'It's time to process everything I placed in my mind now.'
Ken thought to himself as he got up and stretched. He had spent a whole month reading books about fifth and sixth-rank ingredients, techniques, pills, and formations. He hoped he'd have time to learn Runology, but he had to focus on the two topics with immediate practical uses.
'Galen was a bit haughty, but he wasn't that hard to talk to. It's probably because he acknowledged my talent after I passed his test.'
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A month ago:
'This price is crazy!'
Ken sighed and paid a million BP for a single cauldron. No matter how high the price was, keeping the BP which would turn irrelevant soon when he gets out of the secret realm would be stupid, so he just spent it and got what he wanted.
It was an eighth-grade cauldron, and Ken would use it long until he became a ninth-rank alchemist.
"Hello Inheritor, I'm Elder Galen of the Bloodthirst Sect. I can feel you already own two tokens, so you are probably aware that the elders, including myself, came from the top righteous sects. I used to be one of the supreme elders of the Infinite Wisdom Sect."
Ken heard the young voice of a child after he imprinted the Inheritor Token with his Qi.
"Ken Sue pays respect to Elder Galen."
Ken cupped his fist and bowed deeply, showing respect. He judged Galen's character as one that pursues awe and esteem, prompting him to feed the elder with those.
"You are good-mannered, I can appreciate it."
The child-elder said with a haughty countenance. Ken was somewhat surprised to see the elder taking the form of a child, but he didn't let it show on his face.
"Elder Galen, we have only so much time together, and I would never get to meet someone with profound knowledge like yours before I ascend in Horse month of the Monkey year. Please, clear my doubts on Formation Mastery." (1)
"Haha, no problem, no problem. I like ambitious children; only with ambition one can get far. I'm impressed by how young you are, yet you already cultivate and study so diligently."
"A clumsy bird has to start flying early" (2)
"A bird that passed my test can never be clumsy. So, what are your doubts?"
Ken smiled and asked his question. Although he didn't know the answer, he didn't ask to learn but to probe.
"Thank you for the opportunity, it's regarding the eighth-rank formations I ran into in the challenges before, they must have been set by you. How do they make the buildings so much bigger from the inside than they are when you see them from the outside?"
"Oh, those are great formations indeed. However, we don't have time to delve into the mysteries of eighth-rank formations now. Don't try to bite more than you can chew; you will learn nothing if you try to jump so many ranks at once."
"I see, but even if you can teach me a small part of their mechanism to broaden my horizons, I'm sure I will benefit a lot from it."
"Of course, of course. Hmm… how should I explain it in a simple way someone at your rank can understand… so there are runes that affect the space inside and distort it to make the place bigger. You know, somewhat like how storage rings work."
Ken smiled with an admiring gaze and nodded with every word the other boy said as if he was being exposed to the secrets of the universe with every sentence.
"But now enough with that, let's talk about Alchemy instead. Do you practice Runology?"
Elder Galen desperately changed the subject and talked about other topics.
'It seems that the voice was speaking the truth and it is a better formation master than Galen. It must mean that the stronger formations here were constructed by whoever owns that voice, and not by Galen. His main professions are Alchemy and Runology, not Formation Mastery.'
Ken confirmed his suspicions, so he had no reason to keep forcing the elder to talk about formations. Ken knew that Galen is still a better formation master than the current him, but his expertise there wasn't as deep and comprehensive as it was in the other two subjects.
The two chatted for an hour with Ken asking questions about Alchemy and the elder answering. He asked many questions about mind manipulation and mind protection, and he could see that Galen was getting uncomfortable.
"I will dissipate soon. Let me offer you some advice; you've lost a lot of opportunities by choosing the sites in the wrong order. You should've gone first to the Resident of a Buddha and a Demon, it's the most important place for mortal cultivators in this realm."
Ken found it hard to believe that the proud alchemist and runologist will admit that something was more important than his dear library. With that in mind, the young child sat down to browse the books, finding out as much as he could about the mind and soul.
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'It's time to process everything I placed in my mind now.'
Ken sat down after stretching himself and getting a good night's sleep. He read a lot during that last month, and now he had to remove the useless parts and conclude new theories and truths from the knowledge he accumulated.
"Hey voice, does the library have formations that speed up thinking?"
"Yes, but you should go to the Residence of a Buddha and a Demon. Why not come back after you're done there if you have four tokens?"
"It's fine, the challenges only take a couple of days, so I will have more than enough time to go through the remaining four challenges in the last two weeks. I promise to go to that inheritance ground as soon as I finish learning here."
Ken gave a reasonable explanation to make the voice get off his back and it seemed to work.
"All right, enter the portal to reach the Mind Boosting Formation. It will speed up your thinking process, but it can't make you smarter."
A portal opened in front of Ken, and the young boy stepped into it, disappearing from the previous room. When he came out of the portal, he found himself inside a small, squared room made of stone, around three meters long and three meters wide.
There was a visible formation on the ground, and Ken could tell it was a double sixth-rank formation from a glance. By inscribing the same formation on both the floor and the ceiling above it, the formation master made it at least 1.5x times more effective.
The young boy spent the next week in constant meditation without sleep, using Qi to nourish his body whenever he got tired. His mind worked faster than full speed; the formation sped up his mind significantly, and it shortened the process by more than half.
'I have one more week before I must go to the next challenge. I'm finally done fully comprehending everything I read, now I just need to practice it and experiment with it to broaden the theories and confirm them.'
The voice had been nagging him to go multiple times, and Ken knew he couldn't stall for more than one week now. There were only three weeks left for the secret realm before it closes.
He had a clear plan in mind for this week; he wanted to use some days on experimenting with his new knowledge and the last days to broaden it.
Before going for another intense week of training, Ken slept for 12 hours and ate a hefty meal; the formation took its toll on his mind, and avoiding sleeping and eating for so long didn't help.
After resting, Ken followed his plans and started experimenting. He remained in the room with the Mind Boosting Formation and added Qi Stones to the formation. The young child had to fund its activation and he spent over a hundred thousand medium Qi Stones in the past week; supporting a double sixth-rank formation wasn't cheap.
He used 5 days to improve his Alchemy knowledge, which he deemed necessary for his plans to deal with the threat of the Residence of a Buddha and a Demon. He had a huge stock of resources thanks to the slaughters he initiated in different opportunities lately, and he could concoct many of the recipes he had gained.
While this amount might not be enough for normal alchemists as they'd burn most of them while trying to master the concoction process of a single pill, Ken never had to try more than three times to produce a perfect pill, and once he did, all the following attempts to concoct the same pill resulted in perfect pills only.
The young alchemist would then break down the perfect pills and the imperfect ones into small pieces and discerned the effects the essences of the ingredients had on each other and the way his different methods of fire control affected the concoction process.
He also concocted quite a few self-invented pills he believed will come in handy in the near future.
'Now it's time to relive my experiences in the secret realm with my new knowledge about formations and leave for the Residence of a Buddha and a Demon.'
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A/N: (1) In Horse month of the Monkey year – something that will happen in the far future, on an unpredictable date.
(2) A clumsy bird has to start flying first – someone without talent must practice more than those who have talent in order not to be left behind.
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