect disciple would be doing what he would normally assume to be an elder's work.

"Your nameplate." The disciple said with an irritated voice. He was annoyed that Alex was just standing there doing nothing.

"Oh, I don't have one. I am a new disciple, and am here to get one." Alex said in haste.

"Hmm… new disciple? Why are you here so late? Most already came by in the morning, and took their nameplate." The disciple started to question.

Alex gave an embarrassed smile. He couldn't say that he had to log out because he needed to go to his actual school, instead of this one.

"Doesn't matter." The disciple said as he took out a rectangular metal plate with an interesting design on it. The disciple held his medallion with his left hand, and the metal plate with his right hand, and asked,

"What is your name?"

"Ale— Yu Ming" Alex nearly said his real name out loud. Thankfully the disciple didn't catch that.

"Yu Ming… okay." He brought the metal plate to his forehead and kept it there for a bit. After a while, he brought down the metal plate and handed it to Alex.

"See if anything is wrong." The disciple asked.

Alex tried to do what the disciple did, and tried to bring the metal plate to his forehead. But, before he could even do that, a panel appeared in front of him.

[Hong Wu Sect, Outer Sect Disciple 'Yu Ming'. Contribution: 0]

He looked at the information for a few seconds. 'Hmm… so I have no contribution points at the moment huh. Makes sense.' He then closed the panel and looked towards the inner sect disciple as he said,

"Yes. Everything is fine. The information in this is accurate."

"Alright." The disciple said as he brought his hand to a nearby drawer where there were many storage bags. He casually placed his hands on top of one and brought out 3 objects.

He handed all 3 of the object to Alex. Alex took the items and looked at them curiously. He focused on the pink pill, and a simple information panel popped up.

[Minor Healing Pill: 16%

Heals minor injuries within seconds.]

'Oh! It's a healing pill. 16% harmony so, it's a mortal grade pill huh.' Alex thought as he looked at the pill. He then focused on the white pill. Similar to the pink pill, a panel popped up.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 19%

Improves cultivation speed by 19% for 12 hours

]

'Hmm… 19% improvement of cultivation speed? Does that mean I gain 24 Qi every minute, instead of 20 Qi now?' he wondered.

Next, he looked at the white stone in his hand.

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Chapter 13:Alchemy Achievements

The white stone was about 3cm by 2cm by 1cm in volume. It was a rectangular piece of stone that was very translucent. While the overall stone was white, if one looked carefully, it had a cloudy texture inside it.

Alex had never seen anything like this before. 'It can't also be a pill, can it?' he thought. He focused on the stone for a bit before a panel popped up. The panel only had three words on it.

[Common Spirit Stone]

'Common Spirit Stone? What is that?' he was even more confused now. He wanted to come back to the game fast, so he had only learned what he thought was necessary to him, and not bothered with the nitty-gritty stuff.

"What is this?" he asked as he picked up the common spirit stone.

"That's a spirit stone." The inner sect disciple said without missing a beat.

"What's a spirit stone. " Alex continued to ask.

"What? Have you never seen a spirit stone?" the disciple asked with a questioning look on his face.

"No. This is my first time hearing about one, let alone seeing it." Alex answered truthfully.

"Oh. This is a common spirit stone. The inside of it is full of Qi that you can absorb while cultivating to improve your cultivation. Or, you can also choose to use it as a currency as most of the cultivators only exchange stuff in spirit stones." The disciple was smiling while answering this. It seemed it was his first time meeting a cultivator that did not know what a spirit stone was.

"Go now. You are taking up the line. You can come back exactly a month from now to get another [Minor Healing Pill, [Qi Increasing Pill] and a spirit stone." The inner sect disciple ignored Alex and started calling the next person forward.

Alex silently put the 3 items into his inventory. He thanked the disciple and walked out of the room.

Now that he had a nameplate, he could go get a book from the library. So, he headed towards the library.

He was just walking out of the Disciple Hall when he noticed something. It was the big black rock that kept the rankings for all the disciples in the sect.

Even the back of it had a list of all the students in the ranking, ones that were constantly changing every second. The stone was still as magical as ever.

But there was something different about this ranking. For one, the ranking no longer said 'Contribution points' but instead said 'Alchemy Achievements'.

Alex quickly went to the front side of it to check if the ranking was still there, and it was. It seemed the rock showed two different rankings, and he had missed the backside because he was too hasty at going to the disciple hall.

He went back to check the names on the backside. Wan Li was still in the first place, Zhou Mei was still in second place, however, Fan Ruogang was not in third place but instead the fourth place.

The third place was instead occupied by someone named Song Zun. The name Song Zun was nowhere to be found in the contribution point's list's top 20 names.

This made Alex quite befuddled. The term 'Alchemy Achievements' was very vague for Alex to know what the rankings were based on.

"Guess I will learn it later, " he thought and decided to go to the library. As he was about to leave, a name caught his eye.

Yu Ming.

After a while, he left. He made his way back to the library where the elder was taking in the different disciple's nameplates while giving others back.

He walked up to the elder with a nameplate in his hand.

"Nameplate," the elder said absentmindedly. Alex handed him his new nameplate.

The elder instinctively took the nameplate and brought it up to his head, and frowned. He jolted out of his absentmindedness and looked at Alex.

"Hey boy. Why don't you have a single contribution point?" he asked.

"Elder, I am new to the sect. I joined today, so I haven't done anything to earn contribution points yet." Alex said nervously. Was this man going to turn him back? He was worried.

"If you don't have contribution points, then you can't enter boy. Everything in here costs contribution points to borrow. The better the book, the more it costs. Even the cheapest ones cost at least 100 points. "

"So go to the contribution hall and take some missions. Earn some points, and only then come back. Doing anything else will be a waste of your time." The man said as he handed Alex back his nameplate.

Alex didn't immediately take back his nameplate. Instead, he started saying,

"Elder, I might not have any contribution points at the moment. However …" he opened his inventory and brought out the metal token," I have this. I was told that I could pick any Earth grade or lower book for free from the Library."

"Hmm…" the elder squinted. "A silver library token?" the elder was surprised. He didn't even see a bronze token normally, but to think a silver token was here.

"How did you get this boy?" he asked Alex.

"Elder Lang gave this to me this morning." He replied truthfully.

"An outer sect disciple getting a silver library token huh. You must've done very well in the entrance exam then. " The elder mused. He then handed back the nameplate and the silver token and said,

"Alright, you can go in. Since you are an outer sect disciple, you can go anywhere up to the 5th floor. Pick whatever book you want in there. As long as the book is earth grade or lower, you can borrow it for a week for free."

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Chapter 14:The Library

"Remember, you have 1 hour to look for whatever book you want. After 1 hour has passed, you will have to come out. If you stay in there for more than an hour, you will be fined for 10 contribution points for every 10 extra minutes you spend in there."

The elder gave him the last warning before sending him in.

Alex went into the library and was immediately amazed. The number of books in there was simply astronomical. There were dozens upon dozens of shelves each holding at least a thousand books of their own.

Alex was surprised at how many different books there were inside the library. "Do people really read all of these?" he wondered. He looked at the first book on the nearest shelf to him.

It was called [Sleeping Mantis Scythe]. He read a bit to learn what it was about. The [Sleeping Mantis Scythe] was a mortal ranked fighting technique that was specifically made for scythe users.

The technique could only be used if one had a scythe. Alex was surprised to even find a fighting technique here. He had assumed that there would only be Alchemy-related techniques in Hong Wu Sect's library.

He returned the first book to where it was and checked the second book. The second book was also [Sleeping Mantis Scythe].

"Huh… what's going on?" he was taken aback a bit. He looked at the third book, and it was still the [Sleeping Mantis Scythe].

The fourth, the fifth, all the way up to the twelfth were all [Sleeping Mantis Scythe].

Only on the thirteenth one did he find a new book called [Flickering Leopard]. This was a mortal-grade technique that could make a cultivator run as fast as a leopard could for small bursts of time.

There were once more 12 different [Flickering Leopard] books in the library. He finally understood why that was.

"I see. So they have a dozen copies of each book. They must've done it so that a student can borrow a book for a week, and the other student can also take the same book at the same time, and not worry about waiting for another week before getting a chance to borrow the said book."

He then went on to look at the rest of the books on the ground floor. All of the books on the ground floor were of mortal grade. So, he decided to skip them and went up to the first floor.

The first floor had some good techniques, but they were all still of mortal grade.

"Is there no techniques for alchemy here? Why are all the books related to fighting?" he wondered. He wanted to learn alchemy, but somehow he could only find battle techniques in the library.

Finally, on the second floor did he find his first alchemy technique. It was a mortal grade technique called the [Swirling Mists] technique. It focused on moving the ingredients inside the cauldron in a spiral manner before condensing them to form a pill.

The technique felt hard, and not so useful to Alex. It was nothing but a fancy method of forming pills, and not very helpful to the entire alchemy itself.

He left the technique where it was and walked around the 2nd floor looking for other different alchemy techniques. He found a few others, but most of them were either forming pills or increasing their efficiency at the last second. While they did look promising, they were all mortal-grade techniques, so Alex skipped on them.

Finally, walking up to the third floor, he saw his first earth-grade technique. Granted it was a battle technique, he was still happy to see an earth-grade technique after a literal slew of mortal-grade techniques.

He walked around the third floor and found a particularly weird technique. The technique was a mortal grade technique, but, it was neither a battle technique nor an alchemy-related technique. It was actually a formation-building technique.

He read it with particular interest. The formation was called [Qi Gathering Formation]. Its function was to gather Qi from spirit stones placed inside the formation to a single spot and make it many times faster for the cultivator to absorb the qi in them.

Alex liked the idea of having a formation technique, but he needed to get an alchemy technique first.

"I should earn a bunch of contribution points and come back to get these books," he said to himself. He searched around for other books.

He found another unusual book. This time it was an artifact refining technique. While artifacts did sell as well as pills in the outside world, Alex would still choose an alchemy book right now.

After getting an alchemy technique, and getting into an alchemy-focused sect, it would be a joke if he decided to learn artifact refining technique here.

He couldn't find any good techniques on the third floor, so he went up to the fourth floor. This was the last floor he was allowed to enter. If he didn't find any good techniques here as well, he would have to leave empty-handed.

His one-hour time was close to being up, so he hastily started looking for good alchemy techniques. Most if not all of the techniques on the fourth floor were of the earth grade, so he didn't have to worry about getting a low-grade technique.

He searched and searched, but couldn't find one he was satisfied with. Finally, he found one but it was a mortal grade technique. He was about to instinctively skip it, but he stopped.

It was a mortal-grade technique, but the reason why Alex was interested was simple. He read the techniques name,

" Flame Mastery Scripture. Grade Mortal. Growth." That was it. Similar to his amazing mortal grade [Alchemy God's Knowledge] technique, this was also a Growth type technique.

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Chapter 15:Flame Mastery Scripture

[Flame Mastery Scripture

Grade: Mortal (Growth)

Freely control flames to your wishes.]

Alex read the panel that had popped up in front of him. The physical book itself only mentioned the technique being in Mortal grade. However, when he viewed it through the system, it actually mentioned a growth element along with the grade as well.

