"Huh?" Alex exclaimed. "What do you mean, master? How could you lose your skills?"
"I don't know… but I think it has something to do with my newly awakened constitution. The Qi is messing up with my instinct and the recipe. I can't seem to get stuff hot enough to do anything," Ma Rong said.
She tried controlling the fire once more. While she was successful at it, it wasn't at a speed that would help an Alchemist or an amount that was natural.
"What… should we do now, master?" Alex asked. He felt like whatever was happening was really important and didn't want his master to go through that.
"I… don't know. I might have to pour out more Qi to get used to it or see if I can somehow change my Qi back to normal before bringing it out of my body. Either way, I will need to train a lot from now on to get back to where I was, and I'm not even sure if I can ever get there," Ma Rong said.
"I would like to help too, master. Let me know if there is anything I can—"
"There's nothing you can do. Just go and practice improving the pills," Ma Rong said sternly.
"Yes, Master," Alex said immediately and walked out.
He walked down the mountain to his house and went into a private room. Finally, he logged out.
It had been hours since when he should have logged out. However, between Ma Rong's sudden waking up and going to the city lord's house, he finally got to log out at around 12 pm.
'Can I help master at all?' he wondered. Unable to come up with any sort of viable answer, he just shook his head.
He quickly freshened up and ate what he wanted. Once he felt full, he went back to the game to continue improving the mental ability pill.
He put aside his worries regarding his master's situation and fully focused on improving the pill. The trials were quite taxing and took a long time, but he improved it quite a bit.
The pill was now around 48% in harmony. While that was a lot, Alex still needed to improve to get the pill to as high as he could.
He also needed to check if the pill worked on beasts or not, so he went to the forest at night and tested them on some beasts.
Surprisingly, every beast he gave the pill to ran away within 10 seconds of eating the pill.
'So they do gain intelligence,' Alex thought when he saw that. Once he confirmed it, he fought the beasts for a while and returned.
He tried to keep up with what his master was doing during this time, but she never told him anything about what was going on.
His master was already so worried about everything, and now there was another worry placed upon her.
'I wish I could help master somehow,' he thought. However, as a self tempering realm disciple, he couldn't do anything. He wanted to just go and hand over a Heaven-grade pill, but then he wouldn't keep the freedom he currently had.
With nothing to do, he kept on improving the pill.
Over the course of the next week, he made many improvements on the pill and also worked with the nail pill on the side to improve it a little as well.
By now, the nail pill was at 52% harmony at the highest and the mental energy pill was at 51% harmony at the highest. However, he couldn't be sure at all if this was the actual harmony possible from the pill or it was just him being unable to draw out more.
Without handing the recipe over to someone better than him, it was impossible for him to tell if the problem was with the alchemist or with the recipe.
Given that both of his pills were his own made, he couldn't readily hand the recipe over to just about anyone else.
He couldn't hand it over to his master as she wasn't really any good at alchemy now. He couldn't hand it over to his friend since they weren't as good in alchemy. He couldn't hand it to the other elders just because he didn't want to hand over the recipe.
He only had 2 candidates remaining for this. One was the Grand Elder. He could ask his grandmaster to help him figure this out.
However, when he asked him for this, the grandmaster said that he wasn't free at all. With his master spending most of her time recuperating, the burden of the sect had fallen on to him and the First Elder.
So, he wasn't of much help to Alex.
So, Alex decided to go with his second choice, his Martial Uncle. However, his Martial Uncle wasn't in the sect right now. Along with the 3rd Elder and a few other elders, Lang Shun had gone to the different cities of the Crimson Empire to look for Wan Li who was still missing.
So, he wasn't of much help to Alex either.
"Sigh, I guess I can only improve by myself," Alex thought with a sigh. Heaven grade was very good, even exceptional for such pills. However, due to him making Immortal grade pills, he just didn't see them as that impressive anymore.
"I guess I will have to wait a little longer before I consume this pill then," he thought.
Finally, he no longer had to improve the pills at all and could simply focus on other things that he wanted to, namely formations.
At the end of the week, he went to meet his master in her house.
"Master, are you at home?" he called in the communication talisman. However, he got no response at all. He decided to wait for a while and only after 5 minutes did he finally get a message back.
"Yes, why?" she asked.
"I need to speak to you about something," Alex said. "Can I come over?"
"Yes."
After getting the affirmation, Alex went over to his master's house. He sent out his spiritual sense and didn't immediately find his master.
'Huh? Where is she?' he thought.
"I'm right here," Ma Rong's voice appeared from somewhere. Alex sent his spiritual sense in that direction and still couldn't see anything.
