Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The old man was dead for sure. If not for the 8th lightning bolt, the 9th one would kill him for sure.

Alex was only just worried about his own survivability. So, when he saw the yellow paper float not far from him, he knew what he had to do.

His right hand held Midnight, so he reached out with his left hand and grabbed the teleportation talisman.

This was a talisman that hadn't been used in over 30 years easily, so the energy it had gathered in the meantime was enough for Alex to teleport with.

He poured Qi into it the moment he grabbed it, and as soon as that happened, he felt the aura of teleportation slowly circle around him.

The old man was too far gone in his own madness and was ravaging through Alex's various pills that were floating in front of him. He was eating any pill he came across and that gave Alex the perfect opportunity to escape.

As the teleportation aura covered him, Alex felt a sense of understanding as to what was happening. He could feel the aura trying to latch onto some sort of space in a random direction.

Alex realized that he could change this direction if he wanted to, but at the moment, he didn't even know what direction he was turning toward with the sun in the sky. So, he could only let fate decide where he was going.

Now, all he had to do was bring Pearl back into his space.

Alex also understood how this teleportation worked. His normal teleportation was on where he switched the space in his body with another open space.

In the teleportation with the talisman, it teleported the space around him, rather than just him. This was very inefficient in a sense and required too much power.

However, it had its advantage too, and Alex realized that advantage.

"If the space is big enough... I can take everything with me," he thought.

Suddenly, Alex pushed away the teleportation aura around him encompassing everything around him as much as he could. The more items he was bringing along, the smaller the teleportation distance would be, but he didn't care about that.

Not everything he had lost was inside the radius of his teleportation aura, but he didn't have the luxury to worry about it. Still, it was only some ingredients or pills or spirit stones that he was missing out on.

Now, all he had to do was teleport away.

The old man noticed him leaving. "You bastard! Come heal me!" he shouted, but his shout drowned as the next bolt of lightning fell.

"Just die quietly," Alex said, and then he disappeared as he was teleported away with various different items of his.

The moment Alex reappeared somewhere else, he felt incredible pain as his body started getting ripped apart immediately.

Winds howled around him as the wind itself seemed to slice him up every single way. When he opened his eyes to see what was happening, he saw various different colors move around to destroy everything in their path.

Alex's body healed to protect itself, but it wasn't enough. He needed to get out of this place. He was in grave danger.

Just then, he saw his storage ring float in front of him and even further than that was Pearl, whose own body was getting torn up by the wind.

"Pearl!" he shouted, and at the same time, he lost vision. The sharp winds had destroyed his eyes, and even while he tried to heal them, they would be destroyed again.

Alex sent out his spiritual sense and grabbed onto the ring. But for some reason, even his spiritual sense seemed unusable in this wind as it was very quickly destroyed.

Still, he sent it out as far as he could for Pearl. "Pearl, come back!" he shouted, but the sound itself seemed to be torn up in this location.

Alex saw glimpses of the various other things around him. Without vision, and with what little spiritual sense he could use to latch onto the object, he tried to bring them back as well.

"Come back!" he shouted as he tried to pull them away. "Pearl, come!" he shouted as he tried to pull Pearl as well.

However, he couldn't tell what was happening outside of him anymore. His senses had already stopped functioning, and now even his vocal cords were ripped apart by the wind.

His limbs were already in tatters, so if he spent any longer, he would surely die. So, with what little consciousness he had remaining, he called back everything he had once more.

Whether it happened or not, he used all of his mental prowess that still remained to use the Dao of Teleportation to get far away from this place.

The talisman from before had been destroyed by the wind, but Alex remembered the location it was trying to take him to. So, he thought of that direction and used the full force of his teleportation powers.

With his last thought before he was teleported away, he simply sent a mental message to Pearl.

Get away.

Alex teleported once again, but this time he had no idea where he had gone. He couldn't even worry about it as he fainted when he arrived at the new place.

Sometime later, Alex woke up to the constant poking on his head. He suddenly got up and the bird flew far away.

He remembered everything immediately and checked for everything. He was holding Midnight in his right hand, and his Storage ring in his left hand.

He didn't know how long he had been out, but he had healed completely.

He checked the storage ring and found that it was empty. He quickly checked his left biceps and found the claw print still there. However, it was empty.

Pearl was alive, but he was not with him.

"No...," Alex couldn't help but feel sad and destroyed. This was not the first time he had been away from Pearl, but this was the first time he had been in a such dire situation. Pearl was likely somewhere bleeding and in need of desperate treatment.