His technique hadn't grown past level 1 so he still didn't know what growth exactly did to the techniques, but if he were to go by how good [Alchemy God's Knowledge] was, [Flame Mastery Scripture] would also be a great technique.

An hour had passed since he had entered here. So, he took the [Flame Mastery Scripture] and left the fourth floor. He soon reached the entrance to the library.

He went to the elder and said, "Elder, I wish to take this with me." He brought the scripture forward and handed it to the elder.

The elder took the book and looked at it for a few seconds. He was surprised. He turned to look at Alex and asked, "Are you sure you want this? If you have run out of time, you can come back tomorrow to check for more."

He didn't think Alex would actually bring out a Mortal grade technique when he was free to choose any earth grade technique.

"It's an okay elder. I didn't run out of time. I chose to take it." Alex insisted on taking the book.

"Very well then. I guess this is not a bad book. It's at least one of the better ones in the Mortal grade. Especially since you can use it in both Alchemy and Battle." The Elder said.

'I knew it. So I in fact can use it for both.' He thought.

"Alright, give me your token, and nameplate." The elder said as he brought forth his hands.

Alex opened his inventory and took out both the token and nameplate. He then handed it to the elder.

The elder took the nameplate to his head and closed his eyes. Then he took out a talisman from somewhere and brought it to his forehead as well.

"Alright. You can go now. I have recorded your information for today. You can have the book for a week. A week from now you will have to return the book in perfect condition."

"If you fail to return the book in time, you will have to pay 50 contribution points for each additional day you don't return it. And if you somehow end up destroying the book, you will have to pay the book's worth in contribution points." The elder gave him a warning as he returned his nameplate.

"Thank you, Elder" Alex walked out of the library into the crowded streets of the sect valley.

"Hmm… Oh! It's nearly 7. Wow, have I already been in the game for 3 hours?" Alex didn't want to return to his cottage as it was quite far, and it was an uphill journey.

"What happens if I logout out of the streets?" he wanted to try it, but quickly dismissed the idea.

"No, I won't be able to explain to people how I disappear and appear so randomly. Let's just find an empty spot and log out." Alex walked to the side of a building, to a dark alley that wasn't populated.

He looked around to see if anyone was there, and once he saw no one was visible, he logged out.

Alex got out of his bed and waited for the others to log out as well. Once they all logged out, they went to have their dinner and returned.

As soon as they got back, they jumped onto their beds and logged into the game. Alex didn't hesitate to do so either.

Once he logged in he found himself in the same dark alley he had logged out of. He walked out of the alley in the main streets.

He opened his map and looked for something. He needed contribution points for everything in the sect, to begin with, so he had decided to earn some right now.

According to the elder in the library, you could earn contribution points by doing missions given out by the sect. So, he was now looking for the 'Contribution Hall' on the map.

He soon found it on the map. It was about 5 minutes walk away from where he was, so he started walking towards it.

The sky was dark now, and the star had come out. The moon was a bit above the horizon too. The sect valley had started glowing up in a yellowish tinge with all the different lanterns they had put out to light the streets, and buildings.

The night was just as beautiful as the day, perhaps even more so.

Although night had come, somehow, the disciples had grown in number in the streets compared to the day. Finally, Alex reached the Contribution Hall.

In front of him was a massive building with huge corridors, jam-packed with disciples. The contribution hall had 3 floors as well, separated for the outer sect, the inner sect, and the core disciples.

He walked into the massive corridors of the contribution hall and found multiple boards hung up on each side of the wall. Each with texts written on it.

Although the board looked like a normal wooden board, for some reason, this board also had the same magical property as the rankings rock in that it too had magically appearing and vanishing texts.

He started looking through the texts and started reading them.

[Help Sweep the sect valley - 5 points]

[Buy foods from the city - 3 points]

[Run errands for inner sect disciple Gu Zan - 7 points]

[Help make …]

So on and so forth. There were thousands of menial tasks that one could do here to get some contribution points. Alex started to look through them all.

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Chapter 16:Taking A Mission

The tasks in the contribution hall were mostly given out by either the sect, the inner sect disciples, or the core disciples. There was not a single task that gave more than 10 points in the whole board.

After looking at the different tasks, Alex found that there were only 2 tasks that truly interested him. The first one was to kill and bring back some monster corpses, along with any other objects he found. The second one was to become an alchemist's aid.

The first one gave points depending on how strong the monster was. While the second one said to give hourly points.

He wanted to take them both. He looked around to see if there were anyone that he could ask to take the missions. But to his surprise, there was no one.

"Huh… how am I supposed to take the missions then?" he wondered. He looked around to see what the other disciples were doing. Most of them were just standing near the boards doing nothing.

After a while, they would leave, which confused Alex even more.

He stopped one of the disciples that were leaving, and asked them,

"Hello brother. Can you please tell me how I can take these missions?"

The disciple looked back, and asked in a confused manner, " is this your first time?"

"Yes, I only joined the sect today," Alex answered without hesitation.

"Oh. It's very easy. Take your nameplate and put it on one of those holders there. You can choose up to 3 missions to take at once." The disciple answered and left.

Alex looked towards the board once more, and this time saw multiple rectangular cutouts at the bottom of the board.

"Are those indentations for the nameplate?" he thought. He walked up to one of the open ones and put his nameplate in there. Suddenly, a panel appeared in front of him with all the different tasks available on the board.

For some reason, however, neither of the 2 tasks he wanted to take was on the task list. "What's going on?" he wondered.

He searched for a few more minutes, but he still couldn't find one. Confused he decided to ask someone again.

He stopped a female disciple who was just leaving and asked,

"Hello sister, can I ask you a question?"

The girl seemed to be an outer sect disciple but had an air of elegance to her. She didn't seem to be much older than him but seemed very mature for her age.

"What do you want to ask junior brother?" she asked.

"You see, I wanted to take those 2 missions, but I can't find them anywhere when I put my nameplate in the carvings. Can you tell me what's wrong?" he asked while pointing to the 2 missions he wanted to take.

"Hmm… " she turned to look at what the 2 missions he wanted to take were. When she finally saw the two tasks, she laughed a little.

"Of course, you won't find them, junior brother, they are permanent mission after all." She said as if the information she just gave was a matter of fact.

"Permanent?" he looked confused.

"What? Don't tell me you have never seen a permanent mission before?" she asked. It was her time to be surprised.

"I am new to the sect, so I don't know what that means, sister." He said.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Permanent missions just mean that anyone can earn points from them, and you don't have to take the missions here. They are usually the ones where the points are not set. For example, you can just go to the sect market, a few minutes away from here, and sell monster corpses directly. "

"You don't have to go through the hassle of taking the task and only then going to sell the corpses every time you want to sell them. Similarly, you can just go to the Alchemy Hall and tell them you want to be an alchemist's aid. "

"You only need to take the missions for specific ones where there would be a contradiction if 2 people were to do the same mission at the same time. I hope that helped junior brother. Now if you will excuse me, I have a mission to complete." She said as she left the contribution hall.

Alex stood there and looked at the board once more. "So I don't need to take these two missions huh. Then should I take something else?"

He started looking through the mission board once more. Finally, something caught his eyes.

[Find a dwarf berry for inner sect disciple Kong Yuhan: 8 contribution points]

"A dwarf berry? Isn't that what I got from the eastern forest?" he quickly opened his inventory to check. A Dwarf Berry was in fact in there.

"Alright then, I will take this mission." He put his nameplate back in the carvings of the mission board and quickly navigated through loads of missions to find this specific mission.

The nameplate shined a little to inform that the mission had been accepted. Alex looked back to the board and found the mission was no longer there.

He looked at his nameplate, something more seemed to have been added to it. He focused on the nameplate a bit, and a new set of information popped up.

——————-

[Hong Wu Sect

Outer Sect Disciple

Yu Ming

Contribution Points: 0

Go to the inner sect disciple mountain, and look for Kong Yuhan after you have completed the mission.

Reward: 8 contribution points

]

—————-

"The inner sect disciple mountain huh. Where is it again?" Alex opened his map to look for the direction to the inner sect disciples mountain.

The mountain was southwest from he was currently. He walked out of the contribution hall into the brilliantly lit road of the sect. He looked around in admiration at how good everything looked.

After making sure everything was set, he made his way to the inner sect disciple's mountain.

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Chapter 17:Mission Complete

Alex walked slowly in the beautifully lit streets of the sect valley. Hundreds of other disciples were walking around doing their own things.

They had also taken missions from the contribution hall and were on their way to do different tasks. He realized, however, that there were a lot fewer inner sect disciples and core disciples around at night times.

"Is it because they only work during the day, and need to sleep at night?" he wondered. He felt bad for the outer sect disciples who weren't free enough to do what they wanted, whenever they wanted.

After remembering he was also an outer sect disciple, he just laughed and shook his head.

After a while, he had come to the entrance to the inner sect mountain.

"Do I just go in?" he wondered. The rulebook clearly mentioned that going to the inner sect mountain for the outer sect disciples was forbidden.

"How am I going to complete my mission then?" he got confused. He looked at the information about the nameplate, and it clearly mentioned going to the inner sect disciple's mountain and looking for Kong Yuhan.

"Whatever. If I get in trouble, I will just tell them I did what the mission told me to." He started walking inside.

"Hey you, stop." A voice came from the side. Hidden in the darkness near the entrance was a small cottage-like open building. A man walked out of the building and stood in front of him.

The man looked at his clothing and asked, "Aren't you an outer sect disciple? What are you doing here?"

Alex looked at the man carefully and realized he was wearing a green robe with silver linings along the side. 'An Elder!' he was surprised.

"Good evening, Elder. I came here to complete my mission." He told the elder honestly.

"Hmm… Mission? Let me check your nameplate." He asked for the nameplate. Alex swiftly handed the nameplate to the elder.

The elder brought the nameplate to his forehead and closed his eyes for a few seconds. Once he had verified that Alex had indeed come here with a mission, he took out a medallion from his inner robes.

Alex looked at the medallion curiously. It looked similar to the one the disciple in the disciple hall had, but yet somehow different. This medallion seemed to be made up of expensive material.

The elder brought the medallion to his forehead and closed his eyes once more.

After a few seconds, he opened his eyes and spoke, " Wait here, I have called Kong Yuhan. He will be here soon."

This surprised Alex. 'He called the disciple from here? Does that medallion function like a phone?' he wondered. A few minutes later Alex saw someone coming down.

The disciple who just came down was a man in his early 20s and was wearing the inner sect disciple's robes. He was at least a head taller than Alex and had better muscles as well.

His hair somehow seemed blue, even in the darkness. 'This must be Kong Yuhan' Alex thought.

"Disciple Yuhan greets elder Zhang. Why has elder Zhang summoned me?" he spoke in a very formal manner. Alex focused on the newcomer a bit more to see if his hair was really blue or not.

'Woah' he got surprised. Something unexpected popped up. Above Kong Yuhan's head, a set of words popped up.

[Organ Tempering 9th Realm]

'Wow, that's 2 entire realms ahead of me.' Alex was surprised. He then tried to see if it worked on the elder too. Something did pop up, but it just said [Mortal]

'Mortal?' that was impossible. He didn't believe anyone who was still a mortal could be part of the sect, let alone be an elder. 'Does that mean that he is so strong that I can't even tell what realm he is in?' that was the only logical answer for Alex.

