Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy #Chapter 161: Pearls First Battle - Read Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy Chapter 161: Pearls First Battle Online - All Page -

Chapter 161: Pearl's First Battle

It was close to 5 pm right now. Alex walked to the gate on the southern end of the sect crater. Calling it a gate could even be considered wrong, as it was just a small opening in the giant wall that prevented monsters from the Southern Forest from entering.

He walked up to the small entrance and was stopped by the elders guarding the gate.

"Badge!" an elder asked.

Alex took out his badge and handed it to them. The elders recorded the badge number and handed it back to Alex. "You should know that since today is Friday, you won't be exempt from the matches by leaving the sect right?" the elder asked.

"Yes," Alex replied and walked out of the opening. He looked back at the wall and wondered," Is this the wall for the Scarlet City?" He watched the wall go around the outside of the forest and curve outward after reaching a bit further.

"I wonder where the wall lies on Hong Wu sect."

He walked a bit further and started running. He didn't want to mess around with weak monsters on the outer side and needed at least a late Muscle tempering realm monster for what he was about to do.

His running speed, with zero air resistance thanks to making the air frictionless, was beyond amazing. In just a few minutes, he reached what would have taken him an hour at his speed a month back.

Now that he reached this far he decided to bring out Pearl. With a bright shine, Pearl came out of his left arm. He focused and saw the new stats on Pearl after the last few days of training.

[White Cat (Child) - Bonded

Name: Pearl

Cultivation Base: Bone Tempering 6th Realm

Evolution Chance: 40%

Cultivation Method: ????? ?????'s Dominating Body (Shared)

]

"You are stronger than I was back when I came to this forest," he said with a chuckle. "Come, let's see if there are any monsters around for you to fight." He started walking in a certain direction while spreading his spiritual sense at a max distance without overstretching.

Finally, he found a small monster with a shell on its back.

[Smooth Pangolin: Bone Tempering 3rd Realm]

"Oh, that is perfect for you. You should be able to win easily, right?" Alex made Pearl go and fight the pangolin. Alex looked at the monster and deduced, "since it has a shell, it must be a defensive monster and have bad offensive ability."

Pearl didn't know what to do at first, but after Alex explained that he had to fight with the Pangolin, Pearl sped up and reached the pangolin and started purring at him.

The pangolin got surprised by the sudden incoming of Pearl and immediately got into a ball. "Meow," Pearl jumped forward and hit the ball with his paw. Like a football being hit by a professional player, the ball flew far until it hit a tree, and jolted awake a few birds.

The tree had a small dent on the trunk as the ball fell to the ground, taking no damage. The birds in the tree saw Pearl running towards the ball and started to target him.

Alex looked at the birds and realized they were in the lower realms of Bone Tempering, so he wasn't scared. Still, he ran a little behind Pearl to make sure he doesn't get swarmed by different enemies.

Seeing the birds coming towards him, Pearl jumped high into the air and swung his claws at one of the birds. In a single hit, the bird was sent flying to the ground with most of its body broken. The bird was dead, and Alex had gotten the notification for obtaining its core and feathers.

Pearl landed lightly on his feet, leaving Alex in stun behind. 'Just one hit?' he truly hadn't expected the disparity of a few levels to bring forth such a gap in strength.

'Is it perhaps because his body is also cultivated?' he wondered. Training with Pearl, Alex had realized that the cultivation technique that Pearl used was one that both cultivated his Qi and Body. Only because it wasn't compatible, Alex had to suffer through intense pain and only get rewarded with Body cultivation alone.

'At this stage, he must be as strong as a late bone tempering realm monster.' After seeing the attack just now, Alex had no doubt that he had been underestimating Pearl until this point.

Pearl ran off towards the pangolin when another bird started to swoop down and attack him with its sharp talons. The small Pearl didn't even bother protecting himself. He took the full brunt of the attack and shoved it off like it was nothing.

His body was stronger than the bird's talons, and so the talons did not even put a scratch on his beautiful, white fur. Pearl once more jumped up to reach the bird, but by this point, all of the birds had flown away.

They had some intelligence and had already realized that this was an enemy they couldn't beat. Pearl landed on the sticks and stones in the forest, disappointed.

He then ran towards the pangolin and nudged it a little. It didn't move. Pearl cocked his head and didn't know what to do. Alex had arrived at this point and he used his spiritual sense to see what was going on with the Pangolin.

"Holy…" he was astonished. The pangolin's inner body had mostly been destroyed and it was on its last breath. Alex used his Qi to crush its body a little and got the notification that it had died now.

"No need to keep it suffering," he said as he looked at Pearl in a new light. He might look like a little cute fluffy ball of goodness, but that strength was anything but cute.

"Although you have started to slow down, if you keep on getting stronger like this, I can't say how long it would take for you to overtake me," Alex said, and then with a smile added, "Actually, I will look forward to the day when you are stronger than me if it ever comes."

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Chapter 162: Testing Strength

Alex let Pearl fight for a bit longer. He kept finding monsters a little stronger than last time and had Pearl fight them. In the end, it was still the massacre. The cute, little guy could kill anything a realm lower than him in a single swing of his palm. Even monsters in his own realm struggled to stay alive.

Only monsters 2 realms higher than him could threaten him.

Along the way, he had seen quite a few alchemy materials by now and had taken them whenever he found one. He then found an area devoid of alchemy ingredients and no other monsters around.

"Alright, that's enough training against monsters. I came here to train and see exactly how strong I have become compared to the environment."

He stood in front of a giant tree and reeled in his Qi so that it was hiding in his meridian and was no longer available around his body. His natural defense and offense dropped by over an entire minor realm.

He made a fist and punched straight into the tree. The tree was about 2 meters in thickness and Alex punches the exact center.

BOOM

The tree rustled as hundreds of leaves started falling. As for the place itself where he hit, there was a gaping hole, at least 20 cm deep. "Wow, that is more than I would've imagined. "

He looked at the hole and realized just how strong he was. "Fighting against people in your own range doesn't exactly help you understand this sort of thing, does it?" he thought.

He punched the tree a few more times and decided to use different attacks. Legs, elbows, shoulders, fingers, palm, chops. He used whatever he could. In the end, the tree fell down from the overwhelming amount of holes in it.

Alex wasn't even a little bit out of breath. He looked around with his spiritual sense to see if he had attracted anyone, but thankfully he hadn't. He proceeded to the next tree about the same size as this one.

He let the Qi he was keeping inside his meridian flow out to every part of his body. Power coursed through his body once more as his cultivation base returned back to Organ Tempering 3rd realm.

"Alright, let's see what happens with a minor realm higher cultivation base. Although I don't think my cultivation base counts as a normal cultivation base," he chuckled to himself as he thought about it.

He separates his cultivation from his body, but he couldn't separate his body from his cultivation unless he resorted to Qi-based attacks.

He prepped his fist once more, expecting to make a deeper hole this time. Without further ado, he punched the tree.

BOOM

This time the sound was so big, that it caught Alex himself off guard. He looked at his arm, or rather, he tried to look at his arm, but it was so deep inside the tree that it wasn't even visible anymore.

He sent his spiritual sense to see inside the tree where his fist was and realized that his fist wasn't actually touching anything. He slowly sent the spiritual sense forward and realized that beyond where he punched was another massive hole.

Following the hole, he realized that a chunk of the back of the tree's trunk had been entirely destroyed. He quickly pulled out his arm and walked to the back to look at the tree.

"Holy…" he was genuinely astounded at what he was seeing. The hole behind the tree was massive in size, almost as if an explosive had been set off right there.? The small bits of the tree trunk were all over the ground in front of the hole.

"Am I really that strong?" he was curious. Without hesitation, he gave one solid kick to the side of the tree and the whole tree fell to the ground. Its truck had been decimated.

"This is beyond comprehension."

He tried attacking a bunch more trees, and the result was the same. Some trees were stronger and could survive a few more hits, but in the end, they didn't take more than 5 kicks and punches to go down.

"What about my techniques?" he wondered and took out his True Mortal sword. With the sword, it only took him a single hit to cleanly chop off the tree. He didn't even have to use the Smiting Blade technique or the 1st strike of Elusive Heavenly sword.

He threw around other techniques, sending Qi-based attacks to the trees nearby. Most of them fell down with a single attack. Especially Iron Fist Punch and Palm of the Sun, they were the cream of the crops among the abilities he had.

"I wonder when the growth abilities would level up," he wondered. He looked at the time and realized it was close to half-past 6, so he had to hurry back to the sect.

Instead of running, however, he decided to see how fast flying would be for returning. He manipulated his Qi to carry himself and was pleasantly surprised that he was taken off the ground pretty easily.

"Woah," he immediately slowed down the Qi outpour and balanced himself in mid-air. Then, he used the Qi to slowly push him from behind. At first, it was really slow, but soon enough,? as he started using more and more Qi, he was flying at phenomenal speed. It was much slower than when using his movement speed but still moderately fast enough.

"Hmm… How about if I use the movement technique to remove all friction?" he wondered. He started moving his Qi to use Fluctuating Friction dance, as he coated his body with his Qi to make it have zero resistance with the Air.

Suddenly, his speed in the air pretty much tripled. It was now nearly as fast as when he walked, and before he knew it, he had arrived back to the sect.

He walked into the small gate and registered his name back. Thankfully, nobody had bothered to challenge him for a fight while he was gone.

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Chapter 163: Popular

Alex walked back to his house to log out and go eat his dinner, happy that nobody cared enough about him to challenge him.

Unbeknownst to Alex however, his reputation in the sect was steadily growing. Pretty much everyone who went down to the fighting stages had heard about the match between the Inner sect disciple and the core disciple where the inner sect disciple won against the core disciple, going as far as to even make him unconscious.

The news spread like fire, and quickly 80% of the people were in the know. However, they only knew the name of the disciple and were unsure of how he looked like aside from the general description of a tall and lean body with long black hair.

Some people higher than him were scared that he might come for them next. Most people lower than him were waiting for him to beat the upper disciples. Core disciples were intrigued as to how he managed to beat Huo Tu, who they knew had a very tough defense that even they couldn't breakthrough.

However, Huo Tu was still unconscious and they couldn't ask him.

Alex returned back from his final dinner in the cafeteria and got back to his room. However, instead of going back into the game, he looked at the time.

"Hmm… it's 7:21 right now. I should pack my stuff right now. I can go play the game later when it's time for the daily training." He went to the closet and took out the small luggage he had brought from his home. He took out all of his clothing and started packing it.

His roommates had gone into the game before he had even thought of doing this, so he was left alone working on it. He didn't mind it though. He packed everything but a pair of clothes that he would be wearing tomorrow.

With that done, he finally went back to the game. He entered the game a little bit before his meeting with the master, so he decided to eat another one of the monster cores.

He took out two monster cores. One belonging to a monster with a cultivation base of Organ Tempering 4th realm, and another belonging to a monster with the cultivation base of Bone tempering 7th realm.

"Come out Pearl," he said as he sent his Qi to the tattoo on his left arm. Pearl came out in a flash and looked around confused, and he had rarely been called out in this room before.

"Meow," he looked at Alex, all confused. But just then, he smelled the brilliant scent of a monster core and started to climb on top of Alex to find the core. Alex showed him the core when he reached on his shoulder and let him eat it.

While he was eating that, Alex himself too decided to eat the core. With a single push to his mouth, the core vanished into this stomach and Alex to his spiritual sea.

He saw the monster the core belonged to, a massive rhino-like monster with no horns. Similar to last time, it only took him a few minutes to defeat the monster, but he could visibly see the strength of the monster in higher realms having a stronger form in the spiritual sea.

Once the monster was dead, a yellow aura once again came out from around a shadow at the surface of the sea, devouring both of them.

Sun God's Divine Yang Body disintegrates everything

The monster core's element aligns with your spirit root

You have gained 1,240,000 Qi

Alex opened his eyes and said, "It should be fine to break through now, right?"

So he opened his status page and hit [Breakthrough] without even looking at anything. He used up 2.5 million Qi at once and broke through to the 4th realm of Organ Tempering.

He looked at Pearl and saw that he was done consuming the core as well. "Come, let's go. Or we'll be late," he said and let Pearl get back to his arm. He disappeared and walked to the leader's building.

When he finally reached the building, he saw that there was more than just his master. There were also Luo Mei, Liu Xin, and Meng Yun. He let the illusion drop and showed himself.

"You're finally here. I heard you've made quite a bit of ruckus out there today," Wen Cheng said as soon as he came.

"Ruckus? Huh, Senior Brother, Senior Sister, what are you guys doing here?" Alex looked at them curiously.

"Of course, we came after hearing what you did, little brother," Liu Xin said.

"What I did? Did the information about my fight with Huo Tu spread to you guys somehow?" he asked.

"Not just us, little brother," said Luo Mei and continued, "The whole sect knows about your match now."

"Huh? Did the information spread that much?" he was shocked. "Oh no, no wonder even the First Elder came to recruit me. I didn't think it would be such a big event."

Wen Cheng's eyes perked up, as did Luo Mei's and Liu Xin's. Wen Cheng asked, "Did you say the First Elder came to recruit you?"

"Yes. He came by my house with a senior sister, his disciple I think, and tried to make me his disciple." He relayed what had taken place.

Wen Cheng's face got solemn, and asked, "And? What did you say? You didn't reveal our relationship yet right?" he asked.

"Oh, no. I only told him that I was not interested in being anyone's disciple right now. He left after I told him that," Alex replied.

"That should be enough, right master?" Liu Xin asked.

"I would say that's a crisis averted if you ask me," Luo Mei said so too. However,? Wen Cheng fell into deep contemplation, and he finally said,

"Qiu Ju is not a man that would give up so easily. He will come back to recruit you a few times more. However, that is not the problem now. The problem is that you have been recognized by everyone in the sect as a genius, so the Elders will come after you to make you their disciple."

"And not agreeing to a single one would make you the enemy of all of their disciples."

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Chapter 164: Heaven Impacts once more

Alex and the rest of the group fell into thought. Finally, after a while, Alex said, "Will the Elders do something to me?" he asked. He was afraid that if the Elders themselves get in the way, then he would have little way to get out of the situation.

Even his nigh-invincible Immortal Concealment technique could be detected if it were the Elders. They were after all a major realm higher than him.

"No, that won't happen. The Elders care either too much about the sect, or at the very least too much about their face to something so underhanded. However, they would start sending their disciples to mess with you. They won't let you learn or train the entire week, and continuously register you to battles, trying to tire you and maybe eventually beat you."

"If they do that, you won't have enough time in the day to focus on yourself and go do something productive or maybe register your own fight to get to a higher rank. Who knows honestly what they would do? But they will try to hinder you, that's for sure. Especially to not let the other Elders have you."

Alex thought for a moment and said, "That should be fine then. At the very least, I am confident in beating any of the students I meet in the sect for now."

Wen Cheng got a little surprised at such an ostentatious statement from his disciple. "What do you mean you can beat anyone? You think you can beat the core disciples?" he asked.

"I should be able to, but that would be revealing all my secrets, master," he replied.

Wen Cheng started getting more and more curious. "What do you mean? What other secrets do you have?" he asked.

Alex stopped talking for a second and thought for a while. 'Should I tell them?' he contemplated for a bit and said, "Let's go inside first." He walked into the training hall where nobody could eavesdrop into.

"Here is the thing master," he said as he brought out an old, dusty-looking book. The moment they saw it, both Wen Cheng and Luo Mei were surprised. "The book from the auction? You got it?" he asked.

"Yes. Master bought it for me since I could read it," he said. The moment he said that both Wen Cheng and Luo Mei's eyes turned wide, while Liu Xin looked at them wondering why they reacted in such a way.

"Wait, did you say you can read it?" Luo Mei asked in surprise.

"What is the book about?" Wen Cheng asked, accepting his disciple's words without questioning. He had seen enough to be deterred by such small things at this point.

"It's a technique called Heaven's Impact, that lets you use Spiritual sense to attack the other people's mind. Depending on how different our mental capacity is, I can make them faint like I did Huo Tu back in the fighting stage today," he explained.

"So, you really did read that language," Wen Cheng said in shock. "Does that mean you've read the language in the black stele as well?"

"What is going on?" Liu Xin asked and Luo Mei explained to him. It was his turn to get shocked now. "But master, that stele has been here since before the sect even transferred here right?" he asked.

"Yes, but if he can read it, it might help us know about its origins." Wen Cheng said.

"Actually master, I can't read that stele. I have tried it earlier and I felt like I was close to death." He explained the circumstances under when and how he nearly lost all of his spiritual sense and was almost hit with a spiritual attack from the black stele.

Wen Cheng looked confused. "Why use spiritual sense at all if you can read it?" he asked.

"Oh, uhh… how do I explain this. I don't exactly read the language. It's more like I look over it with my spiritual sense and after enough time, the knowledge comes to me."

"If it were normal language, I wouldn't even have to use spiritual sense, but since it's not, I have to. Which turned out to be a bad idea when concerned with that Black Stele. You guys shouldn't use spiritual sense on the black stele either. It's really dangerous." He cautioned the three.

Meng Yun was standing behind Luo Mei, listening to the conversation. 'Attacking someone's mind? Like what I do with my flute?' she wondered.

"Alright, let's see what it can do. Use it on use, little brother," Liu Xin said as he walked in front. Alex hesitated for a bit, but then remembered that she was perfectly fine after using it on her, so he decided to do it.

Without giving Liu Xin any chance to prepare himself, Alex used Heaven's impact. A whirlpool appeared in his spiritual sea that drained an eighth of his spiritual sea, which turned into a mist that floated up and formed the shape of a fist.

It immediately flew towards Liu Xin's head. He wasn't even ready when suddenly, he lost consciousness. His whole body went limp as he fell to the ground with a loud sound.

"Wahh, Senior Brother?" Luo Mei immediately ran forward to pick him up. "Urghh… " Liu Xin couldn't form any words as his head hurt him like crazy. "What…. What was that?" he said as he woke up with his head in his arms.

