"Master!" Alex exclaimed in absolute joy as he looked up to the person in front of him. Ma Rong was sitting ahead of him wearing a dark green robe.
"Master, you're awake," he said with a large smile on his face.
Ma Rong's face which was initially a melancholic smile soon turned into a genuine, happy smile. "I see you've made it back alive. I believed you would," she said.
"Yes, Master. I got back a few days ago," Alex said.
"I heard. I woke up about 4 hours ago, and the elders told me everything," Ma Rong said. "Still, give me your own recollections of what happened," she asked.
"Oh, about that…" Alex explained everything that he could remember. There was not a single thing he left on the table, except for the figure in his spiritual sea that spewed out the yellow fog.
"I see, so it was him." Ma Rong's cold voice sounded almost ethereal. The grass she was sitting on slowly started to stop moving as they froze solid and the ones a little further away, started getting frost on them.
"Master, are you okay?" Alex asked as he stood up and walked towards Ma Rong. Suddenly, as soon as he got close to her, an intense feeling from deep within him came to the surface making him stop then and there.
His legs refused to move a single more step as his body started shaking without any hints of stopping. His eyes were wide with fear in them like he had never felt before.
To him, this felt like his world would collapse at any moment, and that he would no longer be able to live in it.
Ma Rong's eyes flashed a hint of worry when she saw him frozen in fear. She immediately controlled the anger she was feeling towards Zexi and the cold aura around her disappeared.
The frost on the surface of the grass blades disappeared and the frozen patches of grass started moving again. Finally, Alex could grab hold of himself and move.
While he knew that there was no danger, his heart still betrayed him as a deep sense of terror appeared in his mind when he saw Ma Rong a little in front of him. This wasn't to the same level as just moments before, but it was still very fearsome.
'What just happened? Why did I fear Master of all people? And why did my body not respond to the fear at all? I thought it did so with every suppression,' he thought.
"I'm sorry. I still haven't reigned in my unlocked Constitution yet so you had to feel that. It must especially be bad for you considering your body is a yang-type constitution," Ma Rong explained.
"Is… that so?" Alex thought. He felt like someone just dumped a bucket of ice-cold water on him. His body he was starting to get so confident in was actually so inferior to his master's that it froze at the slightest hint of terror from her.
'I guess that settles it then. My body is in fact only divine grade,' he thought.
"It's okay now," Ma Rong said as she walked towards him. Alex instinctively put one foot back to move but stopped himself.
'I can't get scared of my master,' he thought. Ma Rong smiled and placed her hands on his head to teach pat his head.
The moment she touched him, it felt like he had lost all control of his body and dropped to the ground. For a second, he felt his vision blur and he nearly lost everything in sight.
"W-What's wrong?" Ma Rong asked while all flustered. "Wh-What's happening to you?"
Alex finally got back to his feet and huffed. "Ma-Master, I think your body's Yin is suppressing me way too much. It might be better if you don't touch me now. Just standing near you is making me terrified," he said.
Ma Rong's hands stopped where they were and slowly folded back as a sad face appeared on her face.
Alex stood up to see tears in her eyes and realized how what he had just said came off as. "It's okay master. You will just have to learn to hold your aura in and I will be fine. Or I can just enter the True realms soon and can maybe not be so useless against your aura, haha."
Alex tried to think of ways to stop Ma Rong from feeling bad about him. "Uhh… oh yeah, Master, why did you go to the Forbidden Fields? I heard that you took a hoard of elders there too," Alex asked.
"That was… I was worried about the desert encroaching on our lands and wanted to see how much closer they had come," Ma Rong said.
"Huh? Can't you just check from afar? You should be able to see if you fly up high, right?" Alex asked.
"Yes, but I had only ever seen it from far away and thought that I would get a much better understanding of the situation if I saw what was going on up close," Ma Rong said. "Unfortunately, it turns out I should not have gone there. That place nearly put me in a coma."
"Well, it also made you quite strong now. If not from it, I don't think your body would've unlocked its constitution," Alex said.
"Sigh, I guess so," Ma Rong said and simply shook her head. "Alright, continue what you were saying about your life inside that formation."
"Ah right, so…" Alex told her that with nothing else to do inside the formation, he made a small furnace and tested the different ingredients just like she had said.
Ma Rong's eyes shone in surprise when she heard that. "So, you did learn it just like we first intended. Good," Ma Rong said as she praised him.
"How much did you learn?" she asked.
"I experimented with the different ingredients everyday master and made 9 different types of pills," he said with a proud face.
"9?" Ma Rong said in surprise. "How many of them worked?" she asked.