"This outer sect disciple is here to complete the mission you had given to the contribution hall." The elder pointed towards Alex as he spoke to Kong Yuhan.

Kong Yuhan's eyes popped up a bit when he heard that. He looked at Alex with a sudden turn of his head. Inside his eyes, Alex could see a mixture of shock, excitement, and hope.

He practically ran as he came to stand in front of Alex, and asked with a shaky voice, "Ju-Junior Brother, Is- is it true that you found a dwarf berry?" he asked.

Alex didn't expect that an inner sect disciple would be this excited for something that grew in the forest nearby. He brought out the berry from his inventory and handed it to Kong Yuhan.

"Brother Kong, I hope this is what you were searching for. "

Kong Yuhan looked at the berry in his hand absentmindedly. Only after a while did he realize what he was holding.

"Oh, OH!, yes. This is exactly what I had been searching for." He said happily. " A 10-year-old Dwarf Berry." Kong Yuhan seemed to have not expected such an old berry.

He slowly started walking back towards his home.

"Disciple Kong." A stern voice came from the side that jolted Kong Yuhan out of his trance.

"Yes Elder?" he asked the elder.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" the elder said as he gestured towards the standing Alex.

Kong Yuhan looked back and immediately started apologizing. " I'm so sorry, junior disciple. I was so happy to get the berry, that I forgot my manner. Here, give me your nameplate, let me pay you for the berry."

Alex handed him his nameplate. Kong Yuhan took out his own nameplate and put them together, and pressed them to his head. After a while, he returned Alex's nameplate back to him.

Alex checked the nameplate.

[Hong Wu Sect, Outer Sect Disciple, Yu-Ming. Contribution Points: 10]

"Hmm… Brother Kong, there seem to be 2 more points than the reward in the mission." He said.

"That's intentional. I had put up that mission almost a month ago. I was stuck in a bottleneck forever and needed a 2-year-old berry. They were very hard to come by. However, you brought me one, that too a 10-year-old berry. Of course, I am going to give you a little extra."

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Chapter 18:Flame Mastery Practice

Alex stood there stupefied looking at the 10 points in his nameplate. An outer sect disciple was required to earn at least 20 points every week. He had earned 10 in less than an hour.

"Good night elder." He said as he left the mountain back towards the sect valley. Along the way, he started to wonder.

"Do I go earn some more points? Or do I got to learn the flame controlling technique I got from the library?"

He was in a dilemma. "Hmm… I already have some contribution points, it might be more useful to have at least one technique before I go to aid any alchemists."

"Alright. That settles it then. I'm going to learn the flame controlling technique." He said and started walking back to his cottage in the outer sect disciple's mountain.

He soon reached his cottage and opened his door. To his surprise, there was light inside his cottage. "Did someone come in?" he wondered.

There was a lantern hanging in the middle of the empty room, illuminating his room with flickering light. There was no one inside.

'Who lit the lantern?' he thought.

He sat down on his small bed and took out the technique from his inventory. He looked at it once more.

[Flame Mastery Scripture]

As he focused on the book a little more, a panel popped up.

[Do you want to learn ]

He instinctively brought up his hands to click the 'Learn' button, but stopped. 'Wait. What happens if I learn it? do I lose the book?'

Every cultivation method and technique he had learned up to this point had been from the inventory. And after learning them, the source had always disappeared.

He started to get worried. If he really did lose the book, he would have to pay a massive amount of fines to the sect in the form of contribution points. He didn't want that.

'Why don't I learn it like everyone else then?' he flipped the book open and started to read it.

The book seemed to be written in ineligible alphabets, but for some reason, when he saw it, he understood what they meant. In fact, reading these ineligible words was much faster in his opinion.

Within 15 minutes, he finished reading the whole book.

Alex looked at the intact book in his hand and sighed in relief. "Thank god that worked."

"Techniques," he said as a panel of learned techniques opened in front of him with 2 items in it. The first one was obviously the [Alchemy God's Knowledge]. The second one was the newly added [Flame Mastery Scripture].

He clicked on it and opened its description.

[Flame Mastery Scripture: Level 1

Grade: Mortal (Growth)

Level 1:

Unlocked: Can freely control existing fire and influence its temperature

Level 2 locked.

]

He had yet to learn how he could level up a skill. He looked at the description and realized he needed fire to control it in the first place. Thankfully, the fire was everywhere during the nighttime.

All the lanterns around the sect were lit with fire. Same for the lantern in his room. He stood up and slowly brought down the lantern from the very low ceiling.

He put it on the ground and took off the lantern's covering. Inside was a metal plate with a ball of fire floating on top of it.

"Wow. How does this work?" he wondered. There was a lot of magical stuff in the sect, and he was happy to see them.

"Okay. So how do I use the technique?" he wondered. He somehow hadn't thought of this point.

"Flame Mastery Scripture" he shouted hoping to get a reaction. Nothing happened. He looked at the technique list to see if there was a 'use' button. There wasn't.

He was now confused. How was he to use a technique then?

"Hmm… if the developers really went for as much realism in the game as possible, then there is no way using a technique should be so simple."

Not even fighting was simple in this game. To even fight a normal snake he had to…

"Wait. What happens if I go into that weird time slowed state."

He looked at the flame and started to focus. Suddenly, time started to slow down. The small ball of fire floating in the center looked ever so vibrant. It's light shining brighter than ever.

He could feel the increase in the temperature of his surrounding, and how the hot air was moving up. He could smell the minute particles in the air burning and leave an almost unnoticeable smell.

He ignored all of those senses and focused only on the fire. He looked at the fire and saw it the same way as he ever did.

But, for some reason now, he could feel the fire as well. It was almost like he could touch the fire, without actually touching it. He slowly brought forth his hand and stopped a few centimeters away from the fire.

As if he was born with the knowledge, he started moving a sort of energy in his body. "Is that my Qi?" he wondered. His Qi was all over the body in small amounts in every single vessel.

He instinctively started moving the Qi in a certain path. Within a few seconds, the Qi had gathered in one spot, his hands. He could see the space in front of his hands fluctuate, as tiny invisible Qi came out of them.

As the Qi touched the fire, he thought of turning the ball of fire into a candle flame-like oval shape. As if understanding his commands, the fire slowly started to change its form. It started twisting and turning until it finally came to a stop in the oval shape of a candle flame.

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Chapter 19:More Practice

Alex looked at the oval flame and thought, "Did I do it?" suddenly, he lost his concentration, and the oval flame went back to being a ball of flames.

"Awww… I think that was it. Let's try once more." He tried to do it once more. He went back to the slowed time state and began to feel all the Qi inside his body.

He moved the Qi according to what the technique required until it appeared out of his palms. As the invisible Qi touched the flames, he had to just think of what he wanted to do with the flames and it would happen.

For now, he could only change the shape of the flames. That transformation too took about 5 seconds to complete. He slowly did it more and more, until he was able to change the shapes within 2 seconds.

Of course, the shapes he could create were rudimentary shapes, like Oval, or spherical, or spiral, and other simpler shapes. Making figures out of the fire was impossible for him to do right now.

After becoming a little more proficient in the shape-changing aspect of the technique, he moved on to the temperature aspect of it.

Once again, he focused and brought his Qi into his hands and sent it to the fire. However, instead of thinking of a new shape, he thought about increasing the temperature of the flame.

"The flame's highest temperature is 816 Celsius, while the lowest temperature is at 316 Celsius." He could somehow instinctively tell the temperature of the flames.

He was unsure if he got this ability from the [Alchemy God's Knowledge] or [Flame Mastery Scripture]. If he had to guess, he would guess the second one.

He thought of increasing the lowest temperature, and decreasing the highest temperature so that the temperature would be a constant 500 Celsius everywhere.

The minute color differences in the fire suddenly turned to a steady color with no changes. The fire also stopped fluctuating in temperature as it came to be a steady 500 C.

He could feel it. He had succeeded. He quickly focused back and didn't let his concentration waver. Slowly he started to change the temperature.

He made the temperature of the fire go down to 300 C. He succeeded at it. He then made the temperature go up to 900 C. He also succeeded in that.

He brought the temperature back to 500 C. Now, he tried to change the shape of the fire, while keeping the temperature constant.

He tried to turn the fire into a spiral shape but quickly lost his control over the temperature. As soon as he brought his concentration back on the temperature, he lost his control on the shape of the fire.

"Doing both at once is going to be really hard, isn't it?" he thought. He slowly started to train. Through multiple failures, he was finally successful at forming his first oval flame with 500 Celsius.

He practiced for an hour. He was getting the hang of the technique.

He practiced for another hour, he was getting better at the technique.

By the third hour, he could change both the shape and the temperature into whatever he desired within seconds. While he couldn't do a lot with the shape, he could still make a lot of geometrical figures without a problem.

He tried to control the fire once more. He tried to move his Qi to his hands but realized he couldn't anymore. He didn't have any Qi left.

"I should have know when I ran out of my Qi." He thought. Unlike his excess Qi, his normal amounts of Qi weren't shown by the system, and he had to know when he was full or low on it just by the feeling of it.

He put the cover on the lantern and hung the lantern back on the ceiling. He then sat on the bench to refill his qi. He slowly focused on his breathing, and before he knew it, he was asleep. He was once more unconsciously cultivating.

However, he didn't immediately start to collect Qi this time. He had to first fill his empty body before he could store the Qi for breakthroughs.

At exactly, 6:30 AM he woke up. He was still in the game, sitting on the bed.

"Did I fall asleep once more?" he wondered. "Did I cultivate without knowing once more?" He thought as he quickly opened his status to check.

———————

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Muscle Tempering 6th Realm (35000 Qi: 100%) [Breakthrough]

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 72709

]

——————

"The next breakthrough is at 40K Qi huh. That's quite a lot." Now that his Qi was back to full, he wanted to try the Flame mastery once more. But to his dismay, the lantern flame had gone out.

"Guess I will just leave then." He quickly logged out of the game.

He freshened up and went to have his breakfast with the rest of his roommates. Afterward, none of them went back to the game as it was the first day of university classes.

Alex went to the university at 11 after having his lunch. Nothing special happened to the entire class. The classes were mostly introduction-focused, and less about studying on the first day.

He found out that Matt and Eric shared at least one course with him each. All of the classes today were the economic and business courses, so he wasn't really excited about them.

After the classes ended at 3 PM, he went to the cafeteria to have his afternoon lunch and went back to his room. He changed his clothes back to his casual shirt and pants, and without missing a beat, jumped back into the game.

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Chapter 20:Sect Market

Alex opened his eyes back in his cottage. He looked up at the ceiling, but as expected, the lantern was still out.

"I should find other sources of fire. Maybe I should just go buy some matches or whatever equivalent this game has for making fires."

He stood up and walked outside. He saw the same scene as yesterday. Dozens of disciples going on about their daily lives.

He didn't need to open his map this time, he knew how to get to the sect valley. After a few minutes of walking, he reached the sect valley.

He still wasn't used to seeing hundreds of disciples running about in what was basically a small-sized city. He had two things to do here today.

The first thing he needed to do was sell all those monsters he killed in the forest the other day. According to the female senior, he met yesterday, he had to sell the items in the sect market.

He opened the map to check where it was. He quickly located it next to the Disciple Hall on the map, so he walked towards there.

