621 Closed Cultivation

After making sure that there was nothing in the cave once more, and even going so far as to plunge into the pond once more to look if there was any strong beast in there, Alex finally sat at the edge of the cave to cultivate.

The Qi in the room was as low as not much had been able to permeate through the mountain and enter here.

Still, that didn't really matter to Alex all that much. He had never really needed Qi to breakthrough.

He then reached into his pocket and brought out the silvery-white beast core that was tainted a little red with the blood of the snake.

Alex wondered why he kept this core and not another one. Was it because he had been thinking of eating this for so long that he somehow didn't want to let go of it?

He wondered if he could keep the other beast cores when he traveled through the ground, but more than likely the same scenario would have happened again.

'I need to get rid of this core now,' he thought. He cleaned the core and prepared himself. Then, he ate it.

Alex didn't immediately get sent into his spiritual world, but he could sense the snake had appeared there and was about the wreck havoc.

'Oh, do I have to do it manually now?' he wondered. Maybe it was because he was the original soul of the body and not the clone's soul that was just controlling it, it seemed he had more control over himself than he initially thought.

He felt the slight numbness in his mind, while his body was already breaking down the core, giving him Qi.

When he sent his spiritual sense through his body, he could also sense that his Qi was being accumulated around the naval region.

The numbness though was more annoying than anything. He could likely go on for a long time, but Alex could feel his spiritual energy draining.

With vision, he could allow this. But now, he had no choice but to get rid of the snake.

So, he quickly jumped into his own Spiritual sea and looked around in awe as he saw the massive amount of floating silver threads in the air.

"What the hell?" he thought. "I know I haven't been here in about a week, but… no way there should have been so much gathered in that period of time right?"

Then, he looked around to attack the snake. However, there was no snake. "Huh? Where did it go?" he thought. He could still feel the numbness… was that not the snake?

"Thanks for the meal, kid!" a voice said to him from next to the mountain. Alex turned towards the voice to see a ball of black goo, what should have been a clear crystal, floating in mid-air.

'Dammit! Just a few days and it's already regenerated that much black goo?' he thought. Alex flew up to it and asked, "did you eat the snake that was here?"

"Of course," the spirit said. "You sent it here for me right?"

"Why the hell would I send something to you?" Alex asked with an annoyed look. He certainly hadn't lost anything by letting the spirit eat the snake's spirit, but for some reason, it made Alex angry.

"Eh?" the spirit was surprised. "Were you not trying to mend our relationship so that I can help you kill a god?"

"There is no god to kill here," Alex said. "Also, you shouldn't kill gods just because they are one."

"Huh? But they're gods. What do I, Godslayer, do if not slay gods?" it asked confusedly.

"Alright, I don't have the time to deal with you," Alex said and grabbed the floating ball with both hands before a yellow fog appeared around him, devouring the black goo, leaving behind the clean crystal ball again.

"Hey! Oi! What the hell are you doing? Why would you give me food, just to take my strength away?" the spirit shouted, but Alex ignored it.

He looked at the flying threads that originated from the silver mountain. It was to gather these too.

Alex wasn't sure why exactly he was doing this or if it was even beneficial at all. After all, after so many days, he hadn't even begun to see anything manifest in him to suggest it was working.

Still, he kept at it. Just in case that mountain was a parasite, like the Artifact spirit, he needed to keep his mind clean.

Once he was done absorbing all the threads, Alex left.

When he reappeared on the outside, he immediately shot out his spiritual sense to the furthest he could. Once he saw that no beast had walked out of the pond, he drew it back.

However, along the way, he couldn't help but wonder… did his spiritual sense grow in strength again?

It had grown once before this, by quite a massive amount too. It had been after the incident on the beach which gave him his freedom.

His 80-meter spiritual sense had become 100 meters, but Alex simply attributed this to his real soul finally being in control, which he still believed to be true.

However, this time it was different. 'Why did it happen?' he wondered. It surely couldn't just be him having secrets that he still didn't know, could it?

Alex shook his head and got rid of such useless thoughts for now. Right now, he needed to breakthrough.

Qi gathered around him as he used the Five Yang Divine Path to cultivate his Qi and put it through his body to seamlessly break through to the next realm.

It had been so easy that he felt he could do it in his sleep. 'This really is an amazing technique, isn't it?' he thought as he continued using it.

He needed to stabilize his cultivation base before he could do anything else.

From time to time, he stopped himself from cultivating any further and instead spent the rest of the time focusing on the ring at hand.

He felt like he was about to crack open some part of it, but that might have just been his illusion for all he could tell.

Then, at other times, Alex took his sword and practiced his swordsmanship, using it to hit the cave wall a few times before realizing that was not a very good idea. He shouldn't train in here as there was the chance of the place caving in on itself.

He wouldn't mind being buried, he could easily get out. But the problem would be that losing such a good cultivation spot would be unfortunate.

He also jumped into the water a couple of times. He couldn't possibly stay here forever, so he went into the water from time to time to see if there was a way out of this place.

Unfortunately for him, the underground pond was way more massive than he could have imagined. So, he couldn't roam all the location without some beast coming to attack him.

'The beasts must come from somewhere, so there definitely is a route,' he thought, but as of yet, he didn't find any.

So, instead of finding a way out of this place, he decided to carve one. Every single day, he turned his hand into a claw and took out a chunk of the land in a direction.

Since even 150 meters away he couldn't see any sight outside, he knew he would have to go at it for a long, long time.

In between cultivation, finding ownership of the ring, training, carving a pathway out, and finally, refining his new sword, Alex's days passed pretty quickly.

Before he even knew it, a month had passed.

During the month, Alex's cultivation base hadn't improved at all, but his meridians were now amazing in his eyes.

They kept their wide shape without it hurting much at all, but he would have to practice making the sun for much longer to be absolutely sure it became permanent.

He had also gotten close to making a pathway out. He could see the outside world just on the edge of his senses and knew that in just a week or so, he would be able to reach there.

And finally, as a reward for all of his hard work, the ring on his hand had become weaker at fighting back, and now Alex was able to open a small space in it, just enough to store his sword.

'Nice!' he thought as he tried to pull in and out his sword with just a thought. The ring was much easier than using his storage bag as his senses perfectly saw everything inside at once, whereas in storage bags, he would have to search for each item individually.

After hearing that the ring might have items that he could obtain if he tried to remove the ownership from it, Alex had been expectant of getting something valuable. But unfortunately, his wishes didn't come true.

"I shouldn't mind at all," he thought. "This is merely a small space. There is likely a thousand times bigger space inside, if not more. Surely I will find some things."

Then, he started his routine all over again. Cultivation, training, and making the path. Alex focused on just these three things for now.

And after a bit more than a week, he had arrived right at the edge of the mountain without having made an opening.

So, knowing that he would now have to leave and go train through real fights, he sat down one last time, employed his cultivation method once again, and broke through.