413 Mocking Swine

"Huh? What do you mean?" Luo Mei asked.

"We've been searching for you all this time. Even when we learned about your arrival, we were deep in the southern forest, looking for you," Wen Cheng said.

"Huh?" Alex was confused now. "But I should have been visible. There was a massive fog created by the formation and there was a barrier too, so that should have been visible at least. Or maybe you heard some explosions. I was constantly exploding cauldrons many times throughout the night too."

"Huh?" Luo Mei said in confusion. "We definitely flew through that part of the forest multiple times. We did it at night too. I can swear that it was so silent in the forest, if a single wolf howled, we would've heard it from far away. However, we didn't hear a single explosion any time, ever."

"Yes. We definitely looked through that place. Are you sure you're not getting the location of your imprisonment wrong?" Wen Cheng asked.

It was Alex's turn to get confused now. He was absolutely sure that he had gotten the location correct. 'Then why did they nev— Ah!' he thought.

He suddenly rummaged through his bad and brought out the paper that explained the Spirit Disorienting formation and made sure he knew what the formation did.

'3 base formations - Fog, Disorientation, and Space bending,' he read the description again. That wasn't it. He then took out the information about barrier formation.

'2 base formation - Barrier, and space expansion,' he read. He remembered how the space inside the barrier was expanded.

"Hmm… neither of them have anything to do with hiding noise though," Alex said as he showed them the two formation rods. Just as he said that he remembered.

"Ah! Wait a second," he said as he brought out another 2 rods. These were the same rods and Alex quickly presented them to his master.

"There was this rod outside the formation too. However, I never got around to learning what it is or if it is even part of a formation," Alex said. "Maybe this was it?"

"Hmm… I will take these and get them tested," Wen Cheng said and took the rods.

The three talked for a little while longer and caught up.

"Alright, we will return now. I've been ignoring sect work for the last month and need to urgently get back to it. The first elder is good at handling the sect in my absence, but I shouldn't rely on him too much. My change in power won't be smooth once your sister breaks through if I neglect it any further," Wen Cheng said.

"When do you plan on returning to the sect?" Luo Mei asked.

"Umm… I don't know. I made a lot of pills during the last month and need to get them tested. So, maybe after 10 days. Hopefully, I can test all of my pills during that time," Alex said.

"Alright. Come whenever you are ready," Wen Cheng said. "We'll leave for now. Take care of yourself."

"Goodbye Master, Sister." Alex saw them off.

Once the two of them left, Alex looked around for the grand elder, but the old man seemed to have gone somewhere, so he went to the core mountain, and through there, he went to the location of the swine farm once again.

Alex greeted the Elder on guard and went in. He went to the location where the swine were locked up and took out the pill that increased the nail once again.

He quickly fed the swine and watched the hoof grow out a little more. It grew about 2 centimeters again. He broke off the hoof of the right leg and kept it.

He then fed the swine another pill and watched. This was something he was curious about so he was making sure every step was recorded.

The hoof on the right leg of the swine grew to about 2 centimeters, but the one on the left grew only 1 centimeter.

"Oh, so another pill does help in growing the nail more, but it reduces effectiveness," he concluded. He cut the hooves once again to bring the swine back to its original form.

He fed another pill and watched the hoof grow 2 centimeters again. This pretty much confirmed that if someone didn't have long nails, to begin with, they would grow about 2 centimeters of it.

He then checked the durability of the hooves he had and found that the strength in the nail did in fact increase as the number of Harmony in the pill increased.

An increased number of pills however had decreased effectiveness, so taking more than one pill at a time was unnecessary.

The only thing he still couldn't figure out was the duration these nails lasted, but he was pretty certain they didn't expire and that this was a permanent effect.

'That's one pill done,' he thought and sent his spiritual sense through his storage space to look at the 8 other pills he had made while stuck in the formation.

After the first pill, he had come to an understanding that increasing the Harmony of the pill was not necessary at all. He needed the pill to just enter Mortal grade so he could test it out. He could perfect the recipe once he learned that it was a good pill.

He went through the swine to test the rest of the 8 pills. 2 of those pills turned out to be pills that just gave Qi, which was useless to him so he crossed them off of his list.

1 of the pills made the swine's heart beat faster, almost as if it was doping the swine, but to a much weaker level when compared to actual doping pills that existed, so he ignored that as well.