'Huh? Is senior brother's mental strength much weaker than master's? She was able to stop herself from falling even a little bit, which senior brother fell to the ground,' he started evaluating the two and quickly remembered, 'oh right, Master did say she ate some pills that increased her mental strength. That should be the reason why,' he thought.

Wen Cheng watched as Liu Xin barely got up from the floor, eyes moving everywhere as he couldn't focus on anything immediately. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I— I'm fine, master," Liu Xin replied.

Wen Cheng then turned around to Alex and said, "It seems we were wrong in worrying about you."

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Chapter 165: My best Earth Grade pill?

"Little brother… that was too strong," Liu Xin said as he tried to stand still, his head still hurting a bit.

Alex looked at Liu Xin, feeling a little guilty. "I'm sorry, Senior Brother. I should have told you when I was going to attack," he said with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"It's okay. In fact, it's better this way since I get to see the actual effect of the attack. And I must say, it's stronger than I would've expected. However, are you sure you can win against the disciples in the higher realms?" he asked.

"Higher realms? Wouldn't this work well against anyone without spiritual sense?" he asked.

"I don't think so, Junior Brother. I think you are mistaking the spiritual sense for mental strength. One can have high mental strength without having a spiritual sense. I don't know if the other way around is possible or not, but anyone who is in the Mind Tempering realm should be able to get back up from your attack within 10 seconds. Unless you can somehow beat them to a victory in the 10 seconds, I don't think you will be fine while fighting against them," Liu Xin said.

Alex was left speechless for a few seconds. 'That's right. Mind Tempering does increase the mental strength of a cultivator, and Heaven's impact's description does say that the damage is the difference between our mental prowess. Although gaining spiritual sense might have increased my mental prowess quite a bit, that doesn't mean that other people won't have it as well,' he thought.

Seeing that he was silent for quite a while, Wen Cheng finally spoke. "Stop scaring little Yu. Don't worry, little Yu. There are only 7 disciples in the Mind Tempering realm and one of them is your senior sister. So effectively, you only have these 6 to worry about. And they won't be able to come after that easily without the entire sect learning about their masters trying to silence an inner sect disciple."

"Oh," Alex finally stopped thinking. He felt like a load had been taken off of his mind.

"However, we should still think of something." Wen Cheng started to think of ideas to keep the elders away from his disciple.

Just then, Alex spoke once more. "Umm… Master? I don't think we will have to do anything actually. At least, not for the next 2 weeks. Perhaps, even more, depending on the competition."

"What are you planning little brother?" Luo Mei inquired.

"Nothing really. I just thought I will go back to Hong Wu Sect tomorrow evening. After that, the Elders should be unable to do anything to me right? Also master said that the annual competition is coming up next, and I will have to prepare for that. I have ignored Alchemy for quite a while now. I might be getting rusty."

Wen Cheng thought for a while and said. "Hmm… Alright, that makes sense. Although there are still 2 more days, I don't think there is anything you can do by staying here. At least back in Hong Wu Sect, you could get a little better in alchemy."

The others in the room nodded as well.

"Oh, now that I think about it, I don't remember asking this, but how is your alchemy training. Have you made any progress? If not, you can leave the Hong Wu sect and come here. You have shown so much progress that you will definitely be somebody big in the future by staying here." He tried to steal Alex away from Hong Wu Sect.

Alex chuckled a little. "Don't worry master. I have made quite a bit of progress. Me studying is more than worth it," he said.

"Oh, you act like you've made quite a few earth-grade pills by now. How many have you made?" Wen Cheng asked.

Alex tried to remember, but it took him a lot of time to. "What's wrong?" Wen Cheng asked," are you not answering because you have not made any yet?"

"Oh, no master. It's just that I have made so many that it's hard to remember exactly how many. But it should be over 200 by now."

As if a noise-removing formation had just been employed in the room, everyone went silent. Only after a while did Luo Mei finally manage to speak. "Umm… Junior Brother, did you say you made 200 Earth grade pills?" she asked.

"Is that so surprising? I thought you guys knew I was talented. Didn't master tell you anything?" he asked as he turned towards Wen Cheng.

Wen Cheng's eyes were wide. He shook his head a little and said, "No. She only mentioned that you were talented. After seeing your speed in cultivation and learning new techniques, I thought I knew what she meant."

"Oh, ok well, that was what she meant then," he said. He didn't know what else to say.

"What is the highest harmony of the earth-grade pills you've made?" Luo Mei asked.

"Hmm…49," Alex said.

"""49??!""" All 3 of them shouted at once.

"You've made pills with 49% harmony?" Luo Mei shouted.

"How many of such pills have you made, little brother?" Liu Xin asked.

"When did you manage to make such a pill so fast?" Wen Cheng asked with his eyes wide.

"One at a time please," Alex said. "Yes, I've made a 49% harmony pill. I have only made one of such a pill, however, there are a few that came close to it among the different earth grade pills."

"Why are you guys so hung up on it though? It's not even my best pill." Alex had a smile on his face.

Suddenly a thought ran through the heads of all the three master disciples. Even Meng Yun in the back had her eyes nearly pop out when she heard this.

"Uhh… Little brother, you don't mean to say that… uh…" Liu Xin never finished the sentence.

"Yes. Just before I left the Hong Wu sect to come here. The last pill I made there was a Heaven grade pill with exactly 50% harmony."

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Chapter 166: Talisman and Armor

"This…" Wen Cheng didn't know what to say. He was having trouble coming up with words to form sentences to speak right now. Luo Mei and Liu Xin were the same.

Alex on the other hand was just having fun. After a while, they finally calmed down.

"Is that the only Heaven-grade pill you made?" Wen Cheng asked.

"Yes. I haven't been able to make another one since then. Although, I should be able to once I go back and focus only on Alchemy."

"Hmm… that should help you," Wen Cheng said. "Alright then. All of you go back to your residence. You too, Yu Ming. Go take a rest for today. You've been training every day for 2 weeks now. In fact, I don't think you've cultivated in the last 5 days, have you?" Wen Cheng asked.

"No, master," he replied.

"Yeah, you should not miss those. Don't just eat pills for your Qi. Cultivation is more than just gathering Qi. A little break in between is not bad, but you shouldn't go too long without cultivating.

"I understand, Master." Everyone left the room and started going back to their own houses. "Yu Ming, wait a minute. I need to talk to you about something," Wen Cheng said.

"Yes, master?" he asked.

"I decided to wait until you were a Core disciple, but it seems that they will come after you regardless of what rank you are in, so here you go." Wen Cheng took out a small talisman and handed it to him.

"This is a talisman that can defend against the attack of a True Lord realm cultivator. Keep it on your body at all times, since you don't know when you might need it." Alex looked at the normal-looking talisman and was surprised that such a little thing could withstand the attack of a True Lord realm cultivator.

'Isn't True lord the third of the True realms? This thing can block their attacks?' he thought to himself.

"However, It can only block the attack for 1 time. So make sure that when it does happen, use your escape technique immediately. Since you have the concealment technique, you should be able to get out of harm's way soon," Wen Cheng said.

"I understand, Master," Alex said as he kept the talisman inside his robes, instead of his storage bag.

"Also, take this," Wen Cheng took out an armor from the storage bag. Alex was a little surprised as he saw the armor. The armor looked very weird as instead of having 1 opening for neck, 2 for arms, and 1 for torso; it had 1 opening for the neck, 4 for arms, and a small opening for … another arm?

"What type of armor is this master? Can I even wear this?" he asked.

"Hahaha… This is not for you silly. This is for your beast. Take it." Wen Cheng handed it to Alex as well.

Alex curiously looked around the armor and felt that it was quite sturdy. Actually more sturdy than he could have imagined. He turned the armor all over and started to get confused as he saw the entire surface.

There were 2 problems with the armor. Firstly, it was too big. Pearl was at most the size of two palms now, but this armor would fit a grown adult's torso in it easily.

Secondly, there was not a single seam in the armor, almost as if it was made entirely from a single ingredient. Looking at the material it was made up of, Alex thought that was impossible as the various green and brown colors would say otherwise.

So, he decided to ask his master. "Master, do I wait until Pearl is as big as this armor before I make him wear it? I don't think he will need an armor by the time he gets this big. Also, how do I even make him wear this? Do I just put Pearl inside here and wait for him to grow into this armor?" he asked.

Wen Cheng chuckled at the hilarity of the statement and said, "Of course not silly. Just refine the treasure and you can freely use it on any beast companion you have. It can freely change its shape and size to match your beast."

"Oh," Alex said, finally understanding. "How strong is it, master? What grade is it?" he asked.

"This armor is a Common Heaven grade armor. The armor itself can block the damage of an early Mind Tempering realm cultivator. With your cat's current cultivation, he should probably be able to block up to Mind Tempering 4th realm attacks."

"Hmm… Although, I don't think that will be much help to you since your cat is so small and cant really block attacks."

"I see…" Alex kept looking at the armor.

"Oh, and also, It can stay with your beast in their personal space inside your body, so you don't have to keep on putting the armor on them when they come out." Wen Cheng seemed to really like that part about the armor.

"So, I just need to refine it and it's fine right?" Alex asked.

"Yes," Wen Cheng replied and he sighed as he continued, "honestly, I wanted to give you an armor as well, but with your current rate of body cultivation, there isn't a single armor in the treasure hall that would be suitable for you. Also, I wanted to give your a sword too, but you already have that True grade sword, so I decided to change the sword for the defensive talisman."

"I see, thank you, Master," Alex bowed a little towards Wen Cheng.

"You don't have to bow to me. When I first got you as a disciple, I had already promised you about 2 artifacts from the treasure hall. Although one of them isn't really an artifact, I'm just keeping my promise." Wen Cheng said.

"Either way, Thank you, master," Alex said.

"Alright, you can go now," Wen Cheng said as he sent Alex back for the night.

Saying his goodbyes, Alex too went back to his house number 86 to cultivate.

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Chapter 167: Moving

Alex walked into his room and felt it a bit weird to be here during the nighttime. The only time he hadn't left the house at night was when he had the Blood essence enter him and had fallen unconscious for over 12 hours.

"Well, it's not like something different is going to happen tonight either," he said as he chuckled to himself remembering, or rather not remembering, how each night of cultivation went.

He sat down on the bed and closed his eyes. Abruptly, he opened them again. "It's been so long that I nearly forgot," he said as he took out a small pink flower from his storage bags, the Spirit Cleansing Lily.

"I can't forget about increasing my Spiritual Sea," he thought as he closed his eyes and started to cultivate. Slowly, he fell into a trance and fell asleep.

Early in the morning, just a few minutes past 6 am, Alex opened his eyes. He looked down at the flower and realized it was not there. He smiled. He sent out his Spiritual Sense and his smile went even wider as he realized that the Spiritual sea had grown once more.

It was now 3 times as wide as the first time he unlocked it. "So, it will last a long while, if I don't over-extend it right? Actually, it should be pretty much forever." He was happy thinking about this fact.

'Alright, let's leave.' He then logged out.

He woke up and took off his helmet. He looked at the helmet, thinking this was the last time he would be using this. 'Well, I should stop being lazy and go buy my own,' he thought.

He freshened up and got back. He changed into a different set of clothes and made sure nothing of his was left behind. After he was all set, he was ready to leave… except,

"Why is she not picking up? Is she still in the game?" Alex wasn't able to get a hold of his cousin, without whom, he wouldn't get the address. He called a few times and decided to wait for her to call back.

Time slowly passed by and it was 7 am now. The roommates slowly started logging out of the game and saw the Alex was all packed.

"Are you ready to leave already?" Matt asked.

"Yes. Oh yeah, Eric, here's your helmet. Thank you so much for letting me use this. You can't imagine how much this meant to me." He handed the helmet back to Eric who just smiled and said, "Don't worry about it."

TRING TRING

Suddenly, his phone started ringing. He looked at the screen and it was his cousin Hannah. He picked up and could immediately hear the loud voice from the other side.

"Alex? I'm so sorry. I was busy answering some important emails and I lost the track of time. Also, just my luck that my damn phone was on silent for some reason. Anyway, are you prepared to leave? I will text you the location now," she bombarded his ear with a whole bunch of things.

"Okay, sister. You don't have to worry about it. Just send me the location info and I will be on my way," he said.

"Alright. Let me do that real quick. Call me when you are near okay?" she said and ended the call before she could even hear a reply.

Alex looked at the phone and just shook his head.

"Was that your cousin you are going to stay with?" asked Logan.

"Yeah. She will send me the location soon and I will have to leave," he said.

TING

The location info arrived. "Alright, I should leave now. She will be waiting for now." Alex started to get up to leave.

"Wait, let us escort you to the gate." The three of them stood up too.

"You guys don't have to," Alex tried to refuse but they wouldn't budge.

"It's just the gate. Besides, we have to leave for breakfast right now anyway," Matt said.

Unable to refuse anymore, Alex let them follow along. At the gate of the university, Alex stopped a cab and got on it. "See you guys in class," he waved the 3 goodbyes and finally left.

In 10 minutes or so, he reached the location mentioned in the message. He paid the cab driver and got off. He looked around but couldn't see his cousin at all. "This is the right place, right?" he thought as he started calling her once again.

"Sister, I'm here," he said.

"So fast. Wait, let me get down." She ended the call. Alex looked at the tall building in front of him. The building was mostly gray in color and was similar in height to the other buildings around it. A height of over 10 floors. 'Oh my god. She lives in such a tall building.' He was quite surprised.

Within a minute, Hannah came out of the door. "Ah, you're finally here. Vinny left a few days ago, so I've been bored all alone in the apartment. C'mon, let's go in." She made him follow her.

They got into an elevator and Hannah pressed button 11. Alex was surprised. "You live on the 11th floor, Sister?" he asked.

"Yeah. That was the only floor available to us when we moved in." She said.

"Wait, the whole floor is just for you?" Alex asked in surprise.

"It was meant for four different people, but now it's just me, i guess. oh, and you too now." Hannah chuckled a bit.

"How much does the rent cost here then?" he asked. He didn't know anything about renting places and could only wonder.

"Well, the monthly rent is around $10,000. The location is very populated, so it just costs a lot. I had to pay $2500 before, but ever since the other girls left, I have been stuck with it all." Her reply shocked Alex. $10000 dollars was a lot of money.

'I will be broke in 2 months if I had to start paying for the rent,' he thought.

DING

Finally, the door of the elevator opened and revealed what lied beyond it.

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Chapter 168: New Place

"Come, this is your new home for probably the next 3 years of university," Hannah said as she opened the door in the hallway outside of the elevator. Alex walked inside to see another door to his front and two smaller doors to his either side.

"These are for shoes and coats, don't worry about them and come on it," Hannah said as she opened the actual door to the house. Alex walked inside and saw a massive lounge room with white walls and gray sofas. There was a big TV in the middle of the room above the fireplace.

'No wonder it costs $10,000 a month. But still, isn't that a lot?' he wondered. "Come, I will show you the other rooms," she said as she walked towards another small corridor. There were 2 doors on either side and she opened one of them.

"This will be your room from now on."

Alex walked in a saw a massive room with light blue walls. The room was about the size of his dorm room, but instead of 4 different people, only he was going to stay there now.

The room, however, was all but empty and only had a closet in it. "No bed?" he asked.

"No. This room used to be used by the first girl that lived here, and she took everything in here when she left. We wanted to put a bed in here, but since no one was staying, we laid it off until someone came along."

"We can go buy one today. I'm free all day," Hannah said.

"It's okay sister. Actually, I don't even know if I will be needing a bed in the first place, since they will be releasing capsules next week where we can sleep all we want," Alex said.

"Don't be silly. Sleeping in a bed, and sleeping in a capsule are two entirely different things. You absolutely need a bed," Hannah reprimanded her little cousin.

"Alright sister, if you say so." Alex just accepted her words as truth and didn't go on further about getting just the capsule.

"Okay, keep your luggage there and come eat some breakfast. You must be hungry," she said as she headed back out.? Beyond the lounge area was a half-open room, which was the kitchen.

Hannah put some bread in the toaster and started frying some eggs. Alex happily ate all of that. After they finished the breakfast, Hannah proceeded to show him more of the house.

About 10 minutes later, she finally stopped when her phone got a notification. She picked up her phone and smiled when she saw what was in it. Alex was curious as to what could make his cousin smile like that but refrained from asking. If she deemed it important, she would tell him herself.

'Her phone looks quite good. I should probably buy myself one as well.' Although the phone he currently had was a birthday present, it was a cheap model and was thus quite slow.

' I should get myself a laptop as well,' he thought. After learning that he could complete his first semester of university without requiring a laptop, he had decided to buy it later.

That later was now. 'What else do I need? Let's see… a bed, a VR helmet, a phone, a laptop, maybe some clothes as well.'

"I have something to do for a few minutes. Why don't you go watch TV or something? I will come back, and we can go shopping," Hannah said and left Alex alone in the living room.

Alex stayed behind and watched TV for quite a while. Since he had nothing else to do, he just switched the channels over and over, until he landed on a news channel with a flashing headline.

Alex read the headline and thought, 'should I set a reminder so that I catch it?'

"Hey, are you ready?" Hannah suddenly appeared.

"Oh yeah, I'm ready to go anytime," Alex said and got up.

"Okay, let's leave." They both got out of the house and Hannah locked the doors. "Oh yeah, keep this." She handed him a key. "This is the key to the house. You should keep it for now," she said.

"Do we have to take a cab?" Alex asked.

"No, the market is right around the corner, we can just walk there," Hannah replied. "What do you need exactly other than the bed?" she asked. Alex relayed everything he had thought of buying earlier.

"Oh wow. You really want to buy so much huh? Thankfully, your big sister is rich and she can buy you anything," Hannah said with a smug face.

"Oh, have Aunt and Uncle been sending you money?" he asked.

"No silly. I'm talking about my own money. I have already told them that I don't need their money anymore since I have a lot of it," Hannah said.

"You have a job, sister?" he asked. He had never heard of his sister working during the last 2 times they had met.

"No. I am making money from the game." Hannah seemed quite proud.

Alex was surprised. "You make money from the game too, sister?" he asked.

Hannah looked towards him with a curious look and asked," What do you mean 'too'? Do you earn money too?" she asked.

