Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The Dragon Immortal Soul gave out the first trial.

"List out all the ingredients you see before you."

Images of various ingredients appeared in front of him. Thousands of them. Without waiting, Alex began naming them all.

He had to tap into a floating image that surrounded him and use his spiritual sense or just his fingers to write the name onto it. If it was correct, the image flashed away.

He wasted no time and went through the images, naming them all swiftly. Green Sparrow's striped bone here, Two-leaved Garrow thorn leaves there.

A Half-ripe Flawed Serpent fruit. A root of the Stilt Lime tree. A Dark Grand mushroom.

Alex continued answering the ingredients as he saw them and within the next 10 minutes, he was done naming all of it. Once finished, he stopped and looked up at the Immortal Soul, who was also looking down at him.

There was a strange expression on the soul's face, surely caused by the fact that he had never seen someone complete the first trial this quickly. Or at least, that's what Alex believed.

He couldn't imagine someone outspeeding him when it came to ingredients.

The Immortal Soul said nothing, however, and continued waiting. There was a time limit of an hour on the test and so Alex had to wait along with everyone as well.

He felt a little bored, but there was nothing to do. He tried to feel how Whisker was doing and gained a little feedback through his bond that told him that he wasn't feeling bad at all.

That would suggest that he was doing good, not that Alex doubted it. Whisker's knowledge of ingredients came from Alex, so there was little chance he wasn't going to be able to name it all.

An hour passed in almost no time and when it was over, the Dragon's soul spoke. "Those who failed to name it all, you will now be sent out."

Alex hadn't seen what had happened, but if he were to trust the words of the people who went through this trial beforehand, the failed individuals had all been sent back outside.

Alex hoped that none of his alchemists had failed.

"Those who passed will now go to the next trial."

As soon as the soul finished speaking, the dark walls surrounding Alex changed colors ever so slightly, going black to dark red.

The next trial included a test where a Saint pill and its description were mentioned to the alchemists. Their task now was to figure out just which of the 3 recipes provided was the correct one.

Alex looked at the question and realized that he knew the pill. It was one of the healing pill recipes he knew. It wasn't the one he liked making as the one he made was of slightly higher quality.

He chose the correct answer without hesitation and the question switched to another pill. This time, it was a cultivation pill that improved one's speed. Alex had never seen this particular recipe before, so he had to take some time for this one.

But just 10 minutes later, he had gone through all 3 recipes and saw the flaws in the other 2. Only the one in the middle made any sense at all.

He picked it and the question changed again to another pill.

Alex looked at this one, a pill that made one resistant to fire aura. It took Alex 5 minutes to recognize the correct pill for this one as the recipes had mistakes very early on this time around.

He chose the correct recipe and tapped it.

After the third answer in a row, the questions disappeared and Alex knew he had passed once more.

The Dragon Soul didn't try to show it in his face, but he had noticed Alex's quick answers and was more or less surprised once more at the speed.

He had finished it in 15 minutes when the trial itself was to last for 3 more hours. He had taken way too little time for this test.

Alex wanted to speak with the Dragon Soul, wanting to ask questions he was curious about, but he also didn't want to offend the soul and get thrown out of the trial. So, he had waited for the soul to begin talking to him first.

Still, Alex couldn't help but ask Godslayer the same questions instead.

"Do you know that Beasts and Plants can turn to humans?" Godslayer asked him.

"Yes," Alex said. "Brother Bai Jingshen told me that most beasts and plants can turn to humans once they reach the Immortal realm."

"That's not just for the body," Godslayer said. "The beasts and plants' souls are the same as well. They can change to humanoid form or retain their beast form even while in Soul. This one is probably staying as a human to not scare the rest of you."

"I see," Alex said. That made a lot more sense now that Alex thought about it. His first assumption had been that souls could only ever be humanoid. That turned out to be false.

"Still, I didn't expect to see an Immortal Soul in the lower realms," Godslayer said. "I wonder why he is here. If it was anyone else, I would've assumed it was a prisoner, but this one is an Azure Dragon. I doubt the dragons would use other criminal dragons to teach youths from a backwater world."

Alex had no answer. Why would an Azure Dragon remain as a soul?

"Souls are vulnerable, right?" he asked.

"Very much so, especially when compared to a normal body," Godslayer said. "Souls can't use absorption techniques, so they have to rely on themselves to gather Qi. That always ends up being very slow."

"Also, if you use up too much Qi, you end up breaking your soul apart until there is nothing left," Godslayer said. "There is nothing but only downsides to remaining as a soul. He should be finding a body already. Why isn't he?"

Alex felt his heart skip a beat when he realized something. "Do you think he is trying to get one from the ones that enter this trial?" he asked.

Godslayer said nothing for a while. That was certainly a possibility and he didn't need to affirm that for Alex. Alex already knew so.

"Not that there isn't a good chance that he is doing this to find a good body to take over, I don't believe that is the case," Godslayer said. "After all, how long has this trial been going on for?"

"The secret realm itself?" Alex asked. "It was made by the first Azure Dragon… so… over 90 thousand years ago?"

"Is it possible that this man has been here for that long?" Godslayer asked.

Alex thought for a bit and nodded. He had seen very old records when trying to learn about the continent and this trial had always noted the 6 different spirits that inhabited it.

Unless the 6 spirits were replaced every few thousand years, these were most certainly the old ones. Which meant that the Dragon Soul had most likely been the trial master for the past tens of thousands of years.

"If he was after a body, he would've taken one by now," Alex said. "Was that what you were going for?"

"Yes," Godslayer said. "Besides, it seems he's testing your talent in alchemy. Taking over your body wouldn't help him in that. He can't read your mind with his new soul."

Alex nodded and said nothing. That still didn't answer why the Dragon Soul was there.

Alex noticed the Dragon Soul announcing something, but the voice didn't reach him at all. He only saw his face move, and from what Alex could tell, he was addressing other people.

"Oh," Alex looked around curiously. "Are we all taking the test in the same room?"

He didn't just mean the ones taking the 2nd trial as he was, but the others that were taking the 1st trial as well. That made sense.

He hadn't sensed himself being teleported away, so he had always been in the same room. If that was the case then the other people must have come to the same room and were only separated by these walls that Alex was surrounded by.

3 hours passed and the trial was over. The Dragon Soul addressed them again. The ones that failed were sent away, and the ones that passed remained.

The dark red walls glowed brighter, the red becoming more crimson. "We shall begin the next trial for you all."

'You all,' Alex noted. There were still other people, not that he had expected many to fail yet.

The next test was simple in concept. Once again, Alex and the rest of the participants were given the names of 13 ingredients along with a recipe and the pill that formed out of the recipe.

The only problem was, the recipe had 3 out of its 16 ingredients missing. The alchemists had to fill in the blanks and write down the correct recipe.

Alex looked at the list and closed his eyes, beginning a mental simulation of the pill. Since he already knew all the ingredients, as well as the limited number of ways they could be used in a recipe, this was barely a challenge for him.

He had spent years trying out every possibility of every ingredient to fit certain criteria to form a pill of his choice, and that had taught him exactly how to go about this trial.

5 minutes later, after going through multiple simulations, Alex had arrived at the correct one. Without hesitation, he wrote it down.

The Dragon Soul couldn't hide his surprise this time around as Alex passed quickly once more.