Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex frowned a little after learning that he was wrong. Had he been mistaken? Godslayer made no sign of him being wrong. But then again, the one standing in front of him was just a soul.

"You're not an Azure Dragon?" he asked the soul again, looking his all over. "My apologies then, senior. I was just mistaken by your horns and your scales. The features made me think of a dragon, and adding on that name, I was sure you were an Azure Dragon."

"You were not wrong in your assumption all the way," the soul said. "Not all the way through at least."

Alex looked up at the soul, trying to discern what he was trying to say. The soul's expression gave away nothing at all, forcing him to speak up. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I'm not an Azure Dragon, but I am a Dragon still," the soul said. "And I am from the very Qing family that houses the Azure Dragon."

Alex took a moment to process what the soul had said. "What?" he asked, a confused look taking over his face. "How can you be a—"

He paused.

Then, it finally clicked.

"Ah! You're a descendant of the Azure Dragons!!" he said out loud. "You just don't have the bloodline."

The Dragon soul gave an awkward smile when he heard that. "That… that is the case," he said, not knowing how to feel about the words that came from the young human in front of him who wouldn't know anything about him. The same words that had haunted him as nightmares for most of his life.

As a child of the Azure Dragon, one hoped to gain a bloodline belonging to the Azure Dragon as well. When one didn't, they still had a possibility to become one eventually if they happened to evolve somehow in the future.

"Thank you for telling me that, senior," Alex said.

The Dragon quickly shook away any thought about the past he had and returned to the present. "So, does knowing what I am make you less likely to trade with me?" he asked.

"Absolutely not," he said. "I don't judge who I trade with. Well, at least not when I don't know their personality."

"Then?" the Dragon asked. "You will trade with me?"

"Yes," Alex said.

"And the technique is a good one?" he asked. "Is it the main thing you use to make Pill Clouds?"

Alex hesitated at that moment. He hid any expression on his face, but he alone knew that it was not it. The technique he wanted to trade was the Profound Revolution of Myriad Combination technique.

As an Immortal technique, it was quite useful and thus anyone would like to have it. However, the moment he traded the technique and was forced to make another pill during the trial, he would be found out.

He couldn't trade away this technique at all.

Alex sighed internally at the end, grimacing at the thought of what he had to do. "Yes, it is the main thing I use to make pill clouds," he answered. "But, before I trade it away, I will require senior to make an oath that you will not trade the technique with anyone else. Ever."

The Dragon frowned a little. "I have to trade with a disadvantage?" he asked. "Why can't I just get what I trade for?"

"Because the technique I trade with you will be the one force that will make it possible for you to form pill clouds," Alex said. "Will that suffice?"

The Dragon didn't say anything. He was ready to make any kind of offer for the opportunity to learn how to make a pill that could form pill clouds.

"I'll say the oath," the Dragon said in the end. "But you have to tell me what it is that I'm speaking the oath for. What exactly is the technique going to do?"

Alex thought for a moment and explained the best he could without giving away anything about it that could clue in the soul as to what sort of technique it was.

After listening to Alex's words, the Dragon thought for a moment. "Let me see what I can trade you with," he said. "Give me some time."

Alex did.

The dragon went back to handling the trials, while Alex waited for the 3 hours of his own trial to come to an end.

It was such a long time that he didn't believe it would come to an end any time soon. Before it ended, the Dragon returned.

"Alright, I know what I am giving to you," he said. "A Saint pill recipe from the Immortal realm."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "I… have a lot of recipes, senior," he said. "I'm not sure I need another one. You will have to think of something else to trade with me."

"No, no, don't be so quick to dismiss it," the Dragon Soul said. "You haven't even heard what the pill is."

Alex nodded. "You're right," he said. "Please tell me what the pill is about, senior."

The Dragon smiled. "The pill I'm going to trade you with is one that will make you an Immortal," he said.

Alex thought for a moment that he had heard wrong. Had the Dragon really said what he had said?

"A pill that makes you an Immortal?" he was confused. "How is that even po—"

"Temporarily!" the Dragon quickly added. "Sorry. Temporarily. It doesn't permanently make you an immortal. I should have mentioned that."

"Oh!" Alex felt a little better hearing about the pill. It didn't sound so impossible. Taking the new information into context, he was genuinely surprised by the existence of this pill.

"A pill that can give you the strength of an Immortal, huh?" Alex thought. "That's amazing."

"Mhm." The Dragon nodded to Alex.

"Any downsides?" Alex asked him. "It sounds too good to just improve your cultivation base by that amount. Some pills improve your cultivation base, but each one of them causes a problem afterward. What about this one? It must do something truly bad."

The Dragon's expression changed the slightest amount, which Alex failed to grasp. He thought for a moment and sighed. "Depending on the gap, it… It destroys most of your cultivation base," he said. "If you're close to reaching the Immortal realm, say you're in the Saint Transformation realm, then you probably will just drop a bunch of cultivation realm after going through Qi deviation."

"However, if you are weaker, say… barely starting at the Saint Soul realm, then you will wreck your body to the point where you will lose your cultivation base," the Dragon said.

Seeing Alex's face change told the Dragon that the trade wasn't going to go well. "I'll come up with something else to trade you with," the Dragon said. "Just wait for a bit for me to think of something. I don't have anything on me at the time, so I can only give you what I remember."

"No," Alex said quickly after thinking for a bit. He remembered the fight between the Dragon Emperor and the Oathbreakers. The two attacks at the end had made him scared in a way he had never been before.

"I will take it," Alex said. "I will take the pill recipe."

"Are you sure?" the Dragon asked. He had been trying to dupe Alex with the pill recipe as someone from a higher realm. However, hearing that he actually wanted the pill recipe made him frown.

"You… do you feel like you need this recipe?" he asked.

"For a worst-case scenario, yes," Alex said. "It's good to have it if I end up having nothing else to save myself in certain situations."

"But you'll destroy your body and cultivation," the Dragon said.

"Better than dying, don't you think?" he asked.

The Dragon nodded. "That is how you're supposed to think of it with this pill," he said. "I had assumed someone from the lower realm would not have the same mentality."

"Are you looking down on us, senior?" Alex asked with a smile.

The Dragon smiled back. "It seems I have," he said. "Give me an empty talisman. I'll write down the recipe for you."

Alex didn't hesitate and quickly brought out a talisman before handing it to the Dragon.

The Dragon levitated the talisman next to him and used his spiritual sense to write on that talisman. He held onto the talisman and looked at Alex. "Bring out your technique," he said.

"Please speak the oath first, senior," Alex said.

The Dragon thought for a moment and nodded. There was nothing he could lose from this anyway. "I vow to never reveal the pill-forming technique you will pass along to me," he said.

Alex waited and felt the familiar aura of the heavens lock onto the Dragon. He felt the oath fall into place and the Dragon's soul shuddered a little. "Are you fine with this?" he asked.

Alex nodded. "That works for me," he said and brought out a talisman that held the technique. He passed along the technique to the Dragon's soul and the dragon passed back the talisman that he held.

Alex took the talisman and quickly looked through the pill recipe. A few of the ingredients in there seemed hard to get, but mostly it was an actual recipe.

It would take him some time to tell if it did what the Dragon said it did or not.

"If you are somehow not able to break through to the Immortal realm by the time I am supposed to leave this place," the Dragon said. "Come find me. I'll take you back with me."