In just a few minutes, he was in front of the sect market. Looking at what was in front of him truly surprised him, as it was nowhere close to what he had been expecting.

He had been expecting a massive building just like all the other buildings he had been to. Except, the sect market was nothing like it.

In front of him was a long road that was at least 200 m long. And all over the side of the roads were disciples laying objects in front of them, trying to sell them.

There were 3 or 4 properly set stalls that Alex could tell were set up by the sect itself as the owner of those stalls had silver linings in their green robes. They were run by sect elders.

He walked up to one of the stalls. There were a few disciples in front of him waiting for their turn to buy or sell their stuff. Eventually, his turn arrived.

"Are you here to buy or sell?" the elder in the stall asked. The elder seemed quite old, at least in his late 40s. There were signs of wrinkles on his face, and his beard and hair had a lot of white streaks on them.

"I am here to sell, Elder," Alex replied respectfully.

"All right, give me what you have." The elder said as he prepared the table in front of him for the items.

"Umm, Elder, I am here to sell monster corpses, so this table won't be enough," Alex said seeing the little space on top of the table.

"Oh." The elder said as his eyes perked up a bit. He brought out a small storage bag and handed it to Alex. " Alright then, put them here."

Alex took the storage bag and opened his inventory. Aside from the alchemy materials, there were exactly 27 items related to his hunt in the eastern forest. 12 of those were corpses. 11 Skin tempering realm corpses, and 1 Muscle Tempering realm corpses.

He didn't know if the other materials were alchemy materials or not, so he decided to just sell them. The monster cores as well would give him too low Qi if he ate it like a pill, so he decided to sell it too.

He wanted to eat the earth snake's core, but the snake was only at Muscle Tempering 3rd Realms so he didn't bother to. Even if he got 2 realms worth of Qi, that was just a night of sleep for him.

All in all, he sold all 27 items. He put them all in the storage bag and returned them to the elder.

The elder took the bag and looked at it. Within seconds, his eyes went wide. Most of the disciples that came to sell monster corpses only had 2 or 3 at most.

Since the sect was alchemy-focused, the disciples usually didn't bother killing monsters and just bought the materials instead. However, this disciple had just brought back 12 corpses and was also selling their cores and materials.

"Are you sure you want to sell it all?" the elder asked. Most disciples tended to keep the cores and materials as they were important alchemy materials. The elder was surprised to see a disciple that was selling it all.

"Yes," Alex said without hesitation. He had no idea about the usefulness of the cores and materials, as he still believed alchemy only needed plants and herbs.

The elder looked at the items he had on him and started calculating. He spoke in a low voice, "Let's see. 11 points for 11 corpses, 5 points for 1 corpse, 14 points for the cores, 10 points for the other core, 14 points for the material, and 10 points for the venom."

"So, a total of… 78 points" the elder stopped mumbling.

"Give me your nameplate," he asked Alex.

Alex was ready with the nameplate, so he handed it to him. Unlike the other elders and disciples, he didn't bring the nameplate to his forehead, and instead just kept it in his hand.

"Alright, here you go. You have been credited 78 contribution points. Good job young man." The elder congratulated him and handed his nameplate back.

'Huh! 78 points? How?' he was dumbfounded. He looked at his nameplate, and he indeed had 88 total points now. 'Damn, so I can just sell monster corpses here, and I can get enough points to survive for the week, huh' he thought to himself.

He took his nameplate and left the stall. He was about to leave the sect market altogether when he noticed something at one of the street vendors.

Something had caught his eyes. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, something had caught his … feelings?

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Chapter 21:Yellow Rock

Alex had a similar feeling to the one he had when finding the [Spirit Cleansing Lily]. However, this feeling was somehow completely different in both type and origin.

For starters, the feeling he had for the [Spirit Cleansing Lily] originated from somewhere in his mind. Something in his mind had slightly nudged him into thinking that was a good item.

However, this time, the feeling originated from his body. His entire body was reacting as a hungry lion that had just seen an injured deer. His body was ready to pounce on it.

He went towards the vendor to look at what the item really was. The vendor was an outer sect disciple and there were several items that she was selling.

Out of all of them, the one that Alex was interested in was a small, smooth but jagged piece of yellow rock.

"Hello sister, can you tell me what this yellow rock is?" he asked the vendor.

The girl looked at Alex and said, "I don't really know what it is. It was constantly warm so I thought it must've been something good, and chose to sell it. Why? You want it?" she looked at Alex expectantly.

"Yes, I do sister. How much do you want for this?" he asked.

"100 points. No bargaining," she said without hesitation.

'I don't have 100 points though' Alex was confused as to what to do.

Seeing his frowned face, the outer sect disciple got more confident in her attitude and said, " If you don't have the points, then go away. Let other people look at my stuff."

"I only have 88 points right now sister. Is there any way to lower the price?" he asked hoping she would drop it. He was already finding it hard to stand near the stone without grabbing it immediately and shoving it in his mouth.

"No can do. If you don't have 100 points, then go away." The girl closed her eyes after saying this and started meditating.

Alex thought for a bit and said, "While I don't have the full 100 points, would you accept some alchemy materials, sister?" he asked

The girl opened one eye and looked curiously as she said, "Depends". Alex immediately rejoiced and brought out 4 different alchemy materials he found in the forest.

There were normal materials that he had come across in the forest. The girl looked at the items and was surprised.

"You are going to give me those 4 materials, and 88 points?" she asked inquisitively.

"Yes, sister," Alex replied with zero hesitation.

"Okay, it's yours," she said as she handed him the yellow rock, and her nameplate. Alex took both of the items. The yellow rock was too irresistible, so he immediately kept it in his inventory.

That helped quite a bit. He no longer had the impulse to eat the stone at once. He looked at the other item in his hand, the girl's nameplate.

He had to transfer 88 points to her, but he didn't know how to. He decided to do the same thing Kong Yuan had done and put his and her nameplate together.

He focused on them a bit and got the option to transfer contribution points. He unhesitatingly passed 88 points into the girl's nameplate.

He then handed her nameplate back to her, along with the 4 alchemy material. He said his goodbye and went out of the sect market.

His second work in the sect valley was to learn how to become an alchemist's aid. But, he now had to wait until he found out what the yellow rock was.

He had just left his cottage half an hour ago, and now he was back in it. He sat on his bed and got comfortable. He then opened his inventory and brought out the yellow rock.

The yellow rock looked like a normal piece of rock. It was both smooth and jagged in shape. It was smaller than a spirit stone in size and wasn't translucent either.

The yellow in the rock was truly yellow, and not some cloudy yellow inside the rock similar to a spirit stone.

Once the rock was on his hand, the urge to eat it appeared once more. His mind was being the reasonable one and telling him not to do something stupid as eating a rock.

But his body's urge to eat the rock was too big for him to ignore. He decided to go with the body on this one, and reluctantly, ate it.

The moment the stone touched his tongue, it melted into a hot, scalding liquid that traveled down his throat. However, even though it was scalding hot, he didn't feel any pain.

Once the liquid reached his stomach, it started to distribute to every corner of his body.

Suddenly, his body started to hurt like hell. It felt like his entire body was submerged in a tub of boiling lava, that was also somehow injected into his veins.

This was the worst pain he had ever felt in both real life and the game. It took five minutes for the pain to slowly start to disappear.

As the pain subsided, all that remained in his body was power and vigor. He could sense that the amount of Qi his body could store had increased substantially, as well as that the yang qi was dozens if not more times stronger than normal Qi.

He could easily tell that he was twice as strong as he was before.

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Chapter 22:Alchemy Hall

Alex made a fist with his hands and was shocked at how much strength he could feel in them. The pain he had just felt, the transformation of his normal Qi into Yang Qi, had also in some minor ways changed his physical body as well.

While he was still at Muscle Tempering 7th Realm, he could tell that he was ever so slightly stronger. He wanted to check what changes his new form of qi brought to his techniques.

But alas, there was no fire around to see if anything had changed.

Grrrrrr

His stomach cried out hunger. The inner transformation had left him feeling a little peckish.

"Now that I think about it, I'm surprised I have gone so long without feeling hungry or thirsty. Does being a cultivator make you no longer need a lot of sustenance?" he wondered.

He looked at the clock and realized it was only 4 PM. There were still 3 hours before dinner time. There was no homework, so he was free to do whatever he wanted today.

He decided to go eat something in the sect valley but stopped.

"Wait, doesn't food cost contribution points as well?" he quickly checked the rulebook and he could in fact not eat anything without contribution points.

Even the cheapest stuff cost about 2 contribution points. Also, he couldn't leave the sect without permission from an elder, so there was no way to go to the city to get something to eat.

'Sigh. I guess it's time to go work now.' He got out of his cottage. He walked back to the valley. This time, however, he needed to go to the Alchemy Hall.

He quickly checked the map and found it. He thought he would be jaded by now, seeing all the different massive halls, but, he was still surprised when he saw the Alchemy Hall. Perhaps more than everything else he had seen in the sect valley.

The Alchemy hall wasn't just a simple building. It was located at the very corner of the sect valley and seemed to be carved into the sect leader's mountain.

It was a simple one-story building, but he couldn't tell how far into the mountain the hall went. He looked at the entrance of the hall and saw a bunch of light green robe-wearing disciples standing side by side.

Once in a while, an inner sect disciple would come, and pick one of the outer sect disciples and take them inside.

'Were the outer sect disciples standing here to be chosen as aid?' he wondered.

He walked up to a small station outside the hall where an elder was staying.

"Good afternoon elder. I wish to work as an Alchemist's aid. Can you tell me what I have to do?" he asked politely.

"Hmm…." The elder looked towards Alex and asked, "Is this your first time here?"

Alex was surprised. 'How did he know?' there shouldn't have been any clue yet the elder found out at once.

"Yes, elder. This is my first time." He said honestly.

"How good are you at recognizing ingredients?" the elder asked him.

Alex was surprised. That wasn't what he had expected the elder to ask him at all.

"I would say it's very good," Alex said, not knowing if that felt like he was bragging or just being honest.

The elder's eyes perked up at the answer. He reached into his storage bag and brought out 3 items.

One was a small, yellow fruit. The other was a strangely purple leaf. And the last one was a brown bark from a tree.

"What are these?" the elder simply asked him to name them.

Alex focused a little on the ingredients and their names popped upon them.

"They are Cat Eyed Berry, Purple Bane, and Forest Scale." He answered confidently.

"Correct," the elder put back the items and said," Go stand among your fellow disciples. If an inner sect disciple needs you, they will call for you."

"Thank you, elder," Alex left and stood in an open spot next to a female disciple.

He looked next to him and saw the female disciple fidgeting about, almost to the point that it looked like she was shaking.

"Are you okay, sister?" he asked.

The girl turned towards him. She was not the best-looking female he had seen, but she didn't look that bad. She had long black hair, and a small face with big eyes. And in those eyes were a small amount of fear.

"I'm fine," she took a deep breath and stopped fidgeting. " It's just that I haven't earned enough contribution points for the week, and if I don't earn 5 more points in the next 10 hours, I will be punished. I am just nervous that no one will pick me."

"Ah, I'm sure someone will pick you, sister." He said as he comforted her. They made some small talk before an inner sect disciple chose her as his aid, and went it.

