Alex slowly opened his drowsy eyes as he felt something wet around his body. "What?" he asked through his sleep as tried to stand up. Suddenly, his leg slipped on something as he submerged into the liquid once more.
He was now underwater and desperately tried to get back up. Once he came out of the water, he was fully awake. He immediately looked around, sending his spiritual sense to look at the different things.
He found himself in a small room with a small pond-like bath inside of it. "Where…" he looked around confused.
Suddenly, the door to the room opened and Wen Cheng walked in. "Oh thank god it's all clean now," he said as he walked in.
"Master, where am I?" he asked. He was still trying to recollect what the last thing that happened was. Only then did he finally remember the unbearable pain he had to go through once more.
He shuddered as he remembered the pain and asked, "Why didn't you stop Pearl master? It hurts so much." He actually felt like crying from all the memory of the pain.
Wen Cheng looked a little guilty as he said, "Get out of the bath and change into these clothes here." He brought out a set of inner sect robes and pants.
He also took out a bunch of storage bags and kept them on the robe. "You have quite a few storage bags. Do alchemists always need so many?"
Alex was surprised when he saw that. 'Did he check inside?' He was worried his master would find all the ingredients and talismans he found from the corpse. He didn't want to explain that right now.
Alex quickly walked out of the clean bath and changed into his robes. Following Wen Cheng, he walked out of the room.
"I had to change the bath 3 times because of how much filth was on your body." Wen Cheng's face seemed disgusted at the thought of this filth.
Alex got surprised a little. 'It can't be that I sh*t myself due to all the pain, can it?' he started to fear this thought more than anything now.
Wen Cheng walked out of the building, back into the training hall with Alex in tow. Alex looked at the outside and was surprised. 'It's already day?'. He quickly checked the time and was stunned to find out that it was past 10 am already.
"What?" he shouted out loud.
"What's wrong?" Wen Cheng looked back.
"Oh, nothing master. I was just surprised at how late it was."
"Yes, you were unconscious for quite a while. I was about to go get a healer if you didn't wake up in the next 2 hours."
Only after entering the training hall did Wen Cheng finally stop. "Sigh. Tell me, how does it feel right now."
"Feel? I feel fine right now," Alex answered as he wondered if he had a fever or something when he was unconscious.
"No, I mean your body. How does your body feel after going through such a long tempering process and an entire mortal cleansing." Wen Cheng seemed eager to find out just how much his disciple's body had changed.
Finally understanding his master's questions, Alex moved around his arms and shoulders around trying to feel them. "Oh," he sounded surprised. He jumped a bit here and there, all while his eyes were wide.
"It feels so much better master. Almost like I lost half my body weight or something. I feel so light." His words couldn't explain how he was feeling right now. "Is this because of body tempering too, master?"
"I expected so, and no, it's not because of the body tempering. It kind of is, but it's mostly due to Mortal Cleansing."
Alex's face got confused when he heard that. "Mortal cleansing? What's that master?" he tried to remember if he had ever heard that word before, but he couldn't remember. Not even his master had taught him that when she gave him a general lesson on everything.
"It's no surprise you haven't heard of it. In fact, I would be more surprised if you had. Mortal cleansing is a very rare occurrence where one's body discards all of its unwanted filth and leaves you with a pristine body that is prime for cultivation."
Alex asked, "Have you gone through it as well master?"
"Me? No. Like I said it's very rare and you can only do this if you find… some sort of fruit, that I do not know the name of. It's said that only if you eat this fruit can you go through mortal cleansing. However, it seems that is not just the way. It seems your cat can somehow help you as well."
"What exactly does mortal cleansing help me for, master?" Alex was still a little confused.
"You remember how I said that self tempering helped your body store more Qi and thus progress in terms of cultivation?" Wen Cheng asked, to which Alex nodded. "Similarly, Mortal Cleansing also removes your body of everything not required for cultivation and leaves you with only that which is required to reach for immortality, the final destination of a Cultivator. Thus it also improves your bottlenecks for cultivation."
"Hmm… Does this mean I can store more Qi in my body now, Master?" he asked.
"Sort of, yes. But it's more so that your body can now use Qi more efficiently than before. Try using a technique, and see how much easier it is."
Alex did as asked and circulated his Qi to use the Jade Skin technique. As soon as he started, his body produced textures around his skin that made him look like he was made up of jade.
"Oh wow, it took less than half the time it normally takes to use it." His surprised voice gave all the answers Wen Cheng required. He nodded a bit and said,
"Go and check how strong you've become in the actual Training Hall. Also, since you've become quite strong, reach as high as you can by tonight. I want to see you with at least a badge of number 120."
