Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex found himself in a dark place with no air, no light, nothing. His spiritual sense was the only thing he could use in this place, and with that, he could see how large the space was.

The space he was in was no more than a couple of dozen meters in diameter, no larger than the throne room back in the Phoenix palace.

Alex got a feeling that the space was needlessly constricted, as if space was squished together to make this place instead of placing it properly. The inside of a Storage ring was certainly a weird place that Alex got to sense only after being on the inside.

This storage ring was filled with all sorts of minor treasures and objects that the Dragon Emperor had collected over the years. Not many of them were worth much to Alex though.

Anything that couldn't help him save himself from this situation was pretty much useless.

Alex could sense the barrier of the space and knew the outside world remained past the barrier. He could maybe use the Dao of Space to break past the barrier and move out too.

As he thought that, he sensed his sword fly in and quickly went to grab it. A faint sense of helplessness came from Midnight's spirit, one which Alex could empathize with.

"I know, buddy. I know," he said with a sigh. "I am worried about what to do as well. I do think I can go outside if I use my Dao, but... as a soul, I'll have a hard time doing anything even if I do escape."

Alex wasn't certain if he could do anything, but anything he wanted to do, he had to do it before the Dragon Emperor killed everyone he loved, or decided to instead leave this world for another.

Godslayer had been quiet since Alex used his final attack, so Alex knew he couldn't get any help from there.

'No, I can't wait to consider my options. I have to act now!' he thought. He reached out to tear open the space with his Intent, but before he could, something happened that stopped him in his tracks.

Motes of light that Alex could see through his senses flew into the dark and vacant space, making their way toward him.

He was not sure what that light was, but whatever it was, it was moving toward him.

Alex seemed worried at first, not knowing what was happening. But as the light got closer, a thought struck him. A thought so wild that even in his wildest dreams he had not considered it at all.

When the light touched him, Alex knew what it was.

* * * * *

Hannah had seen it happen just before the Dragon Emperor decided to attack her. Something weird, something she didn't think she'd ever seen before.

For whatever reason, Alex's corpse which had been completely dead started glowing softly. Suddenly, most of his corpse turned into bright light, disappearing from right in front of her, going somewhere she could not see.

It happened so silently and so fast, that the Dragon Emperor did not even realize what had happened.

What he did react to was instead something on his finger a second later as his storage ring started glowing brightly.

* * * * *

'My body? How?' Alex thought as the motes of light surrounded him and turned into his physical body, starting with his dantian which grew around his soul, before the rest of it grew back.

Alex had no exact reason why this was happening, but he did have an idea, a connection he had made when he saw the motes of light fly toward him.

The 2nd stage of the Undying God's Physique was something that could heal him from any and all wounds so long as there was Qi for him to heal from.

However, at the 3rd stage of the Undying God's Physique, one didn't need Qi. All one simply needed was the soul to survive and the body would grow on its own as well.

While Alex was certain that he hadn't reached the 3rd stage just yet, he was very, very close to it.

He had certainly reached a point that even if his body was dead, but not completely destroyed, if his soul survived, his body could grow back.

That was the only explanation Alex had as to why his body was growing back at the moment. As for why the motes of light had come to him from outside, Alex had an even more concrete idea.

After all, he had seen something like this happening many times before. That was exactly what happened to Whisker's body when he died.

Each time Whisker was dead, his body would turn into motes of light, flying back into his beast space.

Was this what happened at this stage when the soul was separated from the body? Did the body follow the soul to heal back? Just like Whisker's body jumped to his beast space where the bond was concentrated on to reform his body?

Alex was damn certain that was the case.

And that made him very happy. As soon as his body formed, Alex sensed that everything had come back, which surprised him.

The motes of light had brought back not just his body, but also the Yang source and the Yin bead that were in his dantian.

Not only that, it also brought with it his remaining Qi and blood aura. Alex instantly used all of his body's Qi to heal himself, even forcing his blood aura to turn into Qi.

All but one minute amount. of Qi. The small amount he was going to have to use next.

He healed his body within moments and held Midnight, ready to leave. Only, right before he was about to leave, the space shuddered with pressure and cracks started forming all around him.

There was a strain in the space it simply could not handle, and Alex only realized a moment later why.

"My Soul Space!" he thought.

A smaller space could not hold a larger space inside of it. That was something very obvious to anyone who knew anything about space.

That was the reason why storage rings couldn't be stored inside of other storage bags or storage rings.

Similarly, that was the reason why the Dragon Emperor had failed to take away the Azure Dragon's corpse because he could not put the corpse with the larger Soul Space into the ring's smaller space.

Most of the time, this rule was not something one had to even think about. After all, placing larger space into smaller space was quite simply impossible. One did not have to worry about failing to do the impossible.

However, in this particular case, Alex's body had followed him into the ring's space, reforming inside. And the moment it had finished reforming, Alex had regained his connection with his Soul Space.

And his was a Soul Space that nothing could contain.

Alex sensed the deteriorating space and knew at any moment it would all crumble. He took Midnight and poured the last of his Qi into it.

This was the chance he had been waiting for. This was the distraction that gave him time to prepare for the one attack that he now had a name for.

This was the time he was going to kill the Dragon Emperor.