Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Notifications started appearing in front of Alex's eyes. But none of them were as captivating as what was happening inside his own body. 

Most of the time, when he broke through to a realm, his Qi would get just a bit denser and increase just a little more in amount.

During minor realms, those increased by quite a bit more, but not a lot.

Aside from that, the main change came in the body being tempered a little more to gather more Qi during the self-tempering realm. 

That was what happened every single time Alex broke through without question. However, this time was a little different.

Along with his Qi and body changing slightly, he felt a hot rush of Qi that flew up through his body and entered the brain. They stayed there for a few seconds without any discomfort and left. 

When they did, he felt his mind grow cool and just a little bit stronger.

Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at the notification in front of him. When he saw it, he smiled.

<Congratulations! You have broken through to the Mind Tempering 1st Realm>

'Finally, I'm on the last stretch of realms before I enter the True realms,' he thought. 

He felt a lot fresher now that he had broken through. 'Did reaching the Mind tempering realm really help my spiritual sense?' he wondered and released it. 

"Woah!" he was surprised when his spiritual sense immediately reached 25 meters. 

"It increased by around 3 meters," Alex mused to himself. He tried stretching his spiritual sense and it nearly reached 40 meters mark. 

He quickly brought back the spiritual sense and entered his spiritual sea to see how it had changed. 

"Oh!" he was surprised. He was expecting to see denser water, but surprisingly, the water was vaster as well. 

"Wait, not only did it increase in density, but it also increased in amount?" Alex thought in pure happiness. 

"And this is just the first realm. Will I have nearly 50 meters of spiritual sense by the time I reach the True realms?" he thought. 

He quickly stopped and got up. However, he decided not to leave now. It was already late night, so there was no point in leaving right now. 

'But, I will have to see him very early tomorrow morning to explain what is wrong,' Alex thought and went back to his bed. 

It had been a while, so he decided to cultivate. He called out Pearl and gave him a monster core.

Pearl meowed as he ate the core. 

"How are you feeling today, Pearl?" Alex asked. He was hoping for some sort of complex answer.

"Happy" however was all he got. 

'Well, I guess it will take some time before he can fluently speak,' Alex thought and asked Pearl to start cultivating. 

Cuts started appearing around his body but the pain wasn't as high as it should have been. 

'Sigh, Pearl is falling behind once more,' Alex thought. He shook his head and started cultivating as well. 

Soon, sleepiness overcame him and he could no longer keep his consciousness up. 

When he woke up once again, he realized that it was 6 AM the morning. He stopped Pearl from cultivating any further and asked him to go back to his space. 

Once the cuts disappeared and Pearl was gone, Alex got up to leave, but then… he felt something weird about his body. 

'Huh? What's going on?' he thought. In just a single part of his meridian, he could feel just the slightest hint of something strong. 

That single small part has a stronger aura than his entire cultivation base. 

'Is this…?' he wondered as he tried to send his Spiritual sense to check inside. When he reached that part of his meridian, he could see a viscous bright yellow Qi that outshined the other Qi around him. 

Alex's eyes went wide in both shock and surprise. 

"True Qi!"

He didn't know what to think for a while as his thoughts ran array in a million directions. He quickly gathered them all and tried to think about it all. 

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! How do I have True Qi? Isn't that something I can only gain after I reach halfway through the Mind Tempering realm?" he wondered. 

He thought back to the information he had already read, and it only confirmed what he already knew. 

"Yeah, around 5th or 6th Mind Tempering realm, the common Qi gets condensed so much that I turned from Qi to True Qi. It doesn't normally happen before that. So why is it happening to me?" Alex thought.

The Qi was really way too small to be of any use to him, but it showed that he could easily jump up to the True Realm when the time came. 

"Wait, how well can it work?" Alex thought. He wanted to try out a technique using this True Qi, but he couldn't think of a single technique that could be of use inside a room. 

"Ah, let's try the fire," he thought and quickly reached into his storage bag before bringing out the Fire formation. 

He did have a fire palm technique that could produce fire, but he wasn't sure he could control that fire fast enough to stop it from hitting the wall, and he didn't want to damage the house at all. 

So, he quickly set up the formation on the floor and watched as fire appeared on top of it.

He tried to normally control the fire as he would with his Common Qi and it was very easy. He was very used to it so there was no problem.

Then, he started to do the same thing with the one strand of True Qi that was running around his meridian. 

He slowly brought it from all over his body to his hands and released it into the fire. 

He didn't know what could go wrong if he tried to change the size or temperature, so he decided to go with changing its shape for now. 

He wished to turn the fire from the normal shape it was right now, to a cube. 

He had just visualized a cubic fire when the fire swiftly changed into it. 

