Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

He looked around in search of her and noticed a massive mansion in the distance that looked like it had a lot of trees around it. That was where he sensed Scarlet was.

He found the location a little weird and activated his Demon Eyes. It was then that he noticed all of the trees were actually illusions created through what was most likely a formation.

\'What?\' Alex looked shocked when he noticed that. \'How is an illusory formation active? Shouldn\'t the Qi be getting thrown into the Qi barrier?\'

He slowed down and landed outside of the mansion. He looked at the gate and couldn\'t find any sort of bell to ring.

"Scarlet, I\'m--"

The gate opened on its own without anyone being there.

"--here," he finished letting Scarlet know, but it seemed that wasn\'t necessary.

"Senior says you can come in and find us in the backyard," Scarlet\'s words flowed into him through their bond.

Alex was a little surprised to hear that. \'She\'s calling him senior too?\' he thought. That was not what he would\'ve expected from a previously Immortal beast.

He walked in through the gate and along the driveway. He wanted to go around the house to go directly to the backyard, but he couldn\'t see any way to do so. There was no way to go around the house, which meant he had to go through it.

Alex slowly pushed open the main door, which easily opened up. Then, he spread his spiritual sense around the house and found a path through the house that led him to the backyard.

However, in that search, he also noticed a room that gave giving away some obvious space aura, which caught his attention.

He wondered if he should check what it was, but immediately got rid of the idea. He was in someone else\'s house, someone who was most likely an Immortal of higher rank than Scarlet even was. If he were to accidentally offend that person, he was as good as dead.

Alex ignored that room and walked the path he had found and went to the back of the house. He walked through one final door and arrived outside in a massive garden.

The backyard was an open meadow with flower bushes around the side, but nothing in the middle. There wasn\'t even any simple chair or table setup as many noble houses would have.

Instead, all he saw was a pond in the distance, and in front of it were 3 individuals.

Alex recognized Scarlet and Hao Ya immediately, but the final individual, a man was not someone he had seen before.

Hao Ya noticed Alex and quickly came up to him. "Come, my master has been waiting for you for a while now," she said.

Alex nodded and walked toward the man in the distance. At the same time, the man walked toward him too, leaving Scarlet by the pond.

The man wore a pure white robe that was without a single blemish on it. He looked middle-aged, about what a mortal would look in their 40s, but he had a clean-shaven face, making him appear quite handsome, which was aided by his tall height as well.

He held a smile as he stopped in front of Alex.

"Master, this is Alex," Hao Ya said. "Alex, meet my master."

"Greetings. I did not expect to be able to meet you this early," the man spoke in a gentle voice. "I\'m happy to see that you are doing well."

Alex bowed toward the man. "It is an honor to meet you, senior," he said.

The man looked at Alex curiously for a few seconds and smiled. "Saint Foundation 9th realm," the man said. "In just a little over 40 years, that is definitely not something one can normally do, even if they have the best talent and body to go along with it."

"You flatter me, senior," Alex said. "There are several people who have done better than me."

"There are several people with a higher cultivation base than you, yes. I won\'t deny that," the man said. "However, a higher cultivation base doesn\'t necessarily mean better, does it? You should know that more than anybody."

Alex slowly looked up at the man. "You can tell?"

"That little birdie told me," the man said. "I\'m truly surprised that there is someone who can bring out a cultivation prowess that is 9 realms higher than his own. Even back where I come from, I have never seen or heard of someone being able to bring out that much strength from their cultivation base."

Alex was a little surprised at how smoothly everything was going. He had expected things to be awkward for the first few minutes, but the man didn\'t seem to worry about awkwardness at all. In fact, Alex could swear that he was seeing actual fascination in the man\'s eyes.

"I am honored to hear such compliments from you, Senior," Alex said and bowed once more.

"Ugh! Come on, don\'t be like that. Speak freely, as you would to a friend," the man said.

Alex hesitated a bit, wondering if he should or not. Hopefully, it was not a test of any sort.

"Then, may I know what your name is, Senior?" Alex asked.

The man in the white robe smiled. "Hmm, I wonder if I should tell you," he said amusedly. "I have been called by many names in the short span of time I\'ve spent in this realm, one of the more popular ones being Neil Ambers. However, since it is  you, I shall let you use my real surname, Yang."

"Thank you, senior Yang," Alex said.

The man tilted his head to the side with obvious laughter hidden behind his smile. "I was hoping to get some sort of reaction, but it seems I overestimated my popularity a bit," he said.

Alex looked confused. "I\'m... sorry?"

"You\'re not much of a history guy, are you?" he asked.

"History? I try to learn what is essential, but I wouldn\'t say I know many things," Alex said.

"Shows," the man said. "You didn\'t even react to my other name."

"Your other name? Neil Ambers?" Alex asked. "Is that a fake name you gave yourself in this world? I\'m sorry if I\'m missing some sort of significance to the name."

"Don\'t worry about it. It\'s just one of the more popular names I have used throughout the last 700 years to help your ancestors whenever they needed my help. I had to help keep them from killing themselves after they came to this land from far away," the man said.

Alex\'s eyes narrowed in surprise. "From far away? Wait, are you saying my ancestors originated someplace else?" he asked.

"Hmm? Of course," the man surnamed Yang said. "I thought you would\'ve guessed that by now. That birdie told me you know a lot of things that normal cultivators of this world do not. Did you never put the facts together?"

Alex\'s eyes went wide as they looked around the backyard while his mind worked to sort out different information.

5 thousand years ago, the battle that involved the Heavenly beasts caused the phenomenon of the Qi barrier to form. From that point onward, all Qi in this land had most likely disappeared, and from what the Tortoise had told him, everyone had evacuated long before the changes had happened.

With such a terrible Qi barrier stopping everything from entering afterward, how did his people come to be?

Alex had most likely thought of the exact question many times, but he never gave it enough thought to confuse him previously.

However, now that he was really thinking about it, the facts did not flow as well as they should.

5 thousand years ago, there were no humans, and then suddenly 600 or 700 years ago, humanity came to exist in this world. How could that be?

The only possible answer was exactly what the man had said. They had come from outside the Qi barrier.

However, that posed another problem. Given how talented and gifted the individuals inside the Qi barrier were, they couldn\'t have possibly come from one of the four other continents at all.

Since no one inside this world had demon blood in them, none of his ancestors could have possibly been from this world, or any world with demons in them.

Which meant, they had come from another world, one that was full of gifted humans.

"An Immortal land," Alex thought to himself and looked back up. "We came from a realm that is not this, didn\'t we? We came from a world full of human-blooded individuals. I cannot think of why anyone would move to this sort of place, but that is where we came from, isn\'t it?"

The man surnamed Yang smiled. "You understand now," he said. "Yes, your ancestors did come from a land that is not this. However, you are mistaken about where they came from."

"Please enlighten me, senior," Alex said.

"You are mistaken through no fault of your own. It\'s simply something that should be impossible in the first place," the man said. "You see, I know of every realm that exists in our world. However, your ancestors came from one that I had never even heard of."

"They came from a planet called Earth."