It was then he realized that he couldn't see a certain spot in the room at all. He quickly opened the door and walked in. As he has expected, Ma Rong was sitting crosslegged in that exact spot.
"Woah, master. Why can't I see you with my spiritual sense?" Alex asked.
"As I thought," Ma Rong said with a sigh. "My body constitution is getting more and more potent." Ma Rong looked at her own snow-white palms and shook her head.
"Throw an attack towards me," she said.
"Pardon? Attack?" Alex asked.
"Yes, use an attack on me," she said.
"Um… okay," Alex said. His master was super strong so he wasn't worried about hurting her. "Physical, Elemental, or Mental?"
"Do all three," Ma Rong said.
"Okay," Alex said and took out a common sword before lighting it up yellow as he filled it with metal Qi. Once it was fully glowing, he cautioned his master.
Once Ma Rong was ready, He walked close to her, and slashed his sword at her.
The sword moved down fast, but as it got close to her, it lost its energy rapidly. By the time the sword hit her, it was nothing but metal, encased in frost, falling due to the effects of gravity, and not Alex's.
"What?" Alex said in shock.
"Now try an Elemental attack," Ma Rong said.
Without hesitation, Alex punched at her using the Iron Fist punch. The yellow fist of metal energy flew at her, but as it got close to her, it started slowing down.
When it finally reached her, the energy had all but dissipated into thin air. What hit her was nothing more than a puff of air.
"That's… are you freezing the energy around you?" Alex asked.
"More accurately, my body is," Ma Rong said. "Hit me with Heaven's impact."
Alex nodded and immediately sent out an attack using his spiritual sense. His spiritual sea churned as a hefty amount of it escaped from the sea and formed a fist shape that flew towards Ma Rong.
Even as his spiritual attack flew towards her, it slowly lost its energy and in the end, nothing remained when it touched her body.
Alex was shocked that his Master's body was so strong that he couldn't even damage it at all. "You are way too strong, Master. You can easily win against anyone in a fight," he said.
"No. It's only easy against you because I'm stronger. When people around my own strength fight me, I will only have a better stance than them, not become invincible like right now."
"I don't think my body will be able to stop their attacks fast enough to be of very good use. That's just speculation though. In the end, it could certainly be that my body is strong enough to nullify attacks, but that's for later," Ma Rong said.
Alex thought for a second and said, "Oh, wait master. Can I attack once more?"
Ma Rong looked at him weirdly and said, "Sure, go ahead."
Alex firmed up his resolve and sent out a palm attack. Suddenly, yellow energy escaped out from his palm as it formed the shape of the palm itself.
It flew towards Ma Rong with great energy, but like everything else, it slowed down. However, for some reason, despite being slow, it had enough force to fly in all the way and hit Ma Rong.
Ma Rong was strong enough to handle that attack, but she was still surprised that the attack even managed to hit her. "What…" she was shocked.
She then checked the residual energy in the air that was rapidly going away. "Yang?" she asked.
"Ah yes, I thought it would work," Alex said. "Since your body is Yin, it might easily stop everything else, but I doubted it would be fast enough to stop Yang energy. Turns out I was correct."
"I also want to see how Yin energy would interact with you, but unfortunately, I don't have any yin attack skills," Alex said.
"Ah, I see. That does make sense. Good to know," Ma Rong said.
"Anyway, why did you come here in the first place?"
"Ah right," Alex said and pulled out a few pill bottles. "These are all the pills I made during the last week or two, Master. I want to sell them, so I was coming here to ask if I should sell it in the sect's alchemy shop or in the auction house," Alex asked.
"Show them to me," Ma Rong asked and checked the pills. "Hmm… are these the claw and mental ones? Sell anything less than 40% harmony in the sect and the higher ones in the auction house."
"I see," Alex said and checked his pills again. There were about 200 or so usable pills and of them, about 30 were over 40% in harmony.
'I guess that works for me,' he thought.
"Is that all?" Ma Rong asked.
"No master, there is something else I need to talk about with you," Alex said.
"Hmm… What is it?" Ma Rong asked.
"You see," Alex said. "It's been around 2 weeks since I've been in the sect, and I think it's about time I leave for Tiger sect."
"Oh, that. Right, you should do that. When will you leave?" Ma Rong asked.
"I was thinking of leaving right now actually," he said.
Ma Rong thought for a second and said, "Alright, go."
"Thank you, Master. And take care of yourself," he said. "Don't fret much if you cannot make pills again. You gained a boon and a curse at the same time."
"If you cannot make the pills, I will make them for you. I will get stronger and learn more soon, I promise, master."
Alex bowed towards Ma Rong once and walked out. Ma Rong looked towards where he went and simply smiled.
She then stood up and walked out too— she had work to do in the sect.
