Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex wondered if creating pill clouds back to back was a good idea or not, but since he had already done it now, he would continue.

The lightning struck down from the sky, landing on Memory. Alex barely had to do much to defend the first one at all, as Memory itself was capable of stopping it by itself. It was only in the latter one that Alex needed any help.

Alex interceded during the 2nd and 3rd lightning strike, stopping only on the fourth one. With his current cultivation base, he could nearly stop the 5th bolt too, but since that required Immortal Transcendent 2nd realm strength, he did not wish to reveal it.

The 3rd bolt only required him to have Immortal Origin 3rd realm strength. Anyone with a Battle Power of 2 in his situation could achieve it, so he had no problem ending it there.

Once the pill cloud vanished, Alex pulled out the pill with 3 lightning veins all around it. He nodded to himself in satisfaction and put it into the pill bottle next to him before handing it over to his assistant.

The assistant stood as far away as he could from Alex, not wanting to be considered as someone interfering in heaven's eyes. Once Alex called him, however, he finally went up to him and took the pill.

"W-what ingredient did you replace this time?" he asked.

"I replaced the Indigo Mullflower fruit with a combination of Gold Hammer Jackapple, Full Blossom Borrow flower, and 3-leaved Saint Poison Nettle."

The assistant gave an awkward smile and nodded, reporting the answer to his superior. He walked away, feeling strange about the fact that Alex had somehow replaced a single ingredient with multiple ones.

He had never known such a thing was possible at all.

Alex watched the assistant leave and let out a sigh, quickly clearing his cauldron. A small pile of dust was left behind at the bottom, made from the excess powder of the 3 ingredients he had ended up using.

Since he couldn't put all the powder into the pill, some of it had to be left aside while the rest made up the pill.

'God, is this annoying though,' Alex thought. Each time he replaced an ingredient, its spot in the pill would be vacant, which wouldn't allow for the pill clouds to form. In such cases, he either had to fix the original recipe to work with the changes or form similar shapes of powder with the new ingredients.

Depending on what ingredient he was replacing and how much powder there would be in the end, he had to individually change the recipe for each. He could only sigh and start thinking about the next set of ingredients he could use.

'This would be so much easier if I could make pills instead of using the ingredients,' Alex thought as he began.

Alex had first landed on the idea of using pills as replacements for ingredients. However, because he could only ask for 5 ingredients each time, he had come to realize that it was just going to take too much time to properly make a pill and then use it in the recipe.

While he did focus on Uniqueness and Pill Clouds, he still wanted to be considered for his speed and ranks.

Both he and Aethersage had long since been surpassed by many others, each for entirely different reasons.

Aethersage had simply left the competition after winning it so he didn't have to work much more than that. As for Alex, he had begun replacing older ingredients, so each time, his timer increased higher and higher.

Now, he was ranked around 13th after a bit over 3 hours, with still only 6 out of 12 ingredients replaced. The highest one yet belonged to a person by the name of Faithseeker, who had replaced 8 out of 12 ingredients. Alex hadn't heard his name before, so the man could only be one of the alchemists from the Medicine World.

In fact, 17 out of the top 20 were alchemists from the Medicine World, the only other one not from there being Leafheart, who had managed to complete 6 replacements in just under 3 hours. She was now ranked above Alex.

Alex suddenly found his name flash from the sky and move out of the top 20. His new ingredient had been accepted, and that changed his timer to close to 4 hours, placing him way lower on the ranking.

Sadly, he could only watch and wait. Until the new hour started, he couldn't get the ingredients he wanted.

As time passed, Alex never went above two or three ingredients in terms of the replacements. He also never used a single one, as he needed to remain unique, and using multiple ingredients was certainly unique.

The Pill Cloud came alternatively. He didn't have it form back to back all the time, as he wanted to create enough intrigue in himself while also not showing off too much.

What he was doing was already too much, but he did so in hopes that his family would learn about him soon. 8 pill clouds out of 12 ingredients replaced was certainly a big enough matter that he would drag many eyes onto him.

So long as no one dug too much into his past, that would be great.

It took Alex 14 hours to replace 11 of the 12 ingredients. He was finally left with the 12th ingredient to replace, but he found it a little difficult to find an alternative to, even when considering he could go up to many ingredients.

The ingredient he struggled with was Long Granite Song Tree barks. It had an obvious replacement, but then that wouldn't be unique. Alex wanted the ingredient to be unique.

So, he considered many combinations, but none came close to being the exact same. At last, Alex wondered if he must make a pill to replace it entirely.

It was around the same time that he saw another possibility before him, which made him wonder if such a thing would even be allowed at all.
Discover hidden tales at empire

He could only try and find out.