575 Burnt Book

A few more days, that was all Alex had to wait. It had been 4 days since Fu Tao and the group had teleported into the beast's realm.

For the last 4 days, he had been doing nothing but staying in the palace or going out to the city with the princess.

The princess' guard was always with her, but she never came out to speak with Alex. It seemed that she was still shy from the last time.

Alex had already gone through all the markets buying everything he wanted from ingredients to recipes to formations to even swords.

The one he got was a weak one even compared to his own previous sword. At least, it would be easier to refine.

The rest of the time he would spend in Alchemy hall in the city where he could make as many pills as he could.

On the 2nd day, he had made a particularly good harvest.

After returning from walking around the city, Alex had gone back to his room to rest.

However, just then someone knocked on the door to his guest room. Alex left his bed and opened the door to see a maid outside.

"His Majesty calls you to his study room," she said.

"The emperor is calling for me?" Alex asked and left the room. The maid showed the way to the study room and stopped a bit before reaching the place.

"Your Majesty, you called for me?" Alex asked as he entered the door.

"Ah, you are here. Come, come," the Emperor beckoned him in.

Alex walked in to see that the Emperor was not alone. He was instead with a feminine-looking man of thin building, luscious flowing black hair, and eyes that would make men question their likes and dislikes.

The man looked weak, but his cultivation base aura said otherwise. The man was as least a True Emperor realm expert. That was all he could tell from the aura.

'Who is this person?' Alex wondered.

He walked up to the emperor and took a seat next to him, waiting for him to introduce the man.

"Alright, I will leave you two to talk," the Emperor said standing up to leave.

'Huh? Talk? What?' Alex was extremely confused, but before he could even say anything, the emperor left.

Alex didn't know what to do now. He felt extremely awkward in front of this person he had never seen before.

"Greetings!" Alex still decided to greet the man.

The man bowed a little towards Alex and said, "I only recently came to learn about little Ma's passing. My Condolences."

"T-thank you," Alex said before his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

'Little Ma?' he thought. 'Aside from Grandmaster, I have only ever heard one person…'

"Ah, I'm sorry, senior Lai. I recognized you too late," Alex said. The man in front of him was Lai Qing, the Royal Alchemist.

"Haha, I'm surprised you recognized me at all. I usually have to talk with people for a while before they figure out who I am," the Royal alchemist said.

"Thankfully, I recognized you, or our conversation might have been incredibly awkward," Alex said. "Still, I have seen you 3 times now, and each time you have a different face on. Is there a reason?"

"No particular reason, really," the royal alchemist said. "I was a young man when I got into alchemy and spent nearly 2 centuries trying to hone my skills as an alchemist."

"By the time I was big enough to be given the title of the Royal Alchemist, I realized that I had spent all of my youth tucked away in a room with a fire and a cauldron."

"I felt a little regret for losing my youth, so I try to bring it back in any way possible," the Royal Alchemist said.

"Centuries?" Alex was a little surprised. "How old are you?"

"Me? I… don't know," the Royal Alchemist said. "I should be a little more than 400 years now."

Alex was stunned. He had met old people, but none that were this old as a True realm cultivator.

"That's not what you brought me here to speak about, is it?" he asked.

"No," Alex said. "I requested your audience so that you could teach me about the Structure and Compositions as you promised."

"Sigh, I told you to give up last time, didn't I? It's a difficult concept to understand that even Ma Rong would have a hard time understanding."

"As I said last time, come back to me when you've made a Heaven Grade Tr—"

Alex suddenly put forth a pill bottle next to the Royal Alchemist, stopping him mid-speech.

The royal alchemists sniffed the aroma that was coming off of the pill bottle even though it had a stopper on it.

His eyes widened as he took it. "What pill is this?" he asked.

"A Two-fold Qi Absorption pill," Alex said. That was a pill that doubled the speed of cultivation under normal circumstances.

The Royal Alchemist knew pretty well about this pill. It was a commonly found recipe that almost all True realm alchemists knew.

However, that was not the reason he was so surprised. He opened the stopper and took the pill out and looked at it.

It was a light lime-colored pill with uneven spots of red dots all around it.

The Royal Alchemist said nothing and pulled out a Pill Tester and immediately put in the pill.

Fog appeared around the glass of the tester and slowly went up. The Royal Alchemist had a guess about the pill, but no matter how he looked at it, this should not have been real.

However, it was.

The fog stopped moving and the tester gave the result he was expecting.

51%

This was a Heaven Grade True pill.

"You made this?" the Royal Alchemist asked with wide eyes.

"You said that I would be eligible to learn about Structure and Composition once I was able to make a Heaven Grade True Pill, right?" Alex asked.

"Here it is. Now, please teach me."

The Royal alchemist looked in absolute shock. He had been nearly a hundred years old when he had reached this level.

However, this kid that was in front of him, that wasn't even 20 years old could somehow make such an amazing pill. The Royal alchemist couldn't believe it.

"Did you really make this?" he asked.

"Yes, only 2 days ago," Alex said. "I was hoping you would be okay with this 48% pill I had managed to do about a week ago, but fortunately, I happened to make this 51% pill too."

The Royal Alchemist heard this and his eyes changed and got serious. "It seems you were serious about learning it. I guess you have the right to."

He reached into his storage bag and pulled out a small book that looked old and almost torn in places. The outer cover looked new, but everything else did not.

"What is that?" Alex asked.

"It is the book that gave me the knowledge I have today. Everything I am came from this book right here," the Royal Alchemist said.

"Everything I am about to tell you is something I learned from this book," he said.

He put it forth in front of him, and Alex slowly moved his hands towards it, thinking he was presenting it to him.

"NO!" The Royal Alchemist pulled back his hands, his eyes glaring at him fiercely. It took him a second to realize what he was doing.

He calmed down, the look in his eyes disappearing, and said, "Sorry about that. This is my holy scripture, and I cannot let anyone else touch it."

"Holy scripture?" Alex asked. "Does that book contain information about Alchemy?"

"Yes," the Royal Alchemist said. "I was but a normal cultivator at the start. I was a poor, rogue cultivator that lived his day-to-day life by hunting beasts and selling it."

"If I hadn't accidentally come across this book during one of my hunts, I would have never been able to reach the heights I have reached today," the royal Alchemist said.

"What is it called?" Alex asked.

"I don't know. The outer cover was burned off, so I could never learn its name," the Royal Alchemist said.

'Outer cover was burned?' Alex thought. There was something in his mind that told him why the outer cover could have possibly been burned.

'Could it be…' he thought, 'that this book too… came down in the meteor shower?'