It hadn't taken Alex very long to realize that understanding the composition and structure of pills was not an endeavor he could take on alone. He absolutely needed help from his master.
So, he started focusing his time on other things such as finding new pill recipes using energy alone. Most people would take ages to do this, but thanks to his Spiritual sense, Alex could easily recognize the strength and type of the energy and thus quite easily predict what would happen with the energy.
Still, the energy got harder and harder to predict as more and more energy was added on and he definitely broke quite a few cauldrons.
That didn't stop him from progressing in his journey as an alchemist very fast. By the time he would leave this formation, he would easily become a Common Heaven grade alchemist.
Alex fought with Pearl who was now in the 7th realm of the Organ tempering realm. That also meant that Alex himself was in the Organ Tempering realm as a body cultivator.
Once Pearl's cultivation realm increased, the pain that he had almost forgotten from the body cultivation also returned. The only reason that the pain had been manageable was that his body was in the same realm as Pearl. Once that changed, the intensity of the pain changed along with that.
His own cultivation had also increased by quite a lot in nearly 2 weeks after entering the Meridian realm. He had already reached the 5th realm of Meridian Tempering realm.
The only reason he wasn't higher than that was that he was completely out of monster cores to eat, and normal pills didn't give him a lot of Qi.
Still, after a few more days of making pills and eating them, he would likely enter the 6th realm of Meridian Tempering. At that point, he would be as strong as an expert in the 1st Realm of Mind Tempering.
The one thing that disappointed Alex more than it should have was that his training in sword did not give him the same amount of improvement as he would've wished for it too.
The training was good and all, but he needed actual opponents if he wanted to improve at using swords. As such he needed to wait until the formations opened for him to see visible improvement in swords now.
That wasn't to say that he was at it. In fact, he was most likely better than a lot of cultivators that used swords. However, when comparing that to actual cultivators that had lived their lives by their weapon and now had intent and Qi, he fell short.
"I need to go away for a few days, take care of yourself, okay buddy?" Alex said.
"Meow," Pearl said as the word 'understand' sounded inside Alex's head. Pearl was getting close at using the correct words, he just needed a little more training.
"Goodbye," Alex said and logged out.
He got out of his capsule and went to the kitchen early in the morning to eat. As usual, the girls were there already and they started eating their meal.
Once done, Alex and Hannah went back to their rooms to get ready. Today was the day Alex was going back to his home for the first time in over 3 months.
He quickly got ready and walked out with a bag. Hannah too got down from her room with a suitcase.
"Take care of the house while we're gone. We'll bring you back something from the farm on Sunday," Hannah said and waved.
"See you later," Alex said and turned around.
"Wait," Emily said and walked up to Alex before giving him a kiss on the cheeks. "Now you can go."
"Hey, where's mine?" Hannah asked with a voice that sounded like she was extremely wronged.
"Take me out on a few dates and I will maybe consider giving you one too," Emily said.
Hannah chuckled and waved before walking out of the apartment. Alex followed her and went down to the parking lot.
"Can't we just take the train?" Alex asked.
"Of course not. What's the point of having a license and a car if you're not going to drive?" Hannah said. "It's just a 4 hours ride, it'll be fine."
Alex sighed and loaded up the bags before getting in the passenger seat. Hannah pulled the car out of the parking lot and joined the road.
Hannah drove through the Oakleaf city until they were out of it and into the more suburban area. While they were out of the city, the land they were on was still called Oakleaf City.
After the warring phase, the people wanted to name places based on something that wouldn't align to any side, so they had started naming them off of what tree was found most in what area.
The land that had the Oak trees the most was called Oakleaf city. The main city that was made inside there was also called the same.
In less than an hour, they would cross the border of the city full of Oaks, and enter the city full of Maples, the Mapleleaf city, Alex's home city.
Hannah had entered the highway and was speeding through at a comfortable rate. After an hour and a half, they reached the outside of Mapleleaf city's main city which was also called Mapleleaf City.
They needed to take the outer highway to go past it as going through the inner busy roads would take them forever.
Hannah stopped at a charging station where she charged her car for 15 minutes or so until it was full again. This would give her enough juice for the next 8 hours of driving.
This time, Alex took the wheel and drove past Maple leaf city for the next two hours.
"Oh, we are here," he said and looked around. He was inside a city that was quite urban but not as much as the other cities. He drove based on the way he remembered now and made his way to a train station.
He safely parked in the shade and walked into the train station with Hannah.
