Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy #Chapter 97: Sold - Read Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy Chapter 97: Sold Online - All Page -
Chapter 97: Sold
"Master, are you telling me that people can read this language?" Alex asked while pointing to his book.
"Of course. Everyone can read this book, how else are we supposed to learn new techniques?" Ma Rong said.
"But, the writing on the walls and such don't have this language. Most buildings I've visited also don't use this language in their name. How can everyone read it if they don't even use the language?" He said.
"By everyone, I meant the cultivators. Every cultivator starts by learning this language. Since it's just our own language, just written differently, it's easy to learn. Only after that can they learn a cultivation method in the first place."
"So, why doesn't everyone write in the normal language then? One wouldn't have to learn this language in the first place." Alex said after giving it some thought.
"Oh, and what would you do if you come across some ancient texts written in that language? You can already see what is happening right now by people not being able to read that dusty book. What would happen if everyone stopped learning this language?" she asked.
"Hmm… I guess you are right. If that's how the language started then that argument is valid," Alex said.
"Now you get it. Besides, using 2 different languages helps separate a cultivator's text from a normal person's text. But let's forget about that for now. I want to know how you can read that text." She asked.
"I…" 'I can do it because the game developers made it so.' He wanted to say that, but he couldn't. "I don't know. I don't understand the language but can somehow read it. Same with our own language." He said.
Ma Rong couldn't make heads or tails of the answer, so she decided to give up for now and instead focused on her pill being sold. The soul reuniting pill sold for a total of 43 True Spirit stones.
The next item on the auction was an alchemy ingredient called Revitalizing Ginseng. Alex remembered the name from the records he had read on the top floor a few days ago.
"An ingredient for the Body Rejuvenating pill? But I thought those were pretty much extinct?" he said.
"You read the records too? Yes, they were said to be extinct, but it seems our information is wrong." Ma Rong commented.
Cai Ping started explaining the ingredient. "This ginseng on my hand is called a Revitalizing Ginseng. This is the main ingredient for the pseudo-Saint rank pill called the 'Body Rejuvenating Pill'. The pill is incredible, as it can increase a person's life span by an entire Century regardless of if you are a cultivator or a mortal."
"Oh wow. A 100 years?"
"That's a lot!"
"Can anyone really make that pill though? It's a pseudo-Saint rank pill."
"Maybe Hong Wu sect leader can make it, if not, we can ask the Royal alchemist for it."
Numerous people talked about the ingredient in the crowd. Cai Ping continued, "The auction will start at 30 True spirit stones, and each bid has to be 50 common spirit stones higher."
The crowd didn't bid as much this time. 30 True Spirit stones were a lot for most of the people on the ground floor. The people in the VIP however, bid as though their spirit stones grew in their home's backyard.
Alex watched as his master also bid. He had read the records so he knew how good the ingredient in front of him was. A mortal on average lived around 60 years and 100 years at max.
A self tempering cultivator however could live from anywhere between 100 to 200 years on average. Some even lived as long as 300 years.
A True realm cultivator on the other hand could easily live between 500 to 1000 years on average. Maybe even 1500 in some cases.
The Saint realm cultivator's life span wasn't recorded in the records but they were sure to be high in number. Just looking at that, to anyone who was a True realm cultivator or less, a Body Rejuvenating Pill would be a miracle. Especially when they were at the end of their life.
The bidding was quickly ended at the merchant head fatty managed to outbid everyone with his immense wealth. He bid 100 True spirit stones for the Revitalizing Ginseng and snatched it away from everyone.
After buying Ginseng, the fatty immediately walked out of his room and left the auction house. He wasn't a good cultivator so the next item was useless for him.
Quite a few people left the auction house, acting as if the auction was over. After a few minutes, only about 10% of the original audience was left. Most of them being in the VIP and VVIP rooms.
"Finally, here we go fellow customers. You have all checked the book, please bid whatever you feel this book deserves." Cai Ping said not expecting the people the bid at all.
"1 common spirit stones" someone bid as Cai Ping had not set a minimum bid. Cai Ping felt bad but didn't say anything.
"2 Common Spirit stones."
"3 Common spirit stones."
People started slowly increasing their spirit stones in the hope that they could get the book at a low price, and maybe sell it somewhere else for a higher price.
Suddenly, Ma Rong spoke, "10 True spirit stones."
The entire auction hall became silent. The people who were slowly increasing their bid hesitated as 10 true spirit stones was a lot of money. But then why would that person pay it?
The people in the VIP and VVIP rooms were confused as well, but they didn't bid either. Cai Ping on the other hand became grateful towards the guest in room B1.
She waited for a bit for others to bid, and when they didn't she started the countdown.
"10 True spirit stones, going once."
"10 True spirit stones, going twice."
"10 True spirit stones, going thrice. Sold" she hit the gavel on the table with a loud bang. "The final item in the auction has been sold to the Customers in Room B1."
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Chapter 98: Back To Sect
Once the book was sold, Cai Ping thanked everyone for coming and waited as everyone left the hall. Ma Rong took Alex with her as the lady in the room guided them to a room outside.
After waiting for a while, an old man with white hair finally entered the room.
"Hello, miss Ma. It's good to see you again." He said as he bowed towards Ma Rong a little.
Ma Rong also nodded a little and said, "Hello senior. It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Alex took the opportunity to greet as well. The old man then proceeded to take out two bags of storage and handed them to Ma Rong and Alex. "Please check it," he said and sat opposite them.
Alex looked into his bag and realized there were about 27 True spirit stones and a few Common spirit stones. After taking their cut of the sale, this was what the auction house had given him.
Even after giving 10% of this to the Deva Corporation, he would still have about 25K dollars for himself.
"Take it," suddenly he heard Ma Rong say something from the side. "Hmm…" he turned around to see that she was holding the dirty old book in her hand, giving it to him.
"Me?"
"Yes, I bought it for you. So take it." She said.
"Thank you, Master." He said and gladly took the book. He read the introductory page and was still amazed that the writings on the book were languages that people spoke.
'Why would the developers change the language?' he wondered. 'If most mortals speak the real-life language, I don't think it was necessary to make an entirely new language right?'
"Let's go," Ma Rong started walking away, and Alex followed her as well.
Most of the people had already left the auction hall, so they didn't meet anyone while walking out. Ma Rong took out her flying boat and flew back to the sect along with Alex.
It had taken them nearly 3 hours in total, and Alex wanted to go get some food. He logged out for his afternoon lunch and returned back.
'Should I leave my dorm room, so I can have a flexible schedule for myself?' he wondered, but immediately shook his head. Being in a dorm room had given him the freedom to play whenever he wanted, and also the university was just 5 minutes away.
If he were to leave now, he would have a hard time balancing his university, home, and game time.
'Alright, let's send my money first.' He opened the settings and found a button that opened the bank's panel for him. He put in the information for his bank and saved it. Then, he pressed another button that opened a panel to transfer his spirit stones to the saved bank account.
He put in all of his spirit stones and hit send.
Do you want to send '2560 ($25,600) to XXXXXXXXXX343?
He clicked yes. The spirit stones disappeared from his inventory, and he logged out. He waited for a moment and heard a notification sound.
He quickly opened his phone to see a message on it.
$25,600 has been successfully transferred to your account
He kept staring at the number and was shocked. It had been less than a month since he came to the city, and he had already earned so much.
"I should buy my own helmet on a free day," he thought. He marveled at the money for a while and went back to the game.
He took out the dusty old book and started reading. For some reason, this book took him an exceptionally long time to read. Almost twice as much as the Immortal Grade techniques. He didn't know if the reason for that was the difference in language, the length of the book, or the fact that it was just that exceptionally hard to understand.
Still, after about 10 or so minutes, he fully learned it. He opened the description to the technique. For some reason, the information took a couple of seconds to load, instead of loading instantly like every other time.
[Heaven's Impact:
Grade: Heaven
Use your spiritual sense to hit your opponent's mind with a mighty blow. The greater the difference in mental prowess, the more the damage]
He wanted to test it out, but there was nothing he could try it on. This stumped him for a minute. 'I guess I'm not going to test it anytime soon then.'
He had nothing to do now, so he went to take some pills. There were still a few pills he could make today, and tonight he would have to get some ingredients from the alchemy garden to make the remaining 20 pills to be a core disciple.
He started making simple pills with the remaining ingredients for already made pills and went on to try out the new pills. He was already used to making high-quality pills, so every pill he made ended up having over 30% harmony with ease.
Around evening, he logged out to get his dinner and came back to the game to do his task for the night. He met elder Zhan and elder Wang and took the list for the ingredients.
He walked into the alchemy garden and got every single ingredient on the list as well as the ones he required for the pills he was going to register.
Between the two gardens, they had enough ingredients that he could use to make 7 of the remaining 130-ish pills he had recipes of. After handing the collected ingredient, he walked to the disciple hall. By now, his alchemy achievements had shot through the roof. While he wasn't in the top ten yet, at this rate it wouldn't take him more than a week to be at the top.
He went into the hall to the core disciple's section and registered his 3 new pills to the elder working there. Afterward, he returned to his residence.
"Alright! 7 more pills and I will become a core disciple as well."
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Chapter 99: Spiritual Attack
Early in the morning, Alex woke up from his cultivation. He was tired from yesterday's auction, so he had decided to just cultivate for the night.
He opened his status to check his current Qi. He had about 1.6 million Qi right now. If he wanted to, he could easily break through to the Bone Tempering 9th Realm. But, that would be bad for his foundation as his cultivation base would be hugely destabilized.
The further one went, the worse it would be. He logged out to get some breakfast and came back. Just as he logged back in, his master arrived as well.
'Huh? Are we going somewhere today too?' he wondered.
"Come, it's time for our lesson." She said as she walked into a room that was not the alchemy room. Alex was more surprised now.
"Master, weren't we done with lessons? At least, until I was able to turn 50% of my current Qi into True Qi?" he asked.
"I am not here to teach you alchemy today. I'm here to teach you about the basic knowledge every cultivator should have, that you certainly don't."
"Let's start with language…" Ma Rong went on to teach him how to read the language for about 2 hours. She was confident he could learn it in two hours with his superior memory and mental strength.
In two hours, Alex was good, if not better than most of the cultivators out there in reading the language.
"Alright, take out that old book. Let's see if you can translate that book." She said.
Alex nodded and brought out Heaven's impact book. Ma Rong looked at the book and asked, "See if you can read it now that you know it's a language."
He tried to read it, but he couldn't understand a single word in the book. To him, they were just another piece of paper with scribbles on it.
"I can't master. I can't read it." He said.
"Hmm… didn't you say you read the introduction page?" she asked.
"Oh, that. I didn't exactly read it. It's more like after I look over it, the information just comes to my mind." He said.
Ma Rong frowned a bit. The book had an unknown origin, meaning if anyone could read these books, they might be able to use abilities not yet seen in the Crimson Empire. "Alright then, did you learn it?"
"Well, I did learn it, but…" he trailed off.
"But what? Is this not a technique? Is this something else?" she asked.
"Oh, no. This is a technique. It's only that I couldn't use it at all since I didn't have a target to practice on. So, I still don't know exactly what it does, only that it uses spiritual sense to attack another person's mind."
"Hmm…" Ma Rong contemplated for a moment and said, "Alright, attack me."
"Umm… are you sure master?" he asked.
"Yes, if it does in fact attack the mind, I'm confident that my mind is stronger than yours." She said.
Alex felt the reasoning made sense. "Ok, then, here I come master." He immediately started using the technique. He expected his Qi to start flowing as he started the technique, but to his surprise, they stayed where they were.
Instead, his spiritual sea started churning like crazy. Suddenly, a vortex appeared in the middle of his spiritual sea and quickly drained as a quarter of his spiritual sea dried up within a second.
All of the disappeared sea turned into a massive cloud of spiritual sense that started forming what he felt was a solid shape. They came together to form a fist, ready to launch outward.
He looked towards his master and regarded her as the target. Suddenly, the newly formed fist made up of spiritual sense flew out of his Spiritual sea and slammed right into Ma Rong's head.
Ma Rong had been waiting for the attack to arrive, so she had been monitoring with her spiritual sense. Suddenly, she felt something move near her disciple. And out of nowhere, it struck her head.
Ma Rong felt her consciousness die for a moment as everything around her dimmed to the point she couldn't see anything. Her body went limp without the control of her mind and started falling to the ground.
Within mere split seconds, she caught herself from falling and stabilized herself. Her breathing had gotten disorderly and there were traces of fear in her eyes.
"Are you okay, master?" Alex asked as he was worried that she might have been hurt.
"I- I'm fine. I'm fine." She was shocked at just how strong the attack was. Even without considering the difference in their cultivation, she had more than twice his mental strength, yet she had lost consciousness for a second there.
That went to show just how terrifying this ability was. "How is your spiritual sense? Any changes?" she asked.
"Changes? No, but I did lose a quarter of my spiritual sea on that attack." He said.
"I see. Well, it only makes sense for you to do so much damage if you had to use such a high amount of spiritual sense. Don't worry, after mind tempering realm, you will have a much stronger mental strength and can easily use that technique multiple times." She reassured him.
"Mind tempering realm? I understand master." Alex was looking forward to growing stronger as a cultivator now.
"Alright then, try and see if you can somehow understand the language there. It will help me as well if I can understand that language. As for alchemy, how many pills do you have yet to register?" she asked.
"7, master." He said.
"Alright. Do what you want for now. I will return back around noon to continue our lesson." She said and walked away.
Alex was just happy that his master was investing so much time in him. He was looking forward to seeing what his master would teach him now that she was done teaching about the languages.
"I guess I will have to wait and see. For now, let's go get some lunch." He logged off.
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Chapter 100: Master's Lessons
Ma Rong came back at noon, exactly on the dot, and spent the next 3 hours teaching him the various things one would have to know as a cultivator. She taught him from the smallest things such as what a cultivator should and should not call each other to things such as the different cities and the powerhouses in them across the Crimson Empire.
She taught him about the Royal Fu family and Fu Tian, the King of the Crimson Empire. She taught him how the royal Fu family sent its descendants around the empire to rule as city lords and ladies.
She also gave him a map of the crimson empire to learn and memorize where all the cities were relative to one another.
She also taught him about how a cultivator fought. Some fought with weapons, some fought with their bare hands, some fought using impressive techniques, some fought using poison, some fought using beasts, some fought using bugs, some fought using formations, some fought using talismans, some fought using weird artifacts, and some even fought using pills.
She also taught him about the other production methods aside from the alchemy itself. Some made formations, some made artifacts, some made solely weapons, and some made talismans.
"The last thing, make sure to hide your true talents in front of others. Like I said before, people are envious creatures. Cultivators are no different either. They will betray you the moment they learn you have something they don't. It won't matter to them whether they can obtain it or not, if they can't have it, no one can."
"You are young and you are pure-hearted, but that heart will for sure dye in the filth of the world of cultivation. Make sure you never let that filth stick to yourself. You might get drowned in it, but you have to learn to climb over it."
"For that, you can't just be an alchemist and hope to live in the cultivation world safely. There are strong people out there with bad motivation that might force you into working for them if you aren't strong enough to defend yourself. So, you have to be strong, strong enough to fight off your enemies. I wish you never have to kill anyone, but I know you will have to, even if it's just to defend yourself and your loved ones. The only thing I can do is hope is you don't lose yourself along with your enemies."
"Alright, that's enough for today. You don't have to worry about all these things right now but keep it in mind. I taught you almost everything I could. There are many things I still haven't taught you but that's just because I am not too knowledgeable in them either. You will hopefully learn them soon."
"I'm leaving now, you do what you have to." Ma Rong left the room and walked outside. She took out a medallion and used her spiritual sense to send out a message to all the elders saying, "Starting tomorrow, all the elders who used to work on the alchemy garden are to go back to working on it."
The elders got confused why the sect leader would do that, but they accepted them anyway.
Alex on the other hand remained stunned in his home. He had learned a lot today, yet the final words of his master were what remained to playback in his mind.
'I will have to kill people.' He didn't question the statement and took that as a fact. He knew that was true. After all, this was a game and killing was just an aspect of it. Still, for some reason, killing people wasn't something he would look forward to.
He spent the next few hours absorbing the information his master had just gave him. After he was done learning everything, he left the game to get some dinner.
After dinner, he came back and went to the sect valley to work. This day, he hadn't got the time to make any pills, so he wasn't going to register any. After finishing his work, he went back to his residence and managed to make the 6 different pills throughout the night.
After today's lesson, he didn't have the mental energy to make any more so he just cultivated throughout the rest of the night. In the morning, he logged out of the game and stayed logged out to do some of his classwork.
He only returned back to the game after his classes were over. After logging in, he looked at his storage bags and realized he only had one more pill to go. He was feeling unusually fresh today, so he went on to finish the last pill.
Ma Rong came to his house at around 4 pm. She walked in and sent out her spiritual sense to find him in the middle of alchemy. She walked into the alchemy room to see his absolutely focused face carefully looking at the cauldron.
After a few minutes of intense concentration, he finally opened the lid and a pill flew out of it. As he pulled the pill out, he slumped in exhaustion.
The pill that had just formed was blood red in color and used blood ginseng as its primary ingredient. It was called the Blood Improving pill. It was a common rank pill that would instantly refill a person's blood after they have lost a lot of blood. Or if they did already have blood, it would thicken it and invigorate it with more strength.
This pill was especially important to people in their old ages or people with anemia, as it would counteract their loss of blood and give them a much-needed boost in stamina.
Alex looked at the blood-red pill in his hand and felt its aura. Just the smell alone nearly brought him out of his fatigue, while the aura was something he had never felt before.
He focused on the pill to look at its information as a small panel popped up on top of it.
[Blood Improving Pill: 50%]
He had just made his first Heaven-grade pill.
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Chapter 101: Leaving
"Hahaha hahaha," he started laughing like an idiot. Ma Rong could already tell that the pill had a high harmony, still, she walked in to test it.