"Yeah, I've been making pills in the game that I later sell to auctions. I have sold it a few times and was able to accumulate quite a bit of money," he said.

"Not bad. Making money in this game is quite easy, so you shouldn't have a lot of problems with it," Hannah said. But then she thought about something and said," Actually, maybe it's just me that got really lucky, and making money isn't that hard. How much money have you even made till now?"

Alex thought for a second as to whether saying it was a good thing or not, but since she was his sister, he decided to say it.

"I have managed to make about 25 thousand dollars by now. I should have some increments from my earning tomorrow," he said.

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Chapter 169: Shopping

"Oh, 25,000 dollars? Not bad. So, I wasn't alone case like my friends said." Hannah's reaction was nowhere near what Alex would've expected it to be. She seemed to be completely fine with the idea of someone making 25,000 dollars a month after playing a game.

This made him curious. So much so that he couldn't help but ask.

"Sister, you said you earned money. How much do you earn?" he asked.

"Umm… I don't know. A couple of hundred thousand dollars. But that is just cause I am much higher in cultivation than you. So, if you reach my realm, you will make the same amount as well." Hannah seemed to be completely unphased by what she had just said. Yet, those words were like bombs to Alex.

'Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Do people make that? How does a company like Deva Corp even survive after giving that much money away to just a single player?' Alex couldn't understand.

"What exactly do you do to earn so much money, sister?" he asked. Hannah seemed to be waiting for this question because when she was asked, she started giggling like a little child.

"Hehehe. I don't do anything actually. The money just comes flooding in." Hannah was still giggling.

Alex didn't know what to say. 'Money comes in without doing anything?'. He was surprised to hear that. "How exactly does that work, Sister?" he asked.

"Don't tell anyone the secret okay?" she said while moving in close to whisper, " I got married."

"What?" Alex instinctively shouted.

"Keep your voice down," she said while making sure so one heard her.

Alex hurriedly quieted down. "What do you mean you got married? To whom? Do Uncle and Aunt know?" he asked.

"In the game, Silly. The game. I got married to someone in the game," Hannah clarified.

"Oh," Alex finally said in understanding. "Who did you marry?" he asked.

"His name is Long Huan, he is really, really handsome, and he also turned out to be really rich," Hannah said.

"Turned out to be?" Alex was confused.

"Yeah, I didn't know at first. He just randomly started talking to me and before we knew it, we were together most of the time. Soon after that, he asked me to marry him, and since it wouldn't hurt trying once before doing the real thing here, I married him."

Hannah had a little blush on her checks that she tried to desperately get rid of, but it never went away.

"Do you like him, Sister?" he asked.

"Yes, of course. He's so sweet. Also, I didn't randomly get married to somebody I didn't think was worthy, okay? It was mutual liking. Either way, let's not talk about this anymore. It's too embarrassing to think about."

Hannah started walking a little fast. "Ok, Ok Sister. Now, wait for me," Alex walked a little faster as well. Within 5 minutes, both of them came upon of rather large building. It was a store for different types of furniture.

"Let's see. You will need a bed, some small furniture by the bed, a studying desk and a chair. Do you need a bookcase?" she turned to Alex who simply just shook his head.

Hannah went ahead and chose what she would think would be nice. Alex didn't mind since she seemed to have experience doing this and was choosing some good-looking furniture and other things to go along with them. After selecting all of them, they went ahead to pay for it.

Hannah decided to pay for it herself and was about to take out money, when Alex said, "What are you doing sister? I will pay for myself. Keep our money."

"It's okay, I will do it. You just keep your money. Uncle and Aunt will need it." Hannah didn't back down and insisted on paying it herself.

"No way sister. Don't worry about mom and dad, I will have some money coming my way tomorrow as well." They argued for a bit as to who would pay and in the end, Hannah reluctantly backed down letting Alex pay for it.

Learning that the furniture would be delivered to them later on, they decided to go buy the other stuff. In another store with big glass doors and windows, Alex saw a bunch of phones and laptops.

"Let's go in," Hannah once again walked in first. They walked in and saw a large number of people inside the store, browsing through the different items in there.

"Look around and see what you like."

Alex decided to look at the smartphone section first. "Woah," he was surprised. "I didn't know phones could get this expensive." Most of the phones in there were between $800 to $1500. He who had a $150 phone, couldn't imagine using such an expensive phone.

"Hmm… isn't that there a new model?" Hannah said as she pointed at one of the phones.

"I don't know much about phones sister," Alex replied.

"I think it is. You should get that one. It's really good."

Alex decided to do so and chose that phone. He then moved on to laptops. When he saw the laptops, he was floored at the variety. Even a laptop with similar-looking names was completely different on the inside.

"You know much about laptops? Cause I don't," Hannah said.

"A little. I can tell what's good from my Computer Science classes. However, I can't tell how good they are so we will just have to go off of the numbers they provide," Alex replied.

They decided to ask the store clerk which laptop was better. The store clerk politely explained the features and differences of the different laptops. At the end of that, Alex chose one of the better ones and bought it.

"Alright, now that we are done with phone and laptop, let's just buy the remaining item and get it over with." Hannah was starting to get a little hungry by this point.

Finally, she took Alex deeper into the store, and only then did Alex see what he truly wanted. A VR helmet.

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Chapter 170: More shopping

There were not a lot of people at the place where the helmets were stored. Most people were waiting for the new capsule to arrive and didn't want to waste money right now.

Alex looked at the brand new helmets on the shelves and was quite shocked at how many there were. Not just in amount, but in different brands too. There were barely any helmets for Eternal cultivation.

'Why did Deva corp even decide to make helmets if they were making capsules in the first place? From a business perspective, that doesn't make sense. Aren't they losing money in production?' he wondered.

He then looked at the other helmets in the business. They were nothing like the one made for Eternal Cultivation. These were the helmets, about which he mostly learned in the VR class.

Apparently, due to having proprietary technology and design, no one was allowed to know how it worked or was able to produce such amazing realistic senses. So his class was stuck with these other VR technologies that were trash when compared to Deva corp's helmets.

"What can I do for you?" the Clerk asked seeing the two of them come towards the counter.

"One of those please," Hannah said the moment she reached there.

"The EC Helmet?" The clerk asked in surprise.

"Yes, please," Hannah said.

"Dear customer, we are required to let you know that a better version of the helmet is going to be available in about a week. Deva Corp will start selling a capsule at about the same price range for a similar amount of money," The clerk said.

"Yes, we know, and we still want it."

The clerk sighed and took one out from the shelves. They went to the front of the store where they paid for all of the items at once. Together with the phone, laptop, and helmet, Alex had to pay exactly $3200.

'Oh my god. Just one day of shopping and I'm already down so much money.' The furniture had cost quite a bit as well, but not as much as these 3 items. They got a free backpack with the items, which they carried the 3 things in.

"Let's go back and eat something. The clothing section is on the other side of the house, which we can go to after eating." They walked back to their home. Alex was still surprised every time he saw the large building, but after being in the city for a month, he was starting to get used to it.

They took the elevator back to their apartment and Hannah proceeded to cook some food.

"You need some help sister?" he asked.

"Hmm… okay. Cut the onions and potatoes, while I prepare the other dishes," she said and proceeded to make the other food.

Alex looked at the vegetables that were already on the table. He took a knife from the counter and started cutting them.

"Hmmm…." He voiced out as he stopped cutting. Hannah looked back hearing him and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Oh, uh nothing. It just felt a little awkward chopping the onions for some reason. Maybe not cutting something for over a month has messed with my ability to cut." Alex tried to squeeze his palms almost as if that would reawaken his senses.

"Oh, okay." Hannah went back to cooking. Alex resumed cutting as well. He finished the onions and proceeded to cut the potatoes. He still felt awkward cutting them but kept at it.

Suddenly, "OUCH!" Alex screamed.

"What's wrong?" Hannah immediately came to him after hearing him scream.

DRIP DRIP

Droplets of blood fell onto the marble floor. Hannah then saw that Alex had ended up cutting his finger while cutting the potatoes.

"Oh, no. Are you okay?" she rushed to check his finger. Thankfully, it was just a shallow cut and he was fine.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just cut a little." Alex held his finger up high.

"Let me get some bandages," Hannah said as she left the room and came back with a small bandage and put it on his finger.

"Honestly, you should have told me you were bad at it if you couldn't cut potatoes. I would've done it myself."

Alex's finger had now stopped bleeding after the bandage was put on. "I know how to cut them, Sister. Or rather, I knew it. It seems I have lost my muscle memory. Probably because I spend so much time in the game," he said.

"I think so too. You should exercise every day after playing the entire night. You probably have a really bad lifestyle right now with only playing games and sleeping. " Hannah chided quite a bit.

"I guess so," he said.

"Alright, go and rest. I will do the rest," she said as she took over the potatoes and started cutting them. Alex went outside to the lounge room and sat there watching the TV once more.

"Have I really gone that bad with the rest of my skills as well?" he wondered. He continued watching TV, flicking through the channels but nothing fun was on it. So, he took out his new smartphone and started setting it up.

After a while, he finally managed to get it working properly. When it finally worked, he was absolutely floored at how fast it was. He switched the number from his old phone and started using it.

"Cmon, the food is ready," Hannah shouted from the kitchen.

"Coming sister," Alex said and went to eat his food.

The food was delicious, much better than the ones made in the cafeteria. After eating, they went to the clothing stores on the next side of town and bought a bunch of clothes for themselves.

Just as they were returning from their shopping, their furniture was delivered as well. They opened the door for the delivery people and had them set up the bed and the other furniture.

Alex put his clothes inside the closet and finally, after a long day's work laid on his bed.

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Chapter 171: Back to Hong Wu Sect

Alex set up his new, expensive laptop. He was really fascinated by how good the laptop was. He quickly set up everything required for his school and used it for a bit.

At around 3 PM, Hannah asked him to go eat something.

"Oh, this is quite tasty," Alex said as he ate the stir-fried noodles.

"Right, Vinny taught me this recipe. I try to eat this whenever I can," Hannah said.

"Oh yeah, sister, when is dinner? By what time should I log out?" he asked.

"Dinner? Don't worry about it. I will set quite a lot of it now and put it in the fridge. You can heat it up in the microwave whenever you want and eat it," Hannah said.

"Oh, That is quite convenient," he said.

"Yeah, we've been doing that ever since the game arrived more than 2 months ago."

After finishing his food, Alex went back to his room, while Hannah remained for a little longer to prepare the dinner. Alex took out his new helmet and quickly found a socket to plug it into. With everything set, he laid down in his comfy bed, put on his helmet, and logged in.

Old player detected

Establishing connection with Oakleaf server

Connection Successful

Alex opened his eyes inside the house. He looked around, and then looked at the time. "I guess it's time for me to leave," he thought out loud.

"Master, I'm leaving soon." He sent out a message on a communication talisman meant for his master. He expected his master to come and give him a farewell, but instead, he just got a message telling him to meet his senior brother before leaving.

"Guess, I'll just go say my farewells to Senior Sister, or who knows how much she will beat me when she meets me next." He laughed to himself and made his way to Luo Mei's house.

There was barely anyone on the mountain, and those that were didn't bother with him. Only after walked higher up the mountain did he have to change his aura to not be noticed by others.

He found Luo Mei still inside her house, learning some sort of book.

"Oh, Junior Brother, you're here," she said. He looked around and didn't find Meng Yun, who usually was with Luo Mei. 'Is she logged out?' he wondered. Based on her speed of cultivation, she could only be a player who had joined the Tiger sect from very early on.

As to give her her privacy, he hadn't asked or even talked about it with Meng Yun. After, she was just playing a game like him.

"Are you ready to leave, Junior Brother?" she asked.

"Yes, that is what I came to say, Senior Sister," he said.

After a couple of exchanges, he bade farewell walked down the large, main road straight to the gate. There, he asked an Elder and was taken to his Senior Brother.

"Oh, you're leaving already?" Liu Xun asked when he saw Alex ready to leave.

"Yes," Alex replied.

"Alright. Master wanted me to tell you a few different things. He wanted to tell you himself, but he understood how hard it was for you with so many Elders in front of your door." Liu Xun shook his head.

'Elders in front of my house? Hope they don't get mad just because I ignored them,' he thought.

"Anyway, the no-reply tactic must've worked since all the Elders left you so soon. Oh yeah, I completely forgot about the master's message," Liu Xun said.

"What is it, Senior Brother?" he asked.

"Since it is unlikely you will be representing Tiger Sect in the Annual sect competition, Master wants you to focus solely on improving the Hong Wu Sect's points in the competition.

"We are pretty much guaranteed to upgrade to a First Grade sect even if we fail a majority of the events, but Hong Wu Sect requires quite a lot still, so you should do it. "

"Also, don't worry about hiding your face or anything in front of the Tiger Sect. Master plans to reveal your relationship the next time you come back to the sect." Liu Xun finished speaking.

"I see. I will do as master says," Alex replied. "Also, can you return it to the library for me brother? I completely forgot." Alex handed the book about clones to Liu Xun.

"Alright. Goodbye little brother, see you in 2 weeks." Liu Xun saw him off.

Alex walked out of the gate and went past the busy market.

"Hey, isn't that the new disciple?" somebody spoke.

"What new disciple?" somebody asked.

"You know, the one from the battle yesterday," the first person spoke.

"Hey, that's him right?" another person spoke.

"I was there during the fight, it's definitely him," another person spoke.

'It seems more people know of me than I had hoped,' Alex thought. He quietly walked past the market and when nobody was looking at him, he entered a quiet alleyway. He took off his yellow robes and swiftly changed into green ones.

After walking out of the alleyway now, he was a Hong Wu Sect disciple. He slowly walked back to the sect, while looking through the entire city.

'I have never been to this part of the town, have I?' he thought. He kept looking around and finally saw something that surprised him a little.

"Oh, so this is where it is," he thought. In front of him was a store with many people walking in and out of it. The store was quite big compared to its surroundings and was ran by young men and women wearing green robes.

This was the Hong Wu Sect's Pill store. This was where most of the higher grade pills ended up after they were sold by the disciples. Most of the people working here were Inner Sect disciples, with a few elders behind looking over the entire thing.

'No wonder I never saw it. It was in such a place. I never had even bothered walking this way,' Alex thought. He had heard about it from his master but had never actually seen it before. Having finally seen it, He walked towards the sect's direction and reached it very soon.

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Chapter 172: Low Ranking

Alex was stopped at the gate of the Hong Wu sect by the elders to check if he had permission to leave the sect, or not. But after looking at his nameplate, they immediately let him go.

Alex simply smiled and walked along the outer sect mountain.

'It's only been 2 weeks and I'm already getting nostalgic,' he thought. He walked down the mountain and reached the sect valley.

'This place is as rowdy as ever,' he thought as he laughed to himself. The disciples, both outer and inner were walking around the sect valley, minding their own business.

"Hmm… Let's go see if the ranking has changed in any way," he thought and walked to the disciple hall. In front of the Disciple Hall was the black rock with constantly moving figures that spelled out the names of the students in the rankings.

He looked over the contribution ranking and saw virtually no difference from the time he left the sect. His name had in fact went lower by quite a bit due to not contributing enough.

'I guess that's alright,' he thought. He saw no point in the contribution points for now aside from eating in the restaurant. If he really wanted to, he would do so in a restaurant outside.

He then walked to the back of the black stone and looked at the list of Alchemy Achievements. The names were once again the same. Only this time, it was a problem.

'Where am I then?' he thought. He started looking lower and saw his name around rank number 33. 'Huh? I've made a Heaven rank pill, and that puts me to rank 33? That's impossible.'

He remembered his master saying that even core disciples had a hard time making Earth Grade pills with high harmony, and yet his Heaven Grade pill didn't give him much Alchemy achievements. He also had a lot of other pills that should have increased his ranking by a lot.

'Just what is going on? I should ask master,' he thought and took out a communication talisman. He then started sending a message to his master.

"Master, I'm back. Also, I need to talk with you about something." He sent the message. He waited for a bit and got a reply.

"Come to my residence."

He skipped the rest of the places and walked straight to the sect master's mountain. In a couple of minutes, he reached his home, but he skipped that as well and walked straight to the sect master's home.

He spread out his spiritual sense to see where she was and found her in her alchemy room, so he decided to wait outside. After a few minutes, Ma Rong walked out.

She looked at Alex and said, "You are back quite early. Isn't there still 2 more days to go before you had to return?" she asked.

"Yes, master. However, something happened in the sect that forced me to leave early," he said.

Ma Rong got curious and asked, "What happened?"

Alex proceeded to explain everything that happened between him and Huo Tu and how he beat him using Heaven's Impact. After listening to it all, Ma Rong said, " You made a good choice. I don't know how Wen Cheng could've handled it all without revealing your relationship. That would've only added fuel to the fire at that point."

"So, was that what you wanted to talk about?" Ma Rong asked.

"Actually no, Master. I saw the ranking stone and found out that my name was in the 33rd position for Alchemy Achievements. Does making a Heaven Grade pill not put me in even the top 30?" he asked.

"Oh, that? Of course, it does. It's only that I never registered your pill in the first place, so you weren't high in the list." Ma Rong seemed to be quite casual about it as if it wasn't a big deal.

"You didn't register my pill? Why master?" he was confused and was starting to get a little annoyed as well.

"I didn't have time to absorb what you had really done at that point and had agreed without thinking. But later on, when I was about to register the pill, I finally remembered something very important that was not very much remembered because of how rare it was."

Alex was both confused and curious at this point. "What is this important thing, Master?" he asked.

"There is this rule amongst the core disciples where they have to make 50 pills with over 35% of harmony and register it to the sect. If they manage to do that, they are eligible to take a test to become an elder."

"However, if any disciple can produce a Heaven grade pill, they are automatically promoted to the rank of an Elder. Because at that point, the sect deems it useless for a disciple to remain a disciple."

"As such, had I registered your pill and someone realized that there was a heaven grade pill made from a disciple, the Sect would be in an uproar, and you would be forced to work as an elder from then on. Meaning, you wouldn't be able to enjoy the freedom you have right now."

