ETERNAL CULTIVATION OF ALCHEMY

With his currently exceedingly fast thoughts and capacity, Alex had now gone through many iterations of his own beliefs. Each time he went through it, it changed subtly, but not enough to make a huge difference.

Each time, he also tried to bring up more proofs against his own beliefs, and each time, he had a perfect explanation that went along with his belief.

Throughout the many iterations, there had become one major distinction that Alex had begun making about his own belief. It was the fact that Alchemy and making pills were not the same exact thing.

While they were interchangeable in most contexts, the truth was that they were two entirely different matters. Alex had begun to consciously separate the two as different things now.

Making pills was simply just that: making pills. It used Alchemy to make it happen, but it was not Alchemy itself.

Alchemy was the merging of energy, the reaction they provided, and the attributes they ended up reflecting in the end.

There were a hundred thousand different ways to make pills. There were dozens and dozens of recipes and techniques that could make the same pill, and even dozens of pills that did the same thing.

But there was only one way to do Alchemy. There was no way to make the various energies act differently. You could not add stronger Metal energy to Fire energy and not expect it to get destroyed. Similarly, you could not add weaker Wood energy to Fire energy and not expect the Fire energy to get stronger.

The qualities and attributes of those energies—whether they be healing, fighting poison, clearing one’s mind, or anything else—also always reacted in the same way.

The properties never changed.

Alchemy had no various possibilities. There was always only one possibility in Alchemy. One truth.

And that one truth was so grand that Alex could barely begin to see it just yet.

The Dao of Alchemy was still far out of his reach.

However, Alex knew he was getting there. Under his current state, he felt that he was getting close to it.

But for now, he was closer to something else.

He couldn’t understand all of Alchemy just yet, but maybe he could understand more about pills and how to make them. That was the path his mind had led him to for the past few hours, and that was what he had spent all his time thinking about.

Of course, making pills and Alchemy were intrinsically linked, so he was considering everything in his thoughts. With each iteration, he got closer to something—something he didn’t yet understand, but he could feel was some sort of revelation awaiting him.

For that, however, he still needed to go through everything he knew about making pills and fix each thing that put a thorn in what he currently believed to be the true way of making pills.

In one of those iterations, Alex questioned whether Blank Canvas Pills were failures. Those pills weren’t half-completed, they weren’t consumed afterward, and considering they could be filled with any pill’s energy, they could become whatever pill one wanted them to be—including the so-called failures.

They were such unique pills that Alex had no idea how to make sense of them.

However, it didn’t take him long to come up with an explanation that not only made sense but was, in fact, the real truth.

Blank Canvas Pills were, in fact, not pills at all.

There was one important requirement for a pill to be a pill. And it was the fact that it had energy inside of it.

Blank Canvas Pills, at the moment of creation, were void of all energy. As a result, they were never pills. Until other energy was put into the “pill,” it was just a vessel for the energy and never a pill.

Each type of ingredient had a certain type of connection between its physical body and the energy it produced. When a pill was made, the energy always sought its original physical body or something close to it.

On the flip side, the powder that was the physical body also only accepted energy it was previously associated with.

Blank Canvas Pills were unique in that the energy that was made during their creation rid them of all such connections while turning itself neutral. In the end, all that remained was a bunch of powder with no connection to anything.

And as such, it could connect to any and all energy. Hence, they were the perfect vessels that could accept any and all energy.

And until they accepted that energy, they were just vessels. Once they did, they became an entirely different pill, which at that point fit into Alex’s current belief of what a pill should be.

Alex now felt even more sure of his own belief and trusted that he was in the right direction with something. He understood this was not the Dao of Alchemy he was seeking but something to do with pills. And maybe through their connection, he would learn something about the Dao of Alchemy too.

Alex continued going through all possible points that could disprove his belief, and with each iteration, his belief came out stronger. Not only did it grow stronger, but it also grew as a concept.

He began making a stricter distinction between what a real pill was and what was simply using the concept to achieve something else. Even though one used Alchemy to achieve those results, he now fully considered them as failures from his perspective of what pills should be.

Finally, Alex recognized a pattern with his belief and how it all hinged on one simple thing.

Because he considered only pills that could be consumed to be real pills, it naturally meant that the other way around would be true as well. Only pills that could be eaten were real.

Or, in other words, only pills that could be activated by a person—whether it was a human, demon, beast, plant, or spirit—were real.

And that led him to the final simple explanation of his own belief.

Only pills that could be activated by even mortals, without any Qi or outside assistance, simply by consuming the pill, could be considered a real pill.

Alex knew he needed to go no further than this. There was no need for any more iterations, no need for any more learning. Everything he needed to believe in his own understanding of pills—and partially about Alchemy—he had achieved.

The clear mind Alex experienced all this time suddenly got sharper when he came to that understanding. Even as it happened, Alex realized he was going into a sort of trance.

The happenings of the outside world were unknown to him, for he was lost in the understanding of his own belief at this point, and a sheer will to never deter from this one explanation.

Even if the world told him what he learned today was wrong, Alex would believe it to be right. And so long as Alex believed it, it would be right.

As Alex’s belief solidified into something unbreakable, the world outside of his mind was thrown into chaos as the sky began stirring with energy that was very different from worldly laws.

And very, very rare.

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