Alex looked at her and said, "Oh, hello master. I didn't see you come in." He got up from the ground and dusted himself off.
Ma Rong had already taken out a pill tester and brought it forward. Alex didn't question anything and just put the pill directly into the pill tester.
Ma Rong watched as the fog slowly rise up. She had expected it to cross 40% and wasn't surprised when it did. As she watched the fog slowly rise up, more and more until it stopped at 50%.
"Heaven! You made a Heaven grade pill!!" she involuntarily let out a loud shock.
"Yeah. I got lucky for the most part, but yes. Getting fresh ingredients also helped a lot." He said with a smile.
Ma Rong didn't say another word as she kept on looking at the pill and only spoke after a while, "It took me until I was an elder before I made a heaven-grade pill, yet you made it in just under a month. This is way too shocking."
Alex didn't reply, but instead asked a question, "What are you doing here master? Are we going to have another lesson?"
"Hmm… No. Did you forget what day it is today?" she asked.
"Today? It's Monday of course. Was something supposed to happen today?" he was a little confused.
"Did you forget what you said 2 weeks ago?" Ma Rong asked.
"2 weeks ago?" he started thinking. His perfect memory only went back until the Wednesday before the last one, so he needed to think a bit to remember.
"Oh, wait. Tiger sect. Am I going to Tiger Sect?" he asked, finally realizing what she meant.
"Yes, I'm here to take you to the Tiger sect right now. Come with me." She said as she started walking out.
"Master, the pill?" he asked, stopping her in her tracks.
Ma Rong only then realized she was still holding the pill tester. "Oh right," she quickly took out a pill bottle and put it back.
"Here," she handed him the pill back. Instead of taking it, however, he brought out 6 other pill bottles. "Master, take these. Please register them on my behalf when you have the time. I won't be able to now that I'm leaving for Tiger sect."
Ma Rong checked the pills and realized all of them were some of his best products. "How many more pills do you have to make?" she asked.
"None. That was my last one." He said pointing to the blood-red pill.
"Alright then, after you come back from the Tiger sect in 2 weeks, you will have to take the core disciple test." She said and kept the pills. She then gave him a storage bag.
Alex took the bag and found out it was full of different types of healing pills. "What's this for master?" he asked.
"You will need them if you are going to the tiger sect. Especially since you won't have Wen Cheng's protection for about a few weeks." Ma Rong said.
"Not have master's protection? I don't understand, Master."
"Basically, Wen Cheng wants to keep your relationship as a secret for a few weeks. That doesn't matter right now, Wen Cheng will explain to you most of the rest." She then took out a set of bluish-gray robes that were very plain to look at.
"Wear these for now," she threw the robes at him.
Alex quickly changed into his new plain robes and walked outside with her. "Master, I can go by myself if you are busy by the way." He said.
"Nonsense. Come on, I'm taking you there." She said as she took out the flying boat and got on top of it.
"Master, do you really need the boat now that you have spiritual sense?" he asked.
"Not really, but it is still easier to use, and I'm used to it." She said and gestured for him to climb up. Alex jumped onto the boat and the boat set off.
"Alright, listen up. I talked to Wen Cheng, and we decided that you need to learn to confront a normal sect on your own. You will enter the sect as a normal disciple and rise along with the ranks the normal way. Also, this might be the chance for you to breakthrough in your cultivation, so make sure to properly cultivate every night. "
"Wen Cheng will teach you the rest. While I may not like admitting it, he really is a good teacher. Both of his disciples are the best Tiger sect has produced in a while." Ma Rong talked a lot but somehow didn't give out a lot of information.
"Alright, go invisible," she said and watched Alex disappear in front of her eyes. "Oh yeah, one more thing. You are not allowed to use the invisibility technique or the Flickering Shadows technique during your fights. Only use them in training, or when you spar against Wen Cheng."
Alex couldn't understand why that was, but it probably had something to do with hiding his talent and abilities. His master did say it made people jealous.
"Here we are, Jump down and reappear in an alley. After that just go to the sect gate and tell them your name and that you are a new disciple of the sect. They should know that someone like you is arriving."
Alex nodded and did as she said. "Goodbye master," he said and jumped down, slowly floating his way down. After landing, he went to a nearby alley and appeared from the other side finally visible.
He walked towards the north side of the town looking for the gate to the sect. When he finally found it, he was shocked.
He had been expecting a big gate with no other building in the vicinity. But instead, the Tiger sect's gate was actually a small bustling market on its own.
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Chapter 102: Inner Sect Disciple
Alex was shocked that the entrance to the sect was actually a bustling market. He saw some shops that sold alchemy ingredients, some that sold weapons, some sold general artifacts, some sold talismans, and some even sold formation flags.
'What is going on here?' he wondered. Most of the customers in this market were disciples of the Tiger Sect with their yellow robes and either green or blue linings.
'Blue, I think was Inner sect disciples, right? So green has to be the outer sect. Was senior sister's red-colored lining for core disciples?' he wondered.
He walked past the many disciples and finally saw a small but expensive-looking gate. The gates had two pillars with a statue of a mighty tiger in a mid striking pose on top of both the gates. Between the two pillars was a massive curved board that had the words, 'TIGER SECT' written on it.
Alex walked past the gate and was immediately stopped by a man in a yellow robe with silver linings. 'Elder?' he thought.
"Stop right there. Who are you, and what are you doing here?" the elder inquired.
"Ah, hello. My name is Yu Ming. I am a new disciple of the Tiger Sect. I was told that you guys would know about it." He said.
"Hmm… Yu Ming?" the elder quickly checked his notes and exclaimed, "Ah, yes. We are waiting for you. Come with me." The elder took him to a building right next to the gate and knocked on one of the doors inside the building.
"What is it?" a sound came from the inside.
"Leader, the disciple named Yu Ming is here." The elder said and waited.
"Come in." The elder opened the door and walked it. Inside the room, was a very young man sitting on a chair. He had short black hair and was wearing an elder's clothes. As for his age, he was barely in his late 20s.
'Such a young man, and he's already an elder? He looks way younger than even martial uncle.' Alex thought.
"Leave," he commanded and the other elder left. "So, you are the new disciple huh." The young man said.
"Yes, Elder," Alex replied. The elder stopped for a second but continued as if nothing happened. "Hmm… Bone Tempering 3rd realm huh. He did say you were around this cultivation stage. That means you will directly become an inner sect disciple."
The elder took out a couple of things from his bag and handed it to Alex. "Here are 2 sets of clothes, and this is your badge." Alex took the clothes and kept them in his bag. As for the badge, he looked at it and just saw a big number '2608' written on it. He tried to scan it with his spiritual sense and realized it had a formation plate inside of it. But unlike a nameplate, he couldn't access it.
The elder then began to explain, "Tiger sect is different from Hong Wu sect. The alchemists are a bunch of pacifists who only hole up in their homemaking pills. In the Tiger sect, everything depends on your cultivation and fighting strength. You are currently the lowest-ranked disciple in the sect."
"However, you can go challenge anyone in the top 275 that is not in the Bone Tempering realm and get their homes for free. I suggest you go for the person at 275 so that it's an easy win and you don't need to go through a lot of trouble today."
"In Tiger sect, the disciples are separated into Outer, inner and core disciples based on their Cultivation base. Anyone with cultivation can automatically become an outer sect, anyone with Bone tempering realm of cultivation can become an inner sect, and anyone with Meridian Tempering realm can become a core disciple."
"There is a maximum quota of 50 core disciples, 225 inner sect disciples and the rest are outer sect disciples. Depending on your rank, and the strength of other disciples, you can be a disciple with high cultivation base and still be an outer sect disciple."
"Also, I don't know why, but I was told to give you this." He took out a normal-looking sword. "It's a Common mortal-grade sword that doesn't even have a name. From now on you are to use this sword to fight."
Alex was surprised. 'How often do I have to fight in this sect?' he wondered. "Now go and settle or fight. Here in Tiger sect, we do whatever we want."
Alex was stunned as he was sent away. The elder didn't give him a single piece of information about the sect itself. 'Where am I supposed to live? I don't even have a map,' He thought.
After he left the building, he walked a little further to see a massive mountain. The mountain wasn't very tall, but it was very wide. He saw thousands of houses on the mountain and a single pathway up the mountain. Many disciples were walking up and down the mountain.
He walked up the mountain and saw the houses had numbers. "Hmm… 2138" he walked to the right of the house and saw the next house had the number 2139. "Oh, so we are supposed to live in these houses huh. Since I'm already an inner sect disciple, I should do what the elder said and challenge someone in house 275.
It took him a while to understand the logic behind how the houses were named. From the ground to the top of the mountain, there was only a single path. However, every time the path crossed a line of houses, there were another 2 paths spawning from the original path, that circled the mountain.
The lower the base a house was, the higher its number was. Alex immediately started walking upwards, skipping tons of houses.
Finally, after skipping dozens of lanes, he reached the lanes where the houses were numbered in the 200s. After searching for a while, he found a house numbered 275. He scanned the house using his spiritual sense and found that no one was inside.
Alex was puzzled as to what to do next.
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Chapter 103: Fighting Hall
Alex looked at the house carefully. It seemed to have been made out of brick and mud mostly, yet had a moderately large wooden board on the outside.
'That's a weird choice for a design,' he thought. He looked around thinking what to do next.
He then saw a person walking on the road outside and stopped him. "Hello brother, I'm new here. Do you mind telling me how I can find the owner of this house?"
"New?" he looked at Alex's cultivation base and realized he was just as strong as him. "If it's for challenging, just go to the fighting hall and challenge him. Unless he is out of the sect, you can fight him for the house."
"Oh, and where is the fighting hall?" Alex asked.
"Take this road straight around the mountain, and you will find the fighting hall in the sect crater." The man left after saying that. Alex decided to follow what the man was saying and followed the path that went around the side of the mountain.
After a few minutes of walking, he went past the mountain, coming up on the other side. When he looked down on the other side of the mountain, he was surprised.
"He wasn't kidding when he said crater." In front of him was a massive crater on the back half of the mountain. The crater had reshaped the mountain to have a crescent shape on the backside, and the paths that went around the side, all joined eventually to go down to the crater through either of the two narrow parts of the mountain remaining.
Alex walked down to the crater and was shocked at just how large it was. The crater, just by itself, was about twice the size of the Hong Wu sect's sect valley.
'What could have fallen here to have caused such a large crater?' he wondered. Even a saint realm monster only made a 20 meters wide crater. For something to make such a big crater, it would have to be very large or very powerful.
He walked into the crater looking at the different buildings. Surprisingly, there were very few buildings here. What there were a lot of were fighting stages. Everywhere he turned his head to, he could see two disciples fighting each other with an elder staying as a referee.
He finally found a building named Fighting Hall. He saw at least a dozen different lines of disciples outside the hall. He asked the person in front of him how he should go about fighting someone, and the person simply pointed towards the wall behind the elders recording the fight requests.
'Oh wow, that's quite a comprehensive list of rules.' He thought. He read the rules and was surprised just how much fighting was allowed in the sect.
A disciple could challenge 10 times in a day, and could also be challenged 10 times a day. Unless the disciple was out on leave by the authority of the sect, he would have to fight every single one of the challenging battles.
Every Monday to Thursday, one would have to finish their fights by 9 pm. On Friday and Saturday however, there was no limit to how much someone was challenged. But also, one didn't have to end all of their fights at all. But, if they went an hour without fighting, the match would be automatically forfeited.
Sunday was the only day of rest for these people and nobody was allowed to challenge anybody. This was his first day today, so he was exempted from the rules, but starting tomorrow, he would have to fight this way too.
Finally, when his turn came, he took out his badge and handed it to the elder, and said, "275". According to the rules, one could register a fight with someone based on their names or their badge number.
The elder was surprised to see a number difference between the number in the badge and the number of the opponent. But when he looked at Alex's robe, he understood.
The elder quickly registered the fight and took out a medallion from his bag to transmit something. "Go to stage 24 and wait for your opponent to arrive. If he doesn't arrive by 9 pm, you win."
Alex thanked the elder and searched for stage 24. It didn't take him long to find the stage as there were numbered stones in front of the stage.
He waited outside the stage and watched the people in front of his fight. Most of the people used swords or spears, while very few liked to fight hand to hand. He didn't see any of the other types of fighters his master has told him about.
Many people came and fought. The elder would call out his and his opponent's number from time to time, but only he would respond. His opponent was nowhere to be seen.
Once again another fight ended. The elder always took the disciples badged before they fought and gave the lower numbered badge to the person who won. 'What exactly is the benefit of having a lower-numbered badge aside from getting to live in the inner set disciple's area?' he wondered.
"Number 2608 and 275"
"" Here"" two sounds came out at the same time. One of them was Alex, while the other one belonged to a 20-year-old man with an elongated face. The man looked towards Alex and was shocked. Hearing the number, he had expected an outer sect disciple to try out his luck at the lowest-ranked inner sect disciple. But when he saw Alex in his inner sect clothes, he was shocked.
Alex looked at the man and realized he was in Muscle Tempering 5th Realm. 'So weak?' he thought.
Both of them walked up to the stage and handed their badges to the elder. The elder too was surprised to see Alex wearing inner sect disciples' clothes, but said nothing about it.
Alex wasn't sure how exactly to fight this person. His only fighting experience till now had been with the monsters in the forest, and those were the ones he killed. He couldn't even hurt his opponent badly here, much less kill them. He was in a real dilemma now.
"Fight"
Chapter 104: Black Stele
"Fight," the elder shouted. The young man immediately got into a fighting stance with a blue shining sword in his hand. Alex took out his new unnamed sword as well.
Not knowing what exactly to do, he waited for his opponent to start the fight. As soon as his opponent charged at him, he started using his Focus mode.
Suddenly, everything around him started to slow down. The blue light from his opponent's sword got much brighter as he saw both fury and despair in the young man's eyes.
Alex easily sidestepped the thrust and used the flat side of the blade to hit the man on his back. With a cultivation base higher than his opponent by an entire minor realm, his force was enough to make the man fly out of the 20-meter wide stage.
Alex looked at where the man had gone to and turned around to look at the elder. He didn't know the rules to a fight and was wondering if going out of the stage was considered a loss or not.
Once the elder gave the signal for the match over, he walked over to the elder and got the badge with the number '275' on it. The other man was already standing up and walking towards the elder to get his new badge. Seeing how low it was, he immediately got in the line outside the fighting hall to fight some higher opponents.
Alex on the other hand didn't know what to do. He didn't want to immediately fight after coming to his new sect, so instead, he walked around the sect looking at the different buildings.
There weren't a lot of buildings. There were only 4 buildings there, aside from the Fighting hall. They were a Training hall, a library, a disciple hall, and surprisingly a production hall. He hadn't expected a sect focused on fighting to have a dedicated hall for productions. He learned that one could produce talismans, artifacts, and pills in there.
'At least there is a place here where I can practice alchemy,' he thought.
Almost all of the other places in the sect crater were just fighting ground, except for one. At the very center of the crater, there was a massive black stele with texts on it that shined iridescent colors.
Alex tried to read the texts but realized he couldn't understand them. The text didn't belong to the language the mortals used or the ones cultivators used. 'Can it be?' he wondered and compared the text to the one in the Heaven's Impact book. They were the same.
"What a coincidence. I hope this is another spiritual technique." This type of text required him to read with a spiritual sense for some reason, so he decided to do so. He tried to use his spiritual sense to read it but he suddenly felt something attack his spiritual sea. He immediately brought back his sense and crouched on the ground with his hands around his head.
It hurt him like crazy. "Arghhh… What was that?" he thought. It took a while before the pain in his mind subsided and he realized he had lost all of his Spiritual Sea. It was totally dry.
It would take some time to restore, but if he hadn't reeled back his senses in time, he would have taken some real damage. He felt his forehead brimming with sweat as the fear started to die down finally. He looked towards the black stele once more with some remaining fear in his eyes.
'Screw this,' he thought and went back to his new home. It took him a while to return back to house number 275. Once he finally did reach it, he was confused as to how to open the doors.
He looked around the doors for a second but didn't find anything. So, he started using his spiritual sense to check for any locks. Suddenly, he noticed a formation plate inside the wooden board outside the house.
'That looks similar to the one on my badge,' he thought. He took out his badge and placed it near the wooden board.
KADAK
The door opened. He walked inside with his badge and pushed the door back and heard it lock back. Now that he was inside, everything inside started lighting up.
The house was fancy with multiple lanterns, but in the end, it was still just a single room. He sat on the bed and looked up. Suddenly, his eyes went wide.
On the wall in front of him, there was a large wooden board that had many names on it. He counted them and realized there were exactly 274 names in there. 'Everyone that is higher than me?' he wondered.
He memorized the names starting from the top. When he looked at the name on the top, he was surprised. "Well, I shouldn't be, but it's still surprising."
The name in the first place was Luo Mei. He also found another name he knew, Meng Yun, around 112. 'Wasn't she in the 7th realm of Bone Tempering back when I met her? Wonder how much stronger she has gotten.' He thought.
"hmm..." he was shocked to see a few names that just didn't match the other names in the list. "Lucy, David, Adam... " he started reading a few more names in the list.
"These are Players? Wow, I didn't think I would meet one here. Hong Wu sect has none of them." He was finally in a sect with players.
It was time for his dinner, so he logged out to get some food. He returned back to the game shortly after and realized something was different in the room.
The wooden board that had names on it was now blank with a bit of dim light around its edges. There was a black circle on its bottom left corner about the size of a small bowl.
'What's that?' he decided to check with his spiritual sense. Suddenly, he realized that behind the wooden wall was a massive metal plate that has the formation scribbles on it. While next to it was a smaller, circular metal plate, very similar to the one outside.
He walked up to the board and placed his badge on it. Suddenly, the light around the wooden board died and a bunch of texts started appearing on the wooden board.
"Come to the top of the mountain, behind the sect leader's building. Try not to be seen by other disciples if possible, since I want your existence to be a secret for now. I will wait for you— Master"
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Chapter 105: Training
"Oh, Master sent me this message," he said as he read the message on the wooden board. He took the badge off of the wooden board and the message disappeared.
