Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The Yang section of the Boundless Enlightenment Domain did not have as many customers as it would be normal for anyone trying to learn a Dao.

Due to the number of people that had a Yang or Yin spiritual root being very low compared to the other spirit veins, it was normal for there to not be that many people in this section or the Yin section.

Alex visited the other regions of the Yang section, viewing the many different painting and objects that helped with enlightenment.

He saw a painting of a landscape with beams of light peering through the clouds. The golden beams of light illuminated the painting to the point that the dark room the painting was kept in was brightly illuminated as well.

Alex was surprised how this was possible at all. He tried to stay and learn some more, but he was forced to leave after many hours of staying without gaining any enlightenment from it.

He moved on to another section and found a rock that looked like a lady. Alex couldn't tell just what was happening when he first saw it, but after viewing it for long enough, he learned just enough from it to be able to tell that someone had created an illusion of a girl and pasted it onto the rock.

"Yang illusions?" he wondered. He had his own Yang clones, which were nothing more than illusions as well. If he understood how that worked, could he figure out this Dao by any chance?

Alex then went to a painting of a man on his deathbed. However, no matter who looked at the painting, they all had a single thought.

This man was not going to die today.

The Dao of Vitality that was used to create the painting was strong enough that it was affecting even people that didn't have Yang spiritual roots.

Alex stayed there for a long time to try and learn something, but he couldn't gain much either. However, compared to the other places, this had the most improvement of all.

Alex spent nearly 3 days going around the Yang section, trying to learn what he could from there. Within those 3 days, he learned as much as he could. If he had more days, he could have probably learned more, but the amount he would've learned then wouldn't have mattered much.

With only a month to stay here, he didn't have much time at all and instead had to go look around the region.

The next one after the Yang region was the Fire region.

Alex looked around there for a while to just see how the Dao was being provided and after seeing what he could, he left.

Having learned the True Fire Dao, there wasn't much for him to learn at all.

Next up was the Metal region.

The metal region was the one that Alex was looking forward to the most. He had already learned the Dao of Metal, the Dao of Sharpness, the Dao of Cutting, and the Dao of Malleability.

He wasn't aware of how many more Daos he had to learn in the Metal category, so he was quite excited here.

The first painting depicted the Dao of Metal and there wasn't much he could gain from it. He moved to the second one and it depicted the Dao of cutting, as a man cut a mountain in half in the painting.

Alex moved on to the third one and paused because this was the first unique one he came across.

He paused for a moment, wondering what he was looking at.

The third painting depicted a simple image of a sky with clouds, but there was something wrong with the image. He couldn't place his hand on it, but he could tell that something weird was going on with the pic.

He thought for a moment and continued watching silently, along with the many other people that were there as well.

Alex could feel the Intent in the painting and let it affect him. He tried to understand the Intent but it was difficult for him. There was something about the painting that he had still not managed to figure out.

He kept staring at the image for a bit before he thought he saw something. He stared more intently and a few minutes later realized what he was looking at.

'Ahhh!' he thought. 'It's not the image of a sky at all. It's the image of a lake or a pool of water.'

What he had been looking at was not a painting of a sky, but rather a reflection of a sky.

'The Dao of Reflection,' he thought. That was the same Dao that Elder Yao was familiar with. He remembered the young man from her clan using that dao in their fight, reflecting all attacks back to him.

'This is a strong Dao,' he thought.

He tried to understand the Dao now that he knew what he was looking at, but that didn't help at all. Realizing that it wasn't helpful at all, Alex sighed and left for another section.

The True Metal Dao wasn't low on the number of Dao at all. Aside from the ones he knew, there were various others like the Dao of Rust, the Dao of Magnetism, as well as a weird one known as the Dao of Alloy.

However, none of them came close to affecting Alex as the next one did.

The next object was not a painting. However, it was a piece of art.

A figure of a beast stood on top of a platform. The body of the beast was made entirely with a single thread of metal that was turned and twisted into various shapes to make the single giant statue of the beast.

Alex quickly realized that this was done to show the property that metals had where they could be made as thin as one wanted, and they would still be strong without breaking apart as any other material would.

He was quite familiar with this property of metals. Having become an Artifact forger, there were many times when he needed thin strings of metal to tie something or to form the structure for something.

He looked at the art piece in front of him and let its aura affect him. At the same time, he closed his eyes and thought of the numerous times he had done this with the metals.

As time went on, Alex stepped deeper and deeper into the mysteries. At some point, he stopped.

If he continued any further, he would fall into a trance right then and there. So, he quickly flagged down one of the people flying in the sky and let them know that he needed a safe space.

The people were used to this and quickly took Alex to the edge of the secret realm where many houses were built for this exact reason.

Alex was taken to one of the houses and quickly made to enter a room where he seated. He brought out his Dao pill and ate it before he was slowly sent into a trance where he began to think about the properties of metal just as he had before.

He was trying to learn the Dao of Ductility