Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex looked around inside the Endless Shadow Abyss. He tried to look for anything he could, but he had known that would be impossible before coming in.

The Endless Shadow Abyss was a secret realm where no light got through. Not only light, from what Alex could feel, but even gravity also seemed nonexistent in this place.

He wondered what sort of formations must have been active for this sort of phenomenon to take place inside the secret realm.

He hovered… somewhere and activated his Demon Eyes. Even with that, he could only see black, as the entirety of what he was in was primarily Yin aura, which always showed up as black, to begin with.

Knowing that it wasn’t going to help, Alex released his spiritual sense to look around him. When he did, he realized another thing that he had previously learned about before coming in.

The spiritual sense was heavily restricted. 

Alex’s spiritual sense was now strong enough to reach nearly 30 kilometers, almost as good as a low Saint Transformation realm cultivator’s spiritual sense. Even then, it had somehow been restricted down to no more than 30 meters around him.

It was nearly 1000 times smaller than its original size, so Alex assumed it was the same for others as well.

He quickly checked behind him at his back where a piece of paper had appeared on its own. And, on that piece of paper was written a long string of numbers with 15 different letters to it. 

The number was unique to him and it was the thing that was going to send him out if someone found it. He knew there was no way to hide it or mask it, so the only way to not get caught was to catch the opponent instead and write their number down on the artifact.

He had to find such an artifact, however.

Alex finally paid attention to his outside world, his spiritual sense reaching the entirety of the 30 meters he could spread at the moment.

When he spread it fully, he saw many different things within it. There were some floating pieces of trash, some furniture, broken artifacts, and many other things that were there just to confuse people.

Alex even saw a floating piece of a mannequin that he initially thought was human. He was worried he would be found out that he nearly went in the other direction.

He drifted into the world without gravity for a few minutes, wondering how this all could have been created. The first Dragon Emperor had made it, yes, but he had received help from his father, the first Azure Dragon when creating this. 

Alex floated around, feeling the weirdness of not knowing which direction down was. He could also feel the space around him act weirder than other secret realms as this one was constantly blocking one’s storage from being accessed.

Alex flew toward what to him was forward and passed through the many debris-filled darkness. To his senses the darkness wasn’t there at all, but only emptiness.

He saw a broken piece of a metal arm, a flying wooden board, a large formation rod, and a chunk of stone, and then he sensed spiritual sense.

Alex paused the moment he sensed the spiritual sense. It wasn’t just him that sensed it, but the other person had as well. Without hesitation, he immediately backed away from the location, moving backward.

Thankfully, the person he sensed did the same.

‘He must not have found an artifact. Good,’ Alex thought. If either of them had found one of the artifacts that allowed people to write the other person’s number into it, they would have followed the other person so they could eliminate them.

‘I should find one for my own safety,’ Alex thought.

“Oi, kid!” Godslayer’s called from inside his spiritual sea. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing really,” Alex said. “Why?”

“Did you forget why we came here?” the spirit asked.

“N-no,” Alex said awkwardly. He had been so entranced by the weirdness of this world that until Godslayer had called out to him, he hadn’t remembered that he hadn’t come here to play.

“Good,” Godslayer said, not sensing the lie in those words. “Then let’s go find it.”

Alex nodded but then paused. “Wait, where do we go exactly?” he asked. “I can’t see anything or sense anything here. Everything feels the same. I can’t even tell where up or down is.”

“Uhh…” Godslayer frowned for a bit. “I should be able to sense it… I think.”

“If you get close?” Alex asked.

“Well, I can’t sense it now, so it should be when we get close,” Godslayer said. “How big is this place? Can’t we go look around?”

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Godslayer gave a soft hum of affirmation and stayed quiet afterward. 

Alex stood where he was for a second, planning on what he needed to do. As he was going through his thoughts, a problem made itself apparent to him that he had to deal with somehow.

The constant suppression of spiritual sense was somehow affecting the rate of regeneration for his spiritual energy. Normally, he could have his spiritual sense around him at all times and never run out of spiritual energy as it would replenish at a faster rate than when it was used.

However, here, the replenishment speed wasn’t very high. If he continued using his spiritual sense this way, he was going to run out sooner or later. Given that he was going to have to stay in here for over a month easily, he needed to conserve it.

Instantly, his spiritual sense reduced from 30 meters to 15 meters. Doing so, the rate of spiritual energy consumption was reduced to a fourth of what he was using up previously.

“I need to mark where I’ve been to,” Alex said to himself and flew in the direction of the debris he saw around him. Then, he gathered up the debris and stuck them together as well as he could make a large enough object that could tell him that he had been to this place before.

Once that was set up, he flew away, going out in a random direction with the constant scrutinous observation of his surrounding.

A little forward, he collected the objects, doing the same thing, and continued forward.

As he moved forward. He sensed someone’s spiritual sense. Alex stepped back a bit to move away from the person, but he sensed the spiritual sense following him even further.

“Shit!” Alex realized instantly that the person had found some artifact and was going to follow him now. His first instinct after learning that was to steal the artifact from the person and use it on him.

However, he knew that fighting wasn’t allowed, and as such he had no way of taking the artifact from the other person without fighting for it.

When the spiritual sense then rushed toward him, Alex had no choice. He turned around and started running away to get as far as he could.