597 Ingredients

The people had stared at him because they thought he had a fever from the heat he was radiating.

Had Alex realized that sooner, he would've found himself a place sooner than… midnight? Alex wasn't sure about the time either.

Without the time continuously blinking on the top right corner of his vision, Alex found it hard to gauge time.

'I should learn how to tell the time based on the position of the moon or stars,' he thought. 'Or maybe there were other ways people just knew.'

Alex sat down in a 4 by 4 meters room that was next to an alchemy room of the same size.

The house he had chosen came with 2 rooms, and the one he was in had a Qi Gathering formation that would be great for even someone in the True lord realm, let alone him with his True Disciple realm.

Although, it would be pretty useless since he would never be able to make a full rotation to gather any Qi in the area.  The Yin Qi would likely dissolve into element-less Qi after coming into contact with Yang Qi.

Before starting his cultivation cycles, he looked at his body once more to see how much Yang he had been sending out.

Checking for the Yang was a weird sensation for Alex. Unless he was looking for it, Alex couldn't find the Yang anywhere at all on his body.

It felt normal for him like his body had no affinity at all. Fortunately, with his Supreme Yang spiritual root, he had some level of ability to sense his Yang.

'This is getting bad. I can't even tell when I'm releasing it a lot,' Alex thought. He feared that, just like his master, he too would have to spend months on end in closed cultivation to get his body constitution under control.

Hopefully, he was wrong about that.

He started cultivating, and very soon, he could feel the cold Qi lowering his body temperature to what was normal.

The first few cycles, he had to concentrate on it so that it didn't stop, but soon, he could do it without even thinking about it.

It became a muscle memory to him now. Still, he kept an eye on it so that he didn't accidentally start using the Five Yang Divine Path technique, which too had become muscle memory for him.

Once he was sure everything was going to go normally, he started thinking about the things he had to do.

The very first, most urgent thing that Alex needed to do was find a way to heal his arm.

The Saint Body Regeneration pill that could do so had 12 ingredients to it.

Winevein Poppy, Trileaved Periwinkle Leaf, Dried Torenia flower, Saint Blueflame Monkey's blood, Saint Hotfeather Eagle's tail feather, Ghostbane leaf, Two-headed Hydra's poison, Steelfur Rabbit's tendons, Seeking Mouse's whiskers, Blood Spirit ginseng, Azure Thimble twinflower, and finally, Three-colored Poison Lily.

His first task towards healing his arm without having to wait until he reached Saint realm and maybe find some ingredients here and there was to downgrade each of the ingredients to its True rank equivalent.

Thorny Bugloss, Silverstring Diascia, and Auburn Rue's seeds were 3 ingredients that were already downgraded for him by the Royal Alchemist thanks to his book.

For the rest, he was given some idea on how to.

For beast-related ingredients, Alex didn't have to worry much. For beasts that were named Saint before their ingredient, he could just use the True beasts of the same name.

For example, Saint BlueFlame Monkey's blood could be replaced with the blood of a Blueflame Monkey in the True Realm.

Similarly, Saint Hotfeather Eagle's Tail feather could also be replaced with one from a True Hotfeather Eagle.

As for the other two beasts in the list, those being the Two-Headed Hydra, and Steelfur rabbit, they were already in True realms, so Alex could downgrade them to the Common realm, but it was better to keep them in the true realm.

Of the remaining 5 ingredients, as far as Alex knew, Ghostbane leaf and Azure Thimble twinflower weren't saint rank ingredients but True rank ingredients.

So, he wouldn't have to convert those either.

That left Seeking Mouse's whiskers, Blood spirit Ginseng, and Three-Colored Poison lily.

Alex had never heard of these three ingredients before today. Meaning, after today, he knew what they were.

Seeking mouse was as he had expected, a beast. But, it wasn't the type of beast he had expected. The thing with Seeking Mouse was that it didn't have a cultivation base and was just a normal mouse.

That wasn't to say its body contained no Qi at all. It wouldn't be an ingredient without any Qi or energy in it.