Alex walked to the door and placed his badge on the wooden panel next to the door.
KDAK
The door opened once more. He sent out his spiritual sense to see if there were anyone. After confirming there were none, he turned invisible and activated his Immortal Concealment technique. Once he was basically untraceable, he left the house.
He went onto the main path and started walking upward. Quite a few disciples were walking around, but he managed to pass them without being noticed.
He looked straight at the top and saw a giant building. 'Is that master's building?' he wondered. He walked there without any distractions. After reaching the building, he went through the building to the back.
"Oh, wow" he looked down the mountain to see the sect crater fully lit up, looking extraordinarily brilliant. A person was sitting cross-legged on a giant rock nearby looking at the sect crater in a daze. He seemed to be in his late 40s with a scruffy beard.
The night was dark, but Alex could see the golden linings glittering brightly in the otherwise pale yellow robe.
Alex sent out his spiritual sense to see if anyone else was around, and dropped his invisibility and concealment after not noticing anyone.
"Master, I'm here," he called out to Wen Cheng sitting on top of the giant rock. Wen Cheng looked at him, surprised.
"You arrived much faster than I expected. You didn't let anyone see yourself while coming here, right?" he asked.
"Yes, master. No one saw me."
"Alright, come with me," he took Alex to a lone standing room away from the main building. It looks dirty from the outside, but when he walked in, he was surprised at how well kept it was.
The walls were white all around, while the floors were metallic. He looked at the weird carvings on the floor and asked, "Is there a formation here as well?"
"Yes, there is a formation set to the room that absorbs all sort of energy from escaping the room, including sound energy. So we can practice as much as we want without anybody noticing."
He then turned around to Alex and asked, "So, How did you like the sect? is it better than Hong Wu Sect?"
"It's not bad. although I will have to check it for a little bit longer, but this seems like a good place," he said. They talked for a little longer before Wen Cheng decided it was time to train.
"Alright, are you ready? We will be starting with the basics now. What do you use most? Swords, spears, or some other weapons?" Wen Cheng asked.
"I have a sword that I use, but I'm not a swordsman so I can train in other weapons if need be," Alex said.
"Hmm… since you have that True rank sword, I think it will be better to teach you in sword fighting. Did you get that normal sword I asked Liu Xun to give you?" he asked.
Alex took out the normal sword he got from the young leader of the guards today and showed it to Wen Cheng.
"Alright, let me see how good you are. Come attack me." Wen Cheng said as he got into position.
"Attack you? With the sword?" Alex was surprised. He didn't expect Wen Cheng to immediately start fighting without even giving any training.
"Yeah, attack me. I'm trying to test your limit as a fighter. I can't help you improve if I don't know where you are right now. So just attack me without any reservations. You won't hurt me even if you hit me. Although, don't use any damaging techniques, since I just want to test your martial skills right now."
Wen Cheng's explanation felt reasonable to Alex, so he nodded and readied his sword.
With a single dash, he arrived right in front of his master with the sword halfway through his swing. Without a single worry in his eyes, Wen Cheng simply stepped back and let the sword hit the empty space.
Alex didn't hit his target so he stumbled as his balance nearly destabilized, but he immediately steadied himself and went for a single thrust. This time, Wen Cheng simply brought a sheathed sword and lightly touched the tip of the incoming sword.
The small touch was enough to derail Alex's entire attack, making him miss by a very wide margin. Wen Cheng then thrust his sheath directly into Alex's chest sending him flying.
"This is what happens when you only focus on Alchemy and don't give enough time for normal cultivation. Just two attacks, and it's enough for me to know that you have simply no idea how to fight. No sword style, no footwork, or any other form of martial art. I had expected as such, but seeing you waste your talents still hurts my heart."
"Look at you, you broke through to the 3rd realm two weeks ago when I saw you first, yet you are already at the 5th realm. What people wouldn't give for such a talent, yet you don't even know how to fight. This is too much of a waste."
"Starting tonight, You will have a rigorous training schedule from 9 to 3. You can spend the rest of the time cultivating or doing whatever else you like. I will usually have to do my work as a sect leader during the day, so you will have to practice some stuff on your own during the day."
"Come here," Wen Cheng called Alex towards himself as he too walked next to a wall in the room. Wen Cheng banged twice on the wall and suddenly the wall split open to show a rectangular opening. Wen Cheng took out a metal plate and placed it on the opening.
"Ma Rong mentioned about teaching you a lot of things, but left Spiritual roots mostly untouched. Do you know what they are?" he asked.
"No, Master. Other than the fact that they exist and have something to do with the elements, I know nothing about them." Alex replied honestly.
"I figured as much. Alright then, I guess I will have to start teaching you about it from the very basics."
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Chapter 106: Testing
"From what I know of Alchemy, it doesn't seem to have any specific element-based techniques, so it's understandable why Ma Rong didn't teach you about Spiritual Roots and left them for me."
The metal plate that Wen Cheng had put up on the wall had started to glow as 5 distinct colors started appearing on it in a circular shape in 5 different places.
On the top center was a circle with a red light on it. To the right, a little lower was a circle with blue light coming off of it. On the bottom right was another circle with green light coming off of it. On the bottom left was a circle with a brown light coming off of it. And finally, a little lower to the top left was another circle with Golden yellow light coming off of it.
At the center of the bigger circle that had lines connecting it to the other 5 circles. Inside the big circle was a drawing or a carving of a palm. At the center of the palm was another small rectangular cutout.
"This is a formation plate used to find a disciple's spiritual roots. Take a spirit stone and put it in that slot. After that place your palm along with the diagram and wait for the formation to do its work."
Wen Cheng stepped aside for Alex to move to the front and do what he was just told to. Alex walked to the front and was about to do what he was told, but he stopped. "Umm… Master, I don't have a spirit stone. Can I get one?" He was embarrassed even asking for one, but he had to since he had sent all of his to his bank account.
"You don't have a single spirit stone? I thought you alchemists were supposed to be rich." Wen Cheng was surprised but he still took out a spirit stone for him.
"You are going to have to sell your pills here if you want to do anything here. Unlike the Hong Wu sect, we don't do transactions in contribution points. Everything here is done through actual money. So if you don't have any spirit stones, you might as well not be here."
Alex took that advice to heart and took the spirit stone Wen Cheng gave him. He then inserted it into the slot and placed his palm on top of it.
"Alright, it's going to send a bunch of Qi into your body, don't try to stop it. Once it is in, use your cultivation method to allow it to coarse through your meridians. Once it is done, it will come back to the metal plate and light it up depending on what your spiritual roots are."
Wen Cheng started advising him on what to do. Alex then prepared himself, waiting for the Qi to come in. The Qi started to flow slowly into him and picked up in intensity as time went on. It started pooling along his palm waiting for him to use his cultivation method to take it in.
'Wait, if I use my cultivation method, won't I fall asleep?' He started getting worried. There hadn't been a single time when he had cultivated and not fallen asleep. He racked his brain to try and think of any other way, but couldn't.
'Whatever, here it goes.' He closed his eyes and started breathing slowly, waiting for his cultivation method to kick in. He fully expected his consciousness to vanish, but it didn't. For some reason, for the first time, he could finally cultivate without falling asleep.
'What is going on?' he wondered. This was a very unique situation he was in, but he instead ignored the situation, for now, to focus on the Qi moving into his body.
The Qi started to move along his body at a steady speed. The Qi went around his body through the meridians in his body. Alex used spiritual sense to look at the Qi moving along his body and was surprised.
For the first time, he properly saw the seven-colored light properly, instead of it being just a glimpse. The lights weren't very bright, but they were there. And they were all coming from his meridian.
'7 colors'… 5 of those colors are the same color as the one in the metal board. Wait for a second, is the meridian my spiritual root?' he was surprised. He had wondered what a spiritual root was, but never got a proper answer from anywhere on the Internet.
'Do people not know about them since they don't have a spiritual sense yet?' he wondered.
The Qi moved through his entire body and returned back to his palm in exactly 1 minute, and by this time, all of the Qi had shrunken in size by more than half and instead gotten more viscous as well as vigorous. They had also gained a slight yellow color to them. His Sun God's Divine Yang body had converted the Qi to Yang Qi.
Sun God's Divine Yang Body increasing cultivation speed by 500%
Starry sky Qi Absorption method's Night bonus increasing cultivation speed by 200%
Obtained 200 Qi
Obtained 4382 Qi
He had gained a lot of Qi from the spirit stones, yet the Qi wasn't in his control, so it left his body and entered the metal plate. Wen Cheng came forward and looked at the metal plate.
"You can remove your hand now," he said and waited for Alex to get back.
Alex did as his master said and stopped using his cultivation method. He got back to where his master was standing and looked at the metal plate as well.
It took a while for the metal plate to process the result, so Wen Cheng took the time to explain how it worked.
"The metal plate will take your Qi and use it to look for your spiritual roots. Depending on your elemental alignment, the board will light up to show your spiritual root. Depending on which light shines, we can tell what your spiritual roots are. Oh, look. It's starting."
Wen Cheng stopped talking as the board started lighting up. Slowly, under both of their eyes, all 5 of the circles started lighting up at the same time.
They were very dim at first but slowly increased with intensity as time passed.
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Chapter 107: Bad Spiritual Roots
The light slowly started growing brighter and brighter. All 5 circles were shining with the same intensity. The board aside from the circles was also shining a bit yellow.
"The lights determine how well you can use that particular element. So at some point, some of the lights will go out leaving you with the ones that you have elemental alignment with." Wen Cheng said from the side.
Alex knew what his spiritual roots were, but he still looked forward to seeing how a normal cultivator went about to determine theirs.
The light shined brightly with no sign of going out and this started to make Wen Cheng nervous. The longer it went on, the more his face frowned.
At last, the lights in the circle stayed bright with no sign of increasing and the overall board also shined in bright yellow light.
"Sigh, so unfortunate," Wen Cheng said while shaking his head. Alex was surprised to see such a negative reaction.
'Isn't it good? I have all 5 elements. Why is the acting disappointed?' He was curious, so he asked.
"Is that bad, master?"
Wen Cheng sighed once more and said, "From my knowledge, Yes. It's not bad on its own, but when compared to other spiritual roots based on their advantage and disadvantages, it's the worst."
Alex got really confused at the very vague answer. Wen Cheng saw his confused face and said, "Let me explain."
"There are two types of people born in this world. Those with a spiritual root, and those without it. For the ones that don't have a spiritual root, the best they can do in a cultivation world is reach the top of the organ tempering realm. They cannot go above that."
"The ones who are born with spiritual roots don't have any sort of inherent limitations due to spiritual roots. However, even among them, there are ones that are superior and ones that are inferior."
"A superior spiritual root is one that is aligned to a single or at most 2 of the 5 elements. If it is aligned with 3, it is considered an average one. While having 4 and 5 are considered the worst of the worst."
He sighed once again. Alex was surprised too. He hadn't expected his spiritual roots to be actually considered bad. As for why that was, he decided to ask.
"Why are they the worst master?"
Wen Cheng stopped sighing and started explaining.
"Spiritual roots determine how effective a person is at handling an element. If a person has a single element root, they can use that element to its highest power. However, the more elements you introduce to one's spiritual roots, the less effective their grasp of the elements gets."
"In this manner, both ends of the spectrum have an advantage and disadvantage. The ones with fewer elemental roots can only learn techniques with those elements, but have those techniques be really powerful"
"While those with more elements, they have more freedom at learning techniques, but those techniques won't be as powerful."
"In the end, being strong in a single type of element is way better than being weak in five. Ah, I was really looking forward to teaching you many things. It seems we will have to stick to the normal non-elemental techniques." Wen Cheng said as he sighed once more.
Alex also started getting a little sad knowing that his talent, basically magic, was going to be bad. Suddenly, he remembered something.
"Hmm… but, master. But, I am good at controlling fire though. According to this, shouldn't I be bad at that?" he asked.
"Hmm… show me." Wen Cheng said.
"Uhh… I need fire to control it. It's an alchemy technique." He said.
Wen Cheng immediately brought out a piece of paper and used a fire technique on it to burn it. Seeing this Alex immediately got to work. He started channeling his Qi and used the Flame Mastery Scripture.
Suddenly the little tongue of fire that was about to go out, burned brilliantly as it expanded in size to be about a meter in diameter. Alex controlled it for a second, then started to change its size once more. Once its size was changed, he changed its size. He fluctuated between making the fire very hot, to making it very low in temperature.
Alex himself had been previously surprised at how good his control of the fire had been, once his Qi had gone through another change and increased in intensity.
He dropped the fire, letting it disappear as he thought, 'Hmm… what if the reason my control is so good is because of my Qi? I doubt many people have Yang Qi if any.' He thought.
That was a logical assumption and the only one he could think of right now.
"You really are good at it. It doesn't make sense though? Is it because you also have a yang-focused spiritual root?" Wen Cheng thought.
"Yang focused spiritual root? What makes you say that master?" Alex was surprised his master got it wrong.
"Look at the board, it's yellow, meaning your spiritual roots are yang focused. If it was yin focused, it would've turned azure, and it wouldn't have glowed if it is neutral, which is what 99% of the people have." He said. Alex assumed the yellow was because of his Yang Qi, which overshadowed the yin element in his spiritual root.
'Does that mean me having both Yin and Yang is also a rarity even among the rarity? What if that is the reason behind my fire being so good?' he thought.
"Alright, that settles it. We will do something about your spiritual roots tomorrow. For today, you will have to learn swordsmanship and other non-elemental techniques."
"Now, tell me, did your Ma Rong teach you any battle techniques?"
"No, master. She only taught me alchemy-related techniques. She said that I should learn battle techniques from the Tiger sect since I can find the best techniques here. Although I did learn a mortal grade sword technique, that's it."
"Oh, you did?" Wen Cheng smiled a little and said, " Show me."
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Chapter 108: Elusive Heavenly Sword
Alex took out the mortal-grade sword and started pouring his Qi into it. The sword showed some resistance at first, but quickly let his Qi in and started glowing yellow.
"This is a mortal grade technique, Master. It's called Smiting Blade and all it does is make my sword sharper and deal more damage." Alex explained to his master.
"Hmm… that is quite bad. Only a mortal grade? Ma Rong should have at least taught you an earth-grade technique. Honestly, what is that woman thinking?" Wen Cheng showed disapproval towards the technique.
"Oh no, I learned it before I went to the forest 2 weeks ago. So master has nothing to do with it." Alex cleared some misconceptions.
"Oh, if that is so, then okay. I can understand why you would learn such trash. It doesn't even have an elemental attribute to it. I will get you some better ones to choose from tomorrow."
"For today, let's focus on just swordsmanship."
Wen Cheng took out a common-looking blade and started talking.
"Fighting with a sword is not about using the sword to hit an opponent as hard as you can. It's about the proper techniques and practice."
"The techniques can range anywhere from how to swing a sword to how to best apply forces to how to move your feet to get the better advantage."
"Now, look at me."
Wen Cheng started swinging in mid-air randomly, but to Alex's eyes, it looked like he was fighting a very strong opponent. He weaved and dodged his enemy's attacks by moving in a weird way using his feet, and cleaved his enemy through the chest when he could.
As Alex watched more and more, he started becoming entranced. He slowly walked to an open space and started following Wen Cheng's movements.
The copy of the arts looked very wonky and not at all refined, but the basics were there. About 10 minutes later, Wen Cheng finally stopped and looked towards Alex, only to find him a distance away copying his moves.
He watched his move almost the same as him and started getting shocked.
'This guy managed to nearly copy my moves just by watching me move a while?' he thought. This was what they called talent. Wen Cheng was really happy inside that he made this kid his disciple.
Alex stopped moving after a while, as he had nothing more to copy. He got out of his entranced state and was surprised at what he had just done.
He looked at his own hands. 'Was I even controlling them?' he was honestly too surprised. He hadn't registered any of the things he did but somehow could remember them. It was a very odd experience.
"Did you try to copy me?" Wen Cheng asked. "Although that wasn't very good, the basics were there. Just the fact that you managed to do it means that you probably have a talent for it."
Wen Cheng took out a rather thick book, at least thicker than most cultivation techniques Alex had seen and handed it to him. "This book contains the sword fighting style I use called the 'Elusive Heavenly Sword'. It's mostly focused on footwork and dodging more than attacking. But it also has some strong attacks that would be considered Earth grade if they were a technique on their own."
"I will get you some techniques tomorrow that you can use as proper damage technique. Read this book for now and learn as much as you can. Since it's a heaven-grade technique, it is going to take you a while."
Alex started turning the book's pages over and realized there were a lot of images along with the text. 'This is going to take a while,' he thought.
"Master, is this considered a movement technique too? cause I need one of those as well." He said.
"Oh, no. This is just a set of footwork for swordsmanship. Real movement techniques are something else. Wait a second, did Ma Rong not teach you the Hong Wu sect's immortal grade movement technique?" Wen Cheng seemed to know about Flickering Shadows and asked about it.
"Oh, I already learned that technique, Master. But it's really hard to use during the daytime, in flat surfaces." He said.
"Is it? I don't know how that technique works. Ma Rong is too secretive about it." Wen Cheng said. Then suddenly, he recalled the first part of the sentence and immediately asked.
"Did you just say you already learned it? But it's an Immortal Grade technique, and you had at best only learned it 2 weeks ago."
"Yes, Master. I can somehow learn techniques very fast. Although practicing and perfecting the technique will take me a while, learning it however is pretty quick" Alex explained.
Wen Cheng looked at him closely. "Are you really not lying about it?" he asked.
"Of course not, master. Why would I lie?" he said with a little chuckle.
"Alright then, show me. Use that technique."
Alex was ready for him to say that, so he immediately disappeared from the spot and appeared behind Wen Cheng from his shadows.
"Oh my god. You really do know it. Then you won't need another movement." Wen Cheng was surprised at how talented his disciple was.
