1089 Test Number 1

"Was it a good idea?" Alex asked. "Giving away my information so frivolously?"

"To little Zhu? That's alright," Liang Shufen said. "Don't worry about that."

Alex couldn't help but worry. "You trust him enough to give away such crucial information?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. "He's one of us after all, or at least in a way he is."

"One of us? Meaning… the council?" he asked.

"Yes," the woman said. "You can think of him as the phantom 11th member of the council that never was."

"Can I ask you to elaborate a little bit more?" he asked.

"Hmm, let's see what I can tell you," she said. "Little Zhu comes from the Zhu family, although I'm not sure if that family even exists anymore. He was there thousands of years ago during the time when we formed the council. He was one of us and could have become one of us right now, except he didn't join."

"He's not known to the public as anything other than the founder of the Insight Pavillion now though," she said. "He's made sure to not be associated with us so he can keep his free lifestyle."

"What was his reasoning for not joining? If I may ask." Alex was getting a little curious now.

"Let's see… for one, he was too weak at the time. He was merely a Saint core realm cultivator and… he simply happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. He got roped into what we had to do and as such, you can even say he was forced to make the oath with us," she said. "As for the other one, he might have thought that we— "

The old woman suddenly clutched her throat. "Oops, can't say that," she said with nervous laughter. Her oath had tightened its grip around her just then.

Alex noticed it but acted like he didn't. "Was he there when you went to attack the Western continent?" he asked.

"He wasn't there during the decision-making. He liked to stay in the mountains to the north where his home was," she said. "But since the plan involved bringing spirit veins for the place around his home, he went along as well. Well, many did. Most didn't have a choice."

Alex solemnly walked as he listened to her.

"And he opened the Insight Pavilion afterward?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, it was… a few years after we invaded the western continent, I believe," she said. "He was smart to have done that. Look at how big it is now."

Alex nodded. That was indeed smart.

"So I won't have to worry about him spreading the news of me being here?" he asked.

"Is that what you were worried about?" she asked. "Don't be worried then. Little Zhu is an honorable man. At the very least, he will keep his word. Besides, those bastards most likely already know about you being here."

"Really?" Alex was surprised.

The woman nodded. "You did teleport here, after all. People would have seen you and spread your information already. Not like we're hiding your presence here anyway," she said.

Alex nodded when he heard that. It was indeed true that the dark phoenix most likely already knew about him.

They returned back to the palace where Alex returned to his room to start looking through the talismans. He looked through the ones that had names in it so it would be easier for him. Looking at the ones without names would be useless for him anyway.

He didn't expect the dark phoenix assassins to use the information from the Insight Pavilion, but he did expect the people that commissioned them to.

At the very least, he hoped that they weren't aware that he knew who they might be.

The Dawn Immortal sect, the Jade Fire sect, The Yao family, the Kang family, and others. Alex especially took notice of them when looking through the talismans, but nothing came out of it in the end.

"I will just have to keep at it," he thought and put everything aside to start with the pills.

He relaxed for a bit to get his headspace in order before he brought out the ingredients. There were 6 water ingredients already on the recipe that he was supposed to use, but Alex was starting to wonder if he should confine himself to half a recipe or not.

He had tested half the recipe and had realized that the way the energies mixed together was totally different than the one for the earth pill. Which was to say that he couldn't just mimic that pill and fill in the blanks on the recipe.

Since that was the case, he had 2 ways to proceed from here at the moment, neither of which he was sure would work.

Either, he could continue down this path and try to figure out the remaining ingredients.

Or, he could discard the recipe completely and do everything by himself by using the earth pill's recipe as a model and copying it exactly, except with ingredients with water energy.

He wasn't sure if that would work, but he was happy to have that idea in case the first one didn't work.

"Sigh, it's going to take a while," he thought. Then, he began the tedious task.

He brought out every single water ingredient and checked its energy constitution. Once he knew about it all, he then tried to formulate a recipe in which the energy reacted with each other.

As he thought about the reaction, his mind worked in mysterious ways to quickly think of how the energy interacted with itself.

His Dao of Five Elemental Interaction was helping him in coming up with answers that would have otherwise taken hours to think of. Maybe he would even have to use the ingredients to learn about it.

Still, there was just too much to think about. A single ingredient could have a different rate at which its energy was diffused out of it. Every single variation of this diffusion would lead to a variation of energy that would have to react to another variation, making it infinitely hard to calculate with so many variables.

Just a week later, Alex had to stop as simply thinking about the energy wasn't working for him. Not only was there just too much to think about, but even if he did think about it, he still didn't know what the pill would do in the end.

He had a general idea, but it was still better to check for himself.

Alex brought out the cauldron and chose one of the combinations in his head that he was sure gave stable energy in the end.

He did not care about following the recipe properly, only having the resulting energy be usable. Even if it turned out to be less than 20% harmony, he was fine with it.

The first 6 ingredients and recipe were with him, so he followed it quickly. Once that was done, Alex followed his own made-up recipe.

Since there were ingredients that he hadn't worked with before, he had to adjust to their energy release rate on the go. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Still, in the end, he managed to create a combination of water energy that could be put into a pill.

And so he did.

He quickly formed a pill with his newly found recipe and looked at it. With the pill in his hand, he could feel the energy structure in it, not that he could learn anything from just that.

He would need a lot more experience for that to work.

"Do I eat it?" he wondered. He could eat it with a Saint Nullifying pill, but doing so for every pill out there would be very complicated. Instead, he wanted to get through with the various pill he would be making without stopping at all.

"Can I use a pill swine?" he thought. Pill swine were very close to humans in their physiological makeup, but not all of them had water spiritual roots, so getting just those ones would be hard.

"Well that's not my problem to worry about," he thought and went out to request exactly that.

The swine were brought along the next day and kept behind the palace. Alex hadn't been to this place yet, so coming here was a new experience for him.

The small garden that was behind the palace wasn't anything special, but the giant, bronze dome that was beyond the garden was.

He saw some sort of giant door near the dome that was the path to inside the actual Sunborn Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, he had to ignore it for now. Not that he could open it even if he had the time for it.

Alex went up to the pill swine that were kept there, wasting no more time. He fed the pill he had to the swine and let his senses go deep into the swine as far as he could.

To his surprise, the swine were easy to see through with his senses due to their pitiful cultivation. He saw the water energy go through its body and go towards the core-like dantian at its navel area.

However, after going there, it disappeared. He saw nothing come out towards the pill swine's water spiritual root. The energy was absorbed by the swine, and turned into Qi for it to use to break through.

This one had been a failure.

But, he wasn't expecting it to be a success anyway so he was fine with it. He was simply going to have to try over and over again.