512 Missing Elements

Alex felt very excited. He didn't even care that he had just broken through to the True realm and might need some time to get used to his new cultivation base.

No. He wanted to try out the new unlocked skills of his Alchemy skill.

"I'll be back in a bit, okay?" he told Pearl and left the room. He walked over to the alchemy room and sat down in front of the furnace.

He brought out his cauldron and let it heat up while he tried to think of the perfect pill to test out his new unlocks with.

"Hm, let's try out the Nail Elongating pill," he thought. Up until now, the best harmony he could create for the said pill was 52%. So, he wanted to try and see if he could improve on it.

"I wonder how the improvements will happen. Will it be similar to the pill splitting Qi that comes out randomly?" he wondered.

He brought out the first ingredient for the pill and immediately 2 distinct thoughts came to his mind. It wasn't a notification or a panel that popped up at all. It was just a simple thought.

The first thought was about the age of the ingredient in his hand. Without even doing anything, he had a distinct idea that the ingredient in his hand was about 2 years and 5 months old.

That age however did not include the time since the ingredient was picked up and only how long it had grown before it was picked up.

The thought about age was a simple one, and so was the next thought about the energy of the ingredient.

However, that one thought alone made him feel like a whole new path of alchemy had been opened up to him.

The first ingredient was Black Vine Water. It wasn't a liquid ingredient, but a vine that held water elements in it. At least, that was what Alex had come to learn about the ingredient up until now.

However, the information he was getting in his mind now was different. The thought that had randomly popped up was that the Black Vine Water he held in his hands contained all 7 of the different energies and not just water.

Only thing was that the Water energy it held was in far superior number than any of the rest.

"An ingredient can have all the energies in it. How does that not mess up an alchemy session?" Alex wondered. "Also, is this a one-time thing or what?"

He brought out the next ingredient on the list which was a Red leaf from the Mulberry tree. It was supposed to be a Wood Element ingredient, however, the information he was getting was once again very different.

Similar to the Black Vine Water, the Red Leaf too had all 7 elements in it, and only the Wood element was in high number.

"Wait, so it's all of the ingredients that have it all?" he wondered and started bringing out every ingredient he had for that recipe.

Every single one of the ingredients was as suspected. They all had the 7 different energies in them, with only a single one that was very high in number.

"That's not true, right? How is that possible?" Alex thought. His basic understanding of Elements and Elemental theories was starting to have tears in them. He was starting to have doubts that what he knew was even true at all.

"No, wait. The theories perfectly work when making pills. So maybe these energies don't really have much effect when we use them. That should be it," Alex thought.

He then casually brought out a True rank ingredient to see if the information held true for those as well.

"Hmm," Alex was a little surprised when the information for the True rank ingredient came to his mind.

As expected, the information about age was similar. The ingredient was about 7 years old. However, the information about Energy was slightly different.

The ingredient he had gotten should have had high Fire energy with the rest 6 being very low in amount.

However, what it actually was was that the ingredient had high Fire Energy with only 5 other energies being in low amounts.

One of the energies from the list was missing. It didn't take very long for Alex to realize that the Earth energy was missing.

He brought out another few True Rank ingredients and checked them out as well. As expected, each one of that ingredients had one energy missing from the list of 7.

"Hmm… is it True rank because an energy is missing? Or is the energy missing because it's True rank?" Alex wondered.

Alex wanted to know if it was the missing of energy that made the Primary energy so strong, or if the energy was missing because the Primary energy was so strong.

"Wait, is there even a logic to what energy is missing?" he wondered. He picked back up the first ingredient with the Fire energy that had the Earth energy missing.

He kept that in mind and brought out another of the same ingredient. That too had Earth energy missing.

Alex then went ahead and looked through the other ingredients and noted which ones were missing.

With that information in hand, it didn't take long for him to realize what energy would be missing from each of the ingredients.

"It's the energy that Weakens it," Alex said out loud. Looking at the first ingredient, the ingredient had Fire energy.

Water that Controlled Fire was there. Metal that Ruined Fire was there. And finally, Wood that Empowered Fire was also there.

However, Earth that Weakened Fire was no longer there.

The other ingredients followed the same rule as well. Any energy that weakened the primary energy was missing from the ingredient.

"So, I can freely say that True rank ingredients always have 1 missing element, that being the one that weakens right?" he thought.

"If I were to guess that the weakening Energy not being there was the reason why an ingredient became True rank, then I would be wrong. That wouldn't explain why the primary energy is what it is. Also, that wouldn't answer why some other energy didn't leave first."

"So, the correct assumption would be that it was the primary energy that got rid of the energy that weakened it," Alex thought.

He was happy to learn something new today when suddenly he remembered something. "Wait, what about Saint rank ingredients?" he thought.

He had never really used Saint Rank ingredients, so he didn't even know what ingredient had what energy.

However, thanks to the unlocked skill, he could do so without having to waste the ingredients now.

Alex brought out a wooden box with the ingredient inside and opened it up. As he looked at it, all 3 information entered his mind.

The ingredient was called a Demon Moon Grass, and it was about 26 years old. The first two pieces of information were normal and he was expecting them, albeit they too were a little intriguing.

However, the third piece of information took him by surprise once more. The Demon Moon Grass was an ingredient with Earth as the primary energy. The thing that was surprising however was the fact that the ingredient not only had an element missing but it had 2 elements missing.

Alex could see that the Demon Moon Grass had Metal and Water energy missing from the list. This was likely due to the Earth energy being very strong to the point that only Saint Qi could control it.

However, Alex was once more stuck with finding logic behind the missing ingredients.

"If I go by last time's logic, then Metal which Weakens Earth should be missing, and it is. Then, since Water is also missing from an ingredient with Earth primary element, can I assume that the second energy missing is something that Ruins the primary element?" Alex wondered.

He brought out the other Saint rank ingredients he had and weighed their information against his new theory.

"I was right," he thought with a massive smile. He put the ingredients back into his storage bag and started wondering about the reason why it was all happening.

Unfortunately, he couldn't see any logic behind why only Weakening and Ruining elements were disappearing.

Unable to understand anything, he decided to give up for now. "Let's just forget about that for now. I should start making the Nail elongating pill."