Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The elder looked at Alex with a bit of a surprise. 

"Disciple, did you say 50?" he asked. 

"Yes, Elder," Alex said and handed the elder his badge preemptively. The elder took the badge and looked at it. 

'2144? What's going on?' the elder wondered. He was having the same problem as the elder from the disciple hall. However, since fights required cultivation base and not a robe's color, the elder didn't say anything as he could clearly see Alex's cultivation base. 

"Alright, go to stage 12," the Elder said. Alex took his badge and walked away. 

Even though it was early in the morning, since this was the last day of the week with unlimited fights, people were pretty excited and were already here to fight. 

Alex went to the stage that was numbered 12 and waited. He watched the fights that took place on the stages with a hint of curiosity in his eyes. 

He was trying to predict what happened in the fight based on the usage of the elements and the fighters' cultivation base, but in the end, there were simply too many variables for him to keep track of. 

The fight ended, and Alex's number was called, but the fighter wasn't here yet. So, Alex had to wait for another fight to end. 

That fight ended, and his number was called again, but his opponent didn't come. Alex had to wait for nearly 1 hour with his number being called all the time. 

Alex wasn't really worried about his opponent showing up or not, as not showing up for 1 hour simply forfeited the battle in the favor of the one that did show up. 

However, Alex was worried that he would have to wait until the end of the day before he got his own house when the elders kicked the disciples that didn't leave. 

Fortunately, his opponent did show up in time. 

"Number 50 and Number 2144," the referee elder called out. 

Alex raised his hand and walked up onto the stage. From the other side of the stage, a brown-haired girl with a frowning face walked up onto the stage. 

When Alex laid eyes on her, he was genuinely surprised. 'Meridian Tempering 3rd Realm? What?' he thought. He had mistakenly assumed that the core disciples ranking also consisted of inner sect disciples in his mind. Not many people could possibly have such a high cultivation base in the Hong Wu sect, so he assumed the same for the Tiger sect too. 

'Well, should I show my strength a little or try to stay a little lowkey?' he wondered for a bit, but then soon realized that it wouldn't be lowkey if he beat the girl with a lower cultivation base than her. 

He slowly increased his cultivation base aura such that it matched the same as the girl's. The referee asked the two of them to move to the opposite ends of the stage, and as he did, he heard the girl say something under her breath. 

"God damn NPCs and their rules. I should just leave this shitty sect and go elsewhere soon," the girl said.

'NPC? A player?' Alex thought curiously. Wen Cheng talked about the Trevor guy, but he also said there were quite a few players that decided to stay behind. 

'She must be one of those players. Her name is probably randomly generated too, so most people here don't realize it,' Alex thought. 

He brought out a common sword for this fight and waited for the girl to bring out something. However, she did nothing. Instead, she just rolled up her sleeves and got into a boxing stance. 

'Is she gonna fight me… barehanded?' Alex couldn't help but get a fond sense of curiosity when he saw that. 

"FIGHT!" the elder shouted. 

The girl dashed forward. She prepared a punch that suddenly came alight as if it was burning with fire. 

'Physical and Elemental?' Alex thought and attacked her with his sword. The sword hit the right hand of the girl stopping her in her place. However, the left hand of hers attacked without stopping and flew towards Alex. 

Alex dodged to the right and hit her overextended hands with the common sword. Since he hadn't used any Qi at all, most of the strength that hit her came from his body, and that wasn't strong enough to put a cut on her. 

But it was surely enough to hurt her. "Ow!" the girl cried out and jumped back. 

Alex looked at her and thought, 'she isn't used to fighting very much, is she?' Even though he himself was a beginner to fighting styles, he had just enough training to know what one should and should not do during a fight. 

When fighting against a person with a sword, the woman should have been keeping in mind the reach a sword had compared to her hands. 

With that in mind, she should have only gone in on an attack like that when Alex's sword was not so freely sticking right next to her left hand. 

The girl looked at the red on the skin of her left arm and got angry. Alex didn't smile or make any signs of provocation and just waited for her to attack again. 

As expected, the girl jumped at him again. She punched him with her right arm again. Alex could guess where this was going but decided to indulge in this. 

He hit her hands with his sword once again, however, this time, instead of hitting the sword, she decided to catch it in her grasp. Taking the opportunity, she threw her left punch once again. 

Seeing all of this coming from a distance away, Alex dodged to the left as her arm flew past his right ear, and then hit her square on the stomach. 

