Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex logged back into the game at half-past 10. He had decided to sell another few pills at the market in front of the gate and had gotten 45 spirit stones from that sale. He had then decided to tour around the sect and look at more of the locations.

He had gone around the sect crater and looked at the different fights that were already taking place. He had once again seen that black stele, but this time he was too afraid to do anything and had simply left.

After logging out to get his lunch, he had logged back in once again. He waited for a while and only then ate the Face Changing pill. The pill entered his body and started to dissolve. Thick energy streamed out from his stomach reaching every corner of his body as he felt himself getting melted from inside out.

However, it didn't hurt at all. In fact, he felt like he could influence these melted portions. He started to think of a face to change to. The only face he knew was his own. So, his body slowly morphed into what his real-life mirrored version would look like.

His hair shriveled and shortened itself and his eyes changed color. His face started to slowly change as well. Other than that, there was no change to him. But, this was still enough to make him unrecognizable to the rest of the people.

He walked out of the house after checking that there was no one around to see him leave this exact house. He walked in broad daylight up to the sect leader's building.

Funnily enough, nobody was here to care about this at all. Most of the people were down at the sect crater fighting, as it was Friday today with unlimited challenges.

Alex had come to learn that having a higher badge gave you many benefits in the sect. Everything in the sect needed to be bought with real money. From time in the training hall or a room in the production hall. Or even the techniques in the Library. If one wanted them, they would have to pay a certain price.

But with badges, the higher the badge, the more discount they got. The badges also set an order on who gets what first. If 5 people were waiting for the same technique in the library to be returned, when it did get returned, the one with the highest badge would be allowed to get it.

Sometimes, the disciples with lower badges took forever to get a single technique. So they always looked forward to having a higher numbered badge as it meant life would be better in the sect.

The one thing that Alex found odd regarding the Tiger sect was that the disciples didn't get any form of help to start on their journey. Unlike how Hong Wu Sect gave its disciple's spirit stones and pills monthly, the Tiger sect did nothing of that sort. Every disciple was on their own.

This was also the reason why outer sect disciples and inner sect disciples went around following core disciples just so that they could give them something that would help them. It may be weapons, or techniques, or spirit stones, or even simply just the threat of their name. The disciples could use any of these things to go higher in rank.

'Did that Huo Tu guy think I would do anything for money? Or was he legitimately expecting me to get scared and give him that pill for 10 spirit stones?' he wondered.

He finally reached the sect leader's building. He had never walked in here before. Since he was asked to come secretly every night, he had always sneaked around the side instead of walking through the main hall.

He walked in through the hall and came out of the other side. He saw a few people standing around there. Aside from his master, there were 5 people standing in a group, talking to each other.

Wen Cheng saw him walking towards the group and looked at him with a confused face.

'He doesn't recognize me.' Alex chuckled to himself learning that. He walked straight to his master and bowed down to make a greeting.

"Good Afternoon, Master." As soon as he said that, a light flashed in Wen Cheng's eyes as he realized what was happening.

"Yu Ming, you are finally here. Come here, let me introduce you to the elders."

There were 2 female elders and 3 male elders in the group. Wen Cheng introduced Alex to them all. Wen Cheng unhesitatingly introduced Alex as his disciple as well. Now that nobody could see his face, he didn't care about hiding his relationship.

"Alright, let's leave. We need to reach there as soon as we can. We only have a day's worth of time. My disciple will be the one doing all the ingredients picking, so we old guys are there to protect him only."

Wen Cheng started flying simply and pulled Alex along with him. Unlike Ma Rong, he didn't care about having an artifact when flying. The high speed and the air hitting his face finally made him understand how fun flying really was.

While the speed of their flying wasn't as fast as when he was in Ma Rong's boat, it was still significantly fast. Alex knew that his master could go faster. Maybe even faster than Ma Rong could, but he didn't. Only because doing so would harm Alex.

"Where exactly are we going master?" he finally asked about the destination. While he knew they were going further into the southern forest, it seemed like his master and the elders had a destination in mind.

"Our records speak of a sacred land that we used to have. But ever since the war, most of the records were lost, and we never learned what this sacred land was. In search of the said sacred land, we found a special place in the southern forest that has a lot of different vegetation, no different from the alchemy gardens of Hong Wu Sect."

"We are going there right now."