Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

After returning from the Western Continent, Alex focused all of his free time on learning the Metal Dao.

He also cultivated on the side, improved his physical body, and took a lot of pills when he could. He had already recruited a lot of people to handle the continent, and Scarlet was around herself, so he wasn't required as much.

After nearly 3 months of struggling to learn a Dao, Alex finally managed to learn the Dao of Alloy.

Dao of Alloy came to him as he was already used to making metal alloys while creating artifacts. Since he had an understanding of that, after focusing on just that aspect of the Dao for a while, he was able to learn it.

He spent the next 2 more months trying to learn another Metal Dao, but he was simply unable to. However, it wasn't as though there wasn't any progress.

At the very least, Alex understood why it was that he wasn't learning these new Dao.

Dao of Magnetism was something he simply couldn't learn in such a short time. He would have to spend a lot of time trying to understand it before he could learn that Dao.

Dao of Reflection was in a similar state as well where he simply couldn't learn such a Dao in such a short amount of time without any additional help.

Dao of Rust and Conduction, however, were different cases from what he could understand.

Dao of Rust wasn't just about metal, but also in part about water. Since metal needed water to rust in most cases, without knowing something about water in general, he couldn't progress further in rust.

In a similar way, the Dao of Conduction requires one to know both the Dao of Heat Conduction and the Dao of Lightning Conduction. Alex didn't believe one had to know the two Dao to learn the Dao of Conduction, but he would have to learn it somewhat.

Since he already learned the Dao of Heat Conduction, he could focus on the Dao of Lightning Conduction, which required him to learn the Dao of Lightning.

Alex would've probably been in a lot of trouble had he been required to try and learn Dao of Wood, but Dao of Lightning was something he could do.

He had the shattered pieces of the Noble Dragon Spear that the Dragon Emperor used, which had been infused with the Lightning Dao for so long that it emanated its aura even when it was broken.

Alex began studying the broken treasure as much as he could. After another 3 months or so, he understood enough secrets about the Dao of Lightning even with his frankly trash Wood Spiritual root that he managed to learn the Dao of Lightning Conduction.

Thanks to that, the two Dao merged into one to become the Dao of Conduction. Alex was down to needing 3 more Metal Dao to complete the True Metal Dao.

Alex decided to take some time for the rest as time was all he had. He had received messages from his sister and Long Huan that their wedding date had been fixed and that it would happen in half a year. So he needed to be ready for that.

Alex left the palace, as he had every few weeks ever since he returned from the war, and went to the Sundering Sanctum. He was invisible all the way there and broke into the playground when no one noticed him.

He arrived in the secret realm, looking at the stable space all around him. There was no longer any broken space in here that led to the Void.

The Playground itself was still very damaged from the Void, and so for the past two decades when Alex had been gone, the Sanctum had been opened for fewer people, with the winner being decided based on who got to the top and jumped out first.

The top of the tower was open due to the Void breaking away everything, and so it was too ruined to the fixed.

Alex walked into the playground and the human spirit appeared at the base floor, bowing to Alex as he arrived inside.

"Welcome back, Master Alex," the Spirit greeted.

"How are you doing, playground?" Alex asked.

"Just waiting for the day when you will take me away," the playground spirit said with a sigh.

Alex gave an apologetic smile in return. "Sorry, I don't have much time in the day to spend everywhere. I promise I will bond with you soon enough. I can almost tell you that at the rate I'm going, it will happen in 5 years."

"That is indeed good news," the spirit said.

Alex chatted with the spirit for a while before leaving the secret realm. While he could bond the playground from the inside, it simply didn't feel correct to do it that way.

He needed to go out of the secret realm where part of the playground was sticking outside of the spatial pocket and then try to bond it from there.

Alex landed on the roof of the large building that was a historical landmark for the people of this city and the continent in general and began bonding with the playground.

Had the Playground been a simple treasure without a spirit inside of it, Alex could've refined it a long time ago. But given how strong a spirit there was inside of it, he had to bond the spirit instead, and then could he refine the treasure.

That was what was taking Alex so long. Alex poured his Qi into the playground, slowly letting the artifact recognize his Qi. He had been doing this for enough time that it accepted his Qi without much pushback.

There was some, but not so much that Alex needed to worry about failure. This was just a matter of when and not if.

He had arrived sometime in the morning and by the time he was ready to call it a day, it was already noon.

Alex thought for a moment and decided to pour his Immortal Qi into the playground too. Maybe that way he could speed up the bonding procedure.

He hadn't used it before today, having always been forced to either spend his Immortal Qi in his Mirror or his new ring or maybe in the teleportation escape dials that he now had two of.

He began touching the tiny bit of Immortal Qi he had and poured it into the playground, washing it with the intense power of his Immortal Qi.

The playground shuddered for a moment, recognizing a power that it hadn't received for a very, very long time. It stopped as soon as it started, but Alex could tell it had been quite successful.

He smiled and stood up, ready to leave. Just as he was about to say goodbye to the playground, he suddenly went blind.

Or so it felt to Alex because of the sudden loss of light. Instead, he could still see, but everything was very dark.

"The hell is…"

He looked around and then looked to the sky to see where the sun had vanished too, to see how dark the cloud was that blocked out the sun.

There was no cloud in the sky. No light. No star. No moon.

It looked as though everything in the sky had been swallowed by the abyss, and all they could see was eternal darkness.