?987 8 Years
Alex was surprised at how quickly the years passed. But then, he had also achieved many things in the past 8 years.
His cultivation base had improved 5 more times, reaching Saint Condensation 8th realm. Pearl's had improved to Saint Condensation 4th realm, and Whisker's had improved to True Lord 3rd realm.
Alex was happy with the progress he had made, but he was also sad that he had to make such progress by simply staying in a room, locked for a very long time.
This sort of closed cultivation was something he would only ever expect from people that were at the end of their lives or someone who was trying very hard to reach the next cultivation realm despite their talents.
Fortunately, he hadn't wasted the years and had actually progressed in various other places too.
He had made many different new pills, some he knew were useful, some were useless at first thought, but could be useful if it was ever needed.
He practiced quite a lot regarding making pills with missing ingredients, while also learning to make a certain type of pill from scratch.
He was now somewhat confident that if someone asked him to make a pill that did one specific thing, at the very least, he could list out most of the ingredients that would go into the pill.
Aside from things related to Alchemy, he practiced some more about formations and talismans as well as runes on his own. He learned how to add runes to objects and added runes for durability and sturdiness to Memory.
These runes usually required some sort of power source, which in most cases would be Saint spirit stones, but in Alex's case, he could simply use his Qi to activate it.
He doubted he could see the effectiveness of the runes right now with how strong Memory was without it, but as his alchemy improved, it was certain he would need a strong cauldron to handle the higher level of lightning strikes from Pill Clouds.
Alex had also focused heavily on artifacts, creating quite a few more swords.
He never made another sword like Midnight as the cost alone was something he couldn't handle. He needed 21 swords at the very least for his 21 Sword Array to work, so he melted the previous swords he had made.
As for improving that technique and using more swords, he decided to do so after he had come up with a better technique. He could always have more ores from the Endless Tunnel after all.
After combining the metal with the newly tempered tungsten, he crafted 20 new swords, all of the same design as Midnight, but with nearly half its weight and quite worse all around as the likelihood of them gaining a sword spirit was nonexistent.
Alex had Pearl help him with Sharpening the sword the first few times, but after a few times, he understood the concept behind Sharpness and learned its Dao as well.
After that, he could do a better job at sharpening things than Pearl due to his stronger Qi. Still, he couldn't help but frown at how hard it was. Shen Jing had made it look so easy.
There was another Dao Alex could learn, but every time the worldly laws tried to descend, he forced them away by not deciding to think more about it. He knew he was just a hair's breadth away, but that was all he had from stopping the old man know that he was capable of that Dao.
That was one thing he had been keeping up his sleeve, just in case.
As for his Dao of technique, he had still not learned. That did not mean that he had no progress at all.
Alex had not only managed to separate the four types of meridians that were at the base of any Spiritual root, but he had also learned what most of the other branching meridians all over his body could do.
He categorized the four types into being used for four distinct types of techniques.
One was a cultivation path. It was the path that did not let the Qi go out of the meridian and instead used it to either improve something in his body or gather up more Qi from the outside.
The second one was a controlling path. It was when one could use Qi to control something. Lifting things with Qi, controlling light to go invisible, etc was what he assigned with this path.
The third path was for reinforcing stuff, whether it was his body or weapon. Usually, the purpose of it would be to add strength and defense to whatever he was using, but it could also be to add certain elements to the object.
Finally, the last path was for when you created things, whether it was sword slashes, palms, punches, fire, etc. This was perhaps the path with the most use.
Alex was able to separate the four paths and noticed that each of these 4 paths never actually intertwined with the other.
There were thousands of meridians for each spiritual root, but he was not only able to separate them by the spiritual roots, but he could also further separate them into four groups with each path of the spiritual root having its own meridians.
Doing this, Alex was starting to understand that he could in fact copy what he did with one technique and bring it to another spiritual root and use it there.
As of yet, he had succeeded in turning the Yang elemental attack 'Palm of the Sun' into a metal attack, and the Earth Devour technique into a Water Devour Technique.
He was able to change them because the techniques were close enough and the elements had the same properties in a sense.
He could not make water explode or wind heal. He couldn't make metal burn or fire sharp. He couldn't make Yin give life and Yang take it away.
He still had more to learn regarding all of the various paths, but he also needed to learn more about what each element was capable of.
After all, one of the things required to make everything work was Intent. If he did not know how something worked, he couldn't ever produce the intent to use it.
The progress had been slow for him, but he had progressed. If he had 5 or more years, Alex was certain he could practice enough to learn about everything required in the Dao of techniques.
However, one thing he had not been successful in despite having 8 years for it was a way to find himself out of his current situation.
He and Godslayer spoke a lot about what they could do, but with Alex's oath binding him, there wasn't a single thing he could do to get out of the situation without healing him.
The situation was so bad that if the old man ever died while resting, Alex would have to kill himself for failing to heal the old man.
There was simply nothing else he could do. But healing the old man was the last thing Alex wanted to do.
He could only imagine the pain and tragedy that could come from the old man being back in power. A pseudo-immortal roaming the world, unobstructed from heaven for he had already been judged for the power he held now.
Even if the old man kept his word and left him safe, he could imagine the many people that would die. The various elders from the different sects would most certainly die.
"But what can I do except healing him?" Alex thought. The only thing he could really count on at the moment was for the old man to free him from his oath for his own survival.
But then again, could he really count on a madman?
The door opened and Alex looked up. After 8 years, the door had finally opened up and the old man had come back.
"Oh, I didn't realize you had friends," he said when he saw Pearl and Whisker next to him.
Alex quickly took them back into their beast space and looked at the old man. "You're out?" he asked.
"Yes," the old man said with a rather happy face. "And I see that you have improved, as per my instructions."
"I have," Alex said.
"I hope, for your sake, that it is enough," the old man said.
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