Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"Are you going to request the beasts to give me their blood?" Alex asked.

"That's exactly what I thought of," Bai Jingshen said. "Even if you get just a cup of blood from a single beast, together with thousands of beasts, wouldn't that be a lot of blood to improve your own?"

"It would," Alex said as he thought about it. "Not only my blood, but I can improve my cultivation base with it as well."

"Cultivation base?" Bai Jingshen was surprised. "How exactly?"

"My Blood Absorption technique allows for one of two things. I can either improve my blood aura to make it stronger, or I can improve my cultivation base," Alex said. "Depending on how weak my blood has become, I will have to go with one of the two."

"Hmm, then it seems I will have to hurry up," Bai Jingshen said. "How did you learn to use blood aura though, I'm very curious. Actually, I'm curious about everything that happened in my absence. Tell it all to me."

Alex nodded and spoke of what he remembered. He went through the story of his past and with each new event, Bai Jingshen and Yao Jia reacted as if they were watching a play of some sort.

Not even Bai Jingshen could see some of the twists and turns coming and was surprised to hear about it all.

"No wonder you reached the different continents," Bai Jingshen spoke softly. "I can't tell if you got lucky or unlucky, having to leave behind one land and go to a new one each time."

"It's pretty unlucky at the moment, but overall, it's quite lucky, I suppose," Alex said.

"It helped you more than it harmed you, but the same couldn't be said of Pearl," Bai Jingshen said. "But it should be alright once he evolves now."

Alex nodded. The speed at which Pearl evolved all depended on Pearl himself, so there was nothing for him to do either. All he could do was hope and pray that he was successful.

"So you actually did end up learning the Dao of Technique, huh?" Bai Jingshen asked. "It's a very hard dao to grasp, and you somehow did it. I'm impressed."

"You have that dao too, don't you Brother Shen?" Alex asked.

"Of course, but it took me thousands of years before I learned it," Bai Jingshen said. "You haven't even lived a century, so it is truly very impressive."

Alex nodded. "I could only do it because you told me such a dao even existed. Had I not known about it, I could never have learned it. Without your help, I wouldn't even know that Intent was necessary to use techniques at all," he said.

"That's enough humbleness from you. Everyone knows about this stuff, but not everyone can learn it. Just take the praise when I'm giving it to you," Bai Jingshen said with an annoyed voice.

Alex chuckled a bit. "By the way, brother Shen, I'm a little curious about your journey too. How was it on Earth? When did you come back? I hope you can tell at least something," he said.

"My journey, huh? It was quite fascinating, to say the least, but mostly because the world itself was in a very fascinating state," Bai Jingshen said. He went on to explain his time on Earth as well as the weird things he saw there.

Stuff like Mana and people's awakening powers were something he hadn't come across before and he explained it with great enthusiasm.

Alex and Scarlet were surprised to hear that there were beings there that could easily destroy every single god that lived inside of this world without any effort.

"Are we safe?" Alex asked. "Can't they just come in?"

"No one has the power to travel in between the two universes, except for people like my master who are rare to the point that almost no one else will ever come in," Bai Jingshen explained. "Also, according to my master, the two universes have drifted apart, so even he will have to go through a great amount of trouble to make it here again."

"Not to mention, because of the time difference, you will be hundreds of thousands of years old before someone else like that comes through again," Bai Jingshen explained.

He continued his story, explaining how a part of Earth was destroyed, all of its people gone. Those were the people that had appeared in the Central continent all those years ago and were Alex's ancestors.

"I came as soon as I could after helping everyone, but even then it was too late," he said. "Over 600 years had already passed by the time I had arrived back here. When I did, I saw that everything was as good as it could be and I wasn't needed."

"I met up with the senior after that and talked with him for a bit. To be honest, I hated him quite a bit for what he did to your people, still do. Forcing them all to cultivate is one thing, baiting them into doing so without them even knowing what cultivation even is even worse."

Alex couldn't disagree. He hadn't forgiven the senior for what he had. He wasn't sure he ever could. However, as a person who was still so very weak, he couldn't even show the entirety of his hatred.

"But I suppose you can empathize with him," he said. "You must've been desperate to go back home when you were stuck somewhere as well, weren't you?"

Alex sighed when he heard that. "I can't deny that," he said.

"Anyway, to continue my story, I talked with the senior for a bit and understood what was going on," Bai Jingshen said. "I can't help but regret coming here a little too late though. Had I left Earth even just a few minutes earlier, I probably could've come here in time to stop Ren Xiao from being targeted by Heavenly Judgment, or maybe stop my granddaughter from dying."

"Once I came and found her wounded, I helped her a bit and left to find Pearl. I was going to take him away from you, but then… I realized at that time, I sensed the aura from you. Not only did you have the White Tiger's bloodline which I wanted to know how I also sensed some sort of familiarity toward you that ran blood deep."

"I could tell it came from my own bloodline, one that is no different from the first White Tiger, so I waited. Soon enough, I came to understand that you were the one that my master is waiting for," Bai Jingshen said.

"Are you sure you're okay with that information being public?" Alex asked. "The one about your bloodline."

"Uhh… it doesn't matter," Bai Jingshen said. "It's already public anyway."

"Really?" Scarlet asked. "And here I thought I was going to bring some juicy information back to my family."

Bai Jingshen laughed a bit. "No, they know already. I might have gone a bit overboard this time around so that I could come back. There is no one in the land of the Blessed Sun that does not know what has happened."

"Land of the Blessed Sun, you mentioned that a long time ago," Alex said. "That's your home, right?"

"It's the realm we come from," Bai Jingshen said. "It's a realm of beasts with very few humans living in it. We remain outside of humans or demons, and don't get into conflict with either if we can help it."

"Don't worry, I will take you there when it's time for me to leave," Scarlet said.

Alex said nothing.

"Oh right, do you really not know when Tianchui died?" Scarlet asked. "Not even a hint?"

"No, I went to check on everyone a few years after I came back. I could see the tortoise was hurt, I knew the snake was hurt, and I saw you reverting back to an egg."

"But I couldn't sense the dragon at all. On top of that, I couldn't enter the continent either," Bai Jingshen said. "I was positive he was dead, but it wasn't until I went back and found out that he had never left the realm that I could be confident about it. As for when he died, we will have to ask someone from the Eastern Continent."

"He couldn't have died right after fighting the Godkiller, right?" Scarlet asked. "I hear he came here to announce your death to your wives and subordinates."

"Wait for a second," Alex thought. "How could he come here if you weren't here? Shouldn't your oaths disallow that?"

"It can, because when I left, I had made my first wife the ruler of this land, just like Scarlet did for you. Because of that, the Dragon could come here since a ruler was still on this land," Bai Jingshen said. "I can come to the Southern Continent too in Scarlet's absence, as long as you are there now."

"I see," Alex thought. "Wait, then shouldn't you be able to go to the Eastern Continent too? Since the Dragon Emperor is there?"

"No, it's a little different there. Unlike you or my wife, the Dragon Emperor doesn't hold direct authority from the Azure Dragons to rule the Eastern Continent," Bai Jingshen said.

"Only the first Dragon Emperor had the authority," Scarlet explained. "Everyone after that does not."

"I see," Alex said. "Do you guys happen to know why the first Dragon Emperor held the authority? Was the Azure Dragon tired of ruling and passed the trouble along to others as she did with me?"

"No," Scarlet said. "I believe the reason why the first Dragon Emperor was allowed to rule despite the Azure Dragon's presence is that he was the son of the Azure Dragon that was the ruler back then."