"What? That was so smooth," Alex said in surprise. "He tried to change it to something else and it change into that too very quickly."

He then tried to turn it into a sphere, but that took about 3 times as much time. That was still very fast to normal eyes, but to Alex, it felt abnormally slow. 

"Ah, my True Qi vanished," Alex said with a sigh. "I guess I will have to make more. I… just have to cultivate like everyone else right? I wonder if leveling up will give me more True Qi."

From what he had read, cultivating condensed the common Qi that was already very condensed to an extreme level and the Qi changed its very essence to something higher.

That was what happened to normal people. His body, however, was anything but normal. So, anything could happen and he would just have to wait to know. 

"Hmm, maybe I am getting True Qi faster because I have denser common QI than everyone else," Alex thought. 

"I wonder what will happen if I reach 100% yang Qi purity," he wondered, but that was something he would have to think about later. 

For now, it was time to give the Luo family a semblance of good news in these dark times. 

He didn't ask anyone this time and directly walked to his sister's room and knocked. 

Luo Mei came out of her room in white robes. "Oh, you're finally out, brother. What's going on?" she asked. 

"Sister," he said excitedly, "I found another way to heal Uncle." 

Luo Mei's eyes went wide. "You found it? Oh… OH! We-We needs to go find father," Luo Mei immediately sprinted to a room a long while down the hall. 

She then knocked on it loudly. "Father! Father!" 

The door opened and Shi Nangong walked out. "What's going on, Mei'er? Your father is cultivating. It's not a good time to stop him," she said. 

"Oh, junior brother found another cure for father's illness," Luo Mei said loudly. 

"What?!" Shi Nangong was surprised too. "Oh dear, maybe I should wake your father up."

"What happening? COUGH COUGH. What's the noise about?" Luo Keng walked out too. 

"Uncle, I've found another way to cure you. It… is quite hard to do, but it's definitely easier than finding an Alchemist to make the pill," Alex said. 

"Oh, if there is a chance then I will take it. Tell me what needs to be done," Luo Keng asked excitedly while he coughed. 

"So, I learned that the parasite inside your body is called a Hundred Lives parasite. It's a type of worm beast that eats your Qi to get stronger," Alex said. 

"The reason it's called Hundred Lives is that it can eat up to 100 people's worth of Qi before it dies. So, if we can feed it 100 people's worth of True Qi, it will be fine," Alex said. 

"So… that's it? 100 people's Qi and it's done?" Luo Keng asked. That seemed… too easy for him. 

"Yes, but of course, there are some problems," Alex said. 

"Ok, tell me, I'm ready," he said. 

"First of all, we don't have much time. At the rate your body is deteriorating, we have maybe 2 weeks at most before we kill the parasite, maybe less."

"Also… um, how many days have you cultivated since 2 months ago, after the beast invasion?" Alex asked. 

"I… don't remember. Maybe a few times before I found out I was ill. After that, I have maybe missed a week at most," Luo Keng said. 

"So, on a low estimate, we can say you've cultivated for 40 days, right?" Alex asked. 

"Yes, that number sounds about right," Luo Keng said. 

"Since the parasite releases all of the Qi it ate when changing host, the parasite must've eaten only those 40 day's worth of Qi, so about 40 people's True Qi by now."

"So, in the next 14 days, we need to feed you 60 people's worth of True Qi, maybe even more just to be safe," Alex said. 

"…and how will we do that?" Luo Keng asked. 

"You will have to gather people to give you their Qi so that we can send it to the parasite to eat. Once it eats it all, it will give birth to more parasites and die," Alex said.

"Wait, more parasite? No, but won't that be bad?" Luo Mei suddenly said. 

"Let me finish sister. The new parasites will be common ranked at best, so I can make some Common pills to remove parasites from your body. In fact, you might even be able to remove it with your True Qi as well, Uncle," Alex said. 

"Okay, so let me get this straight… I need to gather around 5 true realm people to give me Qi to feed the parasite for about 12-15 days, right?" Luo Keng asked. 

"Yes," Alex nodded. 

"Hmm, if we could ask random people, it would be fast, but… those people need to be trusted too," Luo Keng said to himself. 

"By the way, how will you pour in the Qi? Through my mouth?" Luo Keng asked. 

"Um, since the parasite is stuck next to a blood vessel, it's best to send it through the closest blood vessel. That way, in case there is some problem in the Qi, we can stop it from affecting your important organs in the chest," Alex said. 

"Also there is another important thing that I haven't mentioned. You definitely need a medically talented person to navigate the blood vessel using their Qi. Otherwise, the problems that come from the random movement of Qi inside your body would be no different from going into Qi deviation," Alex said. 

"But don't worry… I have an idea for who can help us with that."