Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

At the base of a large mountain lay a beach right next to a sea. Around the beach was the tribe of the Baylords, consisting of about 400 total people at best.

These people survived mostly on what they found in the bay as well as the mountains.

A middle-aged man among them stood at the shore, wearing clothes made out of rough fabrics and leather, with about 13 boys aged between 13 and 15. Each one of the young men held harpoons with wooden shafts and stone tips.

They held a very serious look on their faces.

Several other people gathered on the beach too, but they were merely watchers in this task. None of them were there to aid these young men.

“Today is the day where you will prove yourselves,” the middle-aged man spoke. “Today is the day when you will show the tribe that you are worth keeping around. Today is the day you will all become adults.”

“Are you all ready to become adults?”

“Yes, chief!” the several boys shouted at once.

“Good. Now go and prove it. Bring me the biggest fish you can,” the chief said. “And whoever finds the biggest fish will marry my third daughter.”

The several boys turned their heads to a dark-haired girl about their own age with a shy look on her face. They needed no more motivation than that.

Instantly, they jumped into the sea, swimming away from the shore to find the biggest fish.

The chief watched the young men leave and walked back toward his wife and daughters, standing alongside the other watchers.

“How many do you believe will die this time?” the chief’s wife asked.

“I fear half,” the chief said.

The woman looked troubled. “Don’t you think we should stop this? Each time we do this, we lose so many. Our numbers have already dwindled so much.”

“Traditions must be kept,” the chief said. “That is my duty as a chief.”

The woman nodded, pained by her own acceptance of the matter.

Suddenly, a thunderous roar caught everyone’s attention. Everyone turned to look at the sky in search of dark clouds. They panicked, as a storm in an open sea would be dangerous for these boys. They could even be hit by lightning.

However, there were no dark clouds. There was barely even any cloud at all. The shimmering sky above the sea was as open as always.

“What’s that?”

Everyone’s eyes turned toward where the person pointed.

Looking at it, they saw something in the sky, a tiny black dot, falling into the sea. It created a large splash, but other than that, nothing much happened.

The chief waited for anything to happen, but nothing did. Seeing that it was nothing, he quickly forgot about it.

The group waited and watched for the many boys to start returning. Some were tense, some excited.

Some parents were scared for their children, while others wanted to see them rise. Both wanted to see them come back safely.

The women left some time later, going to prepare the feast for tonight. With how many fish would be captured today, even if they didn’t want to, it would become a feast.

A while later, the boys from earlier began returning. They had managed to do what they had set out to do today. They had killed the largest fish they could find.

Some of the fish they killed were larger than their entire bodies, while some were even larger.

Of the 13 that left, 6 returned, of which the largest fish was twice the length of one of the tribesmen.

They waited for an hour longer, but it didn’t appear that anyone else would be returning. So, the chief began the end of the ceremony. Right as he was about to call out the young man who had brought the largest of the fish, he was stopped.

“Who is that? Someone else is returning,” one of the men on the shore said, and people turned to look.

“It’s Dana’s boy. Look at that fish he got. It’s massive.”

The chief watched with a hint of shock on his face. How was this possible? How could someone so young kill a beast so large?

As the young man pulled the fish onto the shore, only then could the tribesmen see how large it was. The fish was nearly 10 meters in length and about 3 meters in height.

Such a fish would feed the tribe for an entire day and more, and the young man had caught it all by himself.

As the young man reached the shore, dragging the fish became harder than it was in the water, but he still had to pull it all the way to the chief.

He put all the energy he had in his body and pulled it next to where the people stood. Everyone watched in shock, as none could believe that the young man had managed to kill such a large beast.

“How far into the sea did you go, Tara?” one of the men asked.

“I…” The man was out of breath, but he spoke. “I… have proven myself, haven’t I?”

He looked straight at the chief.

The chief smiled. “You have,” he said. “Tara, you have brought the largest fish among all your peers. You have won the right to my daughter’s hand.”

Tara didn’t show much emotion at the moment.

The chief pulled a long knife from the belt on his waist and handed it to Tara. “Do the honors. Pull out the gem.”

Tara looked at the knife, doing his best to hide his emotions. He nodded and walked around the fish to face its belly. He touched around its soft belly and stabbed the knife into it, cutting a large open line.

As he did so, the fish’s guts began to spill. And along with it came out a small greenish-blue opaque sphere. The young man reached for it but stopped at the last moment, noticing something.

His eyes widened when he saw the movement.

He immediately pulled the knife and made a cut on the fish’s guts.

And from within it, out came a man.