Ma Rong explained the situation to the best she could. So, Alex finally understood what was going on.

'I see. So I was this close to suddenly becoming an Elder huh. But, is that really bad?' he wondered.

"What are the downsides of becoming an elder, master?" he asked.

"There necessarily isn't one aside from not having free time. However, if you, who became a cultivator just over a month ago, were to become one, it would seriously slow down your learning and training time. You would be forced to do work for the sect at a higher rate than the normal contribution."

"Alchemy is a slow and gradual process, so most of the elders don't actually mind not having much time since they wouldn't be able to do anything if they even had one. However, you are different," Ma Rong said.

"You are more talented than anyone I have seen in my life. So if there were even a single thing that hampered your training and cultivation, that would be disastrous."

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Chapter 173: Shocked Ma Rong

"So… what do I do now, Master? Do I not take part in the upcoming Core Disciple exam? I thought that was what you had told me," Alex said.

Ma Rong made a judging face and said, "Of course not. You're still taking place in the Core Disciple exam. You will just have to give me a pill that is not as good as the Heaven grade pill and I can immediately register you for the core disciple exam."

"Oh, okay," Alex said.

"So, do you have one or did you spend the entire time in the Tiger sect just fighting?" Ma Rong asked with a chuckle.

"Most of my days were just fighting and training, so I was only able to make pills for a single day last Sunday. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make a Heaven-grade pill at that time. I think my last one was just a fluke and I will have to still train quite a bit to produce a Heaven grade pill again," Alex said.

He then reached into his bag and took out a pill bottle with a single pill. He then handed it to Ma Rong. Almost instinctively, Ma Rong took out a pill tester and put the pill inside it.

She slowly watched the fog rise up along the side of the glass until it reached 39% and stopped. She nodded affirmatively and took the pill out to look at it. She looked for a bit, and the more she looked at it, the more her eyebrows furrowed.

She looked at it for a bit more and without any information, decided to ask Alex. "What is this pill? I have never seen such a pill," she said in curiosity and amazement.

"Oh, that pill is called the Great Illusion pill. It's like a Face Changing pill, but instead of changing one's face, it puts an illusion on top of it for a limited amount of time. It can be maintained for a long time. Much longer than the Face Changing pill. However, the illusion disappears if you stop feeding it your Qi."

Hearing Alex's explanation, Ma Rong was stumped. She had never heard of a pill like this so she was confused as to whether her disciple was lying or not.

"How did you make this pill?" she asked.

"Oh, it's quite simple, as long as you have the ingredients. I have the recipe right here," he said and took out the recipe from his storage. Ma Rong looked over the recipe and was surprised that it was actually a new recipe.

"Where did you find this? Was this in the tiger sect? Can't be. I know their entire catalog of pill recipes and this is absolutely not one of them. Did you get it from somewhere else then? Where? I have never seen such a pill before in the entire Crimson Empire."

Ma Rong went off with her questions and speculations leaving Alex not a single room to answer her questions. Only after she finally stopped did he answer her questions.

He told her how he was taken to an amazing place in the southern forest with a high amount of Qi and how he found tons of alchemy material there. He also told her about the skeleton where he found the recipes from.

"So, you found recipes from the dead person? How many did you get?" Ma Rong asked in anticipation.

Alex simply took out the storage bag and handed it to Ma Rong. "Take it, Master. These are the recipes. Also, there are quite a few formation blueprints that might or might not be useful to the sect."

Ma Rong took the bag and used her spiritual sense to look at it. At first, she only showed amazement at the number of different recipes. But as she looked through more and more of the recipes, she was shocked. Absolutely shocked.

"Th—Th— This…" she wasn't able to form any sentence. Her eyes stayed wide while her jaws fell to the ground.

"This is a Saint rank pill recipe," she said.

Alex nodded while understanding her feeling. He was also quite shocked when he first saw them.? Ma Rong went ahead and checked the rest of the pill recipes as well.

Every time she saw a Saint rank recipe she would cry out in shock. This lasted for quite a while. At the end of this, she was breathless from all the shock. She tried very hard to calm herself and asked, "You really found all of this at the place?"

"Yes, master. I think that man might have not been from the Crimson Empire and had instead come from outside," Alex said.

"That could be the possibility. After all, there have been other such cases as well," she said.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, master," Alex said garnering Ma Rong's attention. "Come out Pearl," he said.

In bright white light, a 20-25 cm long white cat appeared in front of Ma Rong shocking her once more. She looked at the small white cat and could tell that it was a child. However, she could also see that it was giving off an aura of Bone tempering realm.

"Is this…" she asked without finishing the question.

"This is my beast companion, Pearl. Pearl, this is my master okay. She is a good person," he taught Pearl.

"Meow," the cat meowed in affirmation.

"He is quite good, isn't he?" Alex asked.

"You got a beast companion in the Tiger sect? Did Wen Cheng not deny this?" she asked.

"Oh no. I didn't get pearl in the Tiger sect. I actually had him all the time since my near-death experience back in that crater in the southern forest," Alex said.

"The crater?" Ma Rong tried to recall back to what had happened there and suddenly remembered something. "The mother and child cat?" she asked in shock.

Alex nodded. "Yes, master. Pearl is the little cat I told you guys about in the crater. He had made a bond with me when I was nearly dead, so I never knew about him. But after being released back in Tiger sect, I have been training with him," he said.

Ma Rong's eyes remained wide open. "You bonded with the child of a monster that was in the Saint realm," she said in shock.

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Chapter 174: More Shocks

Ma Rong's eyes were wide open as the shock came on coming one after another. Her disciple was just a fountain of surprises and shocks that never dried up. She looked down at the cat and took notice of its small size.

"It really is a different monster. I've never seen anything like this," she said.

"Elder Xian of Tiger sect said the same thing as well," Alex replied.

"Elder Xian? Ah, the previous head of Cloud Valley. If he said so, then it must really not be from the Crimson Empire. Maybe it too came from past the southern forest," Ma Rong said.

"Since your beast is still so small, I assume it doesn't have very high cultivation. You should slowly build up its cultivation while constantly training it. Although, beasts usually have Inherent memory, getting their body used to fighting is always a good idea."

Alex nodded and said, "I thought so as well, master. So, I've been training him for the last week and having him constantly cultivate to increase his cultivation. He's already reached Bone Tempering 7th realm by now."

Ma Rong was about to affirm when she realized what she had just heard. "Did you say this child is already at Bone Tempering 7th Realm?" she asked in surprise.

"Yes, Master. Although Pearl has a child's body, his cultivation has been really fast. I am actually afraid if his foundations would be shaky, but He's also been training quite a bit, so maybe not," Alex said.

Ma Rong breathed in and out slowly to bring herself back from the state of shock. "You are giving me quite a lot of shock today. If there is anything else that can shock me, lay it out right now," She said.

"Anything that might shock you? Let's see… umm… oh yeah. Master, have you heard of Mortal Cleansing?"

"Of course. Anyone worth their money in Crimson Empire has heard of it. Although, I'm surprised you know the word as well. Did Wen Cheng teach you ab—" she suddenly stopped as a thought came across her mind.

"Actually Master, I went through Mortal Cleansing," Alex dropped the bomb.

Ma Rong's eyes went wide once more. " Wait wait wait… Mortal Cleansing? YOU went through Mortal Cleansing. Where did you even find the Divine Devil's fruit?" she asked.

"The Divine Devil's Fruit? Is that what is needed ?" He asked. He had never before heard of such fruit, but Wen Cheng had indeed mentioned some fruit being required for the Mortal Cleansing.

Ma Rong's eyes squinted as she got a questioning look. "Didn't you say you went through Mortal Cleansing? You must've eaten some fruit, right?" she asked.

"Oh no, master. My mortal Cleansing was different from others. Or at least that's what the master had said at the time. He said that normally one would have to eat fruit to go through Mortal Cleansing. He must've been talking about this Divine Devil's fruit. However, the way I went through mortal cleansing is by having Pearl Cultivate."

"Every time he cultivates, I somehow get put under a body tempering state and have to suffer through it. The first time it happened, I also went through Mortal Cleansing," He explained.

"Wait, so you didn't eat any fruit and went through Mortal Cleansing just like that?" she asked.

"Yes, Master. It happened while I wasn't conscious due to my body tempering being very painful, so in the end, I only found out after master told me what had happened," he said.

Ma Rong's eyes once again squinted as she asked, "You keep saying you went through body tempering, don't you mean just normal cultivation?"

"No Master, I went through actual body tempering. I'm now a Body Cultivator as well," Alex said.

Another Shock. This was the Fifth shock of the day she had received, and it hadn't even been 5 minutes since her disciple had returned.

The first shock was the new pill her disciple took out. The second shock was the rest of the pill recipes and formation blueprints her disciple had brought back. The third shock was the Saint realm monster's child, the little Cat that her disciple had bonded to. The fourth shock was the fact that her disciple had gone through mortal cleansing.

And now, learning that her disciple was a body cultivator, she was shocked once more. "You really are a Body cultivator? How exactly?" she asked.

Alex went on to explain every single thing that had happened with him and Pearl cultivating. When she heard that he had to suffer through so much pain every single day, she winced a little.

Finally, after hearing everything, she said," So, how strong are you right now?"

"My body is about the same strength as a Body Tempering 3rd realm cultivator," he said.

Ma Rong nodded and sighed, "That is quite strong. I didn't expect you to leave to Tiger Sect for 2 weeks and come back so strong."

"Speaking of which, what is your cultivation base? I can't see it right now," she asked.

"Oh, let me remove the concealment for a moment," Alex said and showed off his cultivation aura once more. A cultivation base of Organ Tempering 4th realm slowly spread out its aura and Ma Rong felt it.

"You've truly become quite strong," she said with a sigh. She had expected him to get stronger, but not by this much.

'Am I stifling this child's potential as a cultivator by not letting him cultivate and only having him make pills?' she started to wonder. While he was good at making pills, in her eyes, he was better at cultivating.

She started to have second thoughts about making him fully focused on Alchemy.

"Master?" Alex asked seeing her lost in her thought.

Ma Rong shook her head, ignoring the thoughts for now. "You've done well. You've increased your cultivation by quite a substantial amount. Although you stopped practicing Alchemy for a while, it isn't as bad since you can continue it now. Alright, If you have nothing else to tell me, go register this pill and prepare for the upcoming core disciple test," she said.

"Wait Master, I still have a few things more to tell you."

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Chapter 175: Asking for Permission

"Hmm… you've got something more to tell me?" Ma Rong asked.

"Actually, I have this to give to you," Alex said as he took out 2 Spirit Cleansing lilies.

Ma Rong had enough shock for the day, but she was shocked once more. Her eyes turned wide as she involuntarily screamed, "Spirit Cleansing Lily? 2 at that. Where did you find them?" she asked.

"The same place I told found the corpse and the recipes. Not only that, I have quite a few alchemy resources as well." Alex brought out a storage bag to show them.

"You can keep some if you want it," he said.

Ma Rong sent her spiritual sense into the bag a saw a load of alchemy ingredients stacked on top of one another. She immediately screamed, "What are you doing keeping them like that? Put them in an individual wooden box or something." She was horrified seeing such precious materials being kept like that.

"I know that I should master," he said as he brought out more storage bags and said, "There are just too many."

Ma Rong felt like she was being tortured. Showing such a horrifying sight of keeping alchemy materials without any protection to keep their energies from leaking out or mixing with each other.

She immediately brought out one of her storage bags with a ton of jade and wooden boxes and handed it to Alex. Alex complied and put the ingredients in, but there were just too many. He was able to only fit one bag's worth of ingredients in there, while the rest of them were still the same.

Ma Rong wanted to cry rivers of tears seeing those ingredients in such a state.

"Don't worry master, I will make a lot of pills very soon and use up most of these ingredients, and I will keep the True rank pills ingredients in the wooden boxes." He reassured her again and again.

Finally, she was fine with how the pills were kept.

"Alright, go register the pill and I will make your core disciple exam as soon as possible," Ma Rong said.

"Okay, Master," Alex said and called Pearl back into his arm. He was about to leave when he remembered something. He turned around and asked, "Master, Do you know much about bodies?"

"Bodies? What do you mean?" she asked.

"You know. Cultivator's body type," he said unable to explain properly.

"Oh, those. I know about them, why?" she asked.

"Then, do you know anything about Sun God's Divine Yang Body?" he asked.

Ma Rong thought for a moment and answered, "No. I don't think I have ever heard of that body. I don't think there are any records about them either. Why do you ask?"

'So, she doesn't know it either huh?' he thought.

"Nothing important really," he sidestepped the questions. "Oh right, master. There are these small rectangular yellow jade-like stones that are found in the Forbidden Fields, do you know about them?" he asked.

"Yellow rectangular jades?" Ma Rong quickly reached into her storage bag and took out a slightly yellow yang jade and asked, "Are you talking about this?" she asked.

Alex's eyes turned bright. "Yes, Master. That's exactly it. Do you have more of these?" he asked.

"Why do you ask?" Ma Rong squinted her eyes questioningly.

"Uhh… I'll tell you later master. For now, do you have some more?" he continued asking.

Ma Rong sighed and said, "No. This is the only one I have right now, and even this is almost done."

"Almost… done?" he asked questioningly.

Ma Rong reached into her storage bag and took out 2 more of the same stones. Except, this time they were both white with not a single hint of yellow. She then said, "See how these are white? These stone lose their energies after being out of the Forbidden fields for a week or two. What's more, they are incredibly rare and are only ever found once in a while."

Alex walked ahead and reached out to the slightly yellow yang jade and looked at its name.

[Jade Stone]

There was no hint of Yang in these jade and thus the name had been changed to the game system as well. Alex sighed, "I expected too much." He then thought about what his master just said and asked, "Master, then can I go to the forbidden fields to try my luck? These stones are very important to me and I need quite a lot of it."

"Absolutely not. The Forbidden Fields is a place we send to punish the students. There is not a single Qi in there and you will starve to death if you are not careful. We will ask the students who leave their punishment and see if they have any more of these stones, that should be enough," Ma Rong said.

Alex thought for a moment and said, "That's fine. When is the next disciple coming out?" he asked.

Ma Rong looked into her medallion and saw that the next one was coming out in a week and relayed that information to Alex.

"A week? But master, it will be too late by then. I will need to be stronger by the competition right?"

Ma Rong thought for a bit and realized that he would in fact be in the competition within a week. "Tell me, honestly, why do you need them? How do they help you?" she asked.

Alex wanted to avoid the question once again, but decided against it and answered. "I can use the Yang inside the jade to make my Qi thicker. I've used it twice now and it's made my Qi at least twice as thick, maybe a little more, and even given it a yang quality," he said.

Ma Rong was confused at first as to how it could possibly be true. But the more she thought about how vigorous her disciple's Qi was or how he could do things beyond his cultivation base, she fully accepted it.

"If what you say is true… then I will allow for you to go to the Forbidden Fields."

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Chapter 176: Back to Pill Making

"I shall allow you to enter the Forbidden Fields, but only for 3 days. We don't have much time otherwise. We will have to leave for Cardinal City on Friday if we want to reach it," Ma Rong said.

"When exactly is the competition starting, Master?" he asked.

"It should start around Sunday, but it will take us time to reach there. So, you will only have 3 days of searching inside the forbidden fields. I don't know how useful that would be, but you will get the time."

"Thank you master!" he said from the bottom of his heart.

Seeing that there was nothing more to talk about, Alex walked out of Ma Rong's house and walked all the way down to the Disciple hall in the sect valley.

'Let's see. I had 12 when I started, I used up 2, 4 were used by the folks at tiger sect, 1 was given to auction, and I just gave 2 to master. Meaning, I only have 3 left.' Alex sighed as he counted the amount of Spirit cleansing Lily he still had.

The sect valley was bright and full of light as the lanterns in the road gave it the feel of a festival. "Ah, I've missed this," he thought. He reached the Disciple Hall and went directly to the third floor under the stares of different people.

He walked up the stairs to the third floor, and just as he was nearing the 2nd floor, he bumped into someone walking outside. Both he and the other person stumbled backward.

"Hey, watch where you're going," a voice came from in front of him. He saw a person being caught by another person they were with. They were both female disciples.

"I'm sorry. It was my fault," he said as he looked more closely and realized that he knew one of the two females. The female disciple he had bumped into was a tall woman with black hair and an emotionless face. Although she looked a little angry right now.

On the other hand, the girl who caught the tall girl was a little shorter than her and looked the same. Only, her face wasn't as emotionless.

"Oh, it's you, sister Zhou Mi. I'm sorry about that, I was in a bit of a hurry," Alex said as he looked at the smaller girl. This was the girl he had met when he had attended Kong Yuhan's ascension.

"Junior Brother… Yu Ming, right? What are you doing here? The upper floors are not for outer sect disciples," Zhou Mi said.

"You know this guy?" the taller girl asked.

"I've met him once before when I was with my other friends," Zhou Mi replied.

As the two sisters were talking, Alex noticed something finally. 'A core disciple,' he thought. He had only seen core disciples before, and only now he was interacting with one, finally.

"I'm letting you go just because my sister knows. Be wary of your surroundings next time," said the taller girl, and started walking past Alex to go down the stairs. Zhou Mi nodded a bit and walked after her sister as well.

'But you bumped into me,' Alex wanted to say, but he decided not to prolong the drama and simply went to the 3rd floor. He registered his new pill with the Elder in there and walked back out.

Seeing that he had nothing to do, he went back up the mountain to his house.

"Let's make a few pills before logging out to have my dinner," he thought. He walked into his familiar alchemy room and sat down in front of the fire pit. He took out his cauldron and put it on the fire to heat it up.

In the meantime, he looked through the different recipes in his mind that he could make right now. After choosing one, he gathered up the materials separated among multiple storage bags into a single one.

He started making the pills and in less than 20 minutes he made one easily. The pill ended up having a harmony of 36%, which he found quite disappointing, however, since it was only the first pill of the day, it wasn't as bad.

He prepared another set of ingredients and started making his next pill. This one took a little less time, and by 15 minutes, he was done with it. He managed to make this one with a harmony of 43%.

