Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Pearl felt his connection with Alex at first, followed by a sense of pain and struggle. He worried for a long time, confused as to what was going on. He tried contacting Alex, but he got no answer.

Then, the sensation went away. And a few seconds later, he found himself pulled away from the Demon Realm.

Pearl teleported out of Alex's Soul Realm, arriving on the red-hot sand, with the shimmering sky above him.

He stared around in awe, seeing the outside world for the first time, with his brother next to him and a woman to the side.

"Is this… Hell?" Pearl asked, very much confused as to what was happening.

"Pearl!" Alex shouted in excitement. "I did it, Pearl. I got rid of the seal."

"You…" It took a moment for Pearl to figure out what Alex was saying. When he finally understood the meaning of those words, his eyes widened in shock. "You got rid of your seals?"

"Yes," Alex said.

"That's amazing!"

"Who is this?" Bladedance asked from the side.

"Oh! Pearl, this is my master. She's the Sword God I've told you about," Alex said, quickly introducing her.

"Greetings, Senior," Pearl quickly bowed.

"He's another one of my beasts," Alex explained. "You've met Whisker already. This is Pearl."

Bladedance looked at him for a while, her eye narrowing slightly. "A White Tiger?" she asked. "Although, you don't seem like one."

"He is indeed," Alex said. "He had the bloodline and evolved. I'm surprised you recognized him, Master, especially since he doesn't have any stripes."

"It was mostly his shape," she said. "I've met the White Tigers before, and they look quite similar to him. His aura, of course, makes him feel like one."

"You've met White Tigers?" Alex asked.

"Yes. About… I don't know how many years ago," Bladedance said. "I was among one of the many gods who went to their realm in order to sit down for a treaty with the Demons."

"That was 90 thousand years ago," Alex said. "I'm no more than 500 years off."

There were about 500 years left for Bai Jingshen and the others to rule before they returned to their home world.

"Ninety thousand…" Bladedance said softly. "I see. I had captured Godslayer around 10 thousand years before that, so it must've been 100 thousand years since I had lost my Creation."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "One hundred thousand years?" he asked in surprise.

"Why are you surprised? You should've known I was older than that," she said.

"No, it's not that. It's just that I didn't realize Godslayer had been trapped for that long."

"Ah! Yes. He was."

Since Alex had given her a point of reference, Bladedance finally came to understand just how long a time had passed. At the same time, Alex understood that his master had lived for 40 thousand years without her Creation, her Soul, before she was betrayed and sent to Hell.

"I'll leave the two of you," Bladedance said after a bit. "I don't sense any of Quickstorm's aura on you, so you have cleared yourself of his seal quite brilliantly."

Alex thanked her.

They returned to the sect after a while where he let Whisker know what he had done. Whisker was happy to see Pearl, but more than that, he was excited to go back to the Soul Space, where he had so many things to take care of.

Pearl had done a great job, but he wasn't used to working with the plants and animals like Whisker had. There were so many things he needed to confirm weren't in a bad state.

Whisker met up with the older Alex and Emily, asking them to get out and roam Hell as well. The two were certainly surprised that the first world they were going to visit was such a one.

Alex let the two out after some time, letting them roam the sect.

Despite their old age, both Alex and Emily were more rejuvenated than ever. They not only had a modicum of cultivation base, but their physical strength had also blossomed by quite a bit. They were both easily in the Immortal realm after years of cultivating in the various time chambers of the secret realm, using all the resources provided to them.

They had been holed up in one place for so many years, and considering they still had the mindset of mortals, it had truly been quite boring for them. So, having been let out and free to roam a larger world was quite a bliss for them.

Alex spent some time recovering from the mental fatigue he suffered after getting rid of both of the seals, although that didn't take that long a time.

After that, he did as he promised and went directly into studying the Temporal auras. He confined himself to his room, not letting the outside world distract him any longer.

Without the seal, his senses were not only potent enough to read through the aura more thoroughly, but he was also capable of understanding them far more easily. It was as though his own computational capacity had been hampered by the seal, and now it had been unblocked.

Without any such obstacle, he devoured the aura, learning from it as much as he could. The aura in the Standing Pendulum and Voidsand Hourglass weren't as strong, but the lack of diversion made it infinitely easier to learn.

Alex tried consuming some Dao pills to learn, but they didn't help as well as he had hoped they would. He didn't have many to begin with, so he made one. However, due to the lack of Heaven, all pills that had a 100% harmony would not result in Pill Clouds at all, thus lacking in pill veins.

That made the pills much weaker than what Alex was used to, and he felt as though he was wasting his ingredients making these here.

So, he forgot about the pills and just focused on the aura for now. And as time passed, his understanding of these auras became more and more pronounced.

He couldn't learn any Dao, but he would learn the thing closest to it.