"But master, this technique doesn't work as well during the daytime at places with little shadows. The technique relies on shadows to be functional." Alex explained when it started sounding like he wouldn't be getting a movement technique.
"Alright, Learn this book for now. Since you are so quick, you should be done with it within the week. I will also get you a good movement technique tomorrow along with a few damaging techniques, defensive techniques, and a very important escaping technique to choose from." Wen Cheng promised.
"Thank you, master," Alex was genuinely happy at how much Wen Cheng was giving him. It had only been a few minutes, and he had already given so much knowledge and opportunity.
"Alright, you read that book. I will come to see you at around 3 am." Wen Cheng left after saying that.
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Chapter 109: Practicing the Sword
Wen Cheng left Alex to learn the book by himself. Alex looked at the book and was still surprised by how big it was. However, he was also happy that he could read the language by himself now.
"Elusive Heavenly Sword. A technique that improves a cultivator's dodging ability and provides great offensive attacks. The elusive part is only useful against cultivators that fight in close combat, while the attacking part works on everyone. Attacks use wind, so cultivators with wood-aligned spiritual roots are preferred. But since the wind aspect only affects 2 of the 3 latter strikes, even those without spiritual roots can learn it."
Alex read the book's first page and was surprised. "Wow, that's a lot of information on the introductory page. It even talks about spiritual roots."
He used his system to read it and found that the description it came up with had barely any information. Aside from the name and the fact that it was a sword technique focused on dodging and attacking, the description gave no other information.
'Do other books give such information as well?' he couldn't check right now as he didn't have any books on him at the moment. He had already returned the Flickering Shadows book prior to arriving here.
He then proceeded to flip the page and was immediately surprised by what he saw. Instead of normal words like any other cultivation technique, this one had drawings telling one what to do.
The first set of 5 pictures showed one how to move with their feet. There was a bunch of text right below, explaining the movement in extent.
Alex put the book to the side and started to do what the picture in the image did. There was no Qi or other type of energy involved. It was just a simple way to move one's body.
Yet when Alex tried it, he found the movements he had just done to be wrong. 'That's not it.' He tried once more. 'That's not it, either.'
'How can I follow easily after watching master, but can't follow a book.' It was then that something came to his mind.
'Wait, do I need to finish the book before I start. Because that was exactly what I did with the other books. Just because I can read the books now, doesn't mean I have to change my learning style right?'
He immediately started using his spiritual sense to read all of the books. It was hard not to ignore the basic understanding from being able to understand the language, but he managed to do it at last.
Finally, after around 15 minutes, he finished reading the whole book.
'Alright, now it should be fine.' He thought and started using the movement technique. Surprisingly, he was still making mistakes at it.
'What's going on?' he couldn't understand what was happening. He still kept on practicing and at some point, started going into another trance.
During the trance, he couldn't think of anything or do anything. But the knowledge of what to do and how to do it kept flowing out of his brain. He practiced more and more, and four hours later, he had perfected it.
Congratulations, You have learned 'Elusive Heavenly Sword'
Finally, he woke up from his trance to see that he had learned the sword technique. He looked at the time and saw surprised that it was nearly 2 am.
'Did I fall asleep once more? That too while practicing?' he was starting to doubt if there was really something wrong with him. But just the fact that he had truly learned the sword technique kept him from believing it.
'Also why did it take me so long to learn the technique? Is it because the technique doesn't have anything to do with Qi and spiritual roots for the most part?' he wondered.
He practiced once more now that he had learned the technique and he managed to do every single footwork perfectly. Elusive Heavenly Sword had 3 different attacks.
None of the attacks had any name and were dependent on one's spiritual roots to use all of the 3 attacks.
The first strike was a simple sword strike that was used in close combat. As long as one had Qi, they could use this attack.
The second strike was one that was used from a little further away from the opponent. It required the cultivator to have a wood elemental spirit root for this attack to work.
With this strike, one could send out a small human-sized wind slice through the air that would fly towards the enemy.
The third and final strike was one that could be used from very far away and was the most devastating of all. It sent out a very fast wind slice through the air that had a very high penetrating power.
However, it required the person to only have wood elemental spirit root or dual elemental spirit root with wood being one of them. Anything more, and the cultivator could not use the technique to its full power.
Alex tried practicing the 3 attacks. The first attack was integrated with the footwork. At a certain segment of the footwork, he brought up his sword and poured Qi into it. As he brought it down, it glowed yellow and gave a loud sound as it cut through empty air.
He then tried the second strike. For this strike, he didn't require footwork. He simply started moving his Qi around his body. He brought it around his body to his palm, where the Qi entered the sword through the sword handle.
However, just before it entered, the Qi changed from Yang elemental to Qi with yang and wood elemental. The color, however, shifted to just green and the yellow from the yang didn't show.
He brought the sword up to the top and sliced it down. A massive slicing wind came forth from his blade and flew away to the wall in the room and disappeared with a boom.
The blade kept ringing in his hand as he looked forward in shock at the power of the strike.
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Chapter 110: Training with Master
Although he couldn't tell the exact output of the attack, he could tell that it was without a doubt the strongest attack he had done until now.
Just the first strike alone was better than Smiting Blade, yet the second strike somehow far surpassed that.
'What would the third strike be like?' he wondered. He held his blade next to him once again and started pouring in the Qi. In the end, he swung the sword directly towards the wall once more.
A very sharp green slice came out of the sword and hit the wall far away.
BOOM
A big explosion rang out at the wall. However, instead of being happy, Alex frowned.
"The damage is much lower than I expected. It's barely any better than the second strike and yet it uses more Qi." He started to believe that his fire abilities were only good because of the Yang Qi. Now that Yang Qi wouldn't help Wood element, his true power finally showed.
"I guess I really have a bad spiritual root. I guess I don't care as long as it doesn't hamper me in my path in alchemy. Cultivating and fighting are just extra stuff for me. But still, it hurts a bit, knowing that I have a bad spiritual root." He thought.
He decided to only use the first 2 sword strike from now on since the third strike was bad when considering Qi to Damage ratio. Still, practicing it just in case he ever needed it was not a bad idea.
He kept on practicing for another hour and finally stopped when his Qi ran out. Sending out wind slices continuously for an hour was really draining for him.
A few minutes later Wen Cheng arrived just to see him down on the ground panting heavily.
"Oh, are you done for today?" he asked.
"Ah, Master. Yes, I'm done for today. I have run out of Qi." He said.
"Oh, okay. How much did you learn? Did you manage to practice some of the footwork?" he asked.
"Oh, I learned the whole thing master. It took me 5 hours to read it."
"5 Hours? Okay, lets tes- HUH? You finished reading all of this in just 5 hours?" Wen Cheng was shocked. When Alex had said fast, he had thought he was talking about taking just a few days to learn the stuff, but to finish it in a few hours? That was too shocking.
"Stand up. I will test you to see if that is true." He ordered sternly. He needed to check if he was lying or not, as it was a really hard thing to believe.
Alex stopped panting and stood up with his sword at the ready. Wen Cheng internally nodded when he saw that he was using a stance from the Elusive Heavenly Sword.
"Come," He said giving permission for Alex to attack. Alex too didn't waste another second and lunged forward with his sword. Wen Cheng saw the sword coming and stepped to the side to dodge it. At the same time, he also used his own sword to make a simple yet precise attack.
Alex immediately moved his feet in such a way that his whole body twisted to barely dodge the attack. Using the same momentum, he once more twisted his body to get in another attack from the side.
Wen Cheng's eyes widened at this. 'His body has yet to properly adapt to the technique, but he himself knows what he is doing. Just a few more days of continuous practice and he will become an expert at this rate.' Wen Cheng was truly shocked seeing Alex fight.
Wen Cheng once more dodged the sword and started making his own hits faster. Alex however, was dodging every single attack that was coming his way.
The fight went on for about 5 more minutes before Wen Cheng's hits were just too fast for Alex to dodge and finally got hit. He was hit straight in the chest and sent flying into the wall.
He dropped to the ground and started coughing. Wen Cheng on the other hand had bright eyes full of admiration. "Are you okay, Yu Ming?" he asked.
He stopped coughing and answered, "Yes, master."
"Good. You have truly learned the Elusive Heavenly Sword. A few more days of it, and you can be considered a Master at it."
"So, for tonight you will go back to your room and cultivate until you are challenged by someone. However, by 9 pm tomorrow, rank up until you are…. Let's see," Wen Cheng checked something using a medallion and said, "Okay, rank up until you are at 194. The person with that badge is a realm lower than you, but since they've been here for a long time, they will probably have more fighting experience than you."
"Only after acquiring the badge 194 will I give you the other techniques. If you can't get it, I will just train you in the sword for another day. Now, Go and cultivate. It would be good if you can breakthrough within the week. The faster the better."
"Yes, Master," Alex was about to leave when he suddenly stopped. "Umm… Master, you said I should break through as fast as I can?"
"Yeah. The faster you get stronger the better." Wen Cheng simply said.
"Umm… So I can breakthrough today?" he said.
"Yes, Of course. Go back and meditate properly. Be in the best state so that you don't fail your break through," Wen Cheng said.
"Are you saying this because you don't know, Master? I thought master told you about me."
"About you? What else is there to know about you? Ma Rong just told me a few things as to what to do. Although, she did say something about me being surprised by your talent. "
"But I already have been. You being able to learn the Elusive Heavenly Sword in 5 hours was very surprising. So I don't think there is anything else left." Wen Cheng said.
Alex finally understood. Ma Rong had purposefully kept his cultivation and learning talent a secret. Wen Cheng didn't really know how talented he was in regards to cultivation. He was mistaken by his own information.
Alex chuckled a little and asked. "So, Master didn't tell you that I can breakthrough whenever I want, did she?"
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Chapter 111: Selling a pill
"You can breakthrough any time you want?" Wen Cheng was a little confused. But then, he remembered something and his eyes became a little wider.
"Is it like what you did back in the southern forest? Don't you have to gather your Qi first to breakthrough?" Wen Cheng asked.
"Oh, yes. I do. But I already have enough Qi to breakthrough 4 more times if I wanted to." Alex said.
"What?" Wen Cheng shouted once more. "Is that true? They why haven't you done so already?" he asked.
"Well, that's because Master said that I should wait until my cultivation base is stabilized before I proceed any further with the breakthroughs." Wen Cheng said.
"Oh, yeah that's right. When did you last breakthrough?" he asked.
"Umm… it was the day of the auction." He replied.
"Just 2 days ago then? That's probably not enough time for you to stabilize. But after today's training, you should be close to it. Just a few more battles and you should be able to do it. Battle is one of the best ways to stabilize your cultivation after all."
"Alright, then. Let's train some more. If you have enough Qi to breakthrough so many times, then you might as well spend the rest of the night stabilizing it. You can cultivate later on during the day to get more Qi." Wen Cheng said.
'Or I can just eat some monster cores and pills. But I don't know if that has any effect on my cultivation base yet.' He thought.
They went back to fighting until the early morning and only then did they stop. Alex got a lot more understanding of the technique and was happy with the outcome. Before sunrise, Alex left the sect leader's building and disappeared.
He only reappeared when he reached near his new house and entered.
'Hmm… my Qi is depleted completely. Can I just eat a core to replenish it?' he wondered as he sat on his bed. It was too late to cultivate and he would have to log out in a while.
'Doesn't hurt to try,' he thought. He took out a random core from all the different monster cores he still had that he didn't sell. At the auction, he had only sold the corpses of the monsters that Luo Mei had given him, and he had kept the cores and materials for himself.
He put the core into his mouth and swallowed it. As soon as it entered his mouth, it turned into a creamy liquid that slid down his throat.
Sun God's Divine Yang Body disintegrates everything
The monster core's element aligns with your spiritual root
You have gained 192,524 Qi
'Well, at least my spiritual roots have that as an advantage. I can eat any core without worries.' He laughed a little.
However, he frowned once more. He had taken in the Qi, but it didn't fill up his body at all.
'Status' he decided to check if what he thought had truly happened.
————————
[Player Name: Yu Ming
Cultivation: Bone Tempering 5th Realm (350,000 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: 1,856,446
]
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"Just like I thought. The Qi from the monster core added to my Qi. Urghh… I don't want to cultivate at all. I hope I passively absorb enough Qi fill myself by the time I return from my university classes."
And so he logged out. He came back after a little while and started wondering what he should do in the less than 3 hours he had before university.
"Hmm… Master said I need spirit stones for everything, right? Let's go sell some pills." He walked out of his house and went to the small market out of the sect.
It didn't even take him 10 minutes to get there, and when he did, he was surprised that the market was already busy with many people from both in and outside of the sect.
Alex walked to a shop that sold pills and asked, "Hello, do you buy pills?"
The man in the shop was surprisingly an elder from the Tiger sect. "Yes, we do. Are you here to sell one?" he asked.
"Yes," Alex said as he brought out a pill bottle with a single pill inside. He had made a few pills as a warm-up before making the many different new pills and was going to sell one of those.
The pill he took out was a Common Healing pill. It was a better healing pill than a minor healing pill but not by much. The elder took the pill and put it into a tester.
Before he knew it, the fog around the glass reached up to 33% and stopped. The elder was really shocked at the pill.
"That's a nice pill you've got there. Sell it to me." A voice came from behind Alex. He turned around to see a man wearing a yellow robe with an orange lining on it.
"I don't really mind selling it to anyone in particular," Alex answered as he looked at the man more carefully. The man seemed to be in his early 20s and was in Meridian Tempering 3rd realm.
He was about the same height as Alex but was almost twice as wide. His unshaven facial hair also made him look like he was older than he actually was.
Behind him were a few inner set and outer sect disciples, who seemed to be following him. The man took out a few spirit stones from the bag and gave them to Alex.
Alex looked at the 10 spirit stones he was just given and hoping it was not what he was expecting asked, "What is this?"
"For the pill," The man said with a gentle-looking but clearly haughty smile.
Alex handed the spirit stones back to the man and said, "Thank you, but I'm not selling my pills for 10 spirit stones." He then turned to the elder and asked, "How much will you take this pill for, Elder?"
The young man was surprised at the refusal just now and started getting unreasonably angry. "How dare you turn your back on me and be disrespectful. Do you know who I am?"
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Chapter 112: Prime Disciple
Alex startled at the sudden shout. He turned back to look at the man and asked, "What do you want?"
"I told you I wanted the pill and yet you deny it to me. If I say I want the pill, then I will get the pill." The arrogant man started spouting nonsense from what Alex could hear.
"Hey brother, why are you messing with brother Huo, he is the 7th elder's disciple? Just sell the pill if you don't want to be constantly challenged by everyone, every day."
"Yeah, if you don't want trouble, it's better to just sell the pill to him. He is 18th in ranking in the core disciples after all. So there is glory in selling the pills to him."
The disciples behind the young man started to fawn over the young man's ranking and privilege in the sect, while seemingly trying to pressure Alex into giving up the pill.
The young man had a smug smile on his face after hearing his lackeys announce his glorious achievements.
'Master did talk about these sorts of people. But it's still surprising I get to meet one so soon. I don't remember people in the Hong Wu sect being like this. Although, I didn't really socialize there, so maybe there are.' He thought. One thing the disciples behind the young man had said had caught his attention.
"You are a core disciple?" he asked the young man directly.
The man thought Alex had gotten scared from hearing about his achievements and simply nodded.
Alex turned to the elder and asked, "Elder, if the orange lining on his cloth means that he is a core disciple, then what does a red lining mean? Are they not a core disciple, but something else?" he asked. He wanted to learn what Luo Mei's position was in the sect.
"Ah… you must be talking about disciple Luo Mei. She is the direct disciple of the sect leader and first in ranking amongst the core disciples. She is our Prime Disciple, and thus gets to wear red linings in her robes." The elder said with a face of fondness.
"Oh, I see." Alex then asked, "So, about the pill, elder. how much will you buy it for?" He asked.
The core disciple called Huo started getting mad. He stepped forward about to shout once more when the elder suddenly looked at him. "If you are here to disturb the sect's business, then you will have to suffer the consequences, disciple Huo Tu."
Huo Tu immediately got scared and bowed to the elder a little before leaving the shop. Alex was surprised that even such a haughty disciple would get scared of the elder.
'He must've thought he could make me give the pill to him, with just the fear of his name alone. He will come for revenge later, that's for sure.'
Alex however wasn't worried about that. Disciples in the sect weren't allowed to fight. If they wanted to, they would have to set up a fight in the fighting hall. The most important part of this situation was still the badges everyone got.
Only a disciple with the lower badge can request a fight with the other disciple. So, no matter how much the Huo Tu guys wanted to kill him, as long as he was in the sect, that would be impossible.
He turned his focus back to the elder who was looking at the pill and contemplating. After a while, he said, "I can give you 24 spirit stones for this pill. I don't know where you came to find this pill, but it's really good and deserves this amount."
Alex thought for a second. While the common healing pill wasn't the best, it was at 33% harmony. Since it wasn't an auction, he thought the specific price was okay.
"Yes, elder. I would like to sell it for that amount." Alex said. The elder kept the pill and passed along 24 spirit stones to Alex.
Alex left the market and started returning back to his house when suddenly he noticed something. He sent out his spiritual sense and found out that 2 of the lackeys that followed the core disciple named Huo Tu were currently tailing him.
'What are they trying to do?' he wondered. They couldn't attack him in the open or anything. There were a ton of disciples on the path. Even If they wanted to, they were way too weak to be a challenge for him.
So he ignored them and minded his own business as he returned back to his home. Just as he was about to open the door, however, the two lackeys ran away.
"Hmm…" he was confused for a second, but immediately realized what happened afterward. "They must've wanted my badge number, haha. I would've given it to them had they just asked." Alex chuckled a bit and returned back to his room.
Now that he had nothing to do, he logged out for the day. It was Tuesday, so he had to go to his classes for the day. Around half-past 3 after he was done with his afternoon lunch and after having called his parents back home, he returned back to the game.
