1929 Improving Memory

While Alex wondered if he could, in some way, be considered an accomplice in Bai Wanzhao's death, Elder Lan seemed to have an entirely different mindset.

"You killed him?" he asked.

"What?"

Alex was pulled away from his own thought and back into reality. It took a moment for him to process what he heard, and as soon as he did, he quickly shook his head.

"No, no, I did not," he answered.

Elder Lan looked back at the recipe in his hand. "But this recipe, it…"

Alex could understand what the man was thinking.

"I got that recipe from Bai Wanzhao," Alex explained. "He was the one who gave me that recipe and asked me to make that pill. I already swore an oath that I wasn't the one who killed Bai Wanzhao."

Elder Lan paused and finally nodded. "I suppose I am overthinking," he said. "You did swear an oath. Never mind me then. Poor young Bai must have made some mix-up that led to his death. Unfortunate, but not your fault."

Alex nodded.

"I'll see you when you start then. Go ahead and rest for now."

After leaving the Elder's Hall, Alex returned back to his place where he no longer felt as though he had enough energy to try and experiment with Memory.

Memory would have to wait to absorb more energy. For now, Alex simply wanted to go cultivate for a while.

While cultivating, Alex wondered about the death of Bai Wanzhao, and how he had come to die. A single, simple mistake as having the wrong pill led to his death.

Alex was at least happy that it wasn't because his pill wasn't good enough. It was just a wrong recipe.

'Why did he have the wrong recipe?' Alex wondered. Considering who his mother was, Alex didn't see a reason why someone would make the mistake of handing him an obviously flawed recipe.

But then a thought struck Alex that nearly made him stop his cultivation. 'But what if it wasn't a mistake?' he wondered. If not a mistake, then someone must have had malicious intent to kill the man from the start.

'Wait… no,' Alex thought. 'How would they know he would go for that exact poison? No, it has to have been a mistake.'

There was no reason for Alex to give it any more thought, so he went back to focusing on his cultivation.

It wasn't until late the next morning that Alex finally stopped cultivating and finally decided to test out Memory and its ability to devour energy from a pill.

He brought out Memory and prepared to make the pill he had gathered a recipe for yesterday. As the pill was something he had already gotten used to making, it didn't take long for Alex to prepare everything regarding the ingredients before he actually started making the pill.

One by one, ingredients went into Memory, slowly getting worked inside until their energy was out of them, floating inside the cauldron.

After all the ingredients had been rendered into powder and the mixture of their energies remained hovering inside the cauldron, Alex finally gave Memory to go-ahead to absorb all the energy inside the cauldron.

For a moment, Alex felt the tiniest bits of feeling of confusion and doubt flow through his bond with Memory. Memory simply did not believe that he was saying what it thought he was saying.

"No, you heard me correctly. Absorb all the energy inside of you right now. Or as much as you can if that is too much. I made it all for you," Alex told the cauldron to make it feel better.

Memory took a moment to confirm what it was being told and then began devouring the energy immediately after.

The speed at which it absorbed the energy wasn't anything phenomenal. In fact, it took an entire 2 minutes to fully absorb all of the energy inside of it. However, once it was done, there was not a single instance of energy inside the cauldron.

All that remained was some light-colored powder at the bottom of it all. Alex took the powder out of the cauldron and threw it away. Even as he threw it away, a thought crossed his mind on what he could do with the powder, but when he fully gave the thought some more thinking over, he came to understand that it wasn't something he could immediately start doing.

'I'll need a higher cultivation base before I can get to that,' he thought. That was the truth for many of the things he had wanted to try doing, including making a pill by simultaneously processing two or more ingredients at the same time.

He had learned the trick back in the Alchemy trial a long time ago and had yet to put it into any sort of practical use.

Given the intensity of Immortal ingredients, everything had to wait.

After throwing away the powder, Alex sunk his senses into Memory, trying to understand just what it was that was happening with the cauldron.

There were no signs at first at all. Memory seemed to have gone completely unconscious after consuming all the energy. But as Alex waited, he began sensing energy escaping from all around Memory.

He couldn't just sense the energy, he could even see it. Multicolored aura escaped from Memory, visible thanks to his Demon Eyes.

The aura that left wasn't as orderly as the energy Memory had absorbed. It wasn't as potent and neither was it as mixed. The energies had more or less separated from the final version, and what escaped were pieces of it.

And lastly, the thing that surprised Alex the most was that the energy that escaped from Memory was a lot less… elemental.

They were purer now, albeit a lot less potent, so Memory was absorbing a lot of it. And it was absorbing both the energy and the essence of the energy.

Alex could only wonder what was happening with Memory and wanted to go ask Elder Lan. But then, he didn't want to tell anyone about Memory. He didn't believe what was going on to be a singular event that only happened to him, but what if there was a requirement?

What if for this to happen, the cauldron had to come across multiple Pill lightning? How was Alex going to explain that?

'Hopefully, I can soon find something on my own that explains this,' Alex thought. Even as he hoped that he did have a hint at exactly what was happening. It was easy to see.

Memory was absorbing energy, and thus improving. If let continue, Memory will most certainly improve.

What he didn't know was if the improvement would come to the Cauldron itself or to the spirit within it. Would the improvement be for both?

Whatever the case, it was an improvement, and Alex would welcome any improvement that came his way. The only question he had now was if he could do something similar to Midnight as well.

He would most certainly test and see if Midnight could absorb any energy, but Alex saw no possibility of that from the start.

'It doesn't matter,' he thought. 'I'll find more than one way to make you all stronger.'