Alex logged back into the game. He was still unsure of what he was to do, what he was to choose. So, he didn't choose at all, at least not right now.
He walked out of his room and went into the courtyard. He looked at the water and remembered that he hadn't taken a bath in a while.
Cultivators didn't need to eat, drink, or take a bath. However, Alex was a human too in the real world. Sweat and dirt always made him take a bath there. That was the same here as well.
Instinct and habit were hard to change when you continued doing the thing you needed to change.
Alex took off his robes and jumped into the water, going deep underwater. He opened his eyes and sat on the bottom of the pond. He felt at peace.
If I never leave, I will never have to make that choice, Alex thought. He really didn't want to make the choice. It just wasn't fair to him.
But that was life and he understood it. Nothing was fair in life. Sometimes, you just had to push yourself through the unfairness and come out on the other side, hopefully not losing yourself in the process.
Alex walked out of the pond after feeling cleaner than he was and used his aura to dry off the rest of the water.
He redressed and felt something buzzing.
"Hmm."
He felt the storage pouch in his robe and saw that one of them was buzzing. He looked into it and found out that he was being messaged by his master.
Come to my place when you're done cultivating, she said.
Alex chuckled a little. He couldn't cultivate even if he wanted to. "I should ask if she had any good cultivation methods. She uses one too, right?" Alex thought.
He made his way out of his house and went to his master's place. He let go of his spiritual sense and was surprised to find his master in the alchemy room.
He wasn't surprised that she was in the alchemy room, but rather that he was able to find her at all.
"Weird," he thought as he made his way to the alchemy room.
He entered through the doorway and found his master making some pills at the moment. He decided to wait. A few minutes later, Ma Rong was finally done with the pill and removed it from her cauldron.
She placed the pill in a pill tester and waited. 41%.
Alex hadn't seen the ingredients, so he didn't know what pill she had made. But, whatever it was, 41% was a good harmony for a pill.
"What pill was that master?" he asked as he finally went in and sat on the other side of the cauldron.
"It's a Spirit Reed pill," Ma Rong said.
"A Spirit Reed pill? What's does it do?" he asked.
"It helps a True realm cultivator improve their Qi output by a significant amount. With this one being 41%, this should help increase their Qi output by… something like 10% I guess," she said.
"Woah, if people can increase the amount of Qi they can produce at once, then they would be quite strong for a limited time, won't they?" Alex asked.
"That's the point of the pill," Ma Rong said.
Alex nodded. His own mortal cleansing worked somehow like that. It made the movement of the Qi in his body faster and thus he could bring more of them out at once.
That was one of the reasons why he could fight people with higher cultivation realm compared to him. It was just one of the reasons, but a reason nonetheless.
Suddenly Alex realized something. "Wait, Master did you get a handle on your constitution already?" Alex asked. The fact that she could create a true pill at such a high harmony, when the last time he saw her, she was much worse at even creating Common pills.
This meant that between the time he had gone and come back, she had already fixed, or at the very least improved her situation.
"Yes, I have got a hold of my constitution," Ma Rong said with a smile. "It took a bit of effort, but it wasn't in vain."
"Great!" Alex exclaimed. He was truly happy for his master. "How did you achieve that? As far as I know, your Yin energy was truly very strong. Even stronger than my yang energy."
"I did what I thought was right. Since my Yin was going out of control, I used the Yang to help me suppress it," she said.
"You used… yang to suppress it?" Alex said with a confused face. "How does that work? I took away all the Yang stones, so where did you get the Yang from?"
"Did you forget that the whole of the Forbidden Fields is covered in Yang energy? I went there every morning to calm my Yin energy so that I could learn to control it using external force," she said.
"What?" Alex's face grew pale. "Master, that's so dangerous. What if something like last time happened and you fell unconscious for days?"
"I… I worried about that too, but I had to do what I did. That was the only way to control my constitution. Fortunately, it worked," she said.
"Thank god, it did. What would we do if you fainted again," Alex said worriedly. "Just seeing you unconscious last time was so worrying. Please don't do something so reckless again."
Ma Rong smiled when she heard that. To hear her own disciple be worried about her, She felt accomplished as a master.
"Alright, stop talking about that. That's not what I called you here for," Ma Rong said.
"Right, what did you call me here for?" Alex asked.
"I want to see how you've improved. I know I have already taught you the most I can, but there may still be something left to teach, depending on how you do today," she said.
"Alright," Alex said. "What do you want me to make?"
Ma Rong thought for a moment and brought out a pill recipe. Alex took the recipe and read it.
In an instant, the knowledge was imprinted onto his mind, and with the slightest recall, he could tell the recipe by heart and instinct.
"You want me to make the Spirit Reed pill?" He asked. He cocked his head as he read through the ingredients and cross-referenced them with what he had.
"Take your time, learn the recipe and see how you handle it," she said.
"It's fine," Alex said. "But I'm missing the False Indigo flower petals, Feather Reed grassroots, and Crested Iris's leaves."
"Oh, don't worry about the ingredients, I have 3 sets," she said and brought one of the sets.
Alex took the set and looked at it. As he did, information such as name, age, and energy constitution flowed out of his mind. It was honestly surreal how the information he had never learned before kept popping up in his head.
Ma Rong took away her cauldron and Alex put his cauldron upon the fire. After a significant time had passed, he started making the pill.
He started with the Snapdragon tendrils and worked with them in the cauldron. Once the powder was formed and the Earth energy released, he put in the second ingredient, the Crested Iris's leaves.
Yarrow seeds, Jade Horse's tail hair, Flame lizard's teeth, Feather Reed grassroots, Verbena thorns, False Indigo flower petals, and finally Million Gold leaves.
Alex put in the ingredients in that order and followed the recipe he had just learned the best he could. He made some mistakes here and there, he could tell what they were.
However, he was confident that the mistakes weren't big enough to have much impact on the pill that was created.
What worried Alex the most however was that his Qi wasn't strong enough to completely handle these energies.
He was still only in the 1st True disciple realm. While his Qi might be equivalent to someone in the 4th True disciple realm, that was still not strong enough to fully handle the pill's energy, or at least handle it enough to completely guide it into the pill he was going to form soon.
He did his best and thankfully, the pill-splitting Qi did not escape out of him. He struggled and guided the energy back into his newly formed powder sphere and waited for as much of it to seep into it.
It was the same all the time. The True pill's energy refused to go in without much 'persuasion'.
The pill finally formed and Alex picked it out. Ma Rong presented him with the pill tester to put the pill in it.
Alex didn't need it, but he still put it in there for her sake. He waited for the pill tester to reveal the result.
31%
Ma Rong's eyes went wide in shock. She was so stunned that she nearly dropped the pill tester. Alex caught her trembling hands before she could do any damage.
"Master?" Alex called her.
"31%… how did you?" she asked. "Have you learned this recipe before? Have you made this pill before?" she was started to get suspicious.
"No, Master. It's thanks to my eidetic memory, that's all," Alex tried to lie.
Ma Rong didn't buy it at all. After all, she had the same thing too, and she couldn't make such great pills on the first try. However, there just wasn't any other explanation.
In the end, she had to accept that her disciple was gifted in ways she was not and that he made the pill on his first try.
This was very scary for her. Soon, she thought, he wouldn't even need her anymore.