"That's more like it," he thought as he smiled a little.

He rested a little more and prepared another set of ingredients for a different pill. After the cauldron had heated plenty, he put in the first ingredient and started making the last pill before dinner.

He started moving the ingredients inside and the energy started to get slowly released. He added another ingredient inside and slowly started moving that energy as well. Those two energies mixed and formed a new form of energy where one energy had the other energy suppressed for a new type of energy.

He put another ingredient and the energy from this pill mixed with the energy in the cauldron as well, forming a different type of energy that was a mixture of all of these energies.

Of these energies, there would mostly be a single type of energy that would be at the forefront in it due to the other energies suppressing each other. As Alex put more and more ingredients inside, it was soon revealed that the final energy that was at the forefront was Metal energy.

Although the Metal energy wasn't abundant, it was still abundant enough to make the pill's energy alignment be Metal. Once everything was done, it was time to form that pill.

He started forming the pill and used Elemental Guidance at the same time to move the energy towards the newly forming pill in hopes of adding more energy into it.

Suddenly, he noticed something very weird. Usually, Elemental guidance was only there to help him guide the energy, he would have no way of forcing them to move in any way he wanted them to.

But, for some reason now, a lot more energy was being guided around with elemental guidance. In fact, they weren't even being guided anymore, but just moved around.

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Chapter 177: Metal

'What's going on?' Alex was surprised. This was an unprecedented event for him during all of his time, making pills. However, as an expert alchemist, he didn't let the unusualness of the situation, derail his concentration.

He made use of the situation and moved the energy directly into the forming pill. The pill absorbed as much as it could before the energy left it. While he couldn't instill a lot of energy, he could tell that it was still better.

He waited for the pill to be formed and when it did, he directly brought it out. He caught the pill in his hand and looked at its name.

[Bronze Tiger's Rage: 58%]

"What??!" he was beyond surprised at this point. He had a hard time crossing 45% on normal pills and had barely reached 49% occasionally, yet today, he had somehow reached 58%.

'That… has to be incorrect right? No way that's correct,' he couldn't believe his own eyes and so he checked again. It was in fact 58%.

"But… But how?' he couldn't make head or tails of the situation. It was almost the exact scenario as when his Iron Fist Punch was all of a sudden much stronger.

'Wait a second…' Alex fell into deep thought. He thought of the similarity between the two situations and realized that the only thing similar between them was…

"Metal!" he shouted out. "That's it. Metal Energy. Iron Fist Punch uses Metal spiritual root, while the pill just now was had a majority of Metal energy. So, did I get a benefit regarding Metal Energy? But how?" he started thinking.

It didn't take him long to come up with the answer. "That blood essence. Did it somehow increase my affinity to metal energy?" he wondered. That was the only explanation he could come up with.

This certainly didn't feel like the advantage of Mortal Cleansing or Body cultivation. Besides, those came after he was already strong at using Iron Fist Punch, so the essence was the only answer.

"But why?" he thought for a while, but couldn't come up with an answer. Sighing to himself, he left the game.

He logged out and woke up in his new room, in his new bed. The temperature of the room was perfect thanks to the AC and the bed was softer than any bed he had been in.

'Such a shame I won't be able to sleep on it for long due to the new capsules.' He walked out of his room to the brightly lit corridor that leads to the living room. Past that he walked to the kitchen, only to find that Hannah was also there about to eat.

"Oh, you logged out?" she said as she looked at the time. "But it's only 7 pm, don't you want to play some more?" she asked.

"I do, but it's ingrained into me at this point that I should log out at 7 for dinner. Will take some time to adjust to the new changes," he said.

"Alright, sit down. I'll put some food for you in the microwave as well." Hannah set the timer on the microwave and sat back down on the chair.

"So, how do you like your new crib? Isn't it fancy?" she asked.

"Very, sister. I didn't even imagine that such a place was available in the world. I had thought that such places were only for the rich people with fancy business and titles," he said.

"Well, we can be considered rich now," Hannah said with a giggle. She then looked down at his hand and asked, "Does the cut hurt anymore?" she asked.

Alex looked down and finally remembered he even had one. "Oh yeah, it's fine. It's barely noticeable," he said.

DING

The microwave sounded after a few moments. Hannah went to bring out the food and laid it down in two portions. Without saying anything, they started eating.

"Mmm… This is quite good," Alex said.

"I learned the recipe from the Internet. It's quite easy, you can make it too I bet," she said.

"I doubt it, sister. Not after I have already lost my muscle memory. It will take me a long while to be able to do that," he said.

"Alright, let's stop talking about that. There is something that I've been wanting to talk to you about but haven't had the chance to," she said.

"What is it, sister?" he asked curiously.

"Do you have free time tomorrow?" she asked.

Alex thought for a bit and said, "Yes I do. It's Sunday tomorrow and I don't have school," he said.

"No, not just school. What about the game? It's your source of earning now, you have to treat it like work. You cannot miss a single day if it hampers your pay," Hannah said.

'Think of the game like work?' he was surprised that people had even thought of that. 'Why would I want to turn something I enjoy into work? Isn't that the easiest way to lose interest in something?' he thought.

However, he didn't voice it out loud. Instead, he replied to her earlier question, "I have some work during the day, but I am mostly free at night. I don't know how much that would help you," he said.

"Oh, that's perfect actually. I want you to accompany me somewhere tomorrow night," Hannah said quite excited about something.

"Where to, sister? Some sort of party or something?" he asked.

"Uh… no, more like… you'll see tomorrow. Let it be a surprise," Hannah said. She just couldn't hide the excitement in her eyes.

'What's going on with her tomorrow?' he wondered. The two of them talked about a few different things for a while and after taking care of the dishes, went back to their individual room.

Alex went up on the soft bed again and laid down on his back. 'Sigh, I just want to sleep in this bed for today,' he thought. But, he had, as Hannah had put it, work to do. So he put on his helmet and once again, logged back into the game.

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Chapter 178: Experiment

Alex went out of to courtyard after logging in. He felt like taking a bath before doing anything. So, he took off his clothes and jumped into the pond. He didn't care about the little fishes in there and only enjoyed the cool water.

"Pearl will probably like this as well," He thought and called out Pearl. With a bright white light, Pearl appeared on top of the water.

SPLASH

As soon as he appeared he fell into the pond, desperately struggling to walk out of it. However, having never been in the water before, he didn't know what to do. He swung his little waves around, causing waves after waves to appear on the surface of the pond.

"It's okay Pearl, it's okay," Alex immediately swam forward to hold the little cat and pet him. Only after being held out of the water did he finally stop struggling and let out a weak meow.

"You don't like water, do you? I should have known that would be the case. You are a cat after all. Still, you need to take a bath," Alex said and proceeded to dunk Pearl in the water and washed him off. He then put Pearl back into his arm and proceeded to wash.

After he himself was fully washed he decided to get out. He started swimming forward but soon realized that even though he was so strong, he was still feeling a bit of resistance in the water.

'Wait a second,' he thought. 'What if I…' without deliberating any further, he immediately used his technique, Fluctuating Friction Dance.

Soon, his body was covered in Qi, which his legs were exceptionally strengthened. He then pushed his Qi outside to remove the friction, but it barely worked. He pushed more Qi and it was starting to do some work, he was feeling a lot less resistance, but there was still some.

Finally, he pushed the Qi to its limit and suddenly, there was no resistance. Suddenly, with no resistance, he started falling to the bottom of the pond, which wasn't very deep.

After reaching the floor of the pond, he simply started walking forward. He felt absolutely no resistance. It was as easy, no, easier than walking on land. The water was pushed around by the Qi faster than he could move forward.

'Wow,' he was surprised. This was not a sight he thought he would be able to see when he became a cultivator. 'This is so good,' he thought. 'Sigh, but it also costs a tremendous amount of Qi. If I were to keep it up, my Qi which lasts for hours on end will be used up in less than an hour,' he thought.

Thinking so, he walked out of the water, and put on his robes, and walked back into the house. It was time for him to make some more pills.

However, he didn't just make pills. He needed to test his theory too.

"I need to see if it is only Metal energy or if there are other energies that I am unaware of that I can use just as well. He racked his brain thinking of the different pills he could make, and the different energy each pill had.

Finally, preparing 6 types of pills for the 6 different types of energy, he started making these pills once more. "Shame there aren't any pills that have Yin or Yang energy as their main result," he thought.

He walked into the Alchemy room and put the cauldron into the fire to heat it up. He used Qi manipulation to get rid of any remnants from the previous alchemy process and started preparing his ingredients for the first pill.

The energy produced for the first pill was none. It was a neutral pill where the resulting energy was a combination of all and thus neither of them. The resulting energy didn't align with any of the other 5 elements so he decided to start with that.

He took as much care as he could during the making of this pill, and finally, when it came time to form the pill, he used Elemental Guidance once more. He didn't expect anything to happen, and just as to fulfill his expectations, nothing did happen.

The energies were guided as expected and only some of them fused with the forming pill, while the rest of them moved away. Suddenly, the powder that was still in the process of forming the pill split into two, making two separate pills. Suddenly, two vortexes formed above the newly formed pills, sucking in all the energy from the surrounding, which was the inside of the cauldron.

Finally, the two pills were formed at 36% and 42% harmony each. "So, Neutral energy pills aren't it" he thought.

He then proceeded to gather ingredients for the Fire energy pill. He started making the pill and after they were done being powder and the energies were up in the air, he started using the Elemental Guidance to guide the resulting fire energy. As expected it worked normally. It just guided the energy and did nothing whatsoever to move the energy.

Finally, the pill formed with a harmony of 48%. "As I thought, Fire energy pills don't work either,' he thought.

Next up was the Earth energy pill. Similarly, he turned the ingredients into powder form and once the resulting energy in the cauldron was earth aligned, he used Elemental Guidance. This one was a failure as well. The pill only had a harmony of 45% and it was a single pill at that too.

"Sigh, not Earth either. Is my theory really correct?" he thought.

The next one on the list was a pill whose resulting energy was water-aligned. As usual, he formed the powder and once the resulting energy was formed, he used Elemental Guidance to move the energy to the forming pill once more.

The result was as expected, a failure. However, he did manage to push himself to the limit and formed a pill in heaven grade with 50% harmony.

"Good pill, but the theory still stands. I couldn't move the energy at all" he thought.

Finally, it was time for him to make a Metal energy pill.

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Chapter 179: Successful Hypothesis

He cleaned the cauldron of any remaining by-products and prepared his ingredients. The pill he was going to make was different from the one he had made before dinner.

He wanted to make sure that it was the energy that was the cause of the advancement, and not the ingredients. Finally, when the time arrived, he put in his first ingredient.

Slowly, one by one, he put in ingredients and turned them into power. Finally, when the time came, he used Elemental Guidance. The energies started being moved. They weren't being guided but moved once more.

"It's happening, I was right," Alex thought but concentrated on the pill once more. He moved the energies towards the forming pill which were absorbed in a higher amount by the powders.

Once again, a simple stream of Qi ran out of his body involuntarily and moved into the cauldron through the path established by his previous Qi. The pills were splitting into two once more.

The powders were separated into two parts and formed into pills.? As soon as they were pills, they started to vigorously suck in the remaining energy in the cauldron.? Finally, after a while, the pill was ready.

Alex expectantly brought out the pills from the cauldron. He was somehow both amazed and disappointed by what he saw. The harmony levels on the two pills were 43% and 45%. They had a combined harmony of 88%, which would have been amazing if it had been a single pill, but he knew that the pills rarely accepted that much energy. Which was why being split into two was good.

However, neither of them had ended up being a heaven-grade pill which was disappointing.

"Sigh, at least my theory is correct. Metal energy is in fact being controlled much easier than the rest of the energies." He didn't still have complete control over the metal energy. However, compared to the other energies, it was as good as being fully controlled.

"I will have to ask master what this means." He proceeded to make two more Metal energy pills. Neither of them split, so one of them ended up having 57% harmony, and the other one ended up with 59% harmony.

The rest of the energies were still being let go of into the air. 'Sigh, if only I had complete control. I wonder if I would if the energies inside were fully Metal instead of Metal just being the highest amount,' he wondered.

Finally, he stopped making pills and decided to cultivate for the rest of the night. He put his cauldron into his storage and walked over to the next room.

Before starting to cultivate, however, he took out one of the 3 remaining Spirit Cleansing Lily. He was going to increase his Spiritual Sea once more. Although they only increased in size, it was still worth it to him. The spiritual sense lasted longer now.

"Ah, I should let master know that a Spirit Cleansing lily can be used twice. She will probably want to know about it," he thought and contacted Ma Rong using the communication Talisman.

He let her know what he learned about it in the Tiger sect and returned back to cultivating.

He took the flower in his hand and started meditating. Qi inside his body started moving on their own as he let go of all control and as usual, he fell into a trance, unaware of his surrounding.

Alex slowly opened his eyes. He slowly sent out his spiritual sense and looked at his Spiritual Sea.

"Huh?" he was surprised. The size of the sea hadn't increased at all. He looked at the water in his spiritual sea and realized that that wasn't the case either. It was then he saw it.

The Spirit Cleaning lily in his hand hadn't disappeared at all. It was perfectly intact, just the way it was last night.

"What's going on? Why didn't I use up the flower?" he started wondering. He tried to think of any records he read that spoke of these things, but couldn't find any.

"Did I make a mistake somehow?" he started to worry. He looked to see if there was any change to the flower, but just like the first time he looked at it, it was intact.

"I must've done something wrong then," he put the blame and forgot about the flower for now. He looked at his surroundings and noticed something out of the corner of his eyes.

"Huh? No way."

He immediately ran out of the dark room and into the courtyard. It was bright, unusually bright. Almost as if it were…. He looked out at the corner of his eyes once more.

"So I'm not seeing things. I did over-cultivate. It's already 10 am."

He didn't know how or why, but for the first time since playing the game, he had ended up cultivating till it was 10 am. The only other times he had woken up this late was when he had genuinely fainted.

But that was different from the current situation where he was fine and it was just normal cultivation.

"Thank god I don't have college today or I would've missed it. If I were in the dorm, I would've already missed breakfast. Whatever, let's go eat some food. Sister must be waiting for me."

He went back into his room and logged out of the game.

He had been in the game for over 14 hours, so he decided to take a bath. After bathing, he walked out into the kitchen and saw Hannah eating her food alone.

"You took quite some time. Why did you log out so late?" she asked.

"Sorry, Sister. I was cultivating and woke up only just now," he replied.

"Woke up?" Hannah looked at him weirdly. "Aren't you in the Organ Tempering realm?" she asked.

Alex wondered why she could ask this, but he still answered, "Yes, sister."

Hannah then asked, "Then why are you still falling asleep while cultivating? That should have stopped after the first few times."

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Chapter 180: Exam Date

"What do you mean by it should have stopped, sister? Is this phenomenon supposed to stop after the first few times?" he asked.

Hannah said, "Yes. At first, you fall asleep a few times, but after a while, you get used to it and can start staying awake during cultivation."

"But, I have never been able to do that sister. I have always fallen asleep. Am I doing something wrong then?" he asked.

"Uhh… I don't think so. I don't think it has anything to do with you since it's supposed to stop of its own. Maybe it's your cultivation technique? Or maybe you are just an outlier. In any case, make sure you're in a safe place when you cultivate then."

"Okay sister," he replied.

"Alright, eat some food. It's in the fridge. Put it in the microwave for 2 minutes, and it should be okay. Also, don't forget, tonight you have to go with me, ok? I hope you won't end up cultivating and forgetting to wake up." Hannah put her dish on the dishwasher and left.

Alex ate the food alone and put the dish in the dishwasher after finishing as well. He waited for the dishes to be cleaned and reorganized them into their original places in the kitchen. Only after then did he leave.

He didn't immediately go to the game and instead used his new phone and laptop for some time. He needed to get used to them if he wanted to use them. After an hour or so of using them, he logged back into the game around 12 pm.

Just as he logged in, he felt a sort of vibration from one of his storage. He looked inside to find that it was his communication talisman from his master. He picked it up and looked at the message.

"Come to my place as soon as you can."

Without hesitation, he left for his master's building. As he arrived, his master was also about to leave.

"Oh, you're here. I was about to go find you since you didn't respond at all," she said.

"Oh, sorry master. I was kind of busy and didn't see your message in time. But I have some questions so I came rushing."

"Come in, I also have something to talk to you about," Ma Rong said as she walked back inside. Alex followed her and walked into one of the rooms as well.

"What do you want to talk about, master?" he asked.

"Alright, your exam date for Core disciple has been set. It will be tomorrow morning around 8 am. Make sure you are at the Elder's hall in time tomorrow," she said.

"Oh, alright. Thank you, master," he said.

"Alright, tell me. What do you want to talk about?," she asked.

"It's regarding these,' he said as he pulled out 3 pill bottles. Ma Rong wasn't sure what was happening, but she took the pill bottles and popped the stopper for one of them.

Immediately, a strong medicinal scent escaped out from the bottle. With just a single smell, Ma Rong could tell, this was not a simple pill. She immediately took out a pill tester and tested the pill.

57%

Her eyes turned wide seeing the absurdly high harmony percentage. "Wha— how?" she asked, shocked that her disciple was able to make this so fast.

"This is what I wanted to talk to you about, Master. Check the other two pills as well," he said. Ma Rong followed his suggestion and took the stopper out of the remaining two bottles. Similarly strong medicinal scent escaped from both of those bottles.

Her hands started to shake a little as she put the pill into the Pill tester. Both of them resulted in 58% and 59%. This just caused her to have more shock.

"What is going on? Did you make these?" she asked. As the harmony levels got higher and higher, the more difficult it was to make the pill. An alchemist could only have so much energy in the cauldron after the intense process.

Due to the multitudes of minor mistakes, the energies released would always end up in some ways not mixing together. That would make the total energy in the cauldron have less than ideal amount of the resulting energy.

This energy would then have to be absorbed by the powder before forming the pill, which was another place where the energy would be less. All in all, an Alchemist would have a very hard time making a pill with high harmony. Especially, once it got above 40%.

