Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex punched a metal puppet as hard as he could and watched it say the words 'True King 7th realm'.

"Finally," Alex thought as he checked his left arm.

When his arm had come back, Alex had been too excited to worry about anything. Then, for an entire month, he went on a testing spree where he ended up figuring out that revealing the recipe was a really bad idea.

Aside from that, he had also realized that his arm that came back wasn't very high in body cultivation as the rest of his body.

While it was in the True realm in terms of strength, it was in the lower end of the True Realm. So, for another month, Alex spent his time cultivating his left arm along with Pearl.

At the same time, he also prepared for his journey to the Icy Hell by making many different pills, talismans, and formations.

When Qin Shan found out he was going there, he was beyond furious, saying that this was a very quick way to kill himself.

The Icy Hell was well known amongst the upper Echelon of the Luminance empire as being one of the more unapproachable locations on the continent.

That, and the secret realm that lied to the north. Compared to the Icy Hell, the Poison Swamp was tame to most people.

His mother started worrying after her master told her the truth and soon she started telling Alex not to leave.

It took him a rather long time to explain to her why he needed to do this. Even then, she was very worried about him.

"I will keep Pearl here then," Helen said to Alex as he got ready to leave.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes, he will tell me if something bad happens to you. If I get any sort of information as such, I will bring the whole empire to look for you," Helen said.

"Okay, if you say so," Alex said. "Alright, I will leave now mother."

"Take care, and make sure to message me from time to time," Helen said.

Alex left.

It was late afternoon when Alex flew southeast where the Icy Hell domain was.

Since he was going to fly above the eastern mountain ranges that were full of beasts that would want to attack him, Alex concealed his aura to be less noticeable.

Saint Realm beasts would find him if they were more or less alert, but since they had no reason to do so, there wasn't any need to worry for Alex.

Night fell soon and the moon rose to the sky. The bright, spotless moon shined brighter than the stars around it.

Countless mountains went past Alex, but he kept on flying. The night was mostly quiet, but he could hear roars and other beastly noises from down below from time to time.

Soon, the sun came up and he could feel the heat on his body. However, the cold air around him never left.

Even as the sun rose higher in the sky, the air was continuously colder and colder.

'I'm here, aren't I?' Alex thought as he started seeing the snowcapped mountains. He was in the region where the Icy Hell was. The Icy Hell itself however wasn't here yet.

So, Alex flew on for much longer until he started seeing snow everywhere.

At that point, it started getting so cold that his flying boat started to have ice forming all around it.

'Time to get down then,' Alex thought as he took back the ship and flew down from the sky.

As he landed on half a meter deep snow, Alex immediately spread out his nearly 200-meter wide Spiritual sense and started looking for the main thing he was here for.

Yin treasures.

According to the princess, this was where many of the Yin treasures originated from, including the drop of yin water that she had given him to temporarily get rid of the yang in his body.

In the 400-meter diameter of the circle that was his Spiritual sense, Alex didn't find any treasures, so he started walking further ahead.

Perhaps due to the lack of sun because of the forever-covered snow land, there weren't many plants in general, let alone ones that were alchemy ingredients.

Still, he had heard about Yin treasures growing here so he could only continue forward.

As he was walking, Alex felt light thumps on the ground coming from up ahead. 'What's that?' he wondered and slowly climbed up the shallow mountain.

When he was at the top, he saw a giant bear of white fur and icy blue body stand on a pool of blood-red snow and the carcass of… something.

It ate the dead body with its now bloody snout and then suddenly turned towards Alex.

Alex feared it a bit at first, but then he noticed that the bear was on the verge of entering the True Emperor realm.

'I have nothing to worry about,' he thought and ignored the bear, but the bear didn't ignore him.

Suddenly, it charged through the snow, kicking it everywhere, and lunged at Alex.

Alex suddenly made a fist with his left hand and used his Qi as well. Then, as soon as the bear was close to him, he punched it directly on the side of its snout.

The heavy bear was suddenly sent back as it skidded on the snow, revealing the barren ground underneath.

"You want more?" Alex asked as he was surprised at how strong he was even when he was holding back.

The bear looked at him with fearful eyes and suddenly ran away.

'That felt good,' Alex thought and turned around to walk deeper into the cold. Soon, the cold was starting to get to him. Not in the same way any other cultivator would feel, however. He was just getting uncomfortable.

At that point, Alex let his yang aura radiate out of him as there were no more reasons to hold it back.

Alex got deeper into the cold, but thanks to his Yang aura, he felt nothing. He continued searching for Yin ingredients but they were really hard to come by.

In the 4 hours he had been here already, he had barely managed to find a single yin flower, and that too wasn't of a very high rank.

So, he could only go deeper.

In the next 6 hours, Alex found 2 more ingredients, neither of which were particularly good.

To him, an ingredient that wasn't at least a pseudo-Saint rank was now useless. So, even as night fell once again, Alex needed to get deeper into the cold.

Around 4 hours in, Alex found a tree that was on Yin energy. While it wasn't the best quality, he decided to gather the ingredient just in case.

However, before he did so, he noticed something. Hidden below the snow under the tree was a snow fox that was waiting for him to approach.

Its body was so easily camouflaged into the snow that Alex nearly didn't notice it. Alex then sensed the beast's cultivation base and realized it was a True Emperor beast.

But of course, it wasn't very strong, so Alex was ready to fight it. He acted like he didn't notice the fox and got closer.

Suddenly, the beast lunged at him and Alex punched the fox. However, even as his fist reached the snow fox, he realized something was wrong.

Stopping mid-attack, Alex immediately jumped to the side and rolled on the snow. Where he had been previously, now there was a snow fox with its fangs baring at him.

The fox that had lunged at him was nowhere to be seen or sensed. If not for him sensing the fox's attack on his leg, he wouldn't have dodged the attack.

'What was that?' he wondered. 'A clone? No, an illusion? How did it manage to create an illusion that seemed so real to my spiritual sense as well?'

As Alex asked that, the beast suddenly split into two. Alex knew one of these two foxes was fake, but he couldn't tell which one was it.

"Two can play at this game."

Alex's body blurred for a bit as a Yang clone of his appeared next to him. He stood side by side and got ready to fight.

Since he was going to fight a beast, he decided to win at its own game and dropped to the ground.

Claws appeared from his hand as his metal energy of his went to work.

"Come!"

Alex suddenly dashed forward as a tiger did. At the same time, his yang clone did so too and the both of them looked like 2 fighters fighting against two foxes.

Alex slashed at the snow fox, but his hand passed through. At the same time, the snow fox also went through the fake Alex and realized it had been duped.

Alex quickly turned to the real fox and lunged at it, but suddenly the fox cried out loudly.

"Awoooo!'

Alex didn't understand what it was doing until he felt his earrings buzz a little. The fox was using a mental attack and his earring easily stopped it.

At the same time, Alex swung his two claws at the fox and tore off a chunk from its right side.

The beast tried to create an illusion again, but it was in too much pain to do so.

So, Alex took pity on the beast and quickly killed it to keep it from being in such pain.

Once the fox was dead, Alex collected its material and went over to the tree. There he took the Yin treasure from it and went on his way.