"No, I can't sit here and mop. I need to find Pearl," he thought and stand up. However, before finding Pearl, he needed to know where he was going, and where he was at.

He looked around the giant crater he seemed to have formed and wondered, "Where am I?"

[End of Volume 3: Forged in Ice and Fire]

* * * * *

[Extras]

Two figures appeared on top of the Intercontinental Teleportation formation. One was a girl and another a beast.

The moment they arrived, they looked towards the east.

"Oh, someone is trying to break through?" the beast said with a curious expression on his face before it disappeared. "No, he's dead."

"Is that so?" the girl said. She could sense the disturbance in the atmosphere to the east too, but she couldn't tell exactly what was happening. Her senses were nowhere near the level of the beast.

"Anyway, thank you senior, for bringing me here," she said.

"No problem. Just go on and do what you came here to do. I will go visit someone and might come to help you before returning to my own place," he said.

"I will," the girl said.

The beast went away and the girl was left alone. She sighed and looked around. "Now, where the hell am I supposed to find enough materials to fix 4 different Intercontinental Teleportation formations?"

* * * * * *

Tai Guan sensed the start of the lightning tribulation and the end of it as well. The moment it ended, she and various other ancestors made their way toward the now lightning-less lightning peninsula and found the remains of the mad immortal.

"He's dead," someone said with apparent disbelief in their eyes.

"He's really dead!" another person said.

"This is a cause for celebration."

Everyone started enjoying the good news the moment they learned about the madman's death. Only a few select ones weren't enjoying themselves as they searched for someone else in the area.

"Did you find any?" Huang Xinyi asked the two ladies. Both of them shook their faces.

"That's a good sign," Elder Xuan said, her crystal blue robe fluttering in the stormless wind. "That means he got away."

"He's certainly not dead, that's for sure," Tai Guan said. "But where could he have gone?"

The group tried to find any sign of Alex's death, but there simply was none.

Tai Guan returned back to the sect and found Liz.

"The old mad Immortal died in a lightning tribulation," she told her.

"And my nephew?" Liz asked with clear pessimism in her eyes. She was ready for the bad news.

"We do not know anything about him other than the fact that he did not die there," she said.

Liz's eyes filled with hope when she heard that. "So, he escaped?" she asked.

"Most likely, but that doesn't mean his life is any better now," Tai Guan said.

"Doesn't matter," Liz said. "As long as he managed to get away, he is bound to do something great. I trust in him to do that much."

She showed great determinism and optimism now that she knew her nephew had gotten away from captivity.

"Let's go, master. I wish to train even more," she said. "I want to be strong enough to kill Immortals."

* * * * *

The script to the Demon realm in the Ruler's Domain opened and the Black Tortoise noticed.

However, even if he noticed he wouldn't care. As long as they didn't bother him, he was fine. After all, he was wounded and couldn't afford any energy he didn't have toward the intruder.

Still, he sent out his spiritual sense to see who had entered. When he did, he noticed the beast that had come in.

Immediately, the tortoise got up, the snow dropping all around him like an avalanche, and looked towards the beast that had already made its way next to him.

"How..." the tortoise couldn't help but be shocked at the new figure. "How are you... !"

The new beast that had come smiled at him as it spoke, "Wow, you're in worse shape than I thought you would be. Do you need my help?"

* * * * * * *

Pearl was barely conscious to even think straight, let alone remember what had happened before.

The only thing he remembered was that when he was in the most desperate of situations, there was a golden glow coming from his body and he had somehow managed to get away from that place.

Still, He had lost a limb and had wounds all over his body. He had lost his left eye, and his right eye saw nothing but red.

He didn't know where he was and if it was day or night. He didn't even care how good he was. As he wasn't thinking straight, there was a single thought in his mind.

Find Alex.

So, he ran around, trying to find him. And then, he found him. It was faint, very faint, but he found the connection between him and Alex, and he followed that.

He was already low on Qi, so after he flew for hours, he couldn't keep up any longer. So, when he ran out of Qi, he crashed into a forest, fully wounded and unable to even move.

He growled with what little energy he had and even his body had reverted to being small to preserve as much energy as possible.

He stared into the night as he breathed in and out, and slowly he was starting to lose consciousness.

Just then, he heard some footsteps and used the last of his self to keep his eyes open.

The last thing he saw before going unconscious was a middle-aged man, standing in front of him with wide eyes and a shocked face.

The last thing he heard before going unconscious was the middle-aged man saying a single word.

"Pearl?"