And yet, her disciple in front of her had 3 pills all with harmony above 55%. This was something unprecedented to her.

"Yes, master. I made these yesterday night," he replied

"How did you do this?" she asked. Suddenly increasing your ability as an alchemist, at this level was not an easy task.

"That is what I wanted to talk to you about master. In the tiger sect, I accidentally took in an unknown blood essence, and ever since then my ability towards anything Metal aligned has improved significantly. "

"I can use metal aligned skills with damage behind them, and make pills where the final energy is Metal at Heaven grade quite easily. Do you have any idea why a blood essence would do this?" he asked.

"What do you mean unknown blood essence? explain thoroughly," she asked.

Alex explained all the circumstances surrounding the blood essence and the resulting effect as much as he could.

Ma Rong fell into deep thought after hearing that the essence had targeted her disciple on her own.

"I do not know the answer to this. I have never heard of someone directly taking in blood essence without putting it through a pill or something. Go and check if there are some other things that have changed in you. Since we don't have any records about this, the only thing we can do is wait to get to the Cardinal City and look through the library ourselves," Ma Rong said.

"I see, Master. Let's do that," Alex said.

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Chapter 181: Problem with being Rich

Alex left his master's house and went back to his house. He made a few more pills to pass some time and prepare himself for tomorrow morning.

"Hmm… I should have asked the master how the test is done. I hope I don't have to make a Metal aligned pill for the test or I don't know how I would make it so that it doesn't have a high harmony. Similarly, Other pills can't have high harmony or it would cause some trouble too. Although, I should be fine as long as I don't make a heaven-grade pill."

" I should also not use Elemental Guidance tomorrow so that the pills I make don't have a lot of Harmony," he said. He was making as many plans as possible to not do well in tomorrow's test.

After making those pills, at around 1 pm in the afternoon, he left the sect. It took him about 15 minutes to go from his house in the sect leader's mountain to the gate at the outer sect, and then it took him about 15 minutes of walking to go from there to the Pink Cloud Auction house.

"I hope the items have been sold by now. They did say

A staff lady who knew his face took him to the inside of the auction house where the Cai Ping and the old person from before were waiting for him.

"Fellow Daoist Yu, you're here," the old man with the long white hair spoke.

"Good afternoon, Fellow Daoist Yu," Cai Pint greeted as well.

"Hello," Alex gave a single nod as a greeting in return.

Alex sat on the chair opposite the two people and waited for them to speak.

The older man simply reached for a storage bag and gave that to Alex. Alex looked into the storage bag with some expectations, hoping to make some good bucks, but what he saw astounded him.

He started counting, one after another.

'1, 2 ,3 … 51, 52, 53 … 172, 173, 174 … 293, 294… 389, 390, 391 … 422, 423, 429.' His eyes went wide with shock. "429 True Spirit stones?" he asked the people in shock.

"Yes," The old man nodded.

"Is this… after the 10% charge?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Of course, Fellow Daoist Yu," the man smiled seeing Alex's reaction. In fact, he himself was surprised at how much money had been issued for him to give back. However, he wasn't surprised why that was at all.

Being near the Saint realm himself, the man could understand the people's willingness to spend so many spirit stones to get their hands on something that could help them get the fabled Spiritual Sense.

Alex's hands were slightly trembling, holding the most expensive item in his whole life up until now.

'If I sell my remaining 3 flowers, I… I... I will be a millionaire,' he thought. This was a very tempting thought for him, but he managed to shake himself out of that thought.

'Take it slow. There will be other changes for that in the future. Invest these flowers on yourself for now,' he said to himself and started thinking about other things.

"How much did the pills earn?" he asked.

"The pills themselves earned you 29 True Spirit Stones. It was the flower that earned you the rest," the old man said.

Alex didn't know what else the two said by the time he was already out of the auction house.

'So much money… nearly 400 thousand… do I even have to worry about money anymore? I can just make pills daily and sell them, can't I? I can probably take care of mom and dad like this,' He thought.

'Is that what sister meant when she said to think of this like work? Is this what this is now? Work. I… should start working hard. I will have to earn more money soon,' he thought.

The path back to sect took longer this time since he had a lot on his mind. He slowed down his pace quite a few times even. Slowly a different feeling started to appear in him.

'I can earn money by making a few pills every day. I don't even have to stay online all the time. Why would I even stay online? I don't even need to play the game most of the time. Is that what this is all forcing me to do? Stop playing?' he asked himself.

Having been handed so much money suddenly made him lose all sources of motivation to play the game for fun. He started thinking of how he could earn money or manage his time.

Thinking so, he got back to the sect and went straight to his house. Once he reached there, he decided to send back all but a few spirit stones.

He put in all 400 True spirit stones in the transfer settings and hit send.

Do you want to send '36000 spirit stones ($360,000) to XXXXXXXXXX343?

"Uhh… the 10% charge. It took away more than what I earned the last time," he said as he felt a little annoyed but still 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.

$360,000 has been successfully transferred to your account

He smiled and then thought, "What do I do now? Go back to making some more pills to earn more money?" he thought and then immediately got a little depressed.

"Sigh. I don't want to play anymore today. Let's just stay logged out for the day. Hopefully, I have more will to play tomorrow," he said and went on to use his phone and laptop.

He surfed the Internet to see what new things were happening, or just call home back to talk to his parents. He even decided to do some exercise to be a little more fit again.

He did that until at 7 PM, he had a knock on the door.

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Chapter 182: Cab ride in the night

"You can come it," Alex said when he heard the knock on the door.

Hannah opened the door and walked in. She was wearing a beautiful purple dress that matched her fair white skin and dark brown hair very well. She looked at Alex who was looking at the computer and frowned.

"Why aren't you dressed yet?" she asked.

"Dressed?" he quickly looked at the time and realized it was 7 pm. "Is it time for us to leave already?" he asked.

"Yes! We need to leave in 15 minutes," she said exasperated.

"Oh," Alex immediately stood and closed his laptop. "I will dress right now sister. Are we going to a fancy restaurant or a dinner party?" he asked.

"No, it's much better than that. Just dress well, you don't really have to look the absolute best," she said and left him.

Alex looked through his old clothes and didn't find any that would be considered well enough for how Hannah was dressed. So he opened his bag of new clothes and chose a simple shirt, coat, and pants that looked sophisticated enough for whatever his sister was taking him to.

After getting dressed, he took his phone and left the room. Hannah was waiting for him in the living room and stood the moment he entered the room.

"Finally," she said and looked at him. "Oh, you look nice. You might just end up getting a girlfriend for yourself tonight," she said.

Alex blushed a little and asked, "Are we going somewhere where there will be a lot of girls my age?" he asked.

Hannah made an embarrassed smile and said, "Not really. At least, I don't really know. Maybe there will be, but probably not. It's not a socializing place either so… sorry if I gave you any expectations."

Alex chuckled a little and said, "It's okay sister. I wasn't being serious. Should we go now?"

"Oh yes, let's go," Hannah said as she took her bag and walked out of the house with Alex in tow. They went down the elevator and got into a cab a minute later.

Hannah gave an address to the driver, but Alex didn't know that many places in Oakleaf City, so he had no idea where this place was. He just looked outside the cab, enjoying the nightlife of the city.

After 15 minutes of the ride, they were still in the cab, and Alex was surprised by how far away this place was.

"Wouldn't it have been better to take the train, Sister? It looks like this place is quite far away," he said.

"No. I looked up the map and the building is quite far away from any train station, so it's better that we took a cab," she said.

"Where exactly are we going sister?" he asked.

"To Channel 8's station," she answered finally.

"Channel… 8? Isn't that a news channel? Why are we going there?" he asked.

"Hehe, Your sister has been selected for an interview in tonight's 9 PM show," she said.

Alex was shocked. 'An interview? With sister Hannah? What is going on?' he wondered.

"Interview about what?" he asked.

"Oh, it's an interview with the people in Eternal Cultivation who have really good starting points like High talent, or great spiritual roots and body," she said.

"Huh?" Alex was surprised. "You have one of these, Sister?" he asked.

"I have all of these," Hannah said with a smug smile on her face.

Alex tried asking for more information, but Hannah just smiled and told him to wait for it on the news.

"How did those people even find you?" he asked.

"Oh, I saw it in the forum. The people at Channel 8 made a forum post requesting everyone with great talent to fill a form if we wanted to appear on an interview. I didn't want to at first, but then thought, why the heck not. Maybe I can even be popular like this," Hannah said.

"After that, I got a mail yesterday morning to verify some of the information I had put in. Can you believe I had to show them some screenshots of my transaction with Deva corp to prove that I was in fact a high-ranking player?"

"Thankfully, that was all I needed to prove. So I get to have an interview today. Although, there will be quite a few others there with me too," she said.

Alex fell into deep thought. 'I wonder if I could get in there with my current income as well?' he wondered. 'Although I don't think I would like that. I can't imagine myself on the TV,' he thought.

Suddenly, he remembered something about the TV. 'That news yesterday… that was… Oh, so this was what they were talking about when they said not to miss it as it would be the greatest news regarding Eternal Cultivation to date.

'I did want to see it, but it seems I will be seeing it live,' he thought.

The cab ride lasted 30 minutes more where Alex just looked through the different buildings lighting up bright in the night.

'This looks exactly like Hong Wu Sect's valley, only more modern. I didn't know cities lit this much at night,' he thought. This looked better than the festivals they had back in his hometown.

Approximately, 50 minutes later, They finally reached the Building for Channel 8. It was a massive building that was wider than his imagination, going up to more than 30 floors.

'Woah!,' he thought as he looked at it. Hannah paid the cab driver and walked out of the car with Alex.

"It's really big, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, Sister."

"Is this the place?" another voice came from behind them. They both turned around to see an elderly man walk out of a cab. He looked to be in his 60s and was dressed quite well in a simple coat and pants.

He looked at the sign that said 'Channel 8' and said, "Ah, this really is it." He then turned his head around to see Alex and Hannah in front of the building too and asked, " Are you kids here for the Eternal Cultivation interview as well?"

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Chapter 183: Show Starts

"Yes, I am, but my brother here is not. He's just accompanying me," Hannah replied.

"Ah, I see. Nice to meet you two," the elderly man said.

"Nice to meet you too," both Hannah and Alex replied the greeting.

The three of them walked inside the building and were stopped by the guards. After verifying their information, they were made to go to a certain room to wait before the program went live.

There were already a few people, all young ones, in the room when the group of three arrived. Slowly people started being added one after another and soon it reached around 30 people in the room.

However, not all of them were being interviewed. Half of the people were like Alex, who came with their friends or family to support them today. Nobody decided to start up a conversation with someone they didn't know and only kept talking with the people they came in with.

After a while, a woman from the staff entered and started calling out names. She called about 13 names before she stopped. Hannah's name was among them as well.

"Alright, I will be off. You should be able to see me on that TV over there," Hannah said and left. 12 other people consisting of 5 young women, 6 young men, and the elderly gentlemen left as well.

Alex looked at the time and realized that there was still 15 minutes before the actual program began.

'Are they going to prepare their talking points or something?' Alex started wondering.

'I wonder if these people think of their time in the game as a job too. Sister did mention that they were selected based on their bank transaction. Also,' he looked around and thought, 'What happened to that guy that said he was the best in the game? He seems to be missing.'

After a few minutes, about 10 minutes before the show started, a woman walked in and asked, "Hello, would you people want to sit in the audience of today's show?"

"Yes, please," a bunch of people stood up and started walking out of the room. Alex decided to do so too. Along the way, the staff member gave them a bunch of information on the do and don't in the studio like putting your phone on silent or vibration mode.

Alex got seated at the corner seat with a girl about the same age as him seated next to him. She was wearing a small pinkish-red dress with frills all around it. She had glasses on that complimented her big and beautiful eyes. She seemed to be a little anxious about something and was constantly fidgeting about it.

"Are you alright?" he proceeded to ask.

"Oh!," the girl jumped in response. She then immediately apologized. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to freak out like that. I— I'm just not used to being around people," the girl said.

"It's okay. I just saw you fidgeting a lot and wondered if you were alright. If you are fine, then it's okay," Alex said.

"Thank you," the girl said.

Alex looked back to the stage and nobody was there yet. There were still about 5 minutes for the show to start, so he decided to make some small talk.

"Are you here with someone?" he asked.

"Ah, yes. I— I'm here with my roommate. She is quite good at the game and told me that she landed an interview and dragged me here. I wonder when it will start," she started to drift off with her thoughts and then remembered that she was still talking.

"Oh, what about you?" she asked.

"I'm here with my cousin. She didn't tell me what was going on and just dragged me here," he said with a chuckle.

"I'm Alex by the way," he said as brought forth his hand for a shake.

The girl hesitated for a bit, but reciprocated at the end with a handshake and said, "I'm Emily. Nice to need you, Alex."

"Nice to meet you, Emily," Alex said with a smile.

Then, a bunch of noise started coming from the stage as the 13 people in the show starting walking up the stage to sit on one of the 13 seats on the stage. There was another seat a bit to the right reserved for the host.

"Ah, she said interview, but it seems like it's more of a talk show," Alex said.

"M—My friend said it was an interview as well. Seems like there were too many people for it to be an interview and they will have to change the format," Emily suppressed her anxiety to speak.

Once all the 13 people were seated in their seats, the host walked onto the stage and sat on his seat.

Within a minute, the light in the audience dimmed and the show started.

"Good evening everyone. This is your host, Drake Hamil from Channel 8. Tonight, we have these 13 people in front of us. Now, while they may look like some ordinary high school students … or maybe teachers for one person's case, they are actually something way better."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Let me introduce you to the 13 Best of the best players in Eternal Cultivation right now," the host spoke.

Countless applause rang up around the studio devouring any other sound. After the crowd was finally silent, the 13 people went around introducing themselves.

Hannah introduced herself 3rd. When a lady named Sarah introduced herself, Emily let Alex know that she was her friend there. The old gentleman introduced himself as Sean White. He was at least 20 years older than the host, so the host didn't try to make any more funny remarks about the man.

Soon, after the round of introductions were done, the host spoke, "Let's start tonight's show where we talk with the current top players of Eternal Cultivation. Go in-depth with some of the mysteries surrounding the game and maybe have some questions that a game developer over at Deva Corp can answer to us, all in today's show.

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Chapter 184: 7 Grades

"First of all, let us tell the audience why you guys are the best of the best, shall we? Let's start with your Cultivation base in Eternal Cultivation okay?" the host said.

Some of the guests hesitated at first, but in the end, they all agreed.

"Let us start with our first guest on the left, Mr. Sean." The host started talking with the older gentleman. "Can you tell us your cultivation base?" the host asked.

"Yes, Of course. My cultivation base right now is the 4th realm of True Masters realm," the old man said.

"Oh, that is quite low, isn't it?" the host said.

"Haha, compared to the energetic youths? Maybe. However, I only play 3 hours a day at most since I have a very young grandchild right now. I would rather spend the rest of my time with her," he said.

"Oh wow. You only play for 3 hours a day and you are already in the True Master Realm? That is quite good," the host said.

"Haha, yes. I believe so too."

The host then went on to talk with the other. The young men and women he talked to were mostly in True King or True Emperor realms. None higher than the 5th realm of the True Emperor realm.

But that didn't matter to the audience. They gasped every time they heard the high cultivation base. However, Alex on the other hand cringed.

'That is clearly very bad, right? Getting to that high of a rank in 2 months would mean that they broke through non-stop using external means. Their bodies didn't have enough time to get used to a cultivation base before they were in another.'

'Why are these people acting like they are doing something very good? They are only seeing explosive growth for now. They will have to struggle to even breakthrough later on,' Alex thought

The host went on to talk with Hannah too.

"What about you, miss? What is your cultivation level?" he asked.

"I am currently in the 6th realm of True emperor," She said.

"Oh wow, that is the highest we've heard yet, isn't it?" the host said. The entire audience gasped hearing how high her cultivation base was. Alex gasped too this time.

He hadn't expected her sister to have such a high cultivation base either. 'But sister knows that cultivating fast is bad. Does she not worry?' he wondered. Then he realized another possibility.

'She doesn't care. Not only her but even the rest of them also don't care either. If they are making money by having such high cultivation, why should they care? It's only a game after all. In fact, it's probably more than just a game to them, it's their work. If being stronger earns them more money, they will gladly do so, won't they?' He felt like he was just enlightened about something.

'What about me? Should I go and eat lots of pills to break through very fast as well? There are not many monster cores left so I might as well make a lot of pills,' he thought.

'Wait, these people are getting stronger to earn money, which means I won't even have to get stronger since I make money without my strength,' he thought.

He suddenly realized where his thought process was being strayed to. 'Ughh… money again. Why am I so fixated on it even when I can earn so much of it so easily?' he started wondering.

'Is that how I think of the game now? Just a way to earn money? What happened to the little bits of fun I was having previously? Is it all going to drown in my need to make money now?' he wondered.

The host had at this point proceeded to ask the rest of the people about their cultivation base and the highest had still been True Emperor 6th realm, which belonged to Hannah and another man.

These two were now unconsciously being viewed as the strongest players in the game, giving them respect much higher than the rest.

"Now, let's move on to the reason why these people, in general, had such a high cultivation base. The reason of which being undoubtedly their Talent and their Body," the host said.

"More specifically speaking, the grade of their talent and body. Now we've come to learn a few critical pieces of information these last few days through the forum post that we made a few days ago. The most important is the true grades of everything. "

"Dear Viewers, Did you know that there are 7 different grades in the game Eternal Cultivation?" The host asked and paused a bit. 'What?' 'huh?' 'No way! These sort of small murmurs ran through the crowd.

Alex himself was startled when he heard of this. '7? I only know of 5, maybe 6' he thought.

The host then spoke. "Yes! There are 7 different grades, and they go as follows. First is the three we all commonly knew from very long ago. These are the Mortal grade, Earth Grade and Heaven Grade."

"Then we have the next two that we only learned a little more recently thanks to people sharing it on the forum. These are the Immortal Grade and the Divine grade."