He felt his Qi and realized it was back to full. 'So, I only need about 8 hours to get my Qi fully back huh. Or maybe even less.' He thought.
"Might as well breakthrough right now." He clicked the [Breakthrough] button and instantly reached Bone Tempering 6th realm.
Once done, he looked up, straight ahead of him at the wooden board with all the rankings on it, and thought, "If Master said I have to get to 194 by the end of today, I should fight the others in between to get the experience, right?"
He started looking through the different names. Thankfully, the names also had simple info next to their names that said whether someone is in their house, just within the sect, or out of sect.
Out of them, Alex chose the ones that had 'Their house' as their location. In the end, he gathered a few names he would fight today.
"Alright, let's go register some fights."
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Chapter 113: Challenged
After a short walk, Alex reached the sect crater and got into the line at the Fighting hall. For the first fight, he challenged someone with the 250th badge.
According to the info on the board back in his room, the person was in their home. So, he decided to wait for the person to arrive. When his number was called, he responded. Another person also responded at the same time after hearing their number. Realizing his opponent had come, Alex walked up to the stage.
Alex had decided to hide his cultivation entirely so that people wouldn't realize how strong he was, or how fast he broke through. His opponent this time was an older girl with a simple ponytail. She was shorter than him, but not by much.
Alex took out his common rank sword and got ready to fight. 'Should I show off my Elusive Heavenly Sword so early?' he wondered. He looked at the girl and realized she hadn't taken out any weapons.
He was surprised. 'Elemental techniques user or close combat fighter?' he started guessing as to how the girl fought. However, seeing as she was only at Muscle tempering 6th realm, he wasn't very worried.
As soon as the elder gave the go, the girl immediately started pouring out her Qi and created a fireball that she shot towards Alex. Alex was surprised, but that was the extent of his reaction. He immediately used Flame Mastery Scripture to control the incoming fire. It showed a little resistance but instantly obeyed his commands. So, he basically killed the flame and made it disappear.
The girl was surprised at what just happened. 'Is my opponent very strong?' she thought. She took out another fireball and threw it towards Alex. This time, however, Alex didn't destroy it. Instead, he controlled it and sent it back to her with a bigger size and higher intensity.
BOOM
The girl was hit directly in the chest and thrown the ground a few meters back. She wasn't sent out of the stage but was really close to it.
Alex was about to charge at her and push her over when she suddenly shouted, "I give up."
"Huh?" Alex nearly stumbled where he stood. He balanced himself and looked towards the elder. The elder nodded and declared the fight over.
Alex took his new badge, numbered at 250, and turned around to walk back to the fighting hall. As he was about to leave the stage, however, he heard the elder call out numbers 275 and 367.
'Hmm… is that me? Or the girl now?' he wondered. The girl was surprised and responded to the call. Alex looked at her walk up to the stage and found that her opponent was one of the lackeys from this morning.
"Hahaha, did they make a mistake? They probably didn't expect me to have won already, huh." The lackeys had only taken his house number, so they couldn't request a fight based on the person, and instead did it based on the badge. And the poor girl fell into a fight once more.
Except for this time, she wasn't so hopeless. The same thing that happened between him and the girl, happened between the girl and the poor lackey.
'Why would they target me with such a weak opponent? Is it really just to bother me?' he wondered. He thought for a moment and said, "They must be checking how strong I am. Like I will every give it them straight." He turned around and walked back to the fighting hall. However, before he could sit in a line, his badge buzzed.
"Hmm…" this was the first time he had seen the badge do anything other than unlock his doors and that wooden tv.
He sent his consciousness into the badge and realized he had a fight in Stage 42 with someone at 312th ranking. Alex sighed with disappointment as this was going to be too easy. He didn't want to waste time with such a useless fight and just reach 194th by the end of the day. But if they were to continue harassing him with the useless fights, he wouldn't have enough time to challenge all those other people.
Reluctantly, he walked over to stage 42. Once his number was called, he walked up to the stage. When his opponent came out, he sighed. 'An outer sect disciple really is too weak,' he thought. His opponent was barely at the 3rd stage of Muscle tempering. He was way too weak to be challenging him right now.
As soon as the elder gave the go, the outer sect disciple ran towards Alex with a small dagger. In response, Alex just put out his hand and used Qi manipulation. Suddenly, the outer sect disciple stopped where he was and started struggling to get out of his clutch.
Alex simply floated him up and tossed him out of the stage. The match was over. Alex took his badge back and walked down the stage.
He could hear the numerous disciples murmur as they started wondering how he did that. Alex on the other hand started realizing what he had just done.
"Urgh… I shouldn't have done that. I got a little angry and forgot you could use Qi manipulation of that order only when you are near the True realm. Whatever, I'll just say it's a technique if someone asks."
He walked back to the fighting hall and finally registered another battle with someone numbered 236. He had to wait for a while before they arrived.
"Number 250 and 234" The elder shouted.
"Here"
"Here"
Two voiced came out from the crowd. Alex walked up onto the stage and looked at his opponent. He was a generic-looking man with long hair. The man took out a weird weapon to fight with, A sickle.
Alex was surprised at first. He hadn't seen a sickle anywhere other than back at his farm. 'You can use a sickle as a weapon too? Master did say people used various weapons, but I didn't expect they would even use something this unorthodox.'
From the side, the elder working as the referee shouted, "Start".
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Chapter 114: Badge Number 194
Alex was surprised at seeing the sickle, but the man was still only in the Muscle tempering realm, so he had no worries. He simply walked forward with his sword and started swinging it randomly.
He wanted to see how one would fight with a sickle in this case. The man swung his sickle in a simple manner, which Alex easily dodge. The man once more brought back the sickle the other way around, which Alex once more dodged easily.
But, on the third swing, something weird happened. Suddenly, as the man was swinging, the sickle left in hand and flew past Alex. 'Did he make a mistake?' But before Alex could even think of a reason, the sickle immediately flew back, targeting the back of his head.
Thankfully, Alex had spiritual sense so he could see what was happening even behind him. He simply ducked as the sickle was about to attack him.
The young man who caught the sickle, and the elder who was about to save him were both surprised. Alex nodded to himself, thinking he did well sending out his spiritual sense even during a fight with a weaker opponent.
He would've been badly hurt if he hadn't. The man with the sickle tried attacking some more but he didn't use any different techniques. He had a pretty simple movement technique that made him just as fast as Alex, but his damage was nowhere sufficient.
After a few bouts, Alex struck him to the ground and the match was over. Alex left the stage after taking his badge.
Over the next couple of hours, Alex fought quite a few disciples and managed to win every single one of them without using any of his techniques. He just used his superior cultivation and spiritual sense to knock down everyone.
Thankfully, he also wasn't challenged. Finally, around 8 pm, he challenged his final opponent for the day, number 194. He waited around half an hour watching the other people's fight in stage 4 before his turn came.
"Number 198 and 194," the elder shouted from stage 4. By now he had managed to defeat the 198th ranking opponent who had a cultivation base of Bone Tempering 2nd realm.
"Here," Alex shouted and waited for another voice to appear.
"Here," someone did speak, and Alex walked up to the stage.
The one who he was going to have to fight was a massive guy with a very well-built body. He was also tall and looked more like a bodybuilder than a cultivator.
'Damn, he looks even beefier than Kong Yuhan,' Alex thought. He took out his sword and got ready to fight as he checked his opponent's cultivation base.
'Bone Tempering 3rd realm? And a person who knows how to fight at that. This is going to be troublesome.' He would have to show more focus in this fight than any of the ones before this. He activated focus mode and adapted to the sudden changes to his senses.
The passage of time slowed down as the different lights from the lanterns started painting the stage in bright orange color. Alex got into his fighting stance as per the Elusive Heavenly Sword for the first time today. He couldn't afford to underestimate the fighter here.
He would also have to be careful about his damage output. Even if the opponent was a veteran fighter, he was still a 3rd ream Bone Tempering cultivator. And all of Alex's damage abilities did way more than that.
"Start," the elder shouted from the side.
Alex waited for the beefy man to come into close combat so he could fight him. But, suddenly, the man did something completely unexpected.
He started using a technique. With a move of his hands, the wind started moving at extreme speed trying to blow away Alex. The only thing Alex do was struggle through it.
'He is using techniques, and not close combat?' Alex was surprised. Alex also used the 2nd sword strike in the Elusive Heavenly Sword and fought wind with the wind. Alex however, did much more damage and destroyed his opponent's wind gust. The remaining damage went on to attack the beefy man and damage him a little.
The man started swiping his hands left and right, creating blades of wind that attacked him. Using the evasive part of his sword style, Alex dodged every single one of the wind blades the man was using.
'Does he only have wood-type spiritual root?' he wondered. His attacks were strong enough to hurt Alex if he let them hit him. The man was also only using Wood type techniques and nothing else.
Suddenly, the man places his palms on the ground. Out of nowhere, roots and vines started appearing out of the ground that targeted Alex.
Alex weaved and dodged as he started cutting every root and vine that came his way. He slowly moved forward while doing that and reached the beefy man. The man had an absolutely shocked face. He had never seen someone so efficiently destroy his Rooting Vine Technique.
The technique wasn't meant to damage, but to obstruct their movements so that other techniques could land easily. Yet, the young man in front of him had used a weird dance-like sword style to cut off all of his roots and vines and nearly reached him.
Immediately, he turned into a bunch of roots and barks as he didn't remain there any longer. That wasn't a problem for Alex however. With his spiritual sense, he could see the beefy man appear inside a cluster of roots and vines in the side. He brought his sword to the highest point above his head and swung it down.
The sword itself did nothing, but Alex secretly used Qi manipulation to throw the whole group of vines, roots, and the man outside the stage.
"Fight over," The elder shouted. Alex walked up to the elder and took the 194th badge. He walked away from the stage thinking, '194 is already so unique at fighting, what are the ones in the higher numbers like? I can't wait.'
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Chapter 115: Beat up
"Hey, Brother, Wait please."
Alex was near the outer end of the crater, about to leave the place when he suddenly heard someone calling. He turned around to find out that it was the beefy man who was calling him.
"Can I do something for you?" Alex asked.
"Ah brother, I've never seen you before, are you new around here?" he asked.
"Yes, I joined not long ago," Alex simply answered waiting for the man to get to the point.
The beefy man was surprised when he did learn that Alex really was a new disciple in the sect. "Oh, brother. You are so strong after joining the sect for so little time. Can you tell me your name?" the beefy man asked.
"It's Yu Ming," Alex simply replied. "Ah, Good to see you brother. I won't stop you now. I will take my leave." The man said and left him there.
Alex frowned. Something was fishy. There was no way the beefy man came here to just converse with him. Especially after he had just been defeated by him.
'How come he is not angry or upset with me? And the more troubling part, why did he only ask for my name, yet didn't give me his own?' he decided to follow the beefy man to see where he went.
After walking back inside the sect crater for a few minutes, the beefy man openly met another man and started talking to him. Alex recognized that guy. 'The inner sect disciple, that's the lackey to that Huo Tu guy? What does he want with my na— Oh. Sh*t, this is going to be troublesome now.'
Only now did Alex realize that he had just hit himself in the foot by giving that man his name. Now, those lackeys wouldn't have to worry about his ranking, and could fight him using his name.
'Whatever, it's not like they can ever beat me. The most they can be is annoying. I will see how long they can keep being annoying.' He thought and threw the matter into some dark corner in his mind.
It was late, so instead of going to his new house 194, which he would have to search for, he directly went to the training facility at his master's place.
Somewhere along the way, he disappeared, and only appeared when he reached his destination. The door to the training facility was open, so he simply walked in there.
"Master, I'm here," he said as he walked in.
Suddenly, a girl with a pouting face appeared in front of him and started talking to him. "Junior brother, Why didn't you come to see me yet? You already joined the sect yesterday and yet I have to be the one to come find you."
Luo Mei acted as if she was angered by this. Alex smiled and said, "Hello, senior sister. I had a lot to do after joining the sect yesterday, so I couldn't come to find you. Please forgive me."
"Hmph. There is no way I'm forgiving you until I beat you to a meat pulp." She said as she waved her fist. Alex was a bit surprised at the sudden and unexpected threat.
Wen Cheng walked from the side and said, "Ah, you're finally here. Did you do what I told you to do?"
Alex reached into his bag and took out the badge numbered 194. He showed it to Wen Cheng, who nodded in satisfaction. "Good, good." Wen Cheng then reaching into his bag and pulled out a stack of books.
There were about 7 books in the stack and he handed them all to Alex. "Here you go. These are all the books I found for you. They are the best of the best we have. Learn them when possible and practice them as much as you can."
"Thank you, master," Alex bowed a little to Wen Cheng as he started to look at the books.
"Nuh Uh. You don't get to learn that now. First, we fight right now. I want to see how much you've learned of the Elusive Heavenly Sword. Also, I said I was going to beat you and I was not lying about it. Come."
Luo Mei took out her blue blade and walked to the middle of the training hall. Wen Cheng shook his head as he smiled a little. "You better do what she says Yu Ming, your senior sister gets really angry when she is mad about something."
"Master, stop talking bad about me." She shouted. We n Cheng simply laughed in response. Alex found himself unable to come up with any excuse so as to not fight, so he just took out his sword and went to the middle to fight.
As soon as both of them were ready, they started fighting. While Luo Mei did act angry, she was genuinely curious about how much he had learned.
Just prior to Alex coming here, Her master had told her that her junior brother had managed to learn the sword art overnight and she was very curious as to how much he had progressed.
After fighting for about 10 minutes, Luo Mei was absolutely shocked at how far he had come. 'Did he really just learn this sword art yesterday? How is he so good at it already?'
As she fought him more and more, she started becoming certain that telling her master about him at that time was the best choice. 'God, I thought I was already the most talented disciple of the master. However, he just overshadows us without even trying.'
After a few more minutes, Luo Mei got serious and started beating Alex all around. She used the flat side of his thin blade, but the strength of a Mind Tempering realm expert was too strong and by the time she was done, Alex was bruised all over.
"Next time, be sure to come to meet me, or you will have to train with me once more." She said and left the training hall.
Alex looked at himself and started laughing. Although she beat him all over, she only did damages that were easily healed and only hurt a lot.
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Chapter 116: Fluctuating Friction Dance
Wen Cheng walked up to Alex who was still on the ground and said, "Alright, I need to talk to you about something."
Alex stood up and waited for his master to continue.
"So, I have 7 techniques here with me. Aside from one technique, all of them are heaven grade. Thankfully, you had 5 elemental spiritual roots, so I didn't have to filter through the techniques and the search didn't last for long."
"What I am thinking of doing is every day, I will give a target for you to defeat. After each time you defeat the target, I will give you one of these books. So, since you completed today's task like I said yesterday, you get a technique."
"Choose, which one do you want? There are 3 offensive techniques, 2 defensive techniques, 1 movement technique, and 1 escape technique. The escape technique is the only one that is in immortal grade, while the others are in heaven grade. So, choose," Wen Cheng really outdid whatever expectations Alex had of him.
"Master, didn't you say that I needed spirit stones for everything in the sect? How come I'm getting free stuff from you?" he asked.
"Yes, you do. In fact, these books cost spirit stones as well. Only thing is, I paid for them instead of you." Wen Cheng said.
"Aw, Master. You didn't have to do that. I could've paid for them myself." Alex said. He had a few pills he could sell, and he could've made more pills if he needed to.
"You could've paid 15 True spirit stones? Didn't you say you were broke yesterday?" Wen Cheng said with a snort.
Alex was shocked. "They cost 15 True spirit stones? Don't you rent them? Why are they so expensive?" he asked.
"These are rented for 2 weeks. As for why they are so expensive, well, our sect's gotta do something to survive. We use whatever method to get spirit stones. Most of them are from our own disciples. Some from outsiders who use our disciples for their requirements like protecting them, or helping them move cities and other stuff." Wen Cheng explained.
"Either way, we are getting out of topic. Choose one for today and get to training."
Alex thought for a bit. He didn't care about the offensive or defensive techniques for now. He only cared about the movement technique. However, the immortal grade escape technique was too good to pass on.
He racked his brains for a bit and chose the movement technique. From his reasoning, during the next day, he wouldn't get into a fight where he would have to escape from it. So, the movement technique was something that would make his life much easier.
"Alright, here you go. Read it and learn it. Shouldn't take you more than 5 hours once more right? Since it's the same grade as Elusive Heavenly Sword." Wen Cheng said.
"I will see you at around 2, and we will practice till dawn once again. I had hoped to keep you till 3, but since you can just use pills, for the most part, it's quite helpful. Okay, I'm leaving. I will see you later." Wen Cheng left with the other 6 books and left Alex with the single movement technique.
Alex looked at the book and started reading it. "Fluctuating Friction Dance. Use your Qi on your entire body to remove or add friction to your movements. Helps one move and stop as required. Doesn't have any elemental alignment, so anyone can learn it.
"Hmm… Friction? That's a very unique thing for a technique. So, it's like increasing and decreasing my resistance to the surrounding? How fast can I get by just removing some friction?"
He read the whole book and didn't have to stop to practice mid-read like he had yesterday. After a few minutes of reading, he got the notification.
Congratulations, You have learned [Fluctuating Friction Dance]
"Okay, let's test this out." He started moving his Qi around his body. Some of the Qi started to leak from all over his body, while most of it ended up in his legs where it strengthened them. He willed the Qi to make his immediate surroundings frictionless and moved forward.
His legs were now too strong and he moved at an incredible speed due to the lack of friction. As such, the room wasn't large enough for his first maneuver
BANG
"Ow," Alex screamed as he hit the wall. His already hurting body hurt even more. "God, that hurts." He looked around the room and wondered if it would be large enough for him to train in.
"Alright, let's not remove all of the friction, I will need some to control myself." He once again started channeling his Qi around his body as he coated himself in Qi, removing most of the friction around himself. However, he didn't send as much Qi into his leg and only increased the strength by about half as much as last time.
He prepared himself and dashed forward. He was still quite fast, but not as fast as he was previously. So, when he reached the end of the hall, he managed to easily stop himself by removing the Qi around him.
