Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy
chapter-2043

Alex arrived at the next spot, which looked like a junkyard. He looked at the plaque to see what this place was called and was surprised to find that there was no plaque at all.

'A place without a name? That's a first,' Alex thought and looked around. A man walked outside, all alone, and with a weaker cultivation base than most people that had come out from those other places.

The man looked around, trying to see if Alex and Pearl were alone. When he noticed that they were, he judged them. "You two Daoists here to join our group?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not," Alex said, preparing for the eventual battle.

"Then are you two here to fight?" the man asked with a curious look. "I would've assumed you two were running away from whatever is happening over at that garden."

"What is happening in the garden?" Alex asked.

"Did you not feel that aura a while ago?" the man asked. "You should have."

"Oh, I felt the aura. Just didn't know what was happening," Alex said. "And we're also not here to fight."

"Hmm? Then why are you here?" the man asked, now seemingly confused.

"To look inside. See what we can find," Alex said.

The man raised an eyebrow. "You want to search here? This place?" he asked.

"Yes," Alex said. "Is that okay?"

"I mean, I don't see why not," the man said. "But I also don't see why?"

Alex was taken aback. "What do you mean why?" he asked. It should have been obvious what he was trying to search the place for. Did this man not know about the sabers or what?

"Huh… neither of you two know about this place, do you?" he asked.

"It's some sort of junkyard, right?" Pearl said. "This must be where everything is thrown to when it is destroyed."

"Oh, you're not wrong about everything here being destroyed, only that it was thrown in here. No, everything you see here destroyed came from this very location," the man said.

Alex frowned. "I don't follow you, brother."

"This place was destroyed a long time ago, and what you see here are the remnants of it. Whatever was here, whatever clue, no longer exists. So if you wish to search through here, we are perfectly fine with it, but I will tell you right now that you are wasting your time."

Alex frowned. This place was destroyed?

"How could an Immortal destroy a place like this?" he asked.

"Well, it wasn't an Immortal from what I hear," the man said. "There are a lot of stories about this, so I'm not sure what the truth is, but it is said that someone who carried the power of a Divinity managed to come to this secret realm in search of the treasures, but something happened when that person was right here and that led to the destruction of this very spot."

Alex looked around stunned at the fact that he was looking at the ruins of a Divinity's presence. "Did that person die?" he asked.

The man shrugged. "No idea. Some say he died, some say he was sent out, and some even say he was captured by other elders. No one ever speaks the truth though."

"I see," Alex said. "So we can enter the place right?"

The man shrugged. "Be my guest."

Alex and Pearl walked into the ruined space that was a bunch of rubble, twisted metals, and a bunch of wood. From what he could tell, this place had a lot of treasures, but they were all destroyed when that incident had happened.

The spot itself was quite large, so Alex walked around, searching for anything he could find. There were countless individuals inside, watching him in case he did something extreme like attack them all of a sudden, but Alex was focused on his own thing. Pearl helped him look around, but neither of them found anything important at all. Everything within this place was as the man had said, completely destroyed.

They searched for nearly a whole day but ended up finding nothing at all. Around the end of the day, they gave up as there was nothing in there at all.

Reluctantly, they decided that they had to leave.

"Found anything?" the man approached them as they were just heading out.

"No," Alex said. "You were correct. There is nothing here."

"I told you," the man said. "The Belly of Treasures no longer has any treasure within it."

Alex and Pearl both looked at the man. "The Belly of Treasures? Is that what this place is called?" Alex asked.

"Yes, did you not know?" the man asked.

Alex shook his head. "We were wondering what this place was called, but there is nothing at the front to say what it was."

"Oh yeah, that was apparently destroyed during that incident as well," the man said. "But records of this place will tell you about the 7 important locations of this secret realm, this one is the Belly of Treasures."

Alex nodded, quickly counting if there were 7 locations in total. The maze, the two gardens, the plaza, this place, another place that was close to here, and the large building at the very far top of the secret realm.

There were 7 locations.

'I guess no one counts the starting hall?' Alex thought. If that was counted that would make 8.

"Thanks for all the help, brother. We will be leaving now."

"I hoped you would be staying, but I won't stop you," the man said. "If you're visiting every place for clues, be careful on the next one."

"What's wrong with the next place?" Alex asked, curious.

"They're… a little crazy," the man said. "But hey, you might just like them."

Alex nodded. "I'll have to see if I like them," he said and left the place. He didn't leave the same way he came from. In fact, he left from the opposite end.

He noticed a small white path that entered through this place as well and followed it to see that part of it came from outside of the maze, and part of it from the exit of the maze.

"Oh, the maze does have an exit," Alex said in surprise. He had fully expected the whole thing to have a single opening. But it seemed the maze did have a solution to it. "We'll have to try that maze again, see if going through the entire maze properly does anything important."

"We're going there again?" Pearl asked. "I don't mind that."

"Yes," Alex said. "For now, let's go there. See what this craziness is that the man talked about."

The next location Alex talked about was the one with red soil. He had seen it from far away earlier today and had been interested in why it was so red.

Even before he got there though, he could already sense a fluctuating aura from the surrounding as though someone was in the middle of a fight on the inside. Actually, it felt as though there were many people in the middle of a fight. A dozen different ones at least.

That confused Alex a lot.

'Just what sort of craziness is going on here?'