He didn't hit hard enough to hurt her extremely, but just enough so that she would loosen her grip on the sword and start catching her own stomach. 

Alex took the opportunity and struck towards the girl again. The girl quickly used her arms to try and block the incoming attack, but in the last second, Alex switched to the flat side of the blade and hit her on the arm like hitting the ball with a bat. 

The girl was sent flying away and landed outside of the stage. This fight was an easy victory for Alex. 

"You Win!" The referee said as he pointed towards Alex. Alex walked up to the referee to take his new badge and bowed. 

After that, he left the fighting stage. The disciples that were watching weren't very surprised when they saw the match but still talked about it as Alex walked away. 

'Finally, a good house,' he thought and left the area. He walked back up the right side of the crater and walked towards his new house. 

He reached the upper area of the side of the mountain and searched for his house. He finally saw the number 50 and opened the door. 

There was still a female scent in the room as if it was occupied by the girl for quite a while, but Alex didn't let it bother him. He quickly entered and looked around. 

Since this was a core disciple's home, this was different from the other two houses he had been to. The outer sect houses 5 people in a single house and people had to share the living room. 

The inner sect houses had a single room, but it was big and spacious. 

Now, the core disciple house seemed much better than the other two. This house had 4 rooms in total. The living room itself was as large as the inner sect house and there was a backyard as well. 

While it didn't measure with the backyard he had back in the Hong Wu Sect, it was still quite good to have. The best thing of all in this house was that there was a damn pond in the backyard where people could bathe. 

The entire area was warded off with high walls, so people couldn't enter easily, and Alex didn't doubt that there were many other sorts of formations in the house. 

He went back inside the house to one of the empty rooms and sat down. It was finally time for him to not worry about his master, his sect, and his pills and fully focus only on the formations that he was so desperate to learn about. 

He had already learned all the basic formations he could and was only waiting to learn to make the best he could with it. He brought out the formation plates and inscription pen and started carving. 

The most important thing about the formations was the stroke. Alex needed to make sure the formation strokes were perfectly straight, and smooth, as well as make sure they didn't stray far from the angles that were in the formations. 

As long as he did that, he was sure he could come up with a high-efficiency formation. He was sure that it wouldn't come up to be of the most possible efficiency however just because the metal he held had most likely some impurities, and the inscription pen didn't carve the smoothest. 

Thankfully, he had something the other formation masters didn't. Spiritual sense. 

Using Spiritual sense, he could perfectly keep track of the strokes' perfections and imperfections. Thanks to it, he immediately knew when he was making a mistake as keeping track of everything was very easy. 

He wondered how long it would have taken him if he did not have spiritual sense. 

"Even then, this is a little too easy, right? I wonder if they consider the formation flag the real formation," he thought. "Wait, how do you make formation flags again? It's by employing an artifact maker, right?" 

The artifact maker would make flags and metal poles into shapes that the formation master wanted, and then the formation master would have to carve on it on their own. After that, the user of the formation had to set the formation up themselves. 

So, there were three chances of mistakes during all of this. The artifact maker could make mistakes, the formation master could make mistakes, and the user could make mistakes. 

This was one of the reasons why formation flags weren't pushed towards the beginners for learning even though it was the most versatile method of setting up formations and most certainly the better one. 

"I should go pick up some formation flag poles and try to make my own formation too," Alex thought. But that was for later on. Right now, he needed to keep on making formations to improve his carving ability. 

For the next 3 or 4 hours, he ended up using the majority of the formation plates he had previously bought. He looked at the fire breathing, water condensing, Qi gathering, wind blowing, heat emitting, loud buzzing, fog making, and other types of base formations. 

He was quite happy with the results he came up with but was unsure how good they were. He could check this on his own by getting a formation tester, however, unlike pill testers, those cost quite expensive. 

"Let's just finish these remaining plates," Alex thought and continued. He could tell that he was gradually improving at his carving ability and was sure that he was making better formations, but he just wasn't sure how good it was. 

For that, he really would have to go check his formation in the shop. 

He put the final stroke on the final plate he was carving. Once it was fully done, he put a spirit stone under it and used his Qi to activate it. 

Once it was activated, slight frost appeared on the surface of the plate, and soon the temperature of the room went down a few degrees lower. 

Alex smiled; he had successfully created a Temperature Lowering formation.. Finally, the last of his formation making for the day was done.