'I knew it. Divine grade really is a thing. So am I ever going to figure out if my body is God grade or Divine grade?' he wondered.

The host continued, "And finally, the 2 new grades we have come to learn are the highest two grades available in the game. The first one is called Ancient grade. This is one of the best grades in the game."

"However, the next one is even better. The final grade in the game is called God."

'Ancient grade? I don't think I have ever heard about that one before. To be fair, I only thought about Divine grade thanks to my body, to begin with, and I wouldn't have known about god grade if it weren't for my talent.' Alex thought.

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Chapter 185: Nine Revolution Ancient Body

After letting the audience and the viewers have a bit of time to process what he had just dropped, the host continued the show.

"Now, let us ask these top players what their body and talent grades are and why they are so high up on the list," the host said.

"Let us start with the oldest of all, Mr. Sean once again." The host then turned to the old man and asked," Mr. Sean, can you tell us what grade your body and talent rank is?" he asked.

"My body is not that good. It's only Immortal grade," the man said with a small smile and continued, "However, My talent… is God Grade."

'What?!' Alex nearly screamed out loud when he heard this. Some people in the audience actually did shout out loud in disbelief.

'I had expected there to be other people besides me with God grade talent, but learning there really are others is truly surprising. No wonder the old guy could break through so fast. He must face no bottleneck at all, just like me,' Alex thought.

The host asked the others the same question and the answer he got were amusing, to say the least. Emily's friend seemed to have a Heaven-grade body with an Ancient grade talent.

The best body that had been mentioned yet was only a Divine body belonging to another girl in the group. The host had purposefully kept the two people with the highest cultivation at the last place.

"Mr. Aaron, what about you?" the host asked.

The man was a little smug as he said, "My body is just a simple Divine grade body that allows me to eat monster cores and gain a massive amount of explosive strength from it. Although I have only been able to use it rarely lately, it's still good. As for my talent, it's at God Grade as well."

The host seemed to be curious about his explanation and asked, "Sorry, can you go back to your bit about your body. You said that you could eat monster cores for strength using it, but now you don't. Can you give us an explanation as to why?"

"I don't really know the reason why, but I just had to. When I started very early on, I did exactly what my body, Divine Devourer told me to do. I devoured pills, spirit stones, herbs, and monster cores. The first three only gave me a little Qi when I ate them, but the monster core, whenever I would eat them, along with Qi, I would get the strength of the monster whose core I ate."

"I slowly started to kill monsters and eat their core to become stronger and kill more monsters. Until about 10 days later, I got a small headache when I ate one. After that, from time to time I would get headaches whenever I ate one. Until one day I straight up fainted when I ate one. It also left my mind hurting for nearly a week. Ever since then, I have only stuck to the other items for Qi, and skipped monster cores."

'That is kind of like me,' Alex thought. 'Does he also need to fight the monster in the spiritual sea which is why his head hurts?'

'Wait, no. He probably hasn't unlocked his spiritual sea yet. so, he can't fight the monsters even if he wanted to. No wonder he has so much headaches. Atleast it's good to know that nothing bad other than some headache would occur in case I lose to the monsters,' Alex thought.

The host nodded a little and asked, "So, do you use the Qi from pills, spirit stones, and herbs to gather Qi and breakthrough now?"

"Kinda, but not really. The pills would help me gain Qi regardless of my body. I can just cultivate with a spirit stone instead of eating it. As for herbs, they are better if they are made into pills. Since these 3 things don't really have a huge impact on my cultivation process, I don't usually mention these when I talk about my body," he said.

"I see. That is unfortunate. Now, let us move on to miss Hannah. Can you tell us about your body and Talent?" he asked.

Hannah nodded and started talking. "My talent is not so special it seems. Most people seem to have Ancient grade talent, I have one as well. However, I also happen to have an Ancient grade body."

"What?" The guest on the stage turned their heads towards her in surprise, not to mention the shock amongst the people in the crowd and back home. Alex himself was surprised by this sudden information as well.

Even Aaron was surprised and slightly jealous of her now. Even though he had a better Talent than her, in the long run, the body would surely be much more useful. Especially if it was anything like his own.

"Isn't that your cousin? Does she have that good body?" Emily asked from the side. She was no longer timid as the shock had taken away any timidness in her for now.

"I— I did not know about any of this. She never shared to me about her talent or anything," Alex said.

The host was stupefied for a moment as well. It seemed he was not informed about this fact from the TV studio, probably for a more genuine interaction on today's show.

"Ms. Hannah, do you really have an Ancient grade Body? What does it do?" he asked.

Hannah chuckled a little and said, "Yes I do. It's called the Nine Revolutions Ancient Body. Basically what it does is every day and night, it gathers Qi from the surrounding until I cannot gather anymore. Which for me is around a few million Qi. Even when I am asleep or offline, It constantly brings in Qi for me."

Hannah's words caused a great amount of shock and envy among the crowd, but the Host seemed to have thought of something and asked, "While it does sound like an incredible body Ms. Hannah, I find it a bit too dull to be an Ancient grade body. Is there anything else you have to add to that?"

"Hehe, you are not a host for just any reason, are you? Yes. I do have something else it does that work in tandem with the Qi gathering. And that is the fact that I can break through any realms without using any cultivation method at all. My body allows me to bypass that restriction."

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Chapter 186: [Bonus Chapter]Continents

"Sorry, you said you don't need a cultivation method at all. Can you explain that?" the host asked shocked at what he had just heard.

"Yes. What I mean is my body can gather Qi on its own which I can then use to breakthrough without needing to learn a cultivation technique. If I had relied on the mortal grade technique that was gifted to me when I first created my character, I would have probably still been stuck at the self tempering realm like a lot of others," Hannah said.

"Oh, so does that mean that you breakthrough continuously without needing to stop at all?" the host asked.

"Theoretically, yes. But realistically, No," she replied.

The host got confused at that answer. So did the rest of the people watching the interview. "Can you elaborate?" the host asked.

"Of course. What I mean is that while I can go on breaking through forever, I don't do that. A bit recently, I came to learn that breaking through one after another without having a stable cultivation base first is really bad for you."

"I'm sure everyone here can attest to the fact that they are weaker than their peers in the game who are at the same cultivation base. All because we didn't spend much time in each individual realm, trying to become the best at that realm before moving on to the next one. I am regretting not learning about this beforehand."

The host looked with wide eyes. "I didn't know anything about this at all." He then turned to the camera and said, "There you have it, folks. If you aren't at a high enough realm yet, this is your time to fix your cultivation right now."

"Now, since spiritual roots don't add anything to cultivation itself, we will skip asking the guests about that. So, let's move on to another topic of today's show, The geography of Eternal Cultivation.

"Many of you viewers might already think you know this, but I promise you don't. This is exclusive information that only 3 of our guests today knew. Others were completely in the unknown about this."

Suddenly, a massive picture appeared on the screen behind the host and the guests. The picture consisted of a blue background with 4 irregular pieces on all 4 sides. It was a map.

Alex looked at it and wondered, 'What is that giant blue thing in the back?'

"This is the map of Eternal Cultivation, or at least an estimation of it since no one has really seen a true map of it yet. To all the viewers who have never seen a map of the game, you are in for a big surprise."

The host stood up and moved to the picture. "Look at this," he said as he pointed at the blue sections on the map. "Can you guys guess what this is?" he asked the oblivious viewers and audience.

"This… is… Water," he spoke trying to create suspense. "These," he gestured to all the blue parts of the map and said, "are all water. It is called an ocean. It houses more water than the land in the world itself."

The audience gasped. They had never heard of this 'Ocean' thing and when they saw that so much of the game was just water, they were surprised. Alex himself was quite surprised too.

'If the blue is the water, then the different 4 objects on the map have to be land right? Even if the left most land is half the size of our world, that is still so much water.'

His eyes shined brightly as he looked at the thing. 'Ocean… what a fantastical thing.'

The host continued, "Now,? look at the lands themselves. We have 2 green ones on the east and west that are similar to our own world, full of mountains, trees and rivers and ponds and cities. The north one, however, is fully clad in snow… all year round."

"Yes, the same snow that only occurs once a while on the northern area of our own real world. The northern lands are forever covered in the snow. The south, however, is perhaps more so bizarre. The southern land is actually covered in sand, all of it. There is not a single place that doesn't have sand in there," the host said.

Alex was listening intently to the new information he was learning through the host. 'Forever snowing land? Place all covered in sand? What sort of mystical land are these? The developers must have really gone above and beyond preparing the world for this game,' he thought.

"This land full of sand is called a desert. This southern continent is just a giant desert, through and through."

"Now, for the thing that is the most surprising of it all. For that, I will have to explain what Continents are. These all 4 lands are called Continents," the host said.

'That was what sister told me,' Alex thought.

"Continents are massive pieces of land on the ocean where the game actually takes place. Unlike our own real world, these lands have an actual edge to them. In our real world, if you walk in a straight direction, you will reach the endless forests and if you walk through the endless forests, you will just fall off the edge into the void and die. "

"But in this place, if you walk in a straight line, you would just reach the water. No worries about falling off and dying," the host said.

"Now, imagine the world we live in, all the 17 different cities with the nearly billion people was a circle, okay. Now look at this," the host said. Suddenly a circle appeared on the Northern continent that was always frozen.

However, the circle that appeared on it was about the size of a door handle on a door. The host then spoke. "This is how big the lands in Eternal Cultivation are. Just the Northern Continent alone is about 40 times the size of our own world."

"You can see why I would call it very surprising."

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Chapter 187: Fifth

Most of the audience members including Alex were shocked at this information. This was such an out of nowhere piece of information that it had caught them truly off guard.

The host was smiling wide seeing the look of disbelief on the faces of the audience. Not only them, but it also seemed that even some of the players, including the old man named Sean, were completely unaware of this information.

"The world of Eternal Cultivation is truly vast, and it also contains a lot of different places not available in the real world. For example, in the northern continent, there are flowing frozen rivers called glaciers. In the eastern continent, there are mountain peaks that spew out fiery liquid from the top. The west has an unending forest."

"There are beaches, which are small strips of land on the edge of the world that meets the water. There are giant cliffs with deep ravines in between called canyons. There are so many different things to explore, and most of us just stay in the cities. Such a shame," the host said while shaking his head.

Alex thought so too. 'There is so much more world that I have yet to see, and I am just staying in one city. I should leave to explore other places.' A small fire of excitement began to light up deep inside him, bringing the fun back into the game.

"Now, returning back to the players while still staying on the topic of continents. How many of you are from the eastern continents?" the host asked the guests.

5 people raised their hands, including Hannah and Emily's friend.

"How many of you are from the Northern continent?" he then asked.

4 hands raised this time including the old man Sean.

"The Southern continent?" the host asked.

All of the remaining 4 hands were raised at this point, including Aaron.

"And we can see that there are none of you from the Western Continent. It's weird, isn't it? We have seen the statistics report and surprisingly, only 12% of all players are in the Western Continent."

"And furthermore, they are always slow on the rise. The resources there are lower than the ones in the other continent. Do any of you have an idea why that might be?" the host asked.

'Didn't sister say that I was from the Western Continent? Is it really that bad?' he wondered.

The guests there made some guesses as to why that might have been. Some said they might have been slow to develop. Some said, the developers just made it that way. However, none of the guests could make any credible guesses, so the host decided to change the topic.

"Since we do not know about it that much, let us move to another topic. That topic being…" the host immediately turned around to point at the center of the map which was nothing but water.

Suddenly, a green land appeared in the middle of the map. "… The Fifth Continent," the host spoke.

Everyone was suddenly confused. Murmurs started appearing among the crowd as they tried to figure out how there could even be a fifth Continent. There were quite a few in the crowd that were quite learned regarding the geography of Eternal Cultivation.

Even though they didn't know the exact area of the continents or their relative location. They still knew that there were 4 different continents. Yet, the host was speaking about the existence of the fifth one that they had never heard of.

The host smiled when he saw the different reactions on the faces of most of the guests and all of the audience.

"You heard it here first. We are revealing to you the yet unrevealed fifth continent of the Eternal Cultivation. This is a very different continent from most of the other continents. Let us ask the three people who provided us with this information," said the Host.

"Ms. Hannah, Mr. Aaron, and Mr. Shane, could you tell us how you came to learn about the existence of this continent and why no one else knows of it?" he asked.

The man named Shane first spoke, "I actually do not know much about the Fifth continent aside from the fact that it exists. I came to learn about it on an accident when my master mentioned that we would have to take a detour through the Eastern Continent if we ever wanted to go the Southern Continent from the Northern continent. All because of the weirdness of the fifth continent."

Aaron followed up, "The fifth continent is actually way more commonly known in the Southern continent. Well, at least on the higher level it is. There are records of land being visible from the southern continent itself when the weather conditions are perfect. Although, because of how hard it is to stay around at the northern part of the Southern Continent, I myself have never personally seen this fifth Continent appearing."

"I see," the host said. He then turned to Hannah and asked, "What about you Ms. Hannah? How do you know about the Fifth Continent?"

"My Hu— Friend from inside the game told me about it. He has a rather high rank among the people in the Eastern continent and has access to a lot of important information. He let me know about, rather cautioned me against ever going towards the Fifth Continent cause of the dangers there."

"Danger?" the host was curious. "Any idea what sort of dangers?" he asked.

"Apparently, a very high-level battle took place in the fifth continent a few generations ago, and the land was left torn apart from the battle. Ever since then, the final continent has remained unapproachable by anyone due to the turbulent Qi in it."

"However, I believe that is what the developers are telling us right now," Hannah said.

"Hmm… what do you mean Ms. Hannah?" the host asked.

Hannah replied, "I believe that this Fifth Continent is going to be the next expansion of the game and is going to open up soon in the near future."

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Chapter 188: Developer

"Oh," the host got a little curious. "Is that so? So you believe the reason no one can visit the fifth continent is that the developers haven't fully made it yet and it is still under development. That kind of makes sense."

"Doesn't it?" Hannah said with excitement. "Imagine later down the line we reach the saint realm and have to go up, and the only way to do that is to move to the fifth continent where there will be much stronger people, better techniques, and all the pills and weapons and artifacts. It will truly be an amazing time."

The host talked with the guests about the fifth continent for a little longer before saying that the talk with them was over and going on a break.

Alex was still taking in the pieces of information he had just gotten. "I didn't know there was so much more to the world of Eternal Cultivation. And here I am staying in one city in one empire in one continent," he said out loud.

Emily didn't know if he was talking to himself or to her so she just decided to respond, "I— I also just stay in a city in the northern continent. I haven't left the city yet since I started playing 2 months ago."

"Oh, you played the game right after its release?" Alex asked.

"Yes. My friend forced me to buy a VR Helmet within the first 4 days of the release. I've been playing passively ever since then," she said.

"Oh, then you must be at quite a high realm," he said.

"Not really. I— I don't go out to fight monsters or buy pills or even get spirit stones. So, I am very slow at cultivating. I barely reached the true realm a week ago," she said.

"Oh, that's not bad," Alex said.

"What about you?" she asked.

"I only started playing about a month ago, so I'm not really that high. Only Organ tempering realm," he said with a smile.

The guests were taken to a different viewing spot in the audience reserved for them where they chatted amongst themselves and in a few minutes.

Then, the show was back on.

"Welcome back viewers. We finished talking with the 13 best of the best players in Eternal Cultivation. Now, we move on to the developer side of the game. I believe we have a developer from the game with us on the line."

"Can you hear us, Mr. Developer?" the host asked.

"Hello? Yes, I can hear you." The person on the other side of the connection said. There was no video and the audience and viewers could only hear the voice.

"Can you please introduce yourself to the audience?" the host spoke.

"Yes. Hello, I am Robin Howard and I have been a developer for Deva Corp for about 9 years now. I have been a part of the big games Deva Corp put out the past few years. Recently I was assigned to Eternal Cultivation as one of the people in charge of looking after the feedback and collecting data."

The host then asked, "So, let me get this straight. You are not part of the developer team that made the game, and you only came to the team later on."

"Uhh, you're not wrong in saying that," Robin said. "Except for the fact that Eternal Cultivation has no developers team."

The host and the other audience members were a little taken aback.

"Sorry, what do you mean Eternal Cultivation has no developers team?" he asked.

"Just what I said. The game Eternal Cultivation was not made by anyone in Deva Corp. It was actually sold to us by a different group of people using another person as a middleman."

"We still have no idea how the game was made, how the helmets made the game seem so realistic, or even how the capsules work. However, we have already tested the capsules and they work fantastically. In fact, it might be considered better than the helmets due to a certain feature that I am not allowed to tell you guys yet," Robin said.

This was a new piece of information that nobody in all the 17 cities knew.

"So Deva Corp is not responsible for making and distributing the game?" The host asked to confirm.

"Oh distributing absolutely, but not making the game. I know Deva Corp has gotten a lot of hate for not answering comments like why the game is not fair, or why we keep the helmet internals proprietary, or even just why we won't let the technology be used in other sectors than just the game," Robin said.

"I see, I was about to ask you if you guys got the idea for the world in the game from the old texts, but it seems you guys probably do not know about it," the host said.

"What is this about the old texts? The ones left by our ancestors?" Robin asked.

"Oh don't worry about it. A player actually found it and had posted on his own forum, but due to lack of exposure, it had been left buried until now. The thing that person found was that Eternal Cultivation was inspired by the old texts. The geographical anomaly all matches the old texts. Of course, except for the part where they were mistaken about the world being round when it is perfectly flat. "

" It would seem that the real developers of the game read the old texts left behind in Pinewood city, and implemented it onto their own game. Unfortunately, due to it being not allowed to be photographed, we couldn't show exactly what the old text said." the host said.

"I see. We wouldn't know anything about that," Robin said.

"Anyway, Thank you for taking the time to appear on today's show, Mr.? Robin."

"Thank you to both you and Channel 8 for having me," Robin said and cut the connection.

"Anyway, that is it for tonight folks. Keep watching for more fun stuff coming along. We will be sure to have prepared more Eternal cultivation. Goodbye."

And with that, the show ended.