Seeking mouse, while not rare, were primarily used by people to scout places for them, seeking ruins, tombs, and other treacherous places.

So, they were usually in high demand and cost a lot. Alex was sure he would be able to get them, but, he would have to either go out searching for them on his own, or fight tooth and nail against someone in an auction to bid for it.

Three-colored Poison Lily was a poison flower that bloomed in the poisonous swamps of the Dreaded mountain range.

The number of colors in the flower denoted its potency and rank as well. Three colors meant it was a saint rank ingredient. So, for a true rank equivalent, he would just have to find a Two-Colored Poison Lily to be a True rank equivalent.

Finally, the Blood Spirit ginseng. This one Alex was most stuck on. He had, quite frankly, no idea what it even was. He had read about it in the books, but they weren't very helpful aside from what it was and what it did.

Its main usage was in restoring blood from what the book said. Aside from that, it mentioned nothing of where it could be found or how it could be found.

Alex would have to rely on his luck to find it. And then, he would have to somehow find an equivalent of that.

That was going to be very hard.

He had heard of Spirit ginseng, which was a Common rank ingredient, so it couldn't likely be the equivalent True rank ingredient.

He had also heard of Revitalizing Ginseng, which was supposed to make a Psuedo-Saint pill. While that was likely a True rank ingredient, there was a very high chance that was not the ingredient he was going to need.

Alex sent his spiritual sense into the storage bag to look through his ingredients.

Aside from dried Torenia flowers, he would have to find all the other 11 ingredients on his own.

That meant, he would have to go visit the Alchemy guild tomorrow morning.

He continued cultivating until he could feel a lot of his yang going down. After a full night of cultivation, his body's aura had died down by a significant amount.

It didn't help him heal his meridians though, as that could only be done using his other cultivation technique.

One saw the sunrise up outside with his spiritual sense, he did the final thing he had trained himself to do each day.

That was to go into his mind and collect all the floating silver threads. He wasn't sure why he was doing this, or if it was even of any use.

But, he still did it regardless of if he cultivated that day or not.

After he finished collecting the hundreds of floating threads in the air, that did nothing whatsoever to reduce the size of the silver mountain in his spiritual sea, he moved over to the crystal ball floating next to him.

Tiny amounts of black sludge floated around the crystal, making it opaque. As usual, Ning cleared the black sludge just in case that was what gave the Godslayer his tempting power.

Once he was done, he left his spiritual sea to train for a bit.

His training only involved using his spiritual sense to form a weapon and then try to use it.

He put forth his right hand as an illusory, misty white sword appeared on it that was almost transparent.

Alex looked at the sword and tried to grab it with his hands again, but as usual, that was impossible.

"What is going on? Am I not supposed to grab it?" he thought. The technique he read told nothing about how difficult it would be to grab this sword.

By now, Alex had come to realize that the technique was very much incomplete.

After an hour of training, doing nothing but making spiritual weapons of various other shapes, Alex left his new house and walked towards the Alchemy guild.

The town looked a little busier in the day today. Perhaps because most people had left for the Northern forest yesterday, Alex hadn't seen as many people.

As he walked past the fresh-smelling food, the chatter of the people, and the calls of the salesmen trying to sell others their goods and services, Alex came across a group of people with particularly boisterous voices.

"Fellow Daoists, please donate some spirit stones if you can. It will only go to the mentally challenged cultivators," they shouted.

'Mentally challenged?' Alex was surprised. He didn't know that was even possible for a cultivator who could heal from everything with the right ingredients.

"Please sir, would you like to donate?" the person saw Alex looking at them and directly asked him.

With no choice, Alex walked up to them and asked, "when you say mentally challenged, what are you talking about exactly?"

"Oh, sir must not know. There have been recently a group of people that suddenly forgot who they were and claim to have come here from another world."

"Most of them had integrated into the society, but some just can't work well at all. We are hoping to help them," the man said.

"Ah," Alex understood. They were trying to help the players.