'Hmm… what if I increased the friction at the end of the run?' He decided to try once again. He removed his friction, strengthened his legs, and dashed.
He smoothly ran forward and just before he was about to reach the end, he increased his friction. Abruptly, his speed decreased at once and he came to a stop at once. The Qi formed a soft blanket that stopped him from moving forward and cushioned his abrupt stop.
Over the next couple of hours, he started testing different ways to use the movement technique and started getting good at it. Unlike Elusive Heavenly Sword which was focused on one's body, Fluctuating Friction Dance required Qi, so it took him a while to properly learn it.
By 2 am, however, he had made quite a bit of progress in using the movement technique.
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Chapter 117: The Man in the Mansion
Alex had lost all of his Qi by now. He was sitting on the floor, waiting for his master to come back. Within a few minutes after it was 2 am, his master finally arrived.
"Did you learn the book already?" his master asked.
"Yes, Master. I'm done." He replied.
Wen Cheng had no problem believing him. "Okay, stand up. It's time we train again. I won't go as easy as last time today."
Over the next 4 hours, they trained until the morning and only stopped when the sun started to rise. "Alright, that's enough for today. I see you've already broken through so you won't have to for another day."
" For today, I suggest you fight until the badge number 184. Although that's not that much of a higher number, starting now, the opponents will be harder and harder to fight for you. After you get the 184th badge, I will give you the next technique."
"Okay, master." Alex nodded and left the training hall. He went back to his room and logged out.
Somewhere else in the real world,
Outside of a giant door, a girl was sitting in the hallway, twirling her bangs along her face, clearly bored. She was wearing a blue dress and had a red bag with her. Her cute face looked cuter as she pouted. She had to wait outside the door for so long, and she didn't like that.
Another hour passed and the girl was still there, waiting for the door to open. Suddenly, the lock to the door opened and a middle-aged man in a white robe walked out.
He had no beard or mustache on his face and his long hair was tied in a ponytail behind him. He looked a little weak, almost as if he hadn't gotten sleep for the last few days.
"Hmm…" he noticed the girl in front of his door who was looking at him with a pout on her face. " Oh, Hao Ya, how long have you been waiting here?" he asked.
The girl was called Hao Ya. She was the same Hao that the president of the Deva corporation practically worshiped as his benefactor. While she had a haughty face and attitude around others, in front of this man, she was a little child pouting because he took too long to leave his room.
"What took you so long? I have been waiting here forever." She said in an angry voice.
The man laughed a little and said, "Ah, it took me longer than I had assumed it would. I was giving some final touches to the new items and I lost track of time."
The girl took out a stack of papers. "Here you go. You asked for these, didn't you?" she said as she handed the stack of paper to the man.
"These are?" he looked at the stack of papers with a look of confusion.
"The records from Deva Corp., for the last month and a half." Hao Ya said.
A light shined in the tired eyes of the man. He started flipping through the pages and reading the assessments written there.
"Have you read these?" he asked the girl.
"Yes," she nodded.
"And?"
"And what?" she asked.
"How are they? Is there anyone with any good talents? Is anyone worth recruiting?" he asked.
"From what I saw, there are a few that are definitely worth it. There are a few that are close to becoming saints and some more in the True Emperor realm. However, the highest one that has revealed himself right now only has a True King realm. I do not know who these other people are."
The man thought for a second and said in a stern voice, "We do not want any of these people who broke through to the True Lord realm or higher. Let's look for better ones. How many of them died by now?"
"Around 30% of these people have died by now." The girl replied.
The man shook his head after hearing this. "The ones that have died are useless now. They can't progress any further."
"Is nobody else bragging about their body or talent? I worked so hard to make a reading of someone's talent possible. At least someone must have a really good talent right?" he asked.
"Well, there are. See here," she turned the records to a different page and said, "According to this, there are about 10 different individuals with God Grade talent, around 50 with Ancient Grade talents, and 500 with Divine grade talents. Although 30% of these have died as well, and we have no way of telling who."
"Oh, and what about bodies? Any special bodies?" The man didn't want to read the whole thing so he instead just asked the girl.
"From what I saw, there is someone special. Someone had an Ancient Grade body, but the name isn't recorded here. There are also a few divine-grade bodies and quite a few immortal-grade bodies. But as I said, quite a few of them died, so I don't know how many of those remaining."
The man got solemn and turned the record's page. After a while, he said, "Go back to the Deva Corp and tell them that I have finished making the sleeping artifacts and that they can come to get it. That should help us gather a more accurate result than just that helm artifact."
"Yes, master," the Hao girl nodded and left. The man kept looking at the different pages of records until he came across a certain piece of information.
"Hmm… it's gone? The god grade technique is gone?" he flipped the pages to see if there was any more info about it. "Who got it? But the technique is only supposed to go to someone with— Ahh, I see. " The man said with a face of understanding
"So finally, someone has come along with those spiritual roots, huh. Hopefully, they haven't died by now and we can once again see the glory of the technique paired together with those spiritual roots." The man's eyes started trembling in hope and anticipation.
"Will another god be born again?"
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Chapter 118: Capsules
It was 3 am in the morning. Alex was still training with Wen Cheng. He had just finished learning another new technique a few hours earlier and had exhausted his Qi training on it.
"Alright, let's stop here for today." Wen Cheng said as he casually blocked one of Alex's sword thrusts. Alex stumbled a little but came to a stop easily.
"Huh?" Alex looked at the clock in his vision and asked, "But it's only been 3 am, Master. Aren't we going to fight until sunrise? Do you need to go anywhere?"
"No. We have an important job today. Around noon, I want you to come back here with a different face. Do you have a face-changing pill?" he asked.
'A different face?' Alex got confused. Still, he answered his master.
"Yes, master. I have one." He said as he took out a Face Changing pill that he had made recently. Half of the pills he made for registering ended up with an extra pill. This was one of them. It was a 38% harmony Face Changing pill that could change a person's face for 38 hours.
"Good. I won't have to give you one then. Alright, at noon, come here with a different face. I, along with a few elders will take you deeper into the southern jungle, where you can find more alchemy ingredients."
Wen Cheng had arranged an expedition along with a few elders to take Alex to find more ingredients. He was hoping he would find a Spirit Cleansing Lily so that he too could unlock spiritual sense just like his disciple, Luo Mei.
"I understand, Master," Alex said. Wen Cheng handed him a small paper slip and Alex left the training hall. He disappeared after getting outside and made his way back to his house in the darkness of the night.
It didn't take him long to find his house numbered 168. During the last 3 days, he had managed to obtain badge 168. He walked into the house and sat on the unfamiliar, yet familiar bed. All the houses in the sect were designed according to the 3 ranks.
Outer sect disciple's houses were all the same. They had multiple rooms in one house and up to 5 disciples could live there at once.
The inner sect disciple's houses were simple, yet elegant. It had a single room, yet it gave the disciples peace and quiet while cultivating.
As for the core disciples, they had houses with courtyards, not unlike what Alex had back in the Hong Wu Sect. He had seen how good his senior sister's house looked when he had gone there to visit her.
He was now at Bone Tempering 8th realm as he had just broken through last night before training. He needed to be ready for the expedition at noon so he started cultivating. As usual, he lost his consciousness and ended up cultivating till the morning.
Once again, early in the morning, between 6 am and 7 am, he woke up. He directly logged out and went to get some breakfast along with the other 3 people.
"Hey, Alex. I need to talk to you about something." Eric said in the cafeteria.
"Sure, go ahead. What do you want to talk about." Alex was surprised he even brought up anything. Ever since he had gotten here, they only ever focused on playing Eternal Cultivation. They never really talked about anything outside of it. To think Eric would be so serious about it, he wondered what it could be.
"Umm…. You see, I will need to get that helmet back from you." Eric said. Alex was shocked. He hadn't expected the topic in question to be about giving him back his helmet.
'I already have the money, so I should just buy another one by now. I should stop being so lazy.' He thought.
"Okay. Do you want me to return it to you today?" Alex asked.
"Oh no. You can keep it for a few more days. I need that helmet back when the capsules are released," Eric said.
"Huh? Capsule? What's that?" Alex asked in confusion.
"Have you not heard the news? Deva Corp is coming up with capsules that you can sleep inside while playing the game. Apparently, they are much better than the helmet," said Eric. "Apparently, you can sell your helmets and get a discount for the capsule. That was why I wanted it. You can give it to me back on the day the capsules are sold."
"Oh. Do you by any chance happen to know when the capsules are going to be sold? Also at what price they are going to be sold?" Alex asked.
"Hmm… I think they said in around 3 weeks or so. I don't think they have a specific date set as a selling day. As for the price, they've given us a range between 300 to 500 dollars after a helmet has been returned. Without the discount, should be around 800 to 1000 dollars," said Eric.
Alex was stunned at how high the price was but shook his head as he remembered that he could afford such money now. 'Although, I will have to earn some more money somehow. After I get the ingredients back today, I should make a lot of pills on the upcoming Sunday and sell them at the auction once more.'
While he had about $25 thousand in the bank right now, that wouldn't be enough for him at all. He could tell that. If he ever was in desperate need of spirit stones, he needed money in the bank for a quick transfer.
'I guess I will care about it when the time comes. Let's just go gather some ingredients for today. It's been nearly 3 weeks since I went hunting in the southern forest. Master says we are going even deeper now. I wonder where we will be going this time. It should be further in than where my senior sister took me to. I'm getting kinda excited now.'
He and the other boys returned back to the room and logged back into the game.
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Chapter 119: Leaving with master
Alex logged back into the game at half-past 10. He had decided to sell another few pills at the market in front of the gate and had gotten 45 spirit stones from that sale. He had then decided to tour around the sect and look at more of the locations.
He had gone around the sect crater and looked at the different fights that were already taking place. He had once again seen that black stele, but this time he was too afraid to do anything and had simply left.
After logging out to get his lunch, he had logged back in once again. He waited for a while and only then ate the Face Changing pill. The pill entered his body and started to dissolve. Thick energy streamed out from his stomach reaching every corner of his body as he felt himself getting melted from inside out.
However, it didn't hurt at all. In fact, he felt like he could influence these melted portions. He started to think of a face to change to. The only face he knew was his own. So, his body slowly morphed into what his real-life mirrored version would look like.
His hair shriveled and shortened itself and his eyes changed color. His face started to slowly change as well. Other than that, there was no change to him. But, this was still enough to make him unrecognizable to the rest of the people.
He walked out of the house after checking that there was no one around to see him leave this exact house. He walked in broad daylight up to the sect leader's building.
Funnily enough, nobody was here to care about this at all. Most of the people were down at the sect crater fighting, as it was Friday today with unlimited challenges.
Alex had come to learn that having a higher badge gave you many benefits in the sect. Everything in the sect needed to be bought with real money. From time in the training hall or a room in the production hall. Or even the techniques in the Library. If one wanted them, they would have to pay a certain price.
But with badges, the higher the badge, the more discount they got. The badges also set an order on who gets what first. If 5 people were waiting for the same technique in the library to be returned, when it did get returned, the one with the highest badge would be allowed to get it.
Sometimes, the disciples with lower badges took forever to get a single technique. So they always looked forward to having a higher numbered badge as it meant life would be better in the sect.
The one thing that Alex found odd regarding the Tiger sect was that the disciples didn't get any form of help to start on their journey. Unlike how Hong Wu Sect gave its disciple's spirit stones and pills monthly, the Tiger sect did nothing of that sort. Every disciple was on their own.
This was also the reason why outer sect disciples and inner sect disciples went around following core disciples just so that they could give them something that would help them. It may be weapons, or techniques, or spirit stones, or even simply just the threat of their name. The disciples could use any of these things to go higher in rank.
'Did that Huo Tu guy think I would do anything for money? Or was he legitimately expecting me to get scared and give him that pill for 10 spirit stones?' he wondered.
He finally reached the sect leader's building. He had never walked in here before. Since he was asked to come secretly every night, he had always sneaked around the side instead of walking through the main hall.
He walked in through the hall and came out of the other side. He saw a few people standing around there. Aside from his master, there were 5 people standing in a group, talking to each other.
Wen Cheng saw him walking towards the group and looked at him with a confused face.
'He doesn't recognize me.' Alex chuckled to himself learning that. He walked straight to his master and bowed down to make a greeting.
"Good Afternoon, Master." As soon as he said that, a light flashed in Wen Cheng's eyes as he realized what was happening.
"Yu Ming, you are finally here. Come here, let me introduce you to the elders."
There were 2 female elders and 3 male elders in the group. Wen Cheng introduced Alex to them all. Wen Cheng unhesitatingly introduced Alex as his disciple as well. Now that nobody could see his face, he didn't care about hiding his relationship.
"Alright, let's leave. We need to reach there as soon as we can. We only have a day's worth of time. My disciple will be the one doing all the ingredients picking, so we old guys are there to protect him only."
Wen Cheng started flying simply and pulled Alex along with him. Unlike Ma Rong, he didn't care about having an artifact when flying. The high speed and the air hitting his face finally made him understand how fun flying really was.
While the speed of their flying wasn't as fast as when he was in Ma Rong's boat, it was still significantly fast. Alex knew that his master could go faster. Maybe even faster than Ma Rong could, but he didn't. Only because doing so would harm Alex.
"Where exactly are we going master?" he finally asked about the destination. While he knew they were going further into the southern forest, it seemed like his master and the elders had a destination in mind.
"Our records speak of a sacred land that we used to have. But ever since the war, most of the records were lost, and we never learned what this sacred land was. In search of the said sacred land, we found a special place in the southern forest that has a lot of different vegetation, no different from the alchemy gardens of Hong Wu Sect."
"We are going there right now."
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Chapter 120: War and Records
"As many ingredients as the alchemy gardens?" Alex was shocked. If that was true, then there would be more than a mountain of ingredients there.
"Have you been to the alchemy gardens before, master?" Alex couldn't help but ask.
"Not, really," said Wen Cheng. "I've only ever seen it from afar. But even then I can tell that the place we are going to has as much alchemy ingredients as the alchemy gardens."
Wen Cheng seemed to be confident in his assessment, so all Alex could do was wait.
"By the way, master. What did you mean by war? Was there a war in the crimson empire?" he asked. To him, war was something that took place ages ago where one country would attack another country.
"No, not the empire. War in the sect. Although it might be better to call it infighting, it was too big to be called something so simple. So, we just call it the war. It's appropriate since more than 4000, 80% of the sect members at that time died in that war." Wen Cheng seemed to be getting a little emotional saying that.
"Were you there master?" he asked.
"Yes. I was but an inner sect disciple at the time. I bore witness to the death and destruction in the sect. Elders of two factions, fighting each other, each dying to the other's hands." Wen Cheng didn't seem to like remembering about the past.
"What was the cause of the war master?" Alex asked. He was getting interested in the history of the sect he joined.
"The 2nd Elder at that time was a powerful, but greedy man that wanted the sect all to himself. However, he couldn't beat the sect leader who was much stronger than him at the time. So, the 2nd Elder was never able to become the Sect Leader."
"Until one day, when the sect leader returned back to the sect from an outside visit, all bloody and weak. The 2nd Elder took the chance to launch a rebellion against the sect master."
"The ones that believed in the 2nd elder fought against the ones that defended the sect leader. It was an all-out war that resulted in huge destruction." Wen Cheng said.
"Was that what made the giant crater in the sect?" Alex asked.
"Crater? No. We still don't know what the crater was since most if not all records were lost. Although we do believe it was the black stele, We are not sure, however."
"The destruction I was talking about was more so the buildings and the lives we lost that day. Plus, we lost most of our history and records that day. It was truly a devastating event." Wen Cheng shook his head as he remembered more.
"Did the sect leader or the 2nd Elder die?" he asked.
"The sect leader died, unfortunately. His wound was just too severe. The 2nd elder was also heavily injured and was sent away to the southern forest at the time. We can only assume he died a few weeks later."
"It was actually at that time we came up with the idea." Wen Cheng said with a smile. "We made the rules on how sect leaders were chosen in the sect from that point forward."
" Do you know how sect leaders are chosen in the Tiger sect?" he asked Alex.
"No?" He wondered if this was common knowledge that everyone knew about.
"In the Tiger sect, the sect leader is based on the ranking of their respective students. The person whose student is the prime disciple gets to be the sect leader. As such, I have been a sect leader for nearly 10 years now." Wen Cheng said.
"hmm... Is it okay as long as it's a disciple? no other requirements?" Alex asked.
"Oh, no. The disciples must be below the age of 25, and not in the True realm yet. For now, your senior sister is the prime disciple, so I will be a sect leader for a little while more."
Alex thought and asked, "And what about after senior sister has crossed those limitations? Do you leave the sect leader's position?"
"Yes, that is how the sect works now. All I can do is rear another disciple to the same strength and hope they are the strongest. Otherwise, the first elder becomes the sect leader, while I turn to whatever rank my newest disciple is among the other elder's disciples."
"Oh…" Alex fell into contemplation after having been dumped such a huge amount of information on. He tried processing all he had just heard and thought of something.
"What is the Sacred land you talked about master?" he had remembered Wen Cheng saying the Sacred Land as they had been searching when they found this mysterious place.
"I don't know either," Wen Cheng said. "If we still had the records from the old times I could tell you, but we don't. Most of our history and information was lost during the war and no one knows what had happened in the sect before the war. All of the elders died so we don't even have hearsay."
"However, there are 2 pieces of information that we managed to find from what records still remained."
"The first information we have is that the Tiger sect actually moved to the current location around 150 years ago or so. We don't know where the Tiger sect was situated before it was shifted to the new location. Only that it was near the Sacred Land"
"The second thing is that the elders and disciples of that time didn't dare step in the sacred land. We can only assume that it was holy to them by what it was called. The records say the sacred land looked over a great landscape of blue, but we haven't found a river or lake matching this description yet."
