Alex sent out a steady stream of Metal Qi while doing his best to keep the Intent as strong as he could. The first few minutes were fine, but after that, he started noticing strain in his body that came from applying too much Intent.
He got a wild mental pain similar to when he had to deal with Intent from outside.
'What's going on?' he wondered. He had never had to send out Intent for this long, and it seemed to be causing some problems. At the same time, he noticed for the first time that his intent was causing his Spiritual Energy to decrease by a decent amount.
It wouldn't be very noticeable if the Intent usage was short, but this long he noticed the lack in his Spiritual energy. Either the spiritual energy was dealing with the ramifications of him sending our Intent, or it was fueling the Intent itself.
Either way, his spiritual energy was depleting and his Intent was the cause for it.
The speed at which his Spiritual energy depleted was slow enough that Alex could go on for multiple days without any problem.
However, he wasn't sure if he could. Before that, he would certainly have to stop because of all the pain.
He continued for as long as he could before stopping. He had to.
"What happened?" the young man was taken aback when he noticed Alex stop just a few hours in. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm alright," Alex said. "I used my Intent for a bit too long. I have a slight headache. Do you mind if he rest for a bit before we start?"
"Oh, sure," the young man said. "Did you overuse your Intent?"
"Yes," Alex said. "I thought I could keep it going for longer, but it seems I only had a few hours in me."
"Oh, were you not aware that you can't do that?" the young man asked.
"I've never pushed my Intent to the full for this long before," Alex said. "I had only ever used it in bursts."
"Oh," the young man said. "Yeah, this is what happens generally. Although I'm surprised that you don't know this when your intent is this strong. Didn't you ever notice it when you make pills for a long time?"
"Made pills for a long time?" Alex thought to himself. "What does that have to do with this?"
"Uhh… everything?" the young man said. "You make pills, which you do by using your intent to make it happen. You do it for too long, you get a headache because you overused your intent."
"You make formations, you use Intent when you carve something."
"You make talismans, you use Intent when you draw the runes."
"You make artifacts, you use Intent throughout the whole process."
"You make paintings, you use Intent when you put the paint on the canvas."
"Everything we do is fueled by intent. You raise your hand, that's Intent. You move your legs, that's Intent. You use your Qi, that's Intent."
"Most of the time, you won't notice it much, because the things you do don't require much Intent from your side at all. Even if they do, your Intent is strong enough that the requirement becomes minuscule to you."
"However, even then when you do it for a long time, you start feeling the loss of Intent. Fatigue, headache, sleepiness. These are all side effects of you using your Intent for a long time."
"When you use a lot of your Intent, it manifests in various different ways, all negative."
"When you used it as fast as you did just now, the lack of Intent manifested as mental pain," the young man said. "And that is why your head hurts."
Alex's eyes went wide in shock when he heard that. He couldn't believe what he had been just told.
He had been led to believe that Spiritual energy was just spent when making pills or other things. but to think that it had instead been Intent that he had been using, which had spent his spiritual energy.
It was a wild thought to be forced to think all of a sudden, but Alex did and he was more than captivated by the information. Intent… there was so much about it that he still wasn't aware of.
'If everything that happens is because of Intent… just what else can it do?' he wondered.
His knowledge of intent grew by a large magnitude that day, but because he had been taught the information, there was no chance for him to gain any Dao from it.
Alex wasn't sure there was even any Dao on Intent, to begin with.
"Relax and rest for a while, brother," Tian Honglui said. "I will try and understand what I can from the Metal aura that you showed me for the past few hours. They are certainly way stronger than your normal Metal aura that is available in this mine, so I should be able to learn a lot more from it."
Alex nodded and sat down. He began to cultivate in order to rest while the painter in front of him did the same and tried to understand the Metal Qi.
After a while, once Alex felt the mental pain subside to the point that there was none of it anymore, he began providing Metal Qi for the young man to learn from once more.
Tian Honglui did the best he could to learn what he could from the aura and went back to meditating when Alex inevitably ran out of Intent.
This happened for a while, almost 5 whole days, before the young man understood what he felt was enough.
"I think I can make my painting now," he said and brought out his paint board.
Alex opened his eyes to the side, fully rested, and looked at the young man. He quickly stood up when he realized that he was about to start making the mountain.
He took a deep breath and removed his presence as much as he could in order to not pull away the young man's focus.
Tian Honglui closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them back up, they were full of concentration. Then, the placed his brush on the canvas and drew a stroke.
