1059 Awake

There were millions of ingredients out there, of which Alex was somehow sure he knew all of them. He wasn't sure why he was so sure, but he was. The alchemy god's knowledge gave him the confidence that every single plant out there was in his mind.

So, when he tried to think about the various different plants and their parts that could help him in making some pills, it was practically impossible without spending months and months just thinking about it.

As such, Alex found it easier to actually test out ingredients by himself, which gave him ample opportunity to see if they were usable or not.

He separated the 6 ingredients for the Water pill he knew about and kept them aside. Then, he took the rest of the ingredients he had acquired and separated them into Earth and Water-type ingredients.

Now that he had done this, he had to start somewhere. As he thought of which one he had to start with, his head started hurting from the confusion.

For the water pill, he needed to find the rest of the ingredients. To find those ingredients, he needed to first know what exactly a similar pill did inside one's body to improve their spiritual roots.

He needed to know the exact effect so he could replicate something similar to it.

For the earth pill, to randomly know which ingredient he could use instead of the willow, all he had to do was get an idea of just what sort of ingredients were used normally, in which case he needed a recipe to refer to.

If he only had the Earth pill, he thought he could find the water pill, and if he only had the water pill, he could somehow get an idea for the earth pill too.

However, he knew neither, and as such he couldn't make progress on either.

Alex paused for a bit. "Maybe I don't need to know about the pills?" he wondered. After all, he had improved his spiritual roots before, and not all had been through pills.

His Metal spiritual root had improved thanks to the White Tiger's blood essence. His Yang Spiritual root had improved thanks to the Nine Yang Divine Fruit, and finally, his Yin Spiritual root had improved thanks to the frigid yin bead he had found in the Icy hell region of the Western Continent.

The only regretful thing about it all was that Alex was either unconscious, not himself, or simply unable to focus on what was happening when he was undergoing the improvement.

However, there was another.

His fire spiritual root's improvement came as the result of a technique that gathered energy from the fire treasures outside and improved his fire spiritual root.

"If I can somehow use a pill to mimic what I did with the technique then…" Alex was a little excited about finally finding a way to possibly improve his other spiritual roots.

The best part about this wasn't that Alex was fully awake when he had improved his Fire spiritual root, but rather he could do it again and see exactly what it was that happened.

Without hesitation, he sat down and used the Fire Spiritual root improvement technique in the third level of his Flame Mastery Technique.

He closed his eyes and sensed his Qi stir in his dantian.

The many crystal-like foundations in his dantian were larger in amount each time his dantian was fully melted as the Qi rushed out of it.

He sensed the Qi goes through his Fire Spiritual root and try to pull the fire energy from the surrounding. However, since there wasn't anything there, nothing happened instead.

Alex quickly stopped after getting all that he needed from this small test.

He opened his eyes as he recorded down his new understanding of what the pill must definitely do. "When the pill is eaten, the energy from it must go into respective spiritual root through the specific path that allows for Qi to be absorbed," he thought.

Finding out exactly which ingredients or a mix of ingredients would do that would definitely take some time, but what did he have if not time?

Until he could somehow find his father, and then somehow find a way back to Pearl, he was stuck on this continent.

Alex started testing out the various ingredients with Earth energy in them. For now, he needed to find the equivalent ingredients for the upgraded recipe.

There were thousands of different types of ingredients, which all would take him multiple days, even months to go through.

Without any hesitation, he locked himself up in the room and did it endlessly. The only time he would stop would be two days a week which he would instead spend on cultivation, but the rest of the days were spent on finding exactly the ingredients.

After about 20 or so days, Alex was done finding all but one ingredient for the Earth pill.

As for the final ingredient, Alex went through all the available ingredients, trying to find the perfect one that fits it.

He made many pills using various ingredients in between the other real ingredients using a similar recipe to what the True rank Earth pill used.

He tried it for 5 days before Alex had to stop. He was simply trying things without any information.

He knew what the pill's effect had to be, but none of the pills had the effect he wanted. Most of the pills simply turned out useless due to having nothing but Earth energy in it, while the others while usable, didn't have any useful effects.

"I can't do it on my own," Alex thought. He needed to wait until he could find and check just what sort of ingredient a Corrosive Willow was. As long as he got the elemental constitution of the ingredient, the ratio of the energy in it, he could continue this pill.

After that project had to be shelved, for now, Alex began with the Water pill again. However, this one was far more difficult than the Earth one.

To start with, he didn't even know how many more ingredients it was he needed. 5 more? 10 more? Who knew?

Pretty soon, it was clear that this pill was infinitely harder than the last one.

"Urghh! I give up," Alex said out loud. "I can't do this until I get a pill as a reference."

It was better to just wait for the Forbidden Orchard to open up and try it afterward.

"I should leave."

"Leave? You can leave now?" a voice spoke to him.

Alex immediately stood up in surprise. "Godslayer? You're awake?" he asked.

"Yes… I have been for a few days now," Godslayer said. "It has taken me a while to try and make sense of what has been happening."

"I'm glad you are finally awake," Alex said excitedly. He went into his spiritual sea and floated next to Godslayer whose flames had rekindled to the levels they were before.

"How are you feeling?" Alex asked.

"Not good, but not bad either," Godslayer said. "Like the first time you took everything from me."

"Oh," Alex said. "Well, thank you for helping me back there."

"Back there? Does that mean you succeeded?" Godslayer asked.

"Yes, we succeeded in running away," Alex said.

"Then why are you still imprisoned? I haven't seen you leave the room since I woke up," Godslayer said.

"I'm not imprisoned," Alex said. "I'm helping some seniors with some pills."

"I see," Godslayer said. "So, what happened to the old man? Did he die like we hoped or did you receive some assistance?"

"He died," Alex said. "Or at least I think he did. He was already near death by the 8th lightning bolt, the 9th one should have killed him."

"Well, if you say so," Godslayer said. "And then? What happened after that?"

Alex's mood turned a little sour. He sighed and explained everything he could.

"What? That little cat is missing? And you haven't tried to find him?" Godslayer asked.

"I can't," Alex said. "As I mentioned, I'm on a different continent. Without a way to go to the Central continent, I have no way of getting back to him."

"And you can't do anything to speed that up?" Godsalyer asked.

"Not that I know of," Alex said. "Even if I do reach the Central continent, I can't enter it due to the protection around it. As far as I'm aware, only Immortals and above can enter it."

"That sucks for you then," Godslayer said. "At least you are safe. You can find another beast in the future if you can't find that little cat."

"No, I will find Pearl. He's not a pet I'm just going to give up on," Alex said.

"Hah! You do you then," Godslayer said. "Alright, let me rest now. Go back and continue making those pills."

Alex nodded and was about to leave when he saw the silver mountain in his periphery. "Wait, I wanted to ask something. You know about that silver mountain, don't you?"

Godslayer looked at it and frowned a little. "Don't make me talk about it," he said in a sour mood.

"Why?" Alex asked. "I have realized that this entire mountain is nothing but solidified Space aura or something like that. I just wanted to learn more about it."

"Of course it is. You consumed a goddamn space stone after all," Godslayer said.

"Space stone? Is that what it is called?" Alex asked.

"Yes, it's a Space stone. It's a piece of stone with space in it. It is what is used to make storage rings, like the one you have," Godslayer said.