"I will be honest. I don't know if you can even call those records trustworthy. We don't know how much of it is true and how much of it is just something we misunderstood. So you better take these with a bit of doubt in your heart." Wen Cheng explained a lot.
"I understand Master" Alex nodded seriously.
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Chapter 121: Fog
Alex found himself unable to come up with any other topics to talk about at the moment so he decided to stay quiet. The rest of the journey was filled with nothing but the sound of wind hitting their ears.
Alex just took in the feeling of flying, something that was impossible to do in real life, and got happy. It took them about 2 hours just to fly to their destination.
Not only was the destination deep into the southern forest, but it was also far away from the scarlet city, so they had to take a much longer path than what others would have.
"Here we are," said Wen Cheng as he looked ahead.
Alex stuck out his neck to the side to see what was in front. To his shock, in the middle of the unending forest, there was a massive area filled with fog that was very unusual for the forest.
'Why is there fog in the middle? Is there a body of water nearby?' he wondered.
As he got near, however, his body shook. 'This!!' he was truly shocked this time. The fog he was seeing in front of him, wasn't actually a fog made out of water vapor. It was actually a fog made up of purely Qi.
'How much Qi will I be able to gather if I cultivate here?' he wondered. Just before they reached the fog, however, the group of 7 dropped to the ground.
"This is the place I talked about, Yu Ming. Ahead is a land filled with Qi, so the vegetation that grows here should be mostly alchemy ingredients. I as well as a few other elders come here once in a while to gather some ingredients, but we don't have a lot of knowledge about the ingredients, so we only take what we know is an ingredient and leave the rest to grow. "
"Thankfully, people don't visit the southern forest a lot, and this location is very unknown." Wen Cheng said. He took out a handful of empty storage bags and handed it to Alex.
"Take these bags. You will go inside to collect the ingredients. This area is safe, so you don't have to worry about monsters here at all. I don't know how long it will take you, but just go at your own pace. Us elders will go around the fog to protect you from monsters just in case they come from the outside."
"Still, if there are some inside, your escape technique should be enough for you."
"Alright, go now and gather everything you can. At least fill all of these storage bags, you should be able to do that, right?" Wen Cheng answered.
"If there are indeed ingredients inside, then that should be no problem," Alex said.
"Alright, go and do your task. We will do ours."
Wen Cheng said as he gestured for Alex to leave. The other elders also started to walk around the fog to the other side of the special place.
Alex walked just a little bit into the fog and he felt like he was getting cleaned with all the Qi. As they touched his body, he realized that it wasn't just normal Qi.
The Qi was a mixture of different elemental Qi. He could feel all of the different elements in the air. He really wanted to cultivate right now, but he didn't. He needed to get to work right now.
He made sure he had enough storage bags to fill up all of these ingredients. Other than the 5 his master had given him, he also had a few storage bags himself. Due to always having to store so many ingredients and monster corpses, he had gotten quite a few when he had the time.
"Oh, what's this?" he thought curiously when he found a talisman inside one of his storage bags. "hmm... oh, this is the paper slip master gave me yesterday. I can't believe I completely forgot to read it," he thought.
-There are spirit cleansing lilies inside. If you do pick them up, do not let the elders know about it. Tell them you weren't confident about it and left it behind. They shouldn't be able to tell the difference between the ones left behind. -
"Oh!" Alex's eyes started shining when he realized spirit cleansing lilies inside. "So, they aren't as rare as I thought… or this place is something special."
"Did master make himself and the elders purposefully stay outside so that they don't see me pick up the lilies? I don't see another reason why." Alex thought as he looked in the surrounding.
He sent out his spiritual sense to the max without overstraining himself. The limit for that was still 20 meters. He then activated his Immortal Concealing technique and used the Veiled light technique to completely hide his body and aura.
After that, he got to work. He didn't even care what any of the ingredients were. As long as he knew them, he picked them up. Leaves, fruit, flower, root, vine, bark, thorns, stalks, stem, branch. Whatever he could find, he would pick it up.
He felt the energies the ingredients gave off and wondered, "That's quite a bit of energy. Are these about 100 years old?"
While he still wasn't experienced enough to tell the age accurately, he could vaguely guess how old an ingredient was based on their concentration of energy. And he was sure these were some of the oldest ingredients he had come into contact with. Even the alchemy gardens in Hong Wu sects which were about 70-80 years old didn't have ingredients with energies this thick.
He kept gathering many ingredients and came across many that he could even use himself. However, the best part about this was that most of the ingredients here were for pills that used True Qi. He knew about 40 different types of True rank pill recipes, and out of them, he had found about 25 main ingredients and a lot of other secondary and tertiary recipes.
This place was a treasure trove of ingredients and he was enjoying every single minute he was in here.
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Chapter 122: A Tiresome Task
"Has master never been to the alchemy gardens of Hong Wu Sect?" Alex wondered as he looked at the time on the clock. It had been 3 pm already. He had been working for the last hour and he wasn't even close to clearing a fourth of this garden.
This was after having continuously used his spiritual sense and Qi manipulation at Bone tempering the 8th realm. By now he had made enough pills and also worked at the alchemy garden long enough, where even diverting his attention into 10 different things at once was considerably easy for him.
"Can I log out here? I hope there is no problem with that." Alex needed to log out to get some food but was worried at the consequences of leaving in such an open area.
He knew that his body didn't disappear when he logged out, so it was imperative he was in a safe spot when he logged out.
"Urghh… Whatever. Master and the elders are looking after me. All I can do now is hope that I don't end up losing my concealment techniques when I log out. If I can keep them active, that would be great." Saying that he logged out.
After a few minutes, he logged back in. He looked at himself and was surprised.
"Oh, wow. It's still active. So, we can log out and still have our techniques running? Wait, what about normal cultivation? Can I do that too?" Alex got unusually excited when he found that out. Only for it to excruciatingly disappear when he realized.
"I fall asleep when I cultivate, So I can't log out." He facepalmed when he remembered such a simple fact. "I can't believe I forgot about that."
After a few more seconds of self embarrassment, he got back to work. There were a lot more ingredients to gather and the time was short.
He walked around the place with his spiritual sense noticing all the ingredients and his Qi picking them all up.
"Man, there are so many ingredients here. It's like the alchemy gardens if it were left alone for a hundred years." He thought. Although one thing was confusing him still.
"Where is all of this Qi coming from though. Is the valley special? Does it have something that makes it special?" this was all he could think of as he collected the different ingredients.
About 2 hours later, he finally found a big group of Spirit Cleansing lilies. There were at least 10 flower beds in there, ready to be picked. Alex was both nervous and overjoyed at the view.
He didn't dare let himself pick them up using Qi manipulation. He went where they were and hand-picked them. After he was done picking them, he kept them in his own storage bag.
Once he was done, he was about to continue when he noticed something.
"What is that?" the thing he noticed wasn't with his vision, but with his spiritual sense. And the place he noticed wasn't around him, but rather below him.
A few meters ahead of him, there was a giant hole in the underground. It was probably more appropriate to call it a tunnel. The tunnel was about 5 meters in width and went on as far as he could sense.
He decided not to worry about what that was for now and continued with the ingredients.
It was 7 pm by the time he was done with 3 fourths of the place. 4 of the 5 storage bags his master gave him were already full and the 5 one was on its way to get full as well.
"I guess I will just keep the rest in mine," he thought. After that, he logged out. Coming back about half an hour later, he was truly surprised to see his concealment techniques still active.
"Well, even if I can't cultivate, I can at least hide in open areas and won't have to look for a safe space when I log out now."
He went on to collect the last portions of the ingredients that were still remaining. After completely collecting them all within the next 2 hours, he decided to go back to his master.
As he was walking back, however, he once more came across those tunnels in the ground.
"These are in a different location from the previous one. Did someone dig them out? Or is this something like a plot hole that occurred on its own?"
The mystery was now too much for him to ignore. "Let me go and check," he said as he disappeared right where he was standing. He reappeared in the tunnel underground.
"I love teleporting like that," he said to himself. He started walking around the tunnel trying to learn how it was made.
"Everything is so circular. Doesn't look like it's something natural. Has to be something made by someone right?" he wondered. As he was walking, he came across something weird stuck on the ground.
It was a metal rod with some sort of weird markings on them. At the end of the rod was a triangular piece of… something that looked like a mixture of paper and cloth was attached.
"That's definitely man-made," he thought and picked it up. He kept on walking through the tunnel and found other metal rods just like this. These thin metal rods were numerous in numbers and were all over the place.
After gathering exactly 24 of these metal rods, he felt something change in the surrounding. It was almost like… the Qi that was gathered in the area was leaving.
"Was this what was causing the Qi to gather here?" he wondered as he looked at the metal rod. He tried recalling anything he had heard about these metal rods and finally realized. "Wait, these are formation flags, aren't they? That means the Qi gathering here was a result of formations as well."
He felt like he had discovered something really mysterious. As he walked, he decided to leave but kept walking just a little further.
It was then that he noticed something in the distance.
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Chapter 123: Worm
'Hmm… what's that?' he walked a little further and saw the object in full clarity. He was expecting to see something that had to do with the formation that was laid down, but instead, it was a corpse.
And a very old one at that. The corpse's flesh had mostly rotted away, and all that was left was the skeleton. The clothes were also in tatters and the skeleton itself was pressed to the side of the tunnel.
"Was he buried here and only showed up when someone opened this tunnel? Or was he already here and whatever opened the tunnel pushed him to the side?" he wondered.
He walked closer to the corpse and looked at it. He didn't feel any disgust or awfulness when he looked at it. Instead, all he felt was sorry for the poor guy.
"Hmm…" he noticed a small slip of talisman on his hand. "What is that?" he wondered as he picked it out. He tried to read and see what it was but realized very soon that it wasn't a records talisman. It was a talisman that did something. As for what a dying man would've wanted to do, he was not sure.
He checked the corpse a little further and found 2 storage bags on him. One of the bags had a bunch of talismans that he guessed were similar to what he was holding. The second bag, however, surprised him. The second bag had plenty of wooden boxes. When he tried to penetrate his spiritual sense into the boxes, he realized that they were all actually full of Alchemy materials.
"Using Jade or Wooden boxes to protect the energy of the ingredients from diffusing is generally helpful, but I've never done it so myself since I use the ingredients pretty much instantly. It's nice to finally see someone do that for its correct cause."
He then looked up at the corpse and thought, "so this person was an alchemist?" suddenly, the ground started shaking.
"What's happening?" he got a little scared. The shaking got larger and larger until he was a giant worm come his way. The worm was quite slow, but it covered the whole tunnel, almost as if it was the one that made all of the tunnels.
Alex was still in his concealed form, so he didn't worry about the worm, but the aura the worm sent out was stronger than anything he had sensed yet. Not even either of his masters was as strong as this worm. That did scare him well.
Suddenly, the worm turned towards him. 'Can it see me?' Alex was surprised and his fear of the worm started to rise. But then, he saw that the worm had no eyes. In the first place, it shouldn't have been able to see him anyway since he was invisible.
"Unless… " a bad premonition appeared in his head. Suddenly, he rotated his Qi, until it came to his head and all the surrounding area started to light up. The worm sped up so fast towards him, that he almost fumbled. But at the last second, he managed to use Flickering Shadow to leave the underground and come back outside.
"Huff Huff… So, that thing was actually looking towards me through its sense of smell huh," he thought.
He watched the worm dance around searching for him, but since he was no longer there, it couldn't find him anymore. The worm then went away opposite to the direction it came from.
Finally, he looked up at him current surrounding. He saw that while the vegetation was still there, there were no more fogs in the surrounding. 'Is it because I took out those formation flags?' he wondered.
Now that the elder was probably searching for him, he deactivated his concealing technique and stopped using his invisibility.
He walked a little forward and saw an elder hurriedly coming his way. "Disciple are you alright?" he asked worriedly. The elder then immediately called the rest of the elders and sect leader.
"Yes, I am fine, elder." Alex simply answered." Wen Cheng looked at his disheveled state and asked, "What happened? Did you manage to get all of the ingredients in there?"
"Aside from a few, I managed to get all," Alex said as he handed 4 full bags and 1 three-quarter full bag. The elders also got in close to look at the ingredients.
Wen Cheng sighed and asked, "You didn't get any Spirit Cleansing Lilies, did you?"
"No, master. Those are impossible; even for me." Alex said while shaking his head. "Alright then, let's return."
Wen Cheng flew off and took Alex along with him. It took them about 2 hours again to return back to the sect. They all landed in the sect leader's backyard.
"Alright, as previously mentioned, my disciple gets half of the ingredients. Do any of you oppose this?" Wen Cheng asked. Nobody there spoke a word of opposition. So, Wen Cheng took out an empty storage bag and filled it a bit. He then handed Alex 2 and nearly half full storage bags.
Alex was surprised. 'Why did master not give me the empty bag back in the special place? Did he intentionally do that?'
The elders took their portions and left without hesitation. Only after seeing the elders leave did Wen Cheng let out a big sigh. "While they are helpful, we are all fighting for the sect leader's position. So nobody wants to give the others a chance to one-up them. If I tried to openly help you, they would shut me down without question."
Alex finally understood. He took out 3 flowers from his bag and handed them to his master. "These should be enough, right master?" he asked.
"So you can get them. Little Mei wasn't lying. Oh god, I was so worried you couldn't do it. Good. Good. You keep one and try to unlock your spiritual sense as well." Wen Cheng said as he handed one back to Alex.
Alex felt warm seeing his master treat him so nicely. "Keep it, master, I already have some more." He said as he took out a few more of the Spirit Cleansing lilies.
"Alright. Go back to your house now. And unlock your spiritual sense." Wen Cheng said and sent him back during the night.
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Chapter 124: Lucky
Alex walked back to his home in the dark. He quietly entered the home numbered 168. Thankfully, his master had registered him as someone who had left the sect, or else he would have lost his home today and would have to go somewhere in the outer sect to live.
He went on to stay in the bed and finally started to think about what had happened today. All those ingredients, the tunnels, the corpse, and the worm.
He took out 6 different bags from within him. After the 5 original bags were filled to the brim, he had used his own bags to collect them. As such, out of everyone today, he had got the most profit.
"This was way beneficial than the 3 days of break I took to gather ingredients in the southern forest."
He thought back to the day and shuddered as he remembered the worm again. "Just what was that? What cultivation was it to make me feel so physically scared?" he wondered. Due to the suddenness of the situation, he hadn't managed to look at the name of the worm or its cultivation.
"I doubt it would've worked. It would've probably said Mortal like it does for all beings with high cultivation base." He decided to not think about that for now and instead looked at the 2 storage bags he had gotten from the corpse.
One of them was full of talismans that he thought did something like that one talisman he was holding. The others had a bunch of ingredients in them.
He looked through the ingredients, and while he recognized all of them, barely any of them were useful for the pills he knew about. "That's odd. I have seen some ingredients that didn't align to a recipe, but not so many at once." He started wondering what other recipes might be out there that used these ingredients. And for them to behold on to using a wooden box, the owner really must've been worried about losing its energy.
He kept the bag and looked at the next one. He had already kept the original talisman the corpse was holding in his other bag, so this bag only had the other ones.
"Let's see what they are about." He took out a single talisman and tried to see what sort of ability it could have or if he could even find that out without trying.
However, when he used his spiritual sense to look at it, he realized something different. The talismans were recording talismans, unlike the other one.
"Hmm… it's a recipe?" he was shocked. The talisman was actually a recipe. He quickly read it all, and suddenly.
Congratulation. You have learned the recipe for 'Heaven Profound Pill'
Heaven Profound pill, according to the recipe, was a pill that helped people breakthrough from the True realm to the Saint realm. The most amazing thing about this pill was that it was actually a Saint Rank pill.
"What? A Saint rank pill's recipe?" he was stunned. He quickly started reading the other talismans. Almost all of the talismans were recording talismans, which had one of two things.
It either recorded a pill recipe or formation blueprints. "Was the one who set the formations in that place this guy?" Alex wondered.
He read through all of the talismans in about 2 hours of time. There was truly a lot of them. Unfortunately, only a handful of the talismans were Saint Rank pills. Still, getting to learn 8 Saint Rank pill recipes and over a hundred True Pills recipes was a chance that would rarely ever come by.
He also remembered about 20 different formation blueprints. But since he had no idea how formations worked, he didn't understand a single thing. Not that he wanted to.
He looked at the time and realized it was 2 am. He decided to cultivate for the rest of the night, when he suddenly realized, his face was still the same as when he ate that pill.
'How do I stop this effect?' he wondered. There weren't any abilities that canceled the pill's effect. He calculated the time and realized that his face would change back at around 4 am in the morning tomorrow. So, he still had over an entire day to go.
'Whatever,' he thought and simply started cultivating. Before he knew it, he was already in a trance state, falling unconscious due to the cultivation.
Early in the morning, a little past 6 am, Alex opened his eyes. He logged out to have his breakfast. As he got out, he saw a notification on his phone. It was from his cousin Hannah.
They hadn't met in a couple of weeks, so she wanted to take him to an amusement park today.
"An amusement park huh. I wonder how different it is from the fairs in the countryside," Alex thought out loud. The time set for the amusement park was around 11 am, so he could only go back to the game for 3 hours at most.
He went to have his breakfast and returned back to his room. While his other 3 roommates went back to the game, he had nothing to do in the game this morning, so he decided not to.
"Guess I won't do anything for this morning then." He went back to bed and tried to sleep, but the game was too good at making him rest well, so he couldn't even sleep.
"Arghh," he said as he started tossing and turning but couldn't sleep at all. So, he took out his phone and started surfing the Internet. "Should I go to the forum?" he wondered but decided not to. "I am already making money and am getting enough information from masters in the game. I don't see why I should spoil myself with other information instead. I want to play it the way the developers intended." Alex thought.
So, he opened up his go-to video hosting site to watch some new videos. On the recommended page, there was a new video released by Deva Corp explaining their latest capsules.
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Chapter 125: Capsule Presentation
"Oh, are these the capsules Eric was talking about?" Alex thought as he clicked on the thumbnail. The video opened up to show a large capsule in the middle of the room and a man ready to talk.
