Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex walked out of his new house and went down the mountain. It was around late in the afternoon right now, so the sun was getting low. 

Just a few more hours, and it would be totally dark. He had come out to buy the new formations, but he didn't have any spirit stones with him at all. Most of what he had was spent buying the same formation plates in those other two cities. 

Alex had thought of selling those formations to get the money first, but he had a better source for it right now. So, he went to the auction house. 

"You are here, Fellow Daoist Yu," Cai Ping said as he walked in through the door. He seemed quite happy today, meaning the sales must have been great. 

"I assume the auction went well today?" Alex said. 

"Of course. It went great. Hardly any alchemist sells pills through us unless it's a major auction. So when we do get pills, the customers get quite happy and buy a lot of them," Cai Ping said. 

"I see. I'm sorry but I need to be somewhere else today, Miss Cai. Can we hurry this up?" Alex said. 

"Ah, yes, here," Cai Ping said and handed him a storage bag. Alex checked the storage bag and saw 82 True Spirit stones. That was quite a lot, but given that he had exclusively sold pills over 40% in harmony, the earning was a given. 

"Thank you, Miss Cai. I will take my leave now," Alex said and stood up to walk away. Cai Ping nodded and bade him farewell. 

Alex walked back to the sect in less than half an hour and reached the mini-market that was outside of the sect. This market was run by the sect, so he didn't have to worry a lot about getting screwed up on his sales. 

He walked into the shop that dealt with formations. Inside was an Elder and a disciple working in the shop. The elder seemed to be busy with the other customers in the shop, so he walked up to the disciple who had their backs turned. 

"Excuse me," Alex called out to the disciple. 

"Yes, what is— Aah! It's you," the disciple called out. 

Alex was quite surprised to see her here too. "Oh, I didn't expect to see you here, hello sister Su," Alex said. The person working in the shop was the direct disciple of the First Elder, Su Min.

"You really are alive. I thought master had gone mad when he said you returned," she said. "What are you doing here?" 

"Oh, I'm here to sell some formations. What are you doing here?" he asked back. 

"I work here. Also, what? Do you want to sell formations? Why does an alchemist want to sell formations?" she asked. 

"Well, because I have nothing to do with it, I guess?" he said and brought out a few plates. "Can you tell me how much these will sell for?" 

Su Min looked at the formations Alex had just dropped and got a little curious. So, she picked up one of them and checked it out. 

Suddenly, she squinted her eyes and looked at it more closely. "Who made this?" she asked. 

"I did," Alex said with a smile. 

She looked up and frowned. "Stop lying, and just say who made these. These are quite good," she said. 

"Haha, I'm not lying. I made them myself. Just a few hours ago too actually," Ning said with a smile. 

"Whatever, if you don't want to say, then don't say," she said and took the formation plate with her to a giant machine-like artifact behind her. 

The machine had a massive metal base and four metal rods popping out of each side. 'That's the formation efficiency tester, right?' Alex thought. 

He hadn't seen it closely from the coliseum seating area, so he wasn't absolutely sure, but it did look just like the machines they used there. 

Su Min placed the formation upside down and waited for something to happen. Suddenly, light sprung forth from the lowest part of one of the metal rods. It glowed yellow and started climbing up it in chunks. 

Alex waited as watched as more and more of the rod glowed fully.  '25 chunks of light  for one rod?' Alex thought. 

"It's at least an Earth grade formation; that I was confident on," Su Min said from the side. Then, the next rod started glowing. It too glowed in chunks and had 25 different parts that could glow.

'So, there are 25 chunks to each rod, making up 100 for the efficiency measurement?' Alex wondered. That did seem to be the case from how Su Min was speaking. 

The rods glowed more and more and the 2nd rod fully glowed as well. 

"Oh, it's a Heaven Grade formation. Not bad," Su Min said. Alex was a little surprised when he heard that. 

'Not bad? That's a Heaven Grade formation,' he thought. "Um, is a Heaven Grade formation easy to come by?" he asked. 

"The base formations, yes. Those are easy to make. We really only consider someone as talented in formations when they can inscribe the formation onto metal rods," Su Min said. 

"That or when they start making True formations plates," she said. 

"You guys can make True Formations? Don't you need True Qi for that?" Alex asked. 

"That's just for the activation. Just making the formation itself is just a lot of accurate carving. As long as you can do that, you can even make a saint formation," she said. "However, the metals the formations are carved in get stronger and stronger, so you do need quite a high cultivation base if you want to make the higher formations." 

Alex nodded when he understood that. "So, setting up a formation doesn't count towards one being a formation master right?" 

"Yeah, since anybody can set a formation. You are only considered a formation master if you can make one," Su Min said.

The third rod glowed to about 12 more chunks and stopped. 62% was the final efficiency of the metal formation. 

"Hmm, not bad. Let me check the others too," Su Min said and started checking through all the formation plates he had made.

The lowest efficiency he got was 38% on one of the first ones he had made, and the highest efficiency he got was 79%. Surprisingly, he had created another Immortal grade item so quickly. Only, this one didn't hold as much value as the other immortal grades. 

"These formation plates are actually quite good. I can give you… hmm… 62 True spirit stones for these," she said. 

Alex was about to thank her for a moment when he stopped. "Wait, I spend 80 True Spirit stones myself just to buy these materials, and then I carved the thing myself too. Are you trying to rip me off right now?" He asked. 

"W-What? Why would you say that?" she suddenly started getting flustered. 

"Um, should I ask the elder for his input then?" Alex asked. 

"Tsk. Damn, you're annoying. Here, 112 True Spirit stones, that's all you will get," Su Min said as she handed him the money. That was quite a return for him and he was pretty happy with it. 

"Can I buy some formation plates? Since you said True formations can be made, maybe I should try it out too," Alex said. "Actually, do you have…" 

Alex listed off a few metal names and waited for Su Min to find them. She only found 3 of the metals he named and brought them to him. 

"Yeah, I don't think you can find those alloys here. You will have to ask an artifact maker to make them if you know the composition," she said. 

"Oh, at least there are 3 here," Alex said. He then went ahead and bought a lot of True Rank formation blueprints. Once he was done, he paid the price of the blueprints and left. 

Su Min still seemed annoyed at him, but he couldn't do anything about her misplaced anger. 'She really must like her master quite a lot to hate me for rejecting him,' he thought. 

He walked past the gate, and as soon as he did, his badge went off. 

"Hmm?" he thought and brought out the badge to see something written on it. 

-You have been challenged by badge 52-

-You have 18 minutes remaining to go to Stage 3.-

"Oh, someone challenged me? 52… that's quite high. I wonder what cultivation realm this person is at. Must be Meridian Tempering too right?" Alex wondered and walked towards the crater. 

He was still quite far away, so it was going to take him quite a while to reach there. That didn't bother him very much and he leisurely walked from the right side of the crater. 

It took him about 15 minutes before he reached the Fighting hall and walked over to Stage 3. The fight on top of the stage was ongoing, meaning his fight would be next. 

In a few minutes, the fight ended and the referee announced the victor. After the two fighters left, the referee called out the two numbers. 

"Number 50 and Number 52," he said. 

Alex walked up the stage and as he was doing so, he saw a few people looking at him from the corner of his eyes. "They are…" he thought and finally realized what was happening. 

Only when he reached on top of the stage did he fully notice the number of disciples that were hanging around this one particular stage. 

There were even elders standing far away to look at the fight. 

"Finally, I can clear up my name by beating you today," a voice came from the side. Alex turned around to look at the person. 

As expected, it was Huo Tu.