Her eyes had gotten truly bright when she was chosen. He thought he would have to wait out here alone for now, when suddenly someone talked ahead of him.

"Eh, junior brother. Aren't you the same junior brother who completed my mission?" A voice came from in front of Alex.

Alex turned around to find a big, buff man in front of him. He looked at the person's face and thought he had seen it before.

"Ah.it's you Brother Kong. it's good to see you here. I almost didn't recognize you since I only saw you in the darkness of evening."

Yes, the man in front of him right now was Kong Yuhan, the inner sect disciple. The same person to whom he had sold his Dwarf Berry last night.

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Chapter 23:The Task of an Aid

"What was your name again junior brother? Yu Ming?" Kong Yuhan asked.

Alex was surprised. He didn't remember ever telling him his name. He replied with a shocked expression, "That's right, brother Kong."

Kong Yuhan saw his shocked expression, and asked, "why do you look, shocked junior brother? Did you think I wouldn't recognize you just because I only saw you once? You brought me a very important ingredient. You are a benefactor to me, and this Kong always remembers his benefactors."

"Ah, no brother Kong. I was just surprised you somehow figured out my name. Even though I didn't remember you asking for my name." He replied honestly.

"Hmm. You didn't? Then I must've read it in your nameplate. Anyway, that doesn't matter right now. Are you working as an aid right now, junior brother Yu?" he asked.

'Oh! The nameplate. Of course.' Alex felt stupid for not realizing that.

"Yes. I am waiting for someone to pick me as an aid."

"Do you want to come with me?" Kong Yuhan asked.

Alex's eyes brightened. 'Finally' he thought.

"Yes, brother Kong. I would love to."

Kong Yuhan walked into the hall and brought Alex along with him. The inside of the Alchemy Hall was not what he had been expecting.

The inside of the hall looked like catacombs. It had a relatively narrow path that went straight for a dozen or more meters before splitting into 3 paths. Each of the paths had multiple rooms on each side of the path. The doors themselves were made of stone, similar to the walls.

Lanterns hung on the wall to light up the pathway. At the very entrance of the hall, there was a big white rock embedded into the walls. There were many small boxes that either lit up with red lights or green lights.

Alex looked at the carvings and immediately realized that this was the internal map of the Alchemy hall. Similar to all the other stones, and boards he had seen around the sect, this was also constantly changing forms, going from red to green, or green to red.

Kong Yuhan looked at the map once and saw a clump of green lights in an area. "Come on junior brother Yu. Let's go find ourselves an open room."

Kong Yuhan knew the path very well, so he simply walked straight through the maze-like the hallway and reached an open room. He walked into the room and waited for Alex to enter.

Alex walked in and was surprised to see the room. The room was bigger than his cottage and had a giant hole in the middle. A steady fire was burning inside the hole, and on top of it was a black cauldron, ready to be used.

Kong Yuhan took out his nameplate and placed it in a carving on the wall next to the open door. Suddenly, a massive block of stone came down from the open door and blocked it entirely.

He took the cauldron on top of the fire, and set it aside at a corner. He then took out his own cauldron and put it on top of the fire. His cauldron seemed to be made of a dirt-like brown color, but more polished than the black cauldron. It was without a doubt better than the other cauldron.

He waited for the cauldron to heat up and took out his storage bag. He then handed to storage bag to Alex.

Alex was confused now. What was he to do with the storage bag? He looked inside and saw a bunch of alchemy ingredients, including the dwarf berry. He decided to ask.

"Brother Kong, what do I do with this?"

"Huh, why are you asking? You should know this as an aid already." Kong Yuhan was surprised at the question as well,

"This is my first time working as an aid brother. I only joined the sect yesterday." Alex said as he laughed wryly.

Kong Yuhan frowned. "This is bad, brother. You should have let me know it was your first time. If you mess something up, I will be in big trouble."

Alex got a little worried as well. 'I should have tried to find out what an aid does before coming here as well.'

"What does an aid do brother Kong?" he asked.

Kong sighed, "The job itself is very simple, junior brother. You just have to give me the ingredients when I ask you to. The problem is that Alchemy requires near-perfect timing. So if you were to hinder my process by not being able to find an ingredient in time, I will fail in making the pill."

"And this pill is very important to me. I only have one set of ingredients, so if I mess up here, I won't be able to break through to the Meridian Tempering realm. I'm just worried that you won't be able to recognize what ingredient I ask, and be slow at delivering it."

Alex's eyes perked up when he heard this. "If it's just recognizing ingredients, then I am confident in being able to do that, brother Kong."

"Very well then junior brother, I shall trust you. The room already took my points, so there is no going back. Familiarize yourself with the pill ingredients and recipe in the bag," Kong Yuhan said as he closed his eyes and started meditating.

Alex looked inside the storage bag and found out there were 13 different items inside. 12 of them were the ingredients, while the last one was a talisman.

Alex took out the talisman and started to read it.

"Oh wow." He was surprised. He didn't expect to learn the recipe the moment he read it.

'This must be because of the feature of [Alchemy God's Knowledge] that says I can learn all recipes instantly.' He thought

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Chapter 24:The Alchemy Process

He realized that the information on the talisman was already on his head and that he didn't require the talisman itself anymore. So he kept it back in the bag and looked at the other 12 ingredients.

Once he thought about the recipe, he somehow knew which ingredients he had to put in, at what time, at what temperature. The recipe had even mentioned how to move the ingredients inside the pot while performing alchemy.

"This is quite thorough," he thought.

After a few minutes, the cauldron started to make sounds, signifying that it was ready for alchemy.

Kong Yuhan opened his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Are you ready junior brother, I will start asking for the ingredients one after another?" He said.

"Yes," Alex replied with a single word.

"Very well then. Horn root grass." He said.

Alex knew [Horn Root Grass] was the first ingredient and was ready for it. Without missing a beat, he took out the Horn Root Grass and handed it to Kong Yuhan.

Kong Yuhan took the ingredient and put it inside the cauldron. Alex wanted to see how he would now follow the recipe and move the ingredient all around the cauldron for 2 minutes.

Kong Yuhan simply moved his right hand in a circular motion without using anything to move the horn root grass.

'He is using his Qi to move the ingredient? That doesn't look like a technique. Does that mean one can normally use Qi to move stuff?' Alex needed to test this as soon as he could.

But now was not the time. After nearly 2 minutes had passed, Alex took out the next ingredient, ready to hand it to Kong Yuhan.

Kong Yuhan called out the name and took the ingredient. He then put the ingredient into the cauldron. This brought a reaction out of Alex.

'NO!!' he internally shouted. 'There were still 2 more seconds left before the 2 minutes were over. He put it in too early.' But he didn't voice his opinion out loud as that might disturb Kong Yuhan out of his concentration.

He then gave him the next ingredient, which looked like a wilted leaf. Kong Yuhan increased the temperature of the fire and put in the wilted leaf.

'The fire is 10 degrees lower than what it should be.' Alex once again found a flaw in Kong Yuhan's process.

Similar things kept on happening with Kong Yuhan's process. Either he put in the ingredients too early, or put them in too late. Sometimes the fire wasn't at the right temperature, other times it changed too slowly.

He took out the last remaining item from the bag, the dwarf berry. Kong Yuhan was full of sweat, still concentrating on the alchemy and ready to put in the final ingredient.

He held out his hand and asked for the berry. He waited for the right moment and put in the berry.

'He timed it quite right this time.' Alex thought. He then looked as Kong Yuhan finally mixed his last ingredients in the cauldron.

All the ingredients had already lost their forms and turned into a bunch of powder by now. The dwarf berry was no different either and soon turned into powder.

Now came the final phase of the alchemy process, making the pill.

Kong Yuhan used a pill-forming technique and slowly brought the powders together to form a clump. He put Qi into the clump to slowly compress them into a ball.

After a few minutes, he had successfully formed a ball out of the clump, and thus successfully, formed a pill.

Kong Yuhan flicked his finger, and a small yellow pill flew out of it, into his hand. A magnificent burst of medicinal scents followed the pill.

Kong Yuhan looked at the pill with wide eyes. He was beyond happy to have succeeded.

Alex was also surprised to see the pill. He had expected Kong Yuhan to fail, given how many mistakes he had made during the alchemy process.

He focused his eyes on the small yellow pill. Suddenly a name popped up on the pill.

[Spirit Enhancing Pill]

He couldn't see its other information as he was not in contact with the pill. He wanted to ask Kong Yuhan to let him touch the pill but decided not to.

He walked forward towards Kong Yuhan.

"Congratulations, brother Kong. You succeeded in making the pill."

"Oh thank you, junior brother. I was quite skeptical about letting you be an aid, but you really helped me a lot." Kong Yuhan said with a big smile on his face.

"With this pill, I can finally break through to the Meridian Tempering realm. That would help me a lot on my path to becoming a better alchemist. Maybe it will even help me become a core disciple" Kong Yuhan started laughing a little.

"What are the requirements for being a Core disciple? If you don't mind me asking." Alex pried a little.

"Oh. Similar to how you have to make 10 different mortal grade pills for becoming an inner sect disciple, you have to make 20 different 20% harmony mortal grade pills for becoming a core disciple." Kong Yuhan said.

"Oh. That seems quite hard. Making 20 different near-earth-grade pills must be quite a task." Alex said.

"They sure are. However, if you manage to make a single Earth Grade pill, the sect will immediately make you a core disciple. That's how Wan Li became a core disciple too." He said.

'Wan Li, that was the name of the First place holder in the rankings, wasn't it?' Alex thought.

" Oh, then what is the harmony level of your current pill brother?" Alex asked.

"Ah, let me see." He focused on the pill for a bit and said, " well, it definitely isn't an earth grade. It's still a mortal-grade pill for sure. Let me check the exact numbers though."

He then reached into his storage bag and brought out a glass beaker with a metal plate on the bottom.

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Chapter 25:Formations

Alex looked at the weird-looking glass beaker and wondered what it was. The glass beaker was small, wide at the bottom, and narrow at the top. It had a circular metal place at its base.

The metal plate was on the outside of the breaker and looked magical with intricate designs. The glass itself had a single black line going across it vertically. There were small dots, along the side of the black line.

Kong Yuhan took his pill and dropped it into the beaker. He then focused as he poured his Qi into the metal part of the beaker. The beaker started to slowly fog up.

At the base of the glass beaker, the mist slowly appeared. The mist appeared on the outer edge of the metal, and it started to mist the glass itself.

Slowly, the mist rose up and started appearing more and more on the glass beaker .it had started at the bottom, and was moving upwards.

After a few seconds, it stopped moving and showed no other signs. Kong Yuhan looked closely at the black dot, next to the black line where the mist had stopped forming.

"Aww… it stopped at 19%. I was so close to 20%." Kong Yuhan sighed. Alex was puzzled. He asked, "What do you mean 19%, brother Kong?"

"Look," Kong Yuhan said as he passed along the beaker to Alex. Now that Alex had it in his hand, he could see that the black dots were not in fact dots, but numbers. They were just too tiny to tell apart from where he was previously.

"Is this the pill's harmony level?" he asked.

"Yes," Kong Yuhan said and started to pack his cauldron.

"How can a glass tell you what a pill's harmony level is, brother kong?" he asked.