"Welcome to the video everyone. Today is the first unveiling of the capsules for the ever-popular game Eternal Cultivation. And Deva corp has given me the honor and opportunity of being the person to introduce these capsules to you."
The man walked up to the capsule and talked as he put his hands on it.
"These bed-sized capsules are the latest products of Deva Corp. You can open these capsules like this and enter here. Once you are inside, you will have to put nothing on your head or body to be able to play. All you do, is you press this button right near your left hand and let the lid close."
The man showed everything one had to do to log in. It seemed pretty easy to Alex.
"As you guys know, Eternal Cultivation can recognize you as the same player no matter how many helmets you chance, this is the same. As long as you log in, you will end up with the same character."
The man moved to the front and started talking about the various other features of the capsule. Saying how fast it processed everything or how much more realistic the game would look now.
"Do you know what the best thing about this capsule is?" the man prompted a question to the camera.
"It is the fact that you won't have to leave the capsule to eat or drink or go to the bathrooms at all. The Deva Corp has managed to make it so that all of your normal bodily functions slow down when you enter the game."
"So all of you game addicts can go into the game without worrying about food or bathrooms ever again. However, Deva Corp still recommends you log out once a day to eat some food and do other things. Also, don't forget to exercise guys. I know you guys only sleep and don't exercise."
The man laughed as he was handed a piece of paper from the side.
"Here we have it, folks. The official numbers. This piece of paper contains the cost and the release date of these capsules. Even I do not know what information is inside, so you guys will know it along with me," as he said that, he started to open the piece of paper very slowly to build suspense among his viewers.
"Oh, we have the date first. And it is going to be released in…" When Alex heard the date, he was surprised.
"That is around 2 weeks from now. Much closer than I had expected." Eric had mentioned it is about 3 weeks away, but it seemed that was not the case. The capsules would be here before they even knew it.
'Where would I even keep it if I got it?' he started to wonder. While the dorm room was big, it wasn't big enough to fit 4 capsules along with the beds and the closets. He stopped thinking about the problem for now and kept on watching the video.
The man further opened the page until it was fully opened.
"Hmm…" a sound of surprise came from the man. "This can't be." The man spoke out loud in shock as he kept on looking at the piece of paper. He slowly looked up at the camera with a face of incredulous and started talking.
"You won't believe me, folks. That is how good the price is." The man stopped talking to increase the suspense more.
"The capsule will be on sale with a cost of $600. 600 dollars guys, 600 dollars. That's a steal if you ask me."
"However, that is not the best part about the price announcements. It would seem the rumors about us being able to return our VR helmets for a discount at the store were true. Depending on the time of the purchase of your helmets, these are the discount percentage you would get."
"To anyone who bought the VR helmet within the first two weeks of sales, you get a 50% discount while buying the capsule."
"To anyone who bought the VR helmet within the second 2 weeks of sales, you get a 60% discount."
"To anyone who bought the VR helmet within the last 2 weeks of sales, you get a 70% discount."
"As for those who can't wait for the capsule coming up in the next 2 weeks, you can just get a helmet and return it back for absolutely free for a whopping 80% discount.
"Guys, you can just go buy a helmet, play for two weeks, then return it back and get a capsule for 120 bucks. That's 20 bucks more than the original price for 2 weeks worth of playing. Go get it if you haven't right now."
"Honestly, with such advanced technology, I wonder why Deva Corp is still refusing to use them in sectors like education and health care. And instead, they just focus on the game."
The video ended soon after. 'Should I get it?' Alex started wondering. Just the fact that he wouldn't have to log out 4 times a day made the capsule worth it. With that, he could play a lot more and earn a lot more money. But, there was no place to keep the capsule.
VR Helmet was one thing, but he wasn't sure if the dorm even allowed its student to get something like a capsule inside.
"The other 3 want one as well. Even if the dormitory allows us, I don't see where we are supposed to keep them." Alex thought as he looked around. 4 capsules could fit, but then there would be no place to move around in the room.
He sighed and thought, "Now that I have money, should I just rent a room somewhere near the college?"
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Chapter 126: Free Apartment
"You wanna ride that?" Hannah asked hesitantly while looking at a big Ferris wheel in front of her.
"Yeah, Hannah, let's ride that. Alex, you should ride that as well. Have you been on a Ferris wheel that big?" Hannah's friend, Vinny asked.
"No. We occasionally had a small one during the fairs, but those were like half the size of these," Alex said.
"Alright then, come on. It's my treat anyway," said Vinny as she dragged both of them along.
Vinny and Hannah were roommates that rented an apartment together. She had recently completed university, so she was leaving the city next week. So, as a sort of farewell party, she had decided to take Hannah to the amusement park. When she mentioned that she had a cousin in town that might also want to come to one, she had allowed Hannah to invite Alex.
Hannah's other friend that she used to live with had also completed university and had already left. While Hannah still had a few more months of study, so she was now going to be alone.
They got up on the Ferris wheel and started enjoying the experience as the Ferris wheel brought them up high. However, Alex didn't find the height scary at all.
'Is it because I am quite used to flying inside the game?' he wondered. Hannah seemed to be less phased by the height as well. While Vinny on the other hand was having the time of her life. Although he wasn't scared, he still enjoyed the experience of rapidly falling.
After 10 minutes, they came down of the Ferris wheel. Vinny took them to a lot of other sites in the amusement park. By the time they left the amusement park, it was already past 3 pm.
Vinny took the two to a restaurant to get something to eat. There, they started talking once more.
"Where are you at in EC, Alex?" Vinny asked while taking a bite out of her fries.
"EC… Eternal Cultivation? How did you know I played it?" Alex asked with a surprised face.
"Everyone plays it, haha. Besides, I think I remember Hannah mentioning something about it." Vinny said as she laughed.
"Yeah, Alex. You didn't mention last time where you were at. What continent are you in?" Hannah asked.
"Continent?" Alex said with puzzlement. "I don't really know what a continent is, but I'm in a place called Scarlet City in the Crimson Empire."
Hannah thought for a bit and said, "I haven't really heard about any empires called Crimson Empire in the game. Must be a different continent from the East then."
Vinny suddenly spoke as she thought, "Ah, I think I have heard about that Empire in the forums. The players say that none of the NPCs know what continent they are in. But, from their description of the place, it's full of trees and greenery, so I think it's not the northern continent that is completely frozen or the southern continent that is said to be barren for the most part, right? So, It has to be the western continent."
"Oh, the Western continent? I heard that it gets the least amount of players for some reason. Also, the NPCs from there have a very weak cultivation base" Hannah said
"Speaking of that, what cultivation base do you have, Alex?" Vinny asked.
"Oh, I am only at Bone Tempering 8th realm. I should reach Bone tempering 9th realm soon." Alex said.
"Huh?" Hannah exclaimed from the side. "Hasn't it been nearly a month since you started playing? How are you not even in the organ tempering realm yet? Don't you have a good cultivation method or money to buy pills?"
"Oh no, I'm fine on that aspect. My method is good. And also, I am an alchemist so I don't have to worry about pills." Alex said.
"Then why are you so slow?" Hannah asked. She seemed to be unusually frustrated for some reason.
"Oh, people in the game told me that it wasn't good to break through very fast. It destabilizes your cultivation base and as a result, your later realms become weaker, or breaking through gets harder." Alex answered.
"I haven't heard of anything like that," said Vinny. "I don't think the forums have something about it either."
"No, I think he is correct. Breaking through too fast does make you weaker. Now that I think about it, I might have been too fast as well. No wonder I am so weak compared to the other cultivators. I will have to make sure my cultivation base stabilizes now," Hannah said as she pondered a little.
They talked about a few other things but nothing important until the conversation shifted towards the capsules that were going to be released soon.
"Ah, I want one right now. It looks so good," said Vinny.
"Yeah. Hey Alex, are you going to get one? Or you can use my helmet instead," said Hannah.
"Oh, no sister. I can't have that. I have earned some money by selling pills. I will use them," said Alex. "Although, I'm not sure if I can even use it in the first place. My dorm might not allow it. If I want a capsule, I will have to leave the dorm."
"Hmm" Vinny hummed as she realized something. Hannah and Alex seemed to suddenly realize it as well. "Woah, you guys can stay together then. That works perfectly, right?" Vinny exclaimed.
Alex thought that was a good idea as well.
"Oh wow. I can't believe I didn't think of that before. I was dreading that I will have to leave the apartment or somehow find other people. But, if you come to live with me, my problems of being alone will be solved."
"Also, it seems you can solve your problem of not being able to play will be solved as well." Hannah said.
"I think that's a fantastic idea, sister. I will talk with the dorm staff tomorrow about my leaving in a week. And I will also call my parents."
Afterward, Hannah and Vinny walked back to their room, while Alex quickly returned back to his dorm room. It was a little late, so he didn't immediately log in. Instead, he called his parents and let them know about the situation. They were happy to hear that he would stay with his cousin.
Soon, he went and had his dinner. Only then did he finally log in for the night.
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Chapter 127: Late on a Saturday
Alex opened his eyes inside his brightly lit room. He tried to remember what he was doing today before leaving the game.
"Ah, that's right. Those talismans. I learned all the recipes and blueprints. It's amazing how I can remember everything in the game, yet in the real world, I can't even remember to call my parents." He laughed as he said that to himself.
"Hmm… " suddenly, he noticed something. Something was vibrating close to him. When he tried to look around for what it was, he realized that it was coming from one of his numerous storage bags.
As he looked into the bag to see what was making so much of a ruckus, he realized that it was his badge. He took out the badge numbered 168 and saw that it was not only vibrating but also flashing as well.
'What's going on?' he thought as he sent his spiritual sense into the badge. "What?!!" he exclaimed loudly as he realized there were numerous notifications in his badge, and all of them were similar.
-Number 182 has registered a match with you. You have 1 hour to fight-
-You have forfeited the match. Your number is now 182-
-Number 198 has registered a match with you. You have 1 hour to fight-
-You have forfeited the match. Your number is now 198-
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-Number 873 has registered a match with you. You have 1 hour to fight-
-You have forfeited the match. Your number is now 873-
-Number 943 has registered a match with you. You have 1 hour to fight-
Alex was really surprised now. "Oh no. Today is a Saturday. I forgot you had to fight every hour on a Friday and Saturday." He looked at the time and realized there was only an hour and a half left before the fightings were over.
He hurriedly ran out of the house. He put the badge on the wooden panel and walked out after the door opened. As soon as he was out, the badge suddenly showed a change.
The number of the badge suddenly changed from 168 to 873. "It can do that too?" Alex was surprised. He didn't give it another thought, however. He started running towards the sect crater and reached it in less than 10 minutes.
However, by the time he was there, his hour was over, and his badge had changed from number 973 to 943.
He immediately went onto a queue in the fighting hall and waited for his turn to register. As soon as his turn came, he registered a fight with the same person with badge 168.
He had made it in time. There were still quite a few minutes before it was 8 o'clock, so even if the man didn't choose to fight and waited out his hour-long break, Alex would still win.
He calmed down a little and started looking at the fights going on all around him. It was almost as if the entire sect was down here in the crater and they were all fighting today.
"Is this how the Fridays and Saturdays are normally spent in Tiger Sect? No wonder they are so much better at fighting." He wondered.
The entire thing looked like a festival. The number of people here was way higher than the amusement park they went to today could ever hope to have.
Finally, after waiting for nearly an hour, his opponent arrived. Alex walked up to the stage and handed his badge to the elder. He then turned around to see a male disciple wearing inner sect clothes. He had a clean-shaven face with short black hair. The most interesting thing about the man was that he was in the same cultivation realm as him. The bone tempering 8th realm.
'The last guy I fought who had the badge 168 was in the 6th realm. Yet, somehow he who came from below has higher cultivation? That shouldn't be possible.'
The guy on the other hand had a confused look. "You don't match the description either," he said to Alex.
"What?" he was confused.
"Hmm... I am pretty sure the person I was supposed to fight was a tall guy with an oval face and long hair. Your face is neither oval nor is your hair long. is that guy still in hiding? I thought he would come to get his badge back by now." the man said.
"What do you— " suddenly Alex remembered. 'My face is still different? Ah, that's right. It's supposed to go away after another 8 hours only.' He finally remembered that the effect of the Face Changing pills was still there.
'Does that mean this person came to fight me specifically? I don't remember getting into trouble with someone like him,' he thought.
"Did you want to specifically fight this guy or what? You seem to have some sort of purpose?" Alex asked.
"Uh, yeah. Sigh. Brother Huo even specifically asked me to beat him up. It seems I will have to return back with the news of failure. Urghh… now I'm frustrated. Why did you have to go and take that guy's spot huh." The man started with an annoyed looked, then got frustrated and finally, got angry.
'So, it was that Huo Tu guy again. Is his ego so fragile that just one deny and he sent his entire collections of lackeys behind me? What will that even get him? He is not even the one taking his revenge.' Alex started frowning too as he thought that.
"Arhh… Screw this. If I can't beat him, then I will beat you up. You dared to register a fight against me huh, see how I torture you during this battle." The man suddenly took out a saber. It looked fancy and was definitely a high-grade weapon.
Alex got a little apprehensive as well. He deliberated between taking out the normal sword or taking out the True ranked sword. In the end, he went with the normal sword since he still had to furnish his techniques.
The elder then brought out his hands forward and screamed, "Fight!!"
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Chapter 128: Battle
'He is after me?'
'Huo Tu still hasn't given up on beating me?'
'How did he even get to fight me?'
'Was he below me in the ranking? That can't be.'
'Did he purposefully got a lower badge number so he could challenge me?'
These and other various thoughts suddenly disappeared from Alex's head as soon as he heard the elder start the match. The man didn't seem the least bit fearful towards Alex.
'He can't see my cultivation base, so he is ignoring the danger.' He thought.
The man wielding the saber suddenly brought it to the side and made a giant slash horizontally that sent out energy towards Alex. The color of the man's sword was brown in color, so the element of the attack must've been earth aligned as well.
Alex sent out the second sword strike of Elusive Heavenly sword. He channeled his Qi into the sword and a green light was produced, which he sent flying towards the incoming brown light.
BOOM
A violent explosion of energies rang out in the middle of the stage. Alex took this opportunity to use his Fluctuating Friction Dance to get closer to the man. The man seemed to have the same idea, so he too came close to it.
However, unlike Alex, he couldn't see through the smoke. Alex managed to take him by surprise. With a swing of the sword, he hit the man right on the side of his chest, sending his entire body flying. With his current strength, the man's ribs must've been broken.
Alex fell back and waited for the elder to call off the battle. But the order to stop fighting never came. His opponent didn't falter either.
The man with the saber slowly got up from the ground and looked at Alex as he gnashed his teeth together. "Don't think you are amazing just because you managed to hit me," the man started shouting.
'What is going on? I clearly hit him?' Alex thought as he sent his spiritual sense inside the man to check his ribs, but suddenly, he noticed something.
Inside the yellow Tiger Sect robe, the man was wearing something else as well. Something that was hard and brown in color.
'An armor artifact?' Alex was surprised. This was the first time he had seen someone wear one outside of that blue armor in the auction.
'Can it be as good as the one in the auction? No way right?' he started questioning himself. 'Even though he didn't get harmed, he should have still been hurt. Dammit! I could finish the fight at once if I could use Heaven's impact, or the Flickering Shadows technique. Hell, he wouldn't last a minute if I went invisible. '
Alex started preparing for his second attack. He used Smiting Blade to charge up his blade with yellow light. And then, he dashed forward.
The man showed a little fear when he saw Alex move. He had severely underestimated his opponent and his body hurt like hell. His earth armor was supposed to block attacks from anyone under the Organ Tempering realm. Even Organ tempering 1st realm cultivators found it hard to do damage to him when he had his armor on.
As soon as the man saw Alex closing in on him, he used a weird technique. Suddenly, all of his body started producing a crisscross pattern of brown lines.
Alex was surprised at the change and also the fact that the man was doing nothing to dodge the attack. This time the sword hit him right in the chest, but the man didn't move a bit. In fact, he didn't even show a single reaction to the attack.
'Damn! A defensive technique?' he thought. Not only did the man have armor, but he also had a defensive technique.
'What else does he have?' Alex sent out a relentless set of attacks that forced the man to keep his defensive technique up for as long as possible. And Alex knew that wouldn't be so long.
'Let me see how long you can last like this,' Alex thought as he kept on hitting the man for a while. However, the man's defense didn't go down.
The man too started swinging his saber at him. Alex had no problem dodging that. Soon, it became a close combat fight between a sword and a saber. The man's saber arts were good, but they weren't able to hit Alex thanks to his amazing dodging ability.
The man started to run out of Qi as he constantly used his defense arts. "God damn you-" he couldn't even finish his sentence as Alex's attacks started getting faster.
'Is this all he can handle? Guess I expected too much of him. It's not like he is my master of anything.'
Suddenly, the man leaped backward, creating a distance among them. He landed right at the edge of the stage. "Damn it. I can't believe you forced me to use it," said the man as he started channeling his Qi.
Brown Qi flowed into the saber as he prepared one more attack. The saber slowly left the man's arm as it started to spin in midair. He made some weird gestures as he sent the saber flying towards Alex in a blink and you miss its speed.
BOOM
An explosion, louder than the first one occurred. Dust rose up, blinding everyone in and out of the stage. The elder got a little startled. He had expected the other disciple to block it with his own attack, but for some reason, he didn't.
"Hey, Are you alright," the elder shouted from the side with a bit of nervousness. The dust was still high, so he swiped his hands sending away the dust from the air on the stage.
"Yeah, I am alright," Alex's voice came from the other side. When the elder finally turned his head to where the sound came from, He saw Alex standing near the unconscious body of the other disciple.
'What happened?' he was surprised. Alex's clothes seemed a little roughed up, but overall he was okay. Alex walked up to the elder to take his badge and simply walked away, leaving the elder and the crowd in stun.
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