Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 2010  The Moon's Shadow

"I mean, you did say the moon. How should I believe this?" Alex asked, his smile vanishing by the second.

"Well, I suppose that is a normal response from someone who doesn't know much about the Immortal world," Lan Douhan said. "People leaving the world to go to outer space is a common thing in the Immortal world. The majority of the people don't do it, but those with high Divine realm cultivation do it frequently."

Alex was taken aback. The man was actually talking about going to the moon. "They really go there?" he asked. "Why?"

Lan Douhan shrugged. "I'm not too sure myself, but I do believe it is to train mostly. Because the Divine realm cultivators are so strong, they cannot fight upon the land like regular Immortals. They would destroy the world if they're not up in the sky." "So, even when they train, they mostly choose to go high in the air to do so. Most of the time, they go directly to the space. And the best place in space to be while training is the moon," Lan Douhan said.

Alex found it a little difficult to believe, but he had heard many others talking about Immortals being able to fly into outer space, beyond the limits of the atmosphere. "And Elder Liang is there?" Alex asked. "How long has he been up there?"

"It's been, 2 years now I believe?" he said. "He left a few months after I returned, so yeah, about 2 years."

"And… when will be return?" Alex asked.

"There's no definite answer, but around half a year should be accurate. He likes to stay up there a lot longer than the other Elders when they do go up there."

There was so much Alex wanted to know, so many questions he wanted the answer to. And for what it was worth, Lan Douhan was not the person he could get those answers from. He simply didn't know anything at all. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"So I won't be able to join his Peak, huh?" he asked.

"You can ask to join his Peak. He will approve it when he comes back. The other elders won't say anything as long as you've put in a request," Lan Douhan said.

Alex shook his head. "That's alright, I'll look for someone else," he said.

"Are you sure?" Lan Douhan asked. "Elder Liang is a Prime Alchemist. As an alchemist yourself, I highly suggest you join him."

"Oh right," Alex said. "I meant to ask about that. What is a Prime Alchemist exactly? This is my first time hearing this at all."

"You don't have those in the lower realm, so you wouldn't know as well," Lan Douhan said. "When you manage to make a pill that is perfect in all way, with not a single thing wrong about it, you end up causing a tribulation to form for the—"

"I know what pill clouds are, senior Lan," Alex said. "Are you talking about pill veins?"

"Oh!" Lan Douhan was taken aback. "What? So you know about that already? Then yeah, a Prime Alchemist is someone who has managed to reach the level of making Pill veins consistently."

Alex thought for a moment. He could remember that one of Bai Jingshen's wives, the tiger, was also an Alchemist who had managed to make Pill veins on a few occasions. Was she a Prime Alchemist too?

"When you say consistently, how consistently do you mean?" he asked. "Every single time, or…"

"EVERY SINGLE TIME?" Lan Douhan shouted in disbelief. "Are you mad? Consistently means once every month or so. Who in their right mind would think that a person can make pill veins every single time? Even Peerless Alchemists would have an impossible time with that."

Alex felt the gazes of everyone in the surroundings looking at him with weird eyes. He gave a slightly embarrassed grin. "I suppose I'm too new to all of this. I don't understand how most of it works,' he said.

"Yes, that's why you must join Elder Liang," Lan Douhan said.

"Thank you, senior Lan for the advice. I'll keep that in mind."

Alex kept that in mind and made his way to Elder Sunheart's mountain which he now decided to choose as the Peak to join.

Sunheart was very much pleased to see Alex join her Peak. "You did the right thing joining my Peak," she said. "I will treat you well."

"Yes, Elder."

He was genuinely surprised to see how excited she was to have him join her. She clearly still felt a connection, but Alex still couldn't make sense of what that connection was.

"I had a few questions, Elder. I hope you wouldn't mind answering them," he said.

"Of course not. That is what I'm here to do. Ask me anything you want," she said proudly.

"Actually, the truth is, before coming here, I had planned on joining Elder Liang's Peak. He is an Alchemist and seeing as I am one as well, I thought it would be best for me to join him."

Sunheart's excitement died down a little, but not as much. "And you didn't join him?" she asked.

"No. It turns out, he's on the moon, which I didn't know was even possible to visit. So I wanted to ask, what is up with that? Why is he on the moon? What's the point of staying there?" "Oh, he went there to train," Elder Sunheart said.

"It's that simple?" Alex asked. So Lan Douhan had told him everything?"

"Yeah, just training. Our cultivation base makes it hard to train in this place without holding back or investing too much in some formations, so we have to go to the moon for that," Elder Sunheart said.

He was curious about what the moon was like. From what he had heard, it was a frigid place with no atmosphere whatsoever. Was that not true?

"Why the moon though?" Alex asked. "As far as I know, the moon has no atmosphere at all. I know a cultivator can sustain themselves on Qi, but then there would be no point in going to the moon itself."

Sunheart shook her head. "We don't go to the moon because there is something special about the moon. We go there because we need to stay in its shade."

"In the moon's shadow? Why?" Alex asked.

"Because the Sun is too strong for us. Without the protection of the atmosphere, we have to use our own layer of Qi to protect ourselves from the sun's violent light. And when we have to use that layer of Qi to protect ourselves, we end up using too much Qi too quickly and can't stay in the space for too long and need to make our way back."

"So, instead of just being out there for a few days, we go to the moon instead and stay in its shade in space while we train," Elder Sunheart said. "That way, we can last up to a year before we need to return."