"What are you talking about, Junior brother? Of course, it doesn't. It's the metal base that shows it." Kong Yuhan answered as if it was common sense.

"The metal?" Alex was even more confused.

"Well, more precisely the formation on the metal." Kong Yuhan clarified a little.

"A Formation?" Alex was shocked. He had never seen a formation before and only heard of it. "Wow, this is my first time seeing a formation," Alex said as he looked at the metal at the bottom of the beaker.

Kong Yuhan took the beaker back, and put the pill inside into a ceramic pill bottle, quickly closing the bottle with a stopper.

Alex was confused now. " I … I have?" he questioned the statement.

Kong Yuhan took his nameplate out of the wall and looked at the stone door disappear above the door. " Of course, you have. How else do you think this door works?" he laughed a little.

"That is a formation too?" Alex was surprised.

Kong Yuhan then pointed at the lantern in the hallway and asked, "Have you ever looked at what's inside a lantern, junior brother?"

Alex had just done that the day before, so he answered, "Yes. I took off the outer cover yesterday night. Inside was a floating ball of fire, and a metal… Don't tell me that metal plate is a formation too?" he eyes were wide with shock.

'How could I have missed it?' he thought. But, then he thought of something.

" But, wait. The lanterns don't require someone to infuse Qi into it as you did to that glass beaker." He asked.

"The 'Pill Tester'? Well, that's because the formation on it doesn't have an energy source to run, so you have to give it Qi to work. The lanterns are different. They aren't individual formation, but rather a part of a larger formation." Kong Yuhan explained.

" A larger formation?" Alex questioned.

"Junior brother, did you know there is a massive formation laid down on the sect ground. It encompasses all 6 mountains and a little more." Kong Yuhan asked.

"Such a large formation? I did not know that brother." He answered.

"Well, I don't know its actual name, but it's unofficially called the 'Sect Running' formation. It taps into the spirit vein below the sect, and uses its energy to run the sect." He explained.

Alex thought of something, and said, "So the lanterns are part of that 'Sect Running' formation?" he asked.

Kong Yuhan laughed a little and answered. "Not just the lanterns junior brother. The nameplates, the sect medallion, the doors in the alchemy room, the fire burning inside, the map at the entrance, the mission board, the puppets, the ranking rock. Everything is part of the 'Sect Running' formation."

Alex was truly dumbfounded right now. He couldn't even in his wildest dreams think of something like that. 'So everything I thought was magical, was in fact just part of the 'Sect Running' formation.' He thought.

Kong Yuhan explained a little more, " How else do you think the rankings constantly change. How else do you think the mission board knows what missions you have taken. How else do you think the elders can call out disciples on their nameplates. Everything inside the sect that runs by itself, is a formation."

"So, it's better if you don't go around saying you have never seen a formation before. People will just call you ignorant."

Alex couldn't keep his thoughts straight until he got out of the Alchemy Hall. "Give me your nameplate, Junior brother." Kong Yuhan said. Alex absentmindedly handed him his nameplate.

Kong Yuhan transferred 5 contribution points. "I will see you later junior brother." He said and walked away.

Alex was still having a hard time grasping the sheer scope of the formation in the sect. So many things used formations.

'I guess the things around here aren't exactly 'magical' huh.'

Grrrrr.

He finally came back to focus. He looked at the nameplate in his hand and checked it. 5 points had indeed been added to it. He sighed a little and thought,

'Either way, it's time to get some food.'

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Chapter 26:Qi Manipulation

Alex easily found a restaurant in the sect valley using his map. Dozens of disciples were going in and out of the restaurant. Almost all of them from the outer sect.

'Do you require less food, the higher your cultivation?' he wondered.

He walked in and found a board on top with words on it. He wondered if that was a formation as well, but no. It was just a normal board someone had written in.

He looked at the cheapest dish in the whole restaurant. A meat stew with some vegetables in it. Most of the outer sect disciples were ordering it, so he ordered it too.

While it was the cheapest dish, the restaurant was very generous about the food and gave a lot. The stew was delicious, and he ate a stomach full.

He slowly ate it, taking in all the different flavors, and it took him fifteen minutes to finish the dish. After finishing it, he paid the 2 contribution points and got out of the restaurant.

Sun had already gone down, and darkness was approaching. This only meant, the light of the lantern shined brighter than ever. Alex walked along the festival-like road, thinking what to do next.

He looked at the time and realized it was nearly 7 pm. It was about time to log out. He decided he would practice some more fire controlling after he returned, so he went back to his cottage and logged out.

There was still a few minutes before the other guys logged out, so he decided to call his parents. He talked for a while, told him about his first day in college, talked about the friends he made, etc.

His roommates were out of the game by the time he had hung up the phone. They went to the cafeteria together and talked about a few different things.

He had wanted to ask something for a while, so he did. "Hey guys, why does time slow down sometimes when you are fighting or training?" he asked.

"I think that's called the 'Focus Mode'. Since every player has different strengths or cultivation, it's difficult to speed up the things in the game so that it matches the players. So, instead of speeding up the game as a whole, they just speed up the thought process of a player who has higher cultivation."

"In the end, the player with higher cultivation does stuff faster than the player with the lower one, and it achieves the same result. Since they don't want the higher cultivation players to constantly suffer from everything around them slowing down, the developers just turned it into a mode that activates sometimes"

Eric gave a full and proper explanation that satisfied Alex very much. After they ate their dinner, they went back to their room. Alex was more than happy to get back into the game.

He opened his eyes in his room, with a lantern-lit bright, hanging from the ceiling. He almost went to grab the lantern when he thought, "Wait. I should probably try moving all kinds of stuff with Qi, instead of wasting it all on flame mastery."

He looked around his room to see if there was anything there. His barren room had nothing. So he walked outside and brought back a few small pebbles.

He put down the tiny stones in front of him and took a deep breath. He instinctively activated focus mode. Everything around him slowed down once more. He could feel the heat from the lantern on his skin and see the stones brighter than he would in the daytime.

If he were to attribute what he saw to colors, then he saw about 7 different colors all over his entire body. But it only lasted for a single second and disappeared the moment he found his Qi.

Unlike yesterday, his Qi was different now. There was a sense of vigor and heat to them. Since he wasn't following any technique, there wasn't any specified path for the Qi this time.

So, he just brought it all to his palms and let his qi bleed out of them. As if they were an extension of his own hand, he was still in control of his Qi even after they left his body.

He slowly pushed them forward until they reached the stones. He let the shapeless Qi envelope one of the stones as if he were catching them in his own palm. The Qi followed his command and fully covered the stone.

'Up' he thought. The Qi slowly started moving upwards, while at the same time picking the stone up as well. He watched as the stone hovered in midair.

'I did it he thought. He was still concentrating on the stone, keeping it in the air. Next, he split his attention. While still keeping the stone midair, he tried to bring out more Qi from his body.

He did it very slowly. The Qi had collected on his palm and were starting to bleed out of it. He watched as the formless Qi once again escaped out of his hands.

"Okay. Now all I have to do is put the Qi over the stone and -"

Clink

The stone in midair dropped. "Haaa- alright, once more." He did that a few more times and was easily hovering the tiny stone in mid-air, but when he had to multitask with it, he failed.

"Once more," but he didn't give up.

After a few more tries, he finally managed to hover 2 stones at once. That was when he thought of something.

"What if I think of both objects as a single one?" he brought out some more Qi, and instead of individually wrapping the stones, he wrapped them all at once.

The stones stuck to each other but were easily moved using Qi.

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Chapter 27:Muscle Tempering 9th Realm

Alex practiced both methods of moving multiple objects with Qi.

The first one was where he would individually wrap the object with his Qi, and move them separately.

The second one was where he would wrap all the objects with his Qi at once, and move the objects with Qi.

He found pros and cons for both of these methods. The first one allowed him to move multiple items in multiple ways. He could move one item horizontally, while spinning the other one, and at the same time revolving another item around his body.

The problem with this method was that, it took a lot of concentration.

The second one didn't require any concentration at all. As long as he wrapped the items with his Qi, they easily moved to his commands. But, he could no longer move them individually, and could only move them in one single way.

Alex decided he would learn both way of manipulating items with Qi. He went outside and brought larger stones and started to practice.

He practiced for about 2 hours or so before stopping.

By now, he could easily pick up 2 kilograms worth of items at once, and move them around on his command. When separated, he could pick up 3 different items, each about 500 grams, and move them all individually.

He was very quickly becoming proficient at the task. After 2 hours of doing this, his Qi went down to about half it's original amount.

He then stopped and brought down the lantern. It was time to learn Flame Mastery.

He took out the cover, and looked at the flame hidden within it. Moving the Qi according to the dictation of Flame Mastery Scripture was a muscle memory to Alex.

Without even thinking about it, he started to move and manipulate the fire. With one thought, he changed the shape of the fire into a cube.

"So fast." He was surprised. He had changed the shape of the fire in less than a second, when it should have taken him about two. He changed the fire into other different easy geometric shapes.

It changed very quickly. He put in more Qi, and the size of the fire started to change as well. He quickly increased the fire to half a meter in diameter.

He looked at the massive flame in front of him. Then, a thought came to him, 'Can I split this fire into two?'

He slowly willed the fire to create a divide in its middle. The fire was surprisingly not resisting him at all. Within a few seconds, he managed to split the fire into two.

He let go of one of the half, and it returned to being the lantern flame. He now had another piece of fire floating in front of him to play with.

He tried to split that fire, once more and started to manipulate them separately. He was trying to use his Qi manipulation method to control the fire. It worked.

He let go of the fire, and it disappeared. A confused look had now appeared on Alex's face.

"Too easy. It's too easy. The fire wasn't this easy to manipulate yesterday. It was taking me about 2 seconds to change it's shape, but now I can do it in less than 1? What changed?" he started to wonder.

"Could it be? My new Qi?" he looked into himself to see the vigorous and hot yang qi. "Hmm… my qi seems to align well with fire. Is that why it suddenly got easier?" he thought he cracked the code.

He went back to practicing. It had taken him 3 hours of practicing to go from full Qi to no Qi yesterday. But somehow, it took him over 5 hours to go from half Qi to zero Qi today.

If he hadn't wasted so much of his Qi trying to futilely move around multiple objects, and instead just practiced Flame Mastery, he didn't doubt he could go on for the entire night.

Now that he was out of Qi, he decided to cultivate. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Before he knew it, he was subconsciously cultivating, while his consciousness had fallen asleep.

He woke up early in the morning at around half past 6. He opened his eyes and saw the mess of stones, and lantern in front of him.

He hung the lantern back up to the ceiling, and threw the bunch of stones outside. He opened his status once more. This time he wasn't surprised he had cultivated over night.

This was a normal phenomenon to him now.

————————

[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Muscle Tempering 7th Realm (40,000Qi : 100%) [Breakthrough]

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 87909

—————————

'So the leftover from yesterday helped, huh.' He thought. While his Qi had turned to Yang Qi, it still said Qi on the status page. He hit the [Breakthrough] button and broke through to the 8th realm.

He was about to close his status when he realized he could breakthrough once more. 'Oh' he was happily surprised. He clicked on the [Breakthrough] button once more.

