"Hundreds? So many?" Ma Rong asked in surprise.
"Yes, the storm flew many of the yang jades in the desert over to the riverside. Thankfully, the storm was mostly concentrated in one area, so they all dropped at the same time. But that meant that I had to fight will all of those strong beasts too," Alex said.
"Right, I meant to ask you this before," Ma Rong said. " Those beasts… they weren't weak, were they?"
"No. I would say they were around Organ Tempering realm to Meridian Tempering realm in strength," Alex said.
"I see… so you are that strong now, huh?" Ma Rong said. "Alright, go back home and rest for now. I will see you tomorrow to teach you Alchemy as I promised."
"Oh, about the procedure to make True pills? Nice. I was waiting for that all week. Alright then, see you, tomorrow master, "Alex said and left.
Ma Rong watched Alex walk away and sighed as a sad face took over her. "Just when will he catch a break?" she thought.
Alex went into his house and jumped into the pond to wash once more. When he was done, he looked at the time and saw that it was only 10 pm right now.
It was still too early for him to just start cultivating, so he wondered if he should eat those Yang Jades right now.
He took one out and his body hungered for him to eat it. Suddenly, Alex remembered something.
"Oh no," he thought and immediately logged out of the game. When he was out, he felt an intense need to use the bathroom as soon as possible.
He hadn't been out of the game in over 2 days. Just under 2 days was the recommended number of hours the doctors said was good for your body, and Alex crossed it by quite a few hours easily.
Once he was out of the room, he felt hunger like he hadn't felt in a while now. He made his way to the kitchen and ate all of the leftovers that Emily cooked for him every day.
Not only that, but he also prepared some food for himself and ate those as well. Only then was his hunger finally satiated.
Once he was done, he returned back to his room and entered the game again.
Alex opened his eyes back on the courtyard where he had logged out. He once again took out a Yang Jade and looked at it.
Since his body hungered for one still, he put the yang jade in his mouth and swallowed it.
Suddenly, he felt the hot Yang Jade melt in his tongue and flow down his throat. Then, he could start seeing the notifications once more.
The numbers surprisingly started from a random point in the middle and counted upwards. Soon, his yang Purity reached 80% and stopped.
He could feel the remaining Yang in his body whittling away for some reason after it reached 80%. The Qi in his meridian got a little denser and the reduction of quantity was filled by the remaining yang Qi in the Yang Jade that he didn't get to consume.
"Just 2 more and I can reach 100%. I wonder what sort of improvement I will see when I reach 100%," Alex thought.
So, he took out another yang jade and ate it. Soon, he was once again seeing the different notifications that said that his body was purifying the Yang Qi.
After a few more minutes of pain, his Yang purity reached 90%. No extra Qi was remaining, so he could tell that he was missing some Qi that he could probably cultivate back.
Alex couldn't wait, so he took the final piece of the yang jade he needed and ate it. Immediately, he could feel the pain once again, but he was used to it now.
1%, 2%, 3%…
He patiently waited and watched as the number went up steadily.
51%, 52%, 53%…
Alex was really excited to reach 100%. He waited and waited and waited for a long time. Finally, it was coming to a close.
97%, 98%, 99%…
"Just one more," Alex thought.
100%
«Congratulations, your Yang purity had reached a 100%»
Alex felt his meridians suddenly have less Qi in them, but way more compared to previous times, but not a lot.
From what he could tell, his Qi was compressed to the amount that he could probably compete to a Mind Tempering 7th realm, or maybe even 8th realm cultivator in terms of pure Qi density.
Those cultivators still had a lot more Qi, but Alex certainly had about the same density for sure. If he was to fight the others only on Qi-based attacks, he was sure to survive easily for quite a while.
This game is quite a strong advantage in his fights against others in the Tiger sect, or even in real fights. Although, real battles had more variables than just Qi.
He waited for more notifications to pop up, but none did. He waited some more but nothing happened?
"Wait, that's it?" he thought. "But I reached 100%. Isn't something supposed to happen now?" Alex wondered. But no matter what he thought, he didn't get any answer.
"Whatever, let me try another one," he thought and pulled out another Yang Jade from his storage bag. Without hesitation, he put it in his mouth and swallowed.
Then, he just waited for the notifications. As expected, they appeared.
«Sun God's Divine Yang body disintegrates everything»
«' Yang Jade' has been consumed»
«You've gained 21,254,666 Qi»
"What?" Alex was surprised. The Yang Jade only gave him Qi, instead of giving him more Yang purity. Also, the number of Qi wasn't even that high. In the Mind Tempering realm, the number of Qi required to breakthrough was in the hundred million.
He tried eating one once more and realized that it gave a similar amount of Qi once more.
"What's going on? Am I really done with Yang purity?" Alex wondered. He was extremely disappointed by the current way things were going.
"Even as a Qi resource, this is too low of a Qi number. I can get way better results by just eating a single Mind Tempering 1st realm monster core," Alex thought.
He was utterly disappointed by the yang jades. "And here I had nearly 300 of them. What the hell did I fight such a hard battle for?" Alex started wondering.
He sighed and just sat down. "What do I do now? I was so excited even," he thought. He felt like his head would start hurting at any moment now.
Suddenly, he remembered something.
"Wait for a second… didn't…" he tried remembering as well as he could, and he could clearly remember it.
"Song Zun did use the Yang Jades to improve just his skins. Maybe I can do that too. Didn't he use a formation or something?" Alex wondered and thought back as well as he could.
"Huh?" he suddenly thought. "Wait… didn't Song Zun make a formation on the ground? He didn't use a metal plate or metal rods. He just simply made a formation on the ground."
"How did he know that? Didn't sister Xing tell me that it was a big secret that formations without metals were possible?" Alex thought.
He was getting more and more suspicious about who the person was that the Clone Song Zun belonged to. Not only did he have some strong techniques like the illusion technique, or the Concealment technique. He also had the knowledge to make formations without Qi or metal.
That was really something Alex found curious. He tried to remember what the formation looked like. From what he could remember, the formation had a certain design.
He quickly took out a random metal plate and started making strokes on it to form the formation he remembered. When he was finally done with the formation, he looked at it.
What he was looking at was definitely a True formation, but whether it was a realm formation or if he made a mistake, Alex sent out his Qi on the formation to check.
Surprisingly, despite seeing it a single time, he was able to properly recreate the formation on the metal plate, and a working one at that.
'Well, I don't know what it does, or what I should draw it on,' Alex thought. He took his chance and drew the formation on the ground as Song Zun did. He even dropped Yang jades in the middle, in almost the same way as he had found it.
Still, nothing happened. In the end, he was left with nothing but a desire to find out more. He quickly took back all the Yang jades.
"Sigh, I should just cultivate for the night now," he thought and sat on the grass. He called out Pearl and talked with him for a bit before starting cultivation.
Soon, Alex was once again feeling pain all over his body. He then closed his eyes and soon he fell asleep once more.
When he woke up, it was early in the morning, and the sun had just come up from the east.
Alex felt his storage bag vibrate a little. He stopped Pearl from cultivating any further and sent him back into his beast space.
Suddenly, Alex could feel something that he couldn't before at all. His eyes widened as he experienced this feeling in his body for the first time.
"Holy Shit!" he called out in absolute shock. After all, he hadn't been expecting this at all.
"Nearly 5% of my total Qi has fully turned to True QI."
