Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy
chapter-2033

Alex and Pearl walked out of the only open door of the four in the large white hall. Many people still spent their time on the other 3 doors that wouldn't open, but Alex didn't see any reason to try for himself.

He had done everything he could around those doors and was certain there had been hundreds of thousands of people before him who had tried something as well and failed.

If the Saber were hidden there, they would've been found a long time ago.

As Alex walked out of the large hall, he noticed a massive pristine white pathway before him. He looked around, noticing that the outside was just as large as any other secret realm.

This one was more well kept though, with forests that had been kept under control and open fields that had been trimmed properly.

"The Qi here is quite strong," Pearl mentioned. "Even more than back home."

"Yes," Alex said. "It is a very good place to stay and cultivate, but not as good as the Blue Silk sect though. That is a proper place."

Pearl nodded. "Where do we go now?" he asked. Alex looked at the large white pathway that led straight toward somewhere in the distance. He could see some large patches of gardens, a few large buildings, and a whole lot of people intending to find the treasures of the secret realm.

"We'll go to all the places we can go to," Alex said. "But before that, I need to check something."

He turned around, looking back at the white hall he had just come out of. Instead of going into the hall, he began walking around it, looking at the place from the outside.

He was not the only one with that idea as many people too did the same thing. They walked around the spherical hall from the outside, looking to see what rooms there were that the other 3 doors could lead to. To everyone's confusion, there were none. Those doors truly led nowhere.

'I couldn't sense any spatial shenanigans around those doors, and my eyes saw nothing out of the ordinary,' Alex thought. 'So are they really just normal doors?'

Alex made one loop around the outside of the hall and finally decided to give up on this weird obsession about the doors.

"There are places to go in that direction too. Where should we go first?" Pearl asked, pointing to the large expanse of land directly on the other side of where the opening to the hall was.

Alex looked in that direction and frowned. Unlike the white pathway that led him toward specific destinations on the other side, this side had nothing at all.

'That must have been intentional,' Alex thought looking at how much of a difference one side of the secret realm was from the other.

"Could that man have made this pathway to hide the fact that he hid the treasure on that side?" Pearl asked.

"I'm not sure," Alex said. "Even if he did, many people have come here already, so they should have checked that side as well. And I don't know if anyone has found anything."

Pearl frowned. "What do we do then? Follow the path or go our own way?" Alex looked down the pathway and saw the number of people going in that direction. "Let's just go our own way first," Alex said. "Let's make sure that side of the secret realm truly has nothing before we head on over to the places where everyone is going."

Pearl smiled. "Yes, let us do that."

Alex and Pearl decided not to take the white path and made their way to the opposite side of the secret realm than where most were heading too. There were still a lot of people going in this direction, but compared to the other side, it was so much less.

There was truly nothing in this section of the secret realm. No garden, no buildings, nothing. There was a small stream of the river that ran straight through the land, but other than that, the only thing noteworthy here were the large forests.

Alex couldn't help but wonder if he was truly wasting his time here. But then again, that would be the same no matter where he went since he didn't know what exactly he was supposed to do there.

Thankfully, quite a few alchemy ingredients were growing here that he could pick. These weren't the rarest ingredients out there, but Alex would never let go of such an opportunity.

"Where can the Sabers be?" Pearl asked. "Would they give off Saber aura? Could you sense it?"

"I haven't come across Saber users that often, so I'm not sure," Alex said. "I don't know if I would even recognize them, but I am keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. So we'll see if I recognize it."

Pearl nodded. "Say the Sabers are hidden somewhere. What would the best place be?" he asked. "Underground maybe?"

"Best place to hide the sabers…" Alex thought for a bit. "The best place to hide a tree is in a forest, so the best place to hide the sabers would be in a storage room of sorts, with tons of old sabers that would be hard to distinguish."

"Oh!" Pearl said excitedly. "Are there those sorts of weapons storage in this place?"

Alex chuckled. "No," he said. "Anything that does not regrow has been long since taken away from here."

"Oh… so there won't be any sabers here."

Alex shook his head. "Your idea of it being hidden underground is good though. But I don't know if that can be true too since everyone should have searched the entire land already."

Pearl nodded.

As they walked, Alex saw the edge of the secret realm, the chromatic wall of iridescent colors, and realized he had come as far away from their starting point as they could.

"Let's go around the wall and see if there are places where he could've hidden it," Pearl suggested.

Alex agreed. They began walking around the edge of the secret realm, searching for any more secrets this realm may hold. As they walked, they came across a group of people sitting down to cultivate in a large clearing within the forest.

They turned to look at Alex and Pearl as they arrived.

"Greetings, Fellow Daoists," one of the men in the group said. "What sect are you from?"

Alex was surprised at the sudden question. Why was the first thing they asked him his sect?

"I belong to no sect," Pearl answered.

"Oh!" the man replied. "Then would you like to join our group? You will have to say an oath to not betray any of us."

Alex frowned. What was the man talking about? He looked at the 4 women and 5 men beside him, and they too seemed to be expectantly waiting for an answer.

"We have no intentions to join you in whatever you are doing here," Pearl answered before Alex could. "If there's nothing else, we'll be on our way."

"Ah… that's a shame," the man said as he pulled out a sword from his Soul Space. "Then I must ask you to leave this secret realm."