Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy
chapter-2018

Guild Master Blackfrost smiled softly, seeing Alex slowly calm himself after the news he received.

"I'm sure you will do fine," the man said. "You are young enough that people will go out of their way to give you approval in just a few decades or so. There is no reason to be in a hurry anyway. Just go at your own pace."

Alex calmed down fully and thanked the old man.

The Guild master nodded toward Alex and took away the dark fog that surrounded them. "I will be leaving now. Let us meet again in the future."

He turned around and left. He walked out of the store, making his way back toward the guild. And even as he did so, something about the interaction with Alex bugged him. There was something there that he had instinctively understood to be weird, but it wasn't coming to him fully.

'Whatever,' he thought. 'I'm sure the kid is not lying to me. He has enough potential that the Blue Silk sect would obviously go out of their way to—'

He paused as the thing that had been gnawing at him from underneath finally surfaced, making him stop in the middle of the pathway. He turned around, looking toward the store he had just left, thinking about the young man who worked inside.

"Those weren't fake," he said to himself, remembering the emblem and the nameplate. He could tell they belonged to the Blue Silk sect. The proofs were there.

But then, how was someone who had joined the Blue Silk sect able to walk away from there less than a week later?

There were a few possibilities in his mind, the first and most obvious of which was that Alex had run away. But the possibility stopped being one when the man thought of how absurd it would be for the Blue Silk sect to have a disciple run away and not inform anyone about it.

Alex was out in the open, so they could come get him. Hell, even if he did run away, they apparently had a Seer with them that could easily divine where someone was hiding.

Alex would have had no chance of hiding at all.

So that possibility wasn't real.

The other possibility was that Alex had requested some time away from the sect to work on his own shop. But he couldn't see why they would let go of such a talented disciple instead of actually teaching him within the sect where he could be safe.

That brought him to the final possibility in the old man's mind. Alex hadn't requested to walk away from the sect, he had made a bargain. He had bargained with the Blue Silk sect and they had accepted.

'Did they?' the old man thought. 'What could he have bargained with? His talent? His future?'

The old man didn't understand what was happening, but the very fact that Alex could find a way to make the sect allow him to not stay in the sect right after joining spoke a lot in his favor.

'Just what the hell does this young man have that allows him to leave without any consequences?' the old man thought. 'No, I shouldn't dare try to find out.'

If his understanding wasn't mistaken in any way, then Alex was much more of a big deal than he had already thought of him to be. 'Dear lord, just what is this young man?' he thought and shook his head before resuming his walk back to the guild. He tried to stop thinking about Alex the whole way through but it was just too difficult.

He had been quite shocked by him today after all.

* * * * * * Alex watched the old man walk out of the store and turn to go back to work. He took one step only when he slipped out of nowhere.

He caught himself half a second later, nowhere nearly falling, and became upright. He looked down to see what he had slipped under and was surprised to see a layer of black ice forming on the marbled surface of his store.

It extended a few meters around him, forming a somewhat circular shape. "Was it because of the Dark fog?" he asked himself, curious. "What could this black ice really—"

He paused. 'Black ice…' he thought before his eyes lit up a bit. 'Blackforst?'

Was this the Blackfrost that gave the old man his name? The black layer of ice on the surface of the marble floor evaporated so quickly that I was gone before he could fully see what it was.

"Must've been a Creation," Alex said to himself and got back to work.

The work ended early that day as there weren't many patients that came toward the evening time. They got to close the shop early and go home.

As they were about to do so, the door opened and someone else walked in.

"Greetings, how may we help you?" Fang Yuxie said out loud to the person who walked in.

The man walked in deeper and raised his hand toward Alex. "Hey, sir Alchemist! Thank god you're here." Alex looked toward the man who spoke with narrowed eyes. The man's face seemed… familiar, and so did his voice. His face gradually changed as he remembered the man.

"Oh! It's you," he said. "Did you get pill poisoning again?"

The man waved at Alex and laughed a little. "I am not ill or anything. Actually, I didn't even come to get anything really. I just came to thank you."

"Thank me?" Alex asked. "You don't have to thank me."

"No, but I do," the man said. "It is thanks to you that I was able to heal, and it is because of you that I improved. It is also thanks to you that my Alchemy skill improved as well."

Alex smiled. "I'm happy to hear that. I'm happy to see that you are doing quite well. You deserve to do well."

The man smiled. His life hadn't been the best for a long time, having to cultivate while being a slave to an evil sect, and using scraps to make pills to aid his cultivation.

Finally, he had found someone who had helped him and he felt forever grateful.

"Within the past 3 years, I did my best to improve my life as much as I could, and today, I am proud to say that I have officially taken the first major step in becoming a great person."

He took something out from his storage bag and showed it to Alex and the rest.

Alex looked at the thing and was surprised to see what it was. It was a blue pendant in the shape of a leaf, and on it were written two words.

Immortal Alchemist.

"You got a license?" Alex asked in surprise. "I got a license!" the man said in high spirits. "And it is all thanks to you sir."

"Nonsense," Alex said. "I just gave a little push is all. You did all the hard work yourself. Congratulations."

The man gave a wide smile. "Haha, I suppose I did," he said. "Now that I have a license, I can finally find a job too."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "You're looking for a job?"

This was quite opportune.