1 of the pills made the right hind leg of the swine slightly longer than the left one. Alex shook his head when he saw that effect. He doubted anyone would ever need such a pill, but still decided to sell it since that was the only thing he could do.

2 of the pills healed at a different rate but were both not as good as the other healing pills out there.

1 of the pills opened up the sweat glands of the pig and made it sweat far faster than normal.

The last pill, however, was something he hadn't expected, or rather, didn't dare expect. When he fed the last pill to the pig, he looked at the information the formation was giving him regarding the swine's vitals and other things.

He looked at the vitals and back at the pig. He was expecting the current pill to have something to do with the non-physical aspect since the main ingredient of this pill didn't have any physical effect.

The ingredient was a type of grass that he hadn't found in the alchemy garden of the Hong Wu Sect. He could only find it in the southern forest or by buying it through the stores.

The ingredient was called the Bright Soul Grass. According to the book Zhou Mei had given him, the grass was supposed to help the soul of anyone that ate the grass to be more profound.

Alex didn't understand what it meant, but he still expected to see some non-physical. He waited for a few seconds for the pill to do its work, but nothing happened at all. He didn't even feel any Qi movement in the swine's body.

The swine started turning left and right, up and down, and even tried to turn around at one point, but nothing more happened at all.

'What?' he was confused. He waited a bit longer, but there was nothing. The light in the enclosure had lit up from the swine eating the pill but there was definitely something wrong here as he didn't have the slightest hint of where the energy affected.

He went against his instincts and fed the swine another pill. The swine didn't immediately eat the pill and instead looked at Alex with its clear human-like eyes.

'What does it want?' Alex wondered as he looked at the pill and pushed the pill towards its mouth. The swine hesitated for a bit, but still ate the pill in the end.

Alex carefully looked for the pill's energy in the stomach now. The energy appeared for a split second before dissolving into the bloodstream. After that, he had no idea where the blood took the energy.

He waited for something to change in the vital signs information to the right. Aside from a slightly faster-beating heart, everything else was fine.

He looked at the final pill he had of this type as it wasn't really necessary to have a lot to test it.

"Sigh, am I really gonna feed this pill and not know what it did?" he thought. Still, he needed to learn, so he brought the pill in front of the pig again.

Instead of trying to eat the pill, the swine instead turned its head sideways so as it didn't have to. It went so far as to tilt its head and not give Alex any attention.

"The hell is wrong with this swine?" he thought and waited for it to eat the pill. However, the swine didn't eat the pill at all.

"Sigh, it must be a really bad pill if even a swine refuses to eat it any further," he believed. So, he pulled back the pill and turned around to feed it to another pill if he could find anything.

Just as he was going to do that, the swine turned to him and stuck its tongue out to mock him.

"What?" Alex was really surprised now. "Why is the swine teasing me? Are the swines supposed to be this intelligent? I thought they were a dull creature with no mind for themselves," he thought. He couldn't understand what was happening here, so he decided to call the elder.

However, just then he stopped. 'Could it be?' he wondered and walked towards the swine once more. It looked a little afraid now that he had suddenly returned.

"Do you want to go free?" Alex suddenly asked. The swine looked at him with a confused stare. 'So it doesn't understand what I'm saying, but is smart enough to understand that I'm trying to communicate,' Alex thought.

'Did my pill make it intelligent?' he wondered. He needed to stop experiments on this swine as it had gained enough sentience.

'Do I test if I'm correct though?' he thought and turned to another swine that was just a normal pill swine with no emotions on its face. Alex walked up to it and handed it the last pill he had left.

The swine made no fuss and ate the pill without hesitation. Within a few seconds, Alex looked at the swine's face and saw that it was starting to look up and down as if it had just noticed that it was in a cage.

It then looked left and right and saw that it was inside a cage. Finally, it turned around to see that it had no place to go at all and had a face of acceptance.

Alex sighed when he saw that face. Seeing a swine have emotions made him sympathetic towards the swine.

However, the biggest surprise he got here was definitely going to be the pill he had made. If he was not wrong, the pill increased the mental ability of someone. Meaning, it increased their mental strength.

If the pill did what he thought it did, then he could definitely use it to increase the density of the spiritual sea and thus better his spiritual sense by a lot.

He would have to work hard to make the pill with a very high harmony, but that was acceptable for him if he truly could somehow improve his spiritual sea in any way.

Once he was done with the swine, he didn't know what to mark them and called an elder for help. The elder took the swine away after seeing their change and Alex was free to return home to do what he wanted to do.