"Uh, 5 of them turned out to be quite a trash, 2 of them are pills I am not sure if it's worth investing my time in, and finally the last 2 are the one that's really fantastic," Alex said.
He quickly showed his nails and started explaining what the pill did. He continued explaining how many experiments he did, and what he had concluded.
"Hmm… Not bad. I think your assessment is correct. Especially about it being a permanent type pill. Besides, it seems it will benefit beasts more than it will us. We might be able to establish a business with the various beast sects to provide this pill," Ma Rong said.
Alex was surprised that she was already seeing so far into the future and was thinking of selling the pills to beast sects, while his mind was on auction still.
"What about the second one?" she asked.
Alex didn't understand the second pill fully even by himself, and definitely required Ma Rong's help in this. So, he explained everything to her as well as he could.
"Hmm… intelligence, that's a very delicate subject. I will have to check this by myself. Come," she said and flew into the air as she flew towards the swine place. Alex flew and followed right behind her.
They soon reached the swine place and Ma Rong walked to one of the swine before feeding it a pill without hesitation. The swine ate the pill with no emotion on its face.
Slowly, as Ma Rong watched, the emotion of confusion appeared in the swine's eyes. As all the different beasts gained intelligence, it looked around to see what was caging him.
"That's… I've never seen a Common Rank pill do that," Ma Rong said in surprise.
"Right, master?" Alex asked. "I was thinking the same thing. I was hoping I could increase my spiritual sea's thickness and thus increase the range of my spiritual sense. That would work right?"
Ma Rong thought for a second. "Yes, it should. In fact, the True rank pill that increases your mental energy also has Bright Soul Grass as a side ingredient. I think you accidentally found a weaker version of the pill," Ma Rong said.
"Oh wow. Really? That's quite lucky," Alex said.
"How did you learn to make new pills this easily?" Ma Rong suddenly asked.
Alex just looked at her and answered, "it's easy once you get to know the element each of the ingredients has. Then you learn the rate at which they release their energy and then you make the pills. You just put them in order and go with what would be necessary according to the state inside the cauldron,"
"Of course, you would need quite a few variations of the pill to get the harmony high, but that's it," Alex said.
Ma Rong was stunned at the level of non-nonchalance Alex had when he mentioned it all. "So, you used a lot of ingredients to experiment with and then used spiritual sense to do the rest?" Ma Rong asked.
She fell into thought as she started to realize what other opportunity the opening of her spiritual sense had brought her. 'Maybe I should go back into a few weeks' worths of secluded cultivation and try to make some new pills,' she thought.
However, now was not the time. She had just come back to being awake and couldn't immediately disappear once again. In a sense, both of Alex's masters had the same problem right now.
"You really used your advantage to its most, huh?" she said with a chuckle.
"Of course Master. If I have the things necessary to boost me in my path to become a better alchemist and I don't take it, then I would just be an idiot," he said. "I don't want to be called that again."
Ma Rong sighed. "Yeah, I guess that works for you. Just keep in check your habit of overusing ingredients as you seem to have learned. That's not really a ve— "
Ma Rong felt something in her storage vibrate just the tiniest bit. "Hm?" he thought and took out her talisman. She looked into the talisman with a spiritual sense and opened her eyes in confusion.
"What's wrong, master?" Alex asked. He wondered who contacted her this soon after her recovery just a few hours ago.
"It's Master. I don't know why though; he says there is someone there to meet me," Ma Rong said. "Come, he is asking for you too."
This time, it was Alex's turn to get confused. "Why me?" he asked.
"I don't know, but it seems to be quite important from the tone of his voice. Let's go and see," Ma Rong said and walked out of the swine hall and flew back towards the Elder's Hall.
Alex followed her close by, but a little behind since he was afraid of randomly falling from the great height if he ever came in contact with her.
They both landed in front of the Elder's Hall and walked in to find the Grand Elder waiting for them. Next to Grand Elder was an old man in a purple robe.
Ma Rong stopped and immediately bowed a little when she saw the man. "Butler Kang, it's good to see you again," Ma Rong said politely.
"Ah, Sect Leader Ma doesn't have to bow in front of this lowly me," the man in the purple robes bowed even lower than Ma Rong.
Alex looked at the interaction of the two with a hint of curiosity.
"Butler Kang has been looking for you for the past 3 days and had to be sent back due to you not being available at the time. However, since you are here now, I decided to let him talk to you," the Grand Elder said.
"I see," Ma Rong said. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience I might have caused you with my absence, Butler Kang. Please let me know why you were looking for me. I will do my best to be of help to you."