The requirements from 7th to 8th realm was 40,000 Qi, and from 8th to 9th realm was 45,000 Qi. But, for some reason, the requirement for Muscle Tempering 9th Realm to Bone Tempering 1st realm was 100,000 Qi.

'Is that because they are two different major realms, and not minor separation in between the realms?' he wondered.

He had just gone through 2 different breakthroughs and was feeling amazing. He felt more strength in himself than before. The amount of Qi had increased as well.

If he wanted to, he could probably go a full 12 hours of Flame Mastery training and not lose all of his Qi.

He once again looked at the time, realized it was nearly 7 AM and hastily logged out.

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Chapter 28:Daily Routine

It was 3 pm in the afternoon. Alex had just returned to his room from the cafeteria, after a full day of classes. After logging out of the game this morning, he hadn't gone back.

Instead, he spent his morning cleaning the room and washing his clothes. Now that he was back from the university, he couldn't wait to go back to it.

He logged into the game as soon as possible and opened his eyes inside his outer sect cottage. It was an afternoon in the game as well, and the light was shining through his windows.

He walked out of the room to the usual masses of green-robed disciples. He had only one task in his mind today, work as an aid for as long as he could.

He quickly reached outside the Alchemy hall and waited in line to be an aid. He talked to the few aids in the group while waiting.

He came to understand a few things about why the alchemist aids were even a thing. Normally, in an alchemy process, an alchemist had to take care of 3 different things.

The fire, the ingredients in the cauldron, and the ingredients outside the cauldron. They had to maintain the fire's temperature and mix the ingredients in the cauldron properly. These were very important.

So when they had to divert their attention from the alchemy itself to look into their bags and search for ingredients to put in next, it hampered their process, even leading to failure many times.

Inner sect disciples were similar. They couldn't multitask all those 3 things and hope to succeed in making the pill. So, the sect decided to have the Outer sect disciples help them with the third part of the alchemy, giving them ingredients.

This way, the outer sect disciples too could gain knowledge and inspiration in the process of alchemy from watching the inner sect disciples.

Of course, not all inner sect disciples needed aids, but most of them did.

Alex didn't have to wait long before a female disciple took him in as an aid. This was the second time he had gone into the catacombs like Alchemy Hall.

The female disciple quickly found an open room and got it. Alex followed closely behind her and entered.

Without speaking, she handed him a bag of ingredients with a talisman. Alex was hoping for another recipe, but alas his luck wasn't as good.

The talisman only listed the items required for the recipe and the order in which they would go into the cauldron. The female disciple decided to use the black cauldron already heating up in the room and started immediately.

One after another, the ingredient's names came out of the disciple's mouth. Alex gave her exactly the ingredient she asked for. Within half an hour, she completed the alchemy and successfully made a pill.

Alex didn't have the recipe this time, so he couldn't tell everything she did wrong, but his instinct told him she made a few mistakes at least.

The girl brought out a pill tester and put the newly formed pill in it.

18%. This wasn't a bad harmony for a pill made by an inner sect disciple.

The girl put the pill in a ceramic bottle and kept it in her bag. There were still a lot of the same ingredients left in the bag Alex was holding. She had brought multiple sets of the same ingredients.

She started making the pill once more. Names after names came out of her mouth, and Alex accurately handed the ingredients to her.

Once again, she succeeded in making the pill. She tested it and it turned out to be 18% as well.

Alex looked at the bag in front of him. There was enough for one more. She performed alchemy once more. Everything went the same way this time too.

Once again, she successfully formed a pill. 'If she is so good at alchemy, then why did she use 3 different sets?' he wondered.

She brought out the pill from the cauldron and put it in the pill tester.

20%. The female disciple had managed to make a 20% harmony pill. For the first time since he saw her, she smiled.

She kept the pill in a ceramic bottle and looked at him. " Give me your nameplate." She said.

Alex handed it to her. After transferring the points, she handed it back to him and left the Alchemy hall.

He walked out of the Alchemy Hall, and once more waited outside to be an aid. Another person came later and took him.

He worked as an aid until 12 am. He worked as an aid about 12 times before 12 am. Some disciples gave him the whole recipe, some just gave him the ingredients list and order.

He learned a total of 4 new recipes. Every time he learned a recipe, he could immediately tell when someone made a mistake. It was as if the recipe was ingrained into him, and he knew everything about it.

After watching the alchemist perform alchemy so many times, he was starting to get the hang of it. There were even times when he could tell they made some mistakes without having a recipe for the pill.

He earned about 60 points in total. Some made multiple pills, some gave him a little extra.

After returning to his cottage at 12 am, he started practicing the qi manipulation, and Flame Mastery Scripture. He learned each method for 3 hours, and before he knew it it was 6 am.

He wrapped his Qi around the lantern and slowly hovered it up to hang it to the ceiling. He then used Qi once more to throw the rocks out of the room, one by one. Once, everything was gone and the room was clean, he logged out.

Author's Note*

June 11, 2021 -- if you started the book after this date, then you don't have to read this note.

I changed the 5 true realms' names to True Disciple, True Master, True Lord, True King, and True Emperor. I have already gone back to change the names in the previous chapters.

These are only 'name' changes, and won't affect the chapters so far.

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Chapter 29:The First Step

"So, how did you like the movie?" Hannah asked while walking out of the movie theater at around 5 pm.

"Uh, it wasn't bad. I really liked the twist at the end." Alex said walking out of the movie theater at the same time.

Yesterday was Friday, so he had played 'Eternal Cultivation' the entire day as he didn't have classes on Fridays through Sundays. When he woke up this morning, he had received a message from Hannah asking him to go to the movies with him.

He and Hannah reached a fast food place, where they got some food and sat down to eat.

"So, how are you liking the city?" she asked.

Alex looked a little embarrassed as he replied, "Well, I haven't visited the city at all. I spend my days playing games."

Hannah's attention immediately snapped towards what he had just said. "What game?" she asked.

"It's a VR game called Eternal Cultivation," he said.

"Oh, so you are playing the game too?" Hannah's surprised voice came from in front of him.

"Too? You play it as well sister?" he asked.

"Of course. Everyone plays it. How did you buy a helmet? Did you lie to your parents for money?" she frowned a little as she asked.

"Oh, no-no. One of my roommates had an extra helmet, so he gave me one to use for a while." He answered honestly.

" If that is true, then good. When did you start playing?"

"I think it's been a week now. I started playing the night I came to the dorm." He answered.

"Where are you in the game? What are you doing right now?" she asked.

"I'm learning alchemy right now, in Hong Wu sect." He answered.

"Oh, you are learning alchemy? If you make good pills, remember to send me a few." Hannah laughed as she said that.

Alex wasn't sure if she was joking or not but agreed nonetheless.

After half an hour, he was back in the dorm room. He wanted to go back to the game but decided otherwise. He rested a little until dinnertime, and only went back to the game after that.

He opened his eyes in his lantern-lit cottage. His last few days had been the same. He would work as an aid until 12 am at night. After that, he would come back to his cottage, and practice Qi manipulation and Flame Mastery. After he ran out of Qi, he would cultivate.

By now it was getting harder to cultivate more than 2 hours each night. After turning into Yang Qi, his Qi amount had increased by quite a bit and didn't require as much Qi to do the same task.

He stood up and walked out. After working as an aid for the last few days, he had got to learn about 10 or so pill recipes. Some increased your qi, some healed you, some helped make breakthroughs easier.

One pill was even as simple as making you smell good. Alex was shocked that people would spend their hard-earned contribution points on such menial pills.

By now, he had earned about 450 or so contribution points. So, he decided to finally make a pill for himself. It was nighttime, so the outer sect disciples were finally allowed to learn alchemy.

The pill he had decided upon was the [Qi Improvement Pill]. He had read the recipe from one of the inner sect disciples and found out that the ingredients were very easy to come by and didn't cost a lot.

He bought 7 sets of the ingredients, and it had cost him 420 points.

He reached the Alchemy Hall and looked at the outer sect disciples grouped up to work as an aid. For some reason, he felt he didn't need aid, and simply walked in.

He had about 20 points remaining, so he could only use the rooms for 4 hours at best. The remaining 10 points he had spent on ceramic bottles to keep the pill.

He walked into a room and closed the door. He was nervous. He walked up to the cauldron and sat down cross-legged beside it.

He opened his inventory and put the panel to the side. This was the reason he thought he didn't need aid. He could simply order the ingredients in the inventory and pull them out one by one as needed.

His concentration was now divided into 3 parts. While the inventory didn't need too much attention, the fire and the ingredients in the cauldron certainly did.

He had to now drop the fire to 800 Celsius, put the second ingredient, move it around for 4 seconds, and then bring the fire up to 1500 Celsius.

He tried to do just that. He put his Qi into the fire to drop the temperature. But due to his constant Flame Mastery practice, he was too good at dropping temperatures and ended up reducing the temperature too fast.

He took out the second ingredient, and put that into the cauldron. But, for a split second while he was taking out the second ingredient, he forgot to move the first ingredient.

It was a very small mistake, but it was a mistake nonetheless. Similar things kept happening during the pill-making process. Either there would be a lapse in attention towards some ingredients, or he would change the fire too suddenly, or too slowly.

By the time he put in the final ingredient, he knew he had made too many mistakes. After the final ingredient turned into powder, he used his Qi to slowly form it into a spherical shape and condensed that into a pill.

After he finally succeeded in making it into a pill, he pulled it out of the cauldron. When he saw the pill, he sighed. It read,

[Qi Improvement Pill: 6%]

His first attempt at alchemy had ended in a failure.

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Chapter 30:One Step Forward

Alex ran his qi through the inside of the cauldron to wipe away any little impurities that had remained there. He had seen the other inner sect disciples do this trick to prepare for their next batch of ingredients.

He once again took a deep breath and put in the first ingredient. He used his Qi to move it around, slowly turning it into powder. He lowered the heat to 800 Celsius but made sure to not do it very fast.

While he did end up not getting the timing right, it was still much better than the first time. He took out the second ingredient and put it in, while constantly monitoring the first ingredient.

After a while, he turned the heat up to 1500 Celsius. He followed the recipe and did as it asked. However, keeping his attention on 3 different things, while at the same time constantly remembering what he had to do next was too hard for him.

He started to lose focus from time to time. Still, this turn went better than the last one. Finally, once all ingredients were inside the cauldron, and fully turned into powder, he started condensing them.

Slowly but surely, he turned them into a pill. He pulled the successfully formed pill out and held it in his hand.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 12%

Improves cultivation speed by 12% for 12 hours]

Alex took a small rest. While alchemy wasn't physically taxing, it was mentally very draining. Doing 3 different things, all with smalled different things from time to time was too much for Alex.

Suddenly, Alex thought of something.

"Wait, what if I slow downtime? Wouldn't that reduce the load off my mind?" he thought that was a brilliant idea. He decided to try it.

He slowed downtime and started putting in the ingredients. As soon as he put in the first ingredient, he realized he made a mistake. Since he was now in focus mode, time was now slow. But, he could not tell how slow he had to move the ingredients since he didn't know how slow time was. He didn't have a clock to look at.

He now wished the clock at his vision's top right corner showing the seconds.

He had already put in the ingredients so, he decided to follow it through. Since he couldn't follow the timing as the recipe dictated, he decided to go off of his instincts.