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Chapter 189: Blushing

"Finally, it's over." Alex took out his phone to look at the time and realized it was 10 pm. His stomach was starting to growl a little.

GRRR

He heard a stomach growl from his side too. He turned left to find Emily's face nearly red in the studio light from the embarrassment. He chuckled a little and said, "You must be hungry as well. I haven't eaten anything since during the day."

Emily chose to say nothing. A staff member came by hauling everyone out through the side door.

Alex met Hannah who was outside, along with the other 12 people.

"That went quite well, right?" Hannah asked.

"Yes. I can't believe you hid how good you were in the game. If not for the interview, I would've never known," Alex said.

"Nah, I would've told you sometime soon. I can't keep it to myself at all," Hannah said with a giggle.

"It's so late, we should return now," Alex said.

"Let's get something to eat before we do," Hannah said. "Hey Sarah, you want to get something to eat before we leave?"

"Sure," A voice came from the group. Alex was a little surprised because the person who had just spoken turned out to be Emily's friend.

"You guys are already familiar?" Alex asked.

"Kind of. She was in one of my classes a year ago. I noticed her in the waiting room but didn't remember her name, so I stayed quiet," Hannah said with a chuckle.

"Yeah. I'm so hungry. Let's get some decent meal if the restaurants are even open at this time," Sarah said as she walked towards Hannah and Alex. Emily was following her timidly among the group as well.

They went to a nearby diner, the only one that was open at this time of the night, and ordered some meals.

Hannah and Sarah started talking with each other, while Alex and Emily were just left there silently eating their food.

"So, is he your younger brother?" Sarah asked.

"He is my cousin. He is in the first year of university and is staying with me right now," Hannah said.

"Oh, Oakleaf University?" Sarah asked.

"Yes."

"Emily here started studying at Oakleaf University too. She is in the 2nd semester of the first year," Sarah said.

"Oh, Alex is joined just a month ago, so he is only in the 1st semester," Hannah replied.

They talked a bit more and finished eating. They left the diner and Hannah started looking for cabs to return back home.

"Since we are going the same way, why don't you two come with us?" Sarah asked.

"With you guys? Sure. Are we sharing a cab?" Hannah asked.

"Oh god no. I brought my own car," Sarah said.

"Oh, nice. I should learn to drive too now that I can buy a car myself," Hannah said.

From a nearby parking lot, Sarah brought out the car. Hannah got on to the front seat, leaving Emily and Alex to take the back seat. There wasn't a lot to talk about so, the car was mostly silent the whole way back.

At some point, thanks to it being boring and having just eaten, Emily fell asleep on Alex's shoulders. Alex thought of waking her up for a second but decided not to.

"Oh, is she asleep?" Sarah said looking at them through the rearview mirror and quickly took a photo of them.

"Hehe, she will be so embarrassed when she sees this photo." She then told Alex," Don't wake her up. She usually goes to bed early, and it's already 11 pm. We still have half an hour left before we get back."

Alex just let her sleep on his shoulders the entire way back. He himself, however, couldn't fall asleep. Having been homeschooled and having barely any contact with girls before, his heart was racing like crazy.

It remained that way the whole way back. Hannah would look back through the rearview mirror from time to time and smirk. Finally, at around half past 11, Sarah stopped in front of a moderate building.

"Let me just get Emily into the room and I will come back to get you guys to your place," Sarah said and got out of the car.

"Oh, no need," Hannah said. "Our building is right over there," she said as she pointed to the tall building a few hundred meters down the line.

"Thank you for giving us a ride, we can walk from here," Hannah said. "Alex, Come one, let's go."

Alex didn't move however and simply pointed at the sleeping Emily.

"Oh," Sarah said as she chuckled and pulled Emily towards her from the window to shake her awake. Emily woke up and looked around, confused as to where she was.

"Am I still in the game?" she asked.

"Haha, silly. You were asleep in the car back home. Now get out," Sarah said.

Finally realizing where she was, Emily hastily got out of the car and fixed her clothes. Sarah and Hannah laughed and Alex finally left the car.

Saying their goodbyes, Hannah and Alex walked back to their home.

"It seems I was right," Hannah said.

"About what, sister?" Alex asked.

"About me telling that you might find a girl today," she said.

Alex immediately blushed. "Oh look at you, already embarrassed about it," Hannah said. "You are blushing more now than when she was sleeping on your shoulder."

"Can we not talk about this, Sister?" he said.

"Hehe, alright, alright."

They reached back home and Alex went straight to his room with the intention to sleep. He laid down on his bed ready to sleep when he remembered something.

"Ah, that's right. There is the exam tomorrow. I almost forgot. Do I go into the game or do I sleep?" he wondered.

He decided to sleep for the night but everything he learned today started appearing on his mind distracting him from his sleep.

'Sigh, I will just go to the game and cultivate for now.' Thinking so, he logged back into the game.

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Chapter 190: Second Best

Alex logged into the game at midnight. He originally planned on cultivating when he came here, but then he remembered what happened this morning.

"If I also mess up the time of me waking up tomorrow morning as well, I will miss the exam," he thought. So he decided to just not cultivate his Qi for now. Since he could manage to cultivate his body without going unconscious now, he decided to do that instead.

He called out Pearl and told him to cultivate. Within minutes, Pearl was glowing gold, and he had started to cultivate. Intense pain shot throughout Alex's body, but it was nowhere near concerning for Alex. He was perfectly fine handling this sort of pain, even though it hurt a lot. His pain tolerance had really gone up a few realms after the continuous body cultivation in the Tiger sect.

Throughout the entire night, he cultivated his body, and a bit before 7 in the morning, he stopped. He sent Pearl back into his arm and logged out. After getting refreshed, he went to the kitchen to have some food. Hannah didn't seem to have woken up yet, so he prepared breakfast only for himself and ate it.

After having his breakfast, he logged back into the game.

The exam started at 8 am, so he decided to leave now. He slowly trekked down the mountain and reached the Elder's hall a bit before it was time for the exam.

'Woah,' he thought as he looked at the slew of disciples standing outside the Elder's Hall. 'What's going on?' he wondered. There were nearly a thousand of them here.

If it had been only a few disciples in front of the Elder's Hall, he would've just assumed they were here for the exam, but the disciples in here were from all 3 sections of the sect numbering in 4 digits.

'I… am at the right place, right?' he thought.

"Alright everyone, come on in," an Elder said and the crowd of disciples walked in. Alex didn't know what was going on, but since his master told him to come here, he didn't think he was in the wrong reason. So, he just followed the group of disciples.

He passed a number of doors and took a sudden left turn. He sent out his spiritual sense to look at everything and realized that he was walking into a big open area.

As soon as the disciples walked into the open area, nearly 90% of them split from the group and started sitting on the floor all around the room. Alex was a little confused.

'Do I sit down too?' he wondered.

"Alright, Examinees and Viewers come with me," the elder said once more and walked even further.

'That's where I go?' Alex thought and walked along, but he still looked at the different disciples sitting on the ground, as if they were at a concert or something.

'A concert… wait a second. Of course.' He felt like facepalming right now.

'God, I can't believe I forgot about the weekly lectures. No wonder there are so many disciples in here,' Alex thought.

The elder took them through a narrower corridor to a different open room, only this time it didn't have many places to sit as there were fire pits all over the floor.

'Are we supposed to make alchemy out in the open?' he wondered.

The entire floor was about a hundred meters long and 50 meters wide. There were about 60 fire pits on the ground and a section had been separated for the spectators.

"Wait here for the other elders to arrive," The elder said and left. Alex took the time to send away his spiritual sense into the crowd to see who was here.

'Oh, it's the core disciple from yesterday,' he thought when he noticed the core disciple that was with Zhou Mi, the one that had bumped into him the day before yesterday.

He found Zhou Mi right next to her as well. He then found a man next to him, another core disciple, and he was looking directly at him. He started walking and came up right next to him.

Alex looked at him in surprise and he hadn't expected to see a core disciple's robe on the man's shoulders this soon. He smiled and said, "Congratulations, brother Kong. I see I missed your actual ascension."

"Thank you, Brother Yu. You could've come watched me pass it as well. I did it last week," he said.

"I was out of sect for the last two weeks, so I couldn't have even if I knew it," he said.

"It's alright. Why are you here? To spectate?" he asked.

"Oh no, I'm taking part in the exams as well," he said. "What about you? It can't be you are already going to take your examinations for the elder role, right?" he asked.

"Oh, you know about that? I'm quite surprised. Also, No. I'm actually here to cheer for sister Mi who is going to take part in the core disciple exam today," he said.

"Oh," he said as he looked towards Zhou Mi. He also saw the core disciple with her and asked, "by the way, brother Kong. Who is that senior with Sister Zhou Mi? They look so similar," he asked.

Kong Yuhan didn't even have to look back to know who he was talking about. He looked at Alex with a small shocked expression on his face.

"You don't know who that is?" he asked as if not knowing who she was unheard of.

Alex started to get more curious. 'Just who is she to garner such a reaction from a core disciple?' he wondered.

"Brother Kong, you seem to forget that I am quite new around here," he said.

"Yeah, but it's still unusual for anyone to not know who she is. Although, I guess outer sect disciples might have only heard her name and never really seen her."

He then turned to Alex and started whispering as he said, " That is Zhou Mei, the second highest-ranking disciple of the sect."

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Chapter 191: Exam Starts

Alex was a little surprised. "I should have guessed. They do look similar, so I could have just known name by associating her with sister Zhou Mi," he thought.

He started wondering how good she might be at making pills or how far along she was at becoming an elder by now. He was also curious if she would be one of the people taking part in the annual competition. It was an obvious choice if he thought about it.

He talked with Kong Yuhan for a few more minutes as the rest of the elders came to the exam fields.

The elder from before started calling out names, sending the examinees to specific elders who were waiting for them. The names were at random from what Alex could tell and thus he had to wait a bit before he was called.

"Yu Ming!" the Elder said out loud. Alex walked up to the Elder. The Elder looked him up and down and said, "You're the sect leader's disciple huh? I heard you're quite good at taking pills. Good luck on your exam today." He then sent Alex to an Elder who was waiting for him near a fire pit.

Alex walked to the Elder and greeted him. The elder was on the younger side like he had just been transferred from the core disciples to the elders. The elder didn't speak much and directly told him to sit down and prepare.

"Have you chosen what pill you are going to make?" the Elder asked.

Alex didn't have to think as he had prepared for this moment. He chose the Bone Sealing pill. The Bone Sealing pill was a pill that blocked the cultivation base of anyone in the Bone Tempering realm of lower for a few hours, depending on the pill's harmony.

It was one of the pills he had only made a few times and was thus one of the few pills that fell under the criteria for his choice in the exam. The criteria being it wasn't registered to the sect, it was a recipe sold in the sect, and it was a recipe he had the ingredients for.

"Do you have your own ingredients and cauldron?" the elder asked. Alex was about to nod his head in affirmation but then realized that it was probably not a good idea to show his True Earth grade cauldron in front of everyone here. So he told the Elder that he only had the ingredients and not the cauldron.

The elder asked for him to take out the ingredients for checking. Alex happily complied and took out the ingredients. After seeing that Alex's ingredients had no tampering done to them, the Elder said, " Keep your storage bags aside please."

Alex was a little surprised at first, but then the Elder gave him a moderately big box that could fit about 10 storage bags in them. Alex put his bags in there and locked the box. He took the key with himself.

The elder took out a simple black cauldron, the same ones that were found in the Alchemy hall. This one had no lid either.

Alex had planned to not use Elemental Guidance and definitely not make pills whose resulting energy was metal so as to not stand out in the crowd. And now, he had to use a less than mediocre cauldron too.

'Oh god. If the pill splitting Qi activates, I might actually end up with pills below 20% harmony and just might fail,' he thought.

After the Elder handed him the cauldron and the ingredient, he said, "You have an hour to make the pill. Your time starts now." He then sat directly in front of him.

Alex stopped caring about the Elder and focused on the cauldron. He put the cauldron on the fire and let it heat up. As he was doing so, a small film-like substance started appearing around him and the fire pit. Not even the Elder was inside there.

Alex realized that this was a sound-blocking formation at work. 'I am really curious how these formations work,' he thought.

He then turned his focus back to the task at hand. The first thing he did, even before putting in the ingredients was clean the cauldron. Sending out a wave of Qi, he scraped off whatever bits of powder were left behind from previously made pills.

The Elder simply nodded when she saw this, approving of the choice.

Alex then waited for the cauldron to reach the proper temperature. The cauldron wasn't very good at transferring heat fast enough, so he would have to time it right. Thankfully, he remembered what the pill was supposed to look and feel like throughout the process of making it. So, he could base how close he was using that memory.

He could also use his spiritual sense to figure out the temperature of the cauldron. However, it wasn't as accurate as Flame Mastery Scripture.

When the cauldron was properly heated up, he put in the first ingredient, a tendon from a beaver-like beast. He waited until the tendon was heated enough and the energy started releasing into the air.

Due to having no lid, most of the energy flew away, while some of them stayed behind and got recollected into the powders. He then put in the second ingredient and moved it around inside the cauldron, turning it into powder and releasing its energy too.

The two energies mixed together in the powder forming a simple harmony of energy.

Compared to the first time he made the pills in the Alchemy hall, this was a much easier time. Thanks to his increased mental energy due to the spiritual sea being unlocked, he had a far better concentration and multi-tasking ability than a month ago.

He could also use spiritual sense to constantly check on the ingredients and energy, instead of just watching the powders move in the cauldron-like last time.

All in all, he was doing much better than the first time he had made a pill. Which, he started worrying might come around to become a problem for him.

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Chapter 192: Failure

Alex continued making the Bone Sealing pill as per the recipe. While more than half of the energy had escaped, he didn't worry about it. The pills would have enough energy left for him to pass.

He continued putting in more and more ingredients as the Elder kept on watching. Finally, with the last ingredient, he was done putting in everything. It was now time for him to form the pill.

He slowly gathered the powder around to shape it into a sphere. It was beginning to form a clump of powder when suddenly, a different strand of Qi escaped from his body and went into the pills.

'No!' he thought, horrified. This was the last thing he wanted happening to him. He wasn't worried about the Elder seeing him split a pill into two. The cauldron was at a distance where the Elder couldn't see inside at all, but the problem was…

The powder clump separated into two equally sized clumps that started forming into pills. A vortex started on top of them sucking in as much energy as they could from their surrounding. However, most of it had already escaped and so the pills were left with none.

After a minute or two, the vortexes stopped forming and the pills were done.

Alex went into Focus mode. Time slowed down as his senses started to become a lot more acute. A little scared, Alex quickly put his hands into the cauldron, hiding the pills from the Elder. As he brought his hands back towards him, he looked at the pills.

[Bone Sealing Pill: 19%]

[Bone Sealing Pill: 17%]

'Sh*t,' he started distressing. He quickly shot the 17% pill down his sleeve and showed the 19% pill in his palm. The pill suddenly flew off as soon as he opened his arm, falling into the Elder's hand.

The Elder started testing the pill's Harmony level in the Pill tester and sighed. He shook his head as he saw the number 19 on the pill tester's glass body. Seeing that number was a little disappointing for him.

The Elder had heard quite a bit about the Sect Leader's disciple from the other Elders, especially the one in charge of registering pills for the core disciples.? 'Was he lying? Or was the disciple cheating at those times?' the Elder wondered. His gaze turned a little harsh now that he knew that the disciple was not very talented at making pills.

However, nothing could be harsher than the way Alex was berating himself on the inside.

'You stupid idiot. You could've just used Elemental Guidance at the end and you would've been fine. Just a single percentage increase and you would've passed the exam. Goddammit! Why did the stupid pill splitting Qi had to get come out at this time.'

'I should have just used my cauldron and I could have fixed this. If only I had a lid, the harmony would go up by about 5% for sure.'

He started thinking about the different things that went wrong or the mistakes he made. However, nothing would now change the fact that he failed to make a 20% pill during the core disciples exam.

'Sigh. Half an hour went just like that,' he thought.

The Elder stood up at this point and walked a little closer towards him. He then spoke.

"Disciple Yu Ming, You have failed to make a pill with 20% harmony under an hour. Do you have anything to say," the Elder asked?

Alex sighed. He was about to shake his head when he suddenly caught up on something. "Um… Elder, Do I pass the exam as long as I can produce a 20% harmony pill in under an hour?" he asked.

"Why are you repeating what I just said and asking if that is true? Of course, it is," The Elder replied a little annoyed at Alex.

Alex however didn't mind it. His eyes were shining from the bit of information he had just received. "Elder, so I can make another pill, and if it turns out to have a harmony higher than 20%, I am fine, right?" he asked.

"Yes, but I will have to inspect your ingredients again and it's already over half an hour now," the elder said.

"No worries," Alex said and immediately opened the box to take out his storage bags. He looked into a few of them and took out the ingredients for the pill once more and handed it to the Elder.

The Elder spent some time checking the ingredients and handed it back to him. Alex looked at the time and only 20 minutes were left. He had to hurry up.

Alex was worried the Elder would waste more of his time if he brought out his cauldron at this point, so he decided to stay with the bad one for now.

Without hesitation, he put the first ingredient into the cauldron. The tendon started turning to powder and releasing energy. Alex slowly used Elemental Guidance to keep those energies inside the cauldron as much as possible.

After some time, he put in another piece of ingredient and used Elemental Guidance to keep its energy inside the cauldron too. As more and more ingredients were added into the mix, the harmony between the elements began to set.

Alex made sure everything was fine when he decided to start forming the pill.

'Oh god please don't release the pill splitting Qi,' he prayed. He then collected the powders in the cauldron to a clump and used Elemental Guidance to move whatever energy was left in the cauldron.

The little amount of energy passed through the powder, increasing the harmony ever so slightly. He could tell that the powders had absorbed a good amount of energy and that the pill would be high leveled now.

He was starting to get hopeful about his chances to pass at this point. He looked at the time and realized he only had less than 2 minutes to complete the task.

He proceeded to complete the task, but just then, the thing he least hoped for happened. The Pill Splitting Qi came out of his body once more.

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