1973 Immortal Patients

Whisker now helped Alex make Saint and True pills. He remained in Alex's soul space, inside the Demon realm where he made those pills as needed.

He wasn't as good as Alex but was good enough that he could make decent pills that could be sold in the shop.

Once that was decided, Alex was finally free enough to work on the problems of an Immortal.

Alex opened the shop early in the morning, an hour after sunrise, and didn't close it until sunset. Some of the days, he kept it open for days on end, letting it stay open even at night time.

Fang Yuxie did her own thing, coming to the shop whenever she wanted, and working as she wished.

She wasn't being paid for the work she did except for a few cultivation pills a month and she was more than happy with that.

A few days passed by and Alex kept getting simple work. Even when an Immortal came in, they would buy a pill from Alex and leave.

It wasn't until a week later that Alex received his first patient. An older man walked in, complaining about some sort of pain in the size of his chest.

Alex took the man to the back room and quickly checked up on him. There were only so many reasons that an Immortal could be feeling continuous pain and Alex quickly figured out what this one was.

Because of the place the old man worked in, the side of his chest had a build-up of metal aura that conflicted with part of his beast bloodline that came from a Flaming Lion beast.

The man had no characteristics of a beast, but one of his ancestors had been one, and so the problem showed up on his body.

Alex told the man what the issue was and gave him a pill that could heal the current issue. He also suggested that the man invest in some sort of formation that kept Metale energy away from where he cultivated as that had been the main issue in the first place.

The old man happily left the store, having been healed from the pain that had lasted for such a long time.

And Alex was happy to have received 680 Immortal Spirit stones for a quick check-up and a pill sold. This was what he wanted after all. This was why he had opened the store.

It took some time for anyone else to come to the shop, but on a daily basis, Alex was making some good earnings.

There were ups and downs, but he was beginning to make about the same as he did the first year working for Elder Lan in the Poison Fighters Sect.

2000 Immortal Spirit stones a month on average was what Alex had been aiming for in the first year, and he was thankfully receiving it.

Nearly a month passed by when Alex received his first major issue.

A man walked into his shop with a missing arm. He didn't seem distressed, despite clearly being in pain.

"Hello! How may we help you?" Fang Yuxie quickly greeted the man.

"Can't you see, woman? I'm missing an arm," the man said. "Are you the alchemist?"

"I'm the Alchemist," Alex said from the side, looking at the man from head to toe. He was only an Immortal Ascendant cultivator in the 7th realm and yet he was being so rude.

Alex dismissed it, considering the man was probably just anxious.

"Do you need a pill to heal your arm?" Alex asked the man, ready to pull out a healing pill.

"No," the man said. "I mean, yes, but also no. I tried healing pills, but they don't work on me at all."

Alex frowned. "Healing pills don't work on you?" he asked the man. "Do you know why?"

"I don't know," he said, an angry look on his face. "Can you help me or not?"

"Let me check you first. Please come to this room."

Alex took the man to the back room and took his left arm to check what was wrong with his body. He had never heard of healing pills not working on someone.

It could have been a problem with his soul that was damaged and he needed soul healing pills instead of pills that healed physical bodies.

Alex had to check to find out.

The very first thing he checked was the arm itself, checking if there was something there blocking his arm from growing back.

Alex sensed nothing out of the ordinary. He moved a little further away, checking everything that could be wrong with the man's blood vessels, meridians, and else.

As he checked, Alex noticed something and frowned. There were only trace elements of what he found, compared to a regular person, even these trace elements were quite a lot.

Alex then began testing throughout his body and quickly noticed more and more of these.

"Do you have a healing pill on you right now?" Alex asked the man.

"What?" the man asked, before going through what he just heard. "Oh, yes. I do. Why?"

"Can you eat it? I think I found the issue, but I want to be certain."

The man shrugged and pulled out a healing pill to eat. Before he ate it though, Alex grabbed the pill out of the man's hands.

The man looked surprised, not realizing how Alex had moved so fast that he didn't notice until the pill was taken away.

"What are you doing?" the man asked angrily.

"Just checking," Alex said, giving the pill back to the man.

The man was frustrated, but he said nothing and ate the pill. Once the pill entered his body, it dissolved in his stomach and the energy began spreading out of it.

However, most of the powder the man had ended up consuming wasn't dissolved inside his stomach at all. In fact, a majority of it remained as parts of pills without any energy were just lumps of powder that could do nothing.

Those tiny lumps were pushed through his meridians, and after who knew how many pills, they had begun creating blockage throughout the pathway that the energy needed to take.

And every place those powders were gathered, they stripped away the energy that flowed through the body, until there was nothing left when it got to the part that needed that energy.

"Pill poisoning," Alex said. Alex had always known about this, but this was the first time he had seen such a clear case of it.

"What?" the man asked.

"You have pill poisoning," Alex repeated. "The pills you eat must not have had great Harmony. Most of the pill's physical substances are creating blockages around your body, reducing the effect of every other pill you eat.

"What?" the man asked, unable to believe Alex. "You're saying I can't heal because I ate too many pills?"

"Too many bad pills, yes," Alex said. "The pill you ate just now had a 44% harmony too. Tell me, how long have you been eating such low-harmony pills?"

"I…" the man began realizing what was happening to him. "What do I do now?" he asked. "Is there anything you can do?"

Alex nodded. "Of course," he said. "I can help you."