He instinctively slowed down every process by what he assumed was the rate of time dilation. He followed the recipe and did what the recipe told him to, only at a slower rate.

The slowed down time helped with every other aspect of the pill-making process, however.

Finally, after a while, he managed to condense the ingredients into a pill. He took the pill out with nervousness, as he didn't know how it would turn out.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 10%]

He had succeeded. It was barely at the cusp of being accepted as a mortal-grade pill. He had managed to successfully create a pill, even though focus mode.

After a short rest, he started once more.

This time he managed to create a 12% harmony pill. He was getting better at creating pills with Focus mode activated.

After a short rest, he started on his 5th set of ingredients.

He followed the same technique all the way through until the end when suddenly something happened within him that startled him. As he was started to condense the powders into the pill, a bunch of Qi inside his body started to move.

Similar to when he activated Flame Mastery Scripture, they moved in a certain path through his meridian. This path was different from the one Flamer Mastery Scripture activated.

Once the Qi moved through his entire body, it arrived at his hands and diffused from it. The arrival of the new Qi made him intuitively use it.

He slowly guided the Qi to enter the cauldron and split it into 2 portions. Both portions of the Qi started to condense the powder into 2 separate balls.

And as a result, they turned into 2 different pills. Alex was astonished at what had just happened. How did he know that he had to split the powder into two portions to form two pills?

Also the pathway the Qi took through his body was the first time they had been used. He only had 2 techniques as of now. Since this wasn't the pathway of [Flame Mastery Scripture]…

"Could it be the [Alchemy God's Knowledge]?" he wondered. He quickly opened his techniques to check the description and realized what had happened.

With Level 1 of [Alchemy God's Knowledge, he had a 50% chance to create an extra pill. That chance had just activated. Alex was both shocked and happy with learning that he could make 2 pills from a single set of ingredients.

He took out both of the newly formed pills and checked.

[Qi Improving Pill: 15%

Improves cultivation speed by 15% for 12 hours]

"Wow! That is the best pill I have made as of yet." He was shocked. He turned his attention to the other pill in his hand.

[Qi improving pill: 15%

Improves cultivation speed by 15% for 12 hours]

This was the same pill as the first one. "Will the harmony level always be the same between the two pills when the 50% chance is activated?" he wondered.

He soon got his answer. After resting a bit he started once more and got 2 pills. One was 12% in harmony, and the other was 14%. He didn't know why that was, but he was glad to know it was possible.

He started with the last pill and succeeded in making it. The last pill came out with 16% harmony. He was really happy to see that.

Seeing that all his ingredients were gone, he walked up to the door and took out his nameplate. 15 points were taken off of the nameplate, meaning he had been here for 3 hours, making pills.

Once he made sure all the pills were in the ceramic bottles, he walked out.

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Chapter 31:Selling Pills At A Loss

Alex walked out of the Alchemy hall at around 10 pm. He had managed to make 8 mortal grade Qi Improvement Pills.

"Do I go sell them now? Or should I register one at the disciple hall first?" he stopped for a moment to decide.

To take the test to become an inner sect disciple, the first requirement was 10 different mortal grade pill. This meant he had to somehow find 10 different recipes, and create a mortal grade for each of them.

Every time he made one, he would have a chance to register them as one of his 10 pills. Once he made 10 pills, he would be given the opportunity to become an inner sect disciple.

He didn't however hear anyone talk about what the test was to become an inner sect disciple, however.

After more than a second of contemplation, he decided to go to the disciple hall.

Walking along the festival-like valley road, he quickly reached the black ranking rock. He hadn't come here since getting his nameplate the first day. When he saw his name that time, it was dead last in the ranking.

He wondered where he was now. It didn't take him more than a few minutes to find his name. However, he was happy it even took him that long.

The total names on the list were 4883. His name was on the 4545th ranking. He had earned more than 300 disciples. Most of them were probably newcomers like him, but just the fact that he got that ranking made him happy.

He walked over to the other side and checked his name there. However, on this site, his name was near the last place. From what he could infer, he didn't have any alchemy achievement at the moment.

He walked into the disciple hall and quickly got into a line. When his turn came along, he handed the inner sect disciple working there the 10% harmony pill.

"I wish to register this pill." He said.

The disciple took the pill and used a pill tester to check the harmony. After confirming that he had indeed brought out a mortal grade pill, the disciple took up a medallion and place it on his forehead.

'Since the medallion is also part of the sect running formation, I wonder if he is checking for something.' Alex was intrigued.

The disciple was indeed checking for something. He was checking Alex's purchase history at the sect market. Anything bought and sold from the official stalls where the elder stayed was recorded in the sect running formation.

The disciple was checking if the pill Alex brought in matched what he had bought in the sect. This was a way of finding out if the disciple had indeed made the pill or not. Another thing he was checking was also the pill room usage by Alex.

Once he found that Alex had in fact bought the items for the pill the day before, and had just gone into a pill room about 3 hours ago, he registered the pill under Alex's name.

The disciple then handed back Alex's nameplate but kept the pill. Alex knew they kept the pill brought for registering, which was why he decided to use the lowest harmony pill in the first place.

Once he was done, he walked out and checked the Alchemy Achievement rankings again.

His name had somehow jumped from the 4800s to 4234.

"Wow. Does that mean almost 600 outer sect disciple had yet to succeed in making a pill?"

He left and went to the sect market. He arrived there in less than 5 minutes. He got in a line and waited for his turn at one of the sect stalls.

He walked up and put out all the remaining 7 pills to sell them.

"I wish to sell these, elder." He said to the elder working in the stall.

This was the same bald elder with wrinkles and streaks of white on his hair and beard. The elder took the pill bottles and checked the pills inside.

Once he confirmed they were indeed mortal-grade pills, he took out a pill tester and tested them.

12%,12%,12%,14%,15%,15%, and 16%.

The elder calculated and said, "you can sell these for 226 points."

"226? But elder I bought 7 sets of ingredients for 420 points, so why are the pills selling for half the price of the ingredients?" he was confused.

"Secondly, if we don't sell the pills for fewer points, a skilled disciple could use just 60 points to buy a set of ingredients, sell the pill for 60 points, then buy another set, and sell another pill, and on and on. This way the sect will soon go into a points crisis."

"This way, the sect can run properly, without having to worry about the same 60 points clearing the entire sect garden."

"So, do you want the points or not?" the elder asked.

Alex sighed, and said, "Yes I do, elder." He handed the elder his nameplate.

"You want to buy anything?" the elder asked.

Alex wanted to, but he had his own idea about what he needed to do.

"No, thank you." He rejected the offer.

The elder handed him his nameplate back with the 226 points. Alex walked out of the market and walked along the night streets.

He didn't need to become an aid anymore, as he could make pills himself. What he needed now was contribution points to buy the alchemy ingredients. And from his experience, the best way to earn contribution points was by selling monster corpses, cores, and materials.

So, the first thing on his agenda was to go out and kill some monsters. And, to kill monsters easily and successfully, he needed to learn some battle techniques.

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Chapter 32:Battle Technique

Alex made his way to the sect library. At the entrance, he showed his nameplate to the attending elder and walked in. He didn't have a lot of contribution points, so the best he could get was a low-tier mortal grade technique.

He had an hour to look through the techniques, but it didn't take him that long this time.

Very soon he found a sword-related technique called [Smiting Blade]. It cost only 200 contribution points, so he happily took it. For comparison, the [Flame Mastery Scripture] would've cost him about 800 contribution points.

Mortal grade techniques cost between 100 and 1000 contribution points, while the highest Earth grade technique Alex had seen previously was 4000 points. There might have been some that cost even more.

Alex had tried to read the books in the library but realized they wouldn't open for some reason. So, he walked out of the library with the book in hand.

He handed it to the elder, along with the nameplate. The elder handed it to him and reminded him to return the book in 7 days. Alex also returned the [Flame Mastery Scripture] at the same time, as he didn't need it anymore.

He went to a quiet place and took out the book. Under the lantern's light, he started reading it. He didn't understand what the book really said, but when he finished it, he got a notification.

He opened the description of the technique.

———————————-

[Smiting Blade

Grade: Mortal

Infuse Qi into the blade to increase its penetrating power.]

—————————————

"Alright, time to train now." He said as he looked at his new technique's description.

He needed to look for a place to train this technique now. And there was no place better for this in the sect than the training hall.

Alex located the training hall a few distances away. Although it was called a hall, it was just a massive open field. He could see a few dozens of disciples training their battle techniques.

Some were shooting out arrows, some were using a sword, some threw fire from their hand, while some just ran around a lot making weird moves.

All of these disciples were far away from each other, so there was no way they could hamper each other's progress.

There were about a few hundred wooden posts in the field denoting the place for training. Alex walked up to one of the posts that were far away from any disciple.

He looked at the carving on the surface of the post and places his nameplate there. As soon as he did that, about a few meters away from him, the ground opened up and a wooden puppet came out.

The puppet was what the disciples trained their techniques on. Similar to the alchemy room, the training hall too took 5 contribution points per hour, so he needed to get on with it.

He brought out his steel sword and activated focus mode. Once everything slowed down, he closed his eyes and tried to feel his Qi. This was too easy for him at this point.

He thought of the new technique, and the Qi started moving through his meridian. This was the first time, so it was going to take longer to complete the travel through the new path.

It slowly moved all over his body and reached his hands. However, instead of diffusing from his hands, it instead traveled from his palm to the hilt of the sword.

The Qi felt some difficulty in entering the hilt but still managed to enter it at last.

The Qi had visibly entered the sword hilt as Alex saw the hilt's color change to a slight yellowish hue. The color then traveled up the sword as it crossed the cross-guard, moved along the blade, and stopped at the tip.

His Qi has trouble moving along the entirety of the sword but succeeded in it at last. Now, the sword was glowing a mild yellow.

"I wonder if the Qi is having difficulty because it's a metal object?" Alex wondered.

Now that he had successfully activated his [Smiting Blade] technique, it was time to test how good it was. He held the sword in a fighting stance and pounced forward to cut the puppet.

BAM

A massive cut appeared on the puppet where Alex had just cut it. The sword had stopped glowing yellow as he stopped the flow of Qi.

He looked back at the wooden post as a few words appeared on it.

He smiled. His attack just now had been equivalent to a Bone Tempering 1st Realm cultivator's normal strike. That meant his new battle technique improved his damage by 1 realm's worth.

Adding to the fact that this 1 realm was an entire minor realm jump, the battle technique returned its worth twice over. He decided to attack once more.

Once more, he did the same damage as a Bone Tempering 1st Realm cultivator.

[Muscle Tempering 8th Realm]

"Huh? Why is my damage lower than my actual cultivation base? What is going on?" he was very much confused.

He tried attacking the puppet with his bare hands.

[Muscle Tempering 9th Realm]

"Wait. So I do more damage with my fists than I do with the sword? What sort of garbage was I handed during the tutorial." Alex couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Is this the game's way of balancing things out? Giving me ultra good talents and techniques, but then giving me trash pills that give 10 Qi, or a sword that does less damage than my fists."

Alex didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He picked up his sword once more. The puppets were part of the sect running formation and had self-mending techniques, so they were back to perfect condition once more.

He infused Qi into the sword once more and started attacking.

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