Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"Just how long is this place?" Alex wondered. He had been walking down the cave with the ever-increasing cold for what felt like days now and still, he didn't reach the end.

Sure the path he walked didn't just go straight to the center, but rather snaked around multiple ways, even crossing into other paths many times.

Many times, it also split into other pathways, and Alex no longer could make judgments on which path he could take to the center based on the coldness. He had to make the judgment purely out of random.

Still, the path he chose never ended, so maybe the tidbit he had heard about none of the pathways mattering, and all leading to the center was correct.

He sat down once again, the floor that was once dry, then frosted, now completely covered in a layer of ice. It wasn't just the ground, but the wall and the ceiling as well.

It was an ice cave at this point, with icicles of nearly 5 meters in length available in some places even. However, they weren't normal ice or icicles, and were, in fact, Yin Ice, making everything much more difficult to handle.

Alex closed his eyes and started adjusting to the increased coldness, learning as much as he could about Yin. That to his surprise had been going on smoothly.

Alex was learning about Yin.

After some time, he opened his eyes, understanding Yin a little bit more, which allowed him to shave off its effect on him. He could go a little further.

Alex took a quick glance in his Soul Space, making sure no Yin had invaded it. Once he was sure, he looked at the timer in his Soul Space, the Voidsand Hourglass, which let him know that only 4 days had passed since he had entered this place.

"I have…" Alex thought for a moment. "10 more days?" No one was sure how long the cave would be open, so that was the amount of time he could stay in there safely.

He stood up to leave, looking in the direction he needed to move toward.

One thing puzzled him about the pathway that he hadn't yet managed to figure out about. How could he see in here?

Cultivators had incredible eyesight, needing barely any light to see things at all. But they still needed some light. This deep underground there should have been no light, and yet he could see.

Were the other cultivators using artifacts to light up the place? Giving him enough to see everything. He didn't believe there were even that many cultivators close to him to begin with.

The coldness he was facing needed either an incredible understanding of Yin to deal with or just an absurd amount of Yang to make Yin useless to himself. And Alex was doing both.

He had learned what he considered a lot about Yin and also brought out Yang from his Dantian. It was a good thing that he had started carrying a healthy chunk of Yang treasures since his Yin problem had surfaced a few years ago.

Thanks to it, he didn't have to worry about being unable to move forward more in the cave. After a few more hours of walking, he sat down to learn more about Yang and did this 3 more times over the course of the entire next day.

Then, around the start of the 6th day, Alex realized that there was some light coming from the end of the cave. There was something at the end that was providing light for him to see, for everyone in the cave to see.

He wondered what it was.

Unfortunately, he had to stop once again as the Yin was getting incredibly dense around here, and cultivating alone was becoming hard as all he would absorb was Yin, and that was not what the Five Yang Divine Path needed to work properly.

Alex used the Yang treasures to fight back the Yin inside his Dantian, but other than that, he couldn't use his cultivation technique for actually cultivating.

So, he was forced to use his Undying Physique technique to cultivate. The sheer speed at which he cultivated using that technique in here was surprising. However, since that technique did use Yin, maybe it shouldn't have been.

Alex cultivated constantly, improving his physique, getting ever closer to that 3rd stage, but that seemed like a mile away. Still, he was traversing a healthy chunk with how he was cultivating down here.

That made him wonder what it was down here that was causing such a thick settlement of Yin to form. As far as Alex could remember, not even the Yin bead had caused such a phenomenon.

There had to be something here. Something stronger than the bead itself. He couldn't imagine something stronger than the bead, but then again, what did he know about the other realms?

He tried his best to understand Yin and once he had enough understanding to bear the Yin around him a little more. He started moving.

He was sure he was now on the final stretch of his journey in this cave. Just a little more and he would arrive at the center.

What was at the center? No one knew. No one had been here. He wanted to know what it was that could cause Yin to gather for so long, so periodically open, and be a great source for learning about Yin to every man and woman out there.

Alex continued walking.

However, he hadn't expected the final stretch to be this hard to walk through. He was there, he could tell. He could see the light bright enough that just around the corner was what he was here for.

But he couldn't move. The cold had gotten too much for him to handle even though he had just started walking again. Even just an hour of walking now increased the Yin by a magnitude that he wasn't ready for.

So, without any choice, he had to sit and dwell on Yin when the destination was right over there.

Thankfully, that also meant that Alex was learning more and more about Yin, to the point that he could tell how close he was to learning about the Dao.

He felt that if could just… if he could just.

Alex felt himself falling in and out of trances as he thought about Yin. Each time, he felt as if he would learn the Dao, but it didn't happen. Each time, he got closer.

In a way, Alex felt it was now or never. So, without hesitating, he pulled out the best Dao pill he had and ate it. He let the pill dissolve into his body and let the trance that came afterward take over him.

His mind grew dull but his thoughts grew sharper. While he had no control over where his thoughts went, they were very clear and concise and as such, having planned on learning about Yin, his mind went in that direction.

He stopped cultivating at this point, and his body stopped producing Qi as well. As he fell deep into contemplation about the laws and mysteries behind Yin, his body froze over, the Yin slowly getting to him.

Yin was a terribly difficult element to learn about. As one of the high elements, it was a rare element to come across in the lower realm and thus was harder to learn about.

Still, as someone who constantly had to deal with the Yin in his own body, he had always understood Yin to a certain degree. Maybe it wasn't at the same level of knowledge as Yang, but it was there.

And coming to this cave, spending days in such a thick world of Yin aura made that knowledge grow exponentially. Throughout the entire time he remained seated, lost in his own mind, Alex managed to get closer and closer to learning the entire truth behind Yin.

After a while, he did.

The world rumbled a deep growl as worldly laws lowered themselves down onto the Evening Mist Lake, reaching deep underneath it in the caves below its surface.

The many women who stood outside the cave's opening looked up in shock, most of them sensing the Yin that was being learned about. There was only a single person there who knew the Yin Dao, and it seemed there was now going to be another one.

The Queen looked up in the sky, wondering who it was. That didn't matter much, however. Whoever it was, they needed the person to get done with it quickly.

After all, 2 weeks had passed since the opening of the cave and it was time for it to end. And they would hate for the person to get lost inside the cave.

Alex was unaware of the situation as he was still in the midst of peering into the Dao, learning more about Yin. It took some time for him to learn it all.

Once he was done, he finally opened his eyes, having fully learned a very complicated dao. The Yin Dao.

Alex felt happiness bubble up inside him. He wanted to smile in happiness but found himself unable to. His entire body was frozen over, and most of his body parts nearly going to fall off because of frostbite.

His dantian was cold as well due to a Yin buildup inside of him.

Alex poured out his Yang, melting away the ice around him, and heating up his body. At the same time, he took out some Yang treasures and dealt with the Yin in his Dantian.

Once he was done, he was finally ready to get up and venture forward.