The nearly 3-kilometer wide sphere of floating blood-red water had remained in the darkness of the void inside of Alex's soul space that it almost looked as though it was something made of smooth red marble instead of being liquid.
There were no fluctuations to the object, no disturbance of any sort. In a world with no gravity, it had found its shape a long time ago.
The water was also tens of thousands of kilometers away from anything else in his body, so it had remained perfectly safe until now.
However, Alex did wonder if the life energy that his Soul Space seemed to form all the time had caused any problem. He hoped not.
Alex had tried figuring out if there were ways to bring out just the blood from the bloody water, but he couldn't find any. So, he was now forced to do it the normal way.
Alex brought out Memory and made it as large as he could, which ended up being as large as his entire room, then, he filled it with the bloody water and jumped inside it, sinking to the bottom of the cauldron full of water.
Then, he absorbed all the blood aura that was inside of the water.
During the first few minutes, Alex wasn't even sure if anything was happening. It was only afterward that he felt the faintest blood aura flowing into his body and only then did he know that he was doing the right thing.
He continued absorbing, albeit very slowly due to the diluted concentration of the blood in the water, and kept it going for nearly 2 hours. By that time, he realized that he had cultivated all that he could using the blood in the water. Whatever remained, while still full of Qi, was useless for Alex's blood.
'Is should give this to the two plants,' Alex thought and took back all the water.
He refilled it after a while again and restarted again, going for 2 more hours, absorbing as much blood as he could.
Alex's blood aura was already as strong as Saint Transformation's 5th realm, so the improvement he showed was so very slow that it felt as though he was wasting his time.
But Alex knew he wasn't wasting any time with this, so he kept going. He cultivated for days in a row and didn't even manage to go through just a quarter of the entire amount of blood he had.
'I'm being limited by the size of my room,' Alex thought. While Memory had expanded to fill the entire room, it could grow to be much larger still, so Alex had to use a more spacious place.
After talking to Scarlet, he went to the dome to be in closed cultivation for a few months in total so that he could get through the massive ball of water in his soul space.
Alex cultivated nonstop for 2 more months, going through as much water as he could in the time. He absorbed over 30 thousand liters of the bloody water in a single day, each day.
And yet somehow, the amount in his soul space never seemed to end at all. He had taken in just a bit too much water in the hope of getting all the blood he would have wasted.
While he absorbed 30 thousand liters a day, the total water in his Soul space had originally been 10 billion liters. Which meant that at best, in 1 month, he could only go through a thousandth of the total water.
'This is going to take a long time,' Alex thought. 'Maybe I don't have to absorb it all.'
That was the only solution he had in this situation as unfortunate as it was.
Alex gave up on the water for some time and started absorbing the pure blood instead that he had gathered from the few beasts and people he killed while he wasn't in a frenzy just yet.
The amount of blood in Memory was barely a tenth of the total volume it could handle with its current size, and yet, the potency was off the charts.
Alex could spend another 3 months with the blood water and not absorb half as much blood aura as this small amount of blood gave.
Alex half submerged himself in the blood, ignoring the smell around him, and focused entirely on the Blood Absorption technique.
Slowly, the technique began working, and like thirsty beasts finally given water, Alex's body drank the blood aura like the sweet nectar of life itself.
There was a lot of aura to process and a lot of improvements to be made, and his body did it with gratitude.
Alex felt the improvement in his blood slowly go past the Saint Transformation 5th realm and into the 6th realm, and even move slightly past that by the time there was nothing more to be absorbed.
Alex left the cauldron and took in all the blood to feed to the plants. Then, he sat on the ground of the forest in the dome and started cultivating right there.
He had spent plenty of time absorbing blood and had finally improved, so it was time to improve his cultivation base as well to match his blood cultivation in strength.
Alex ate another beast core to cultivate. This time around, it was a core he knew he hadn't killed while he had been sane. The reason for choosing one such as that was to experiment on exactly if he was correct or not.
He wanted to see if the beast remembered him or not.
The seahorse beast that formed in Alex's mind did not recognize him at all. It was different from the first beast in that it seemed quite arrogant and much less confused, but it hadn't recognized Alex like the squid had.
"I'm dead, aren't I? How did that happen?" the Seahorse asked.
It seemed it was still aware of its own demise, just not the situation surrounding it.
"I killed you," Alex said simply.
The seahorse got angry and attacked Alex. The next instant, it was dead.
"Well that was different," he said to himself. "So it's not just impression, but their personality too. This one wasn't confused but angry. I will have to do a bit more experiments."
Alex appeared back outside and absorbed the energy of the core that now flowed through his body. It was a lot of energy from one core and he absorbed it all thoroughly, improving everything he needed to.
He cultivated the next two days with that energy and at the end of it, he felt ready to break through, although due to the side effect of the exceptional cultivation pill, he had to wait a week to cultivate again as his meridians were very stressed right then.
Alex spent the next week underwater once again, improving his blood aura just that much.
Then, when he was ready, he cultivated for the next 2 days using no external aids this time, and by the end broke through once again.
Alex had now reached Saint Soul 6th realm.
He still had around a year left before he needed to go back to the Eastern Continent, so he decided to keep going and see just how far he could go with his cultivation in that time.
