Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

After saying goodbye to the Tortoise, the group of 3 went outside the secret realm to go back and complete the remaining task.

"You know what he was not telling me, right?" Alex asked.

Scarlet nodded. "Yes," she said. "I don't see how it matters to you though. Either we, I will see if it's true or not very soon."

Seeing the serious expression on Scarlet's face, Alex didn't continue the conversation.

"Where do we go now?" Scarlet asked. "Those ponds where you can see the future?"

Alex looked at Scarlet for a bit and then toward Ronron. "No, we won't be going there," he said. Knowing the future, even one that was very unlikely to happen felt like a curse that Alex didn't want others to get inflicted with.

One of his prophecies had already made him reluctant to help others on multiple occasions simply because he wondered if that was the event that would cause his death.

He didn't know if he should explain or not why they shouldn't be going there when Alex felt something buzz in his storage ring.

He pulled out a talisman and noticed that his aunt had sent him a message.

"Come to my sect as soon as you can. It doesn't look like the elders are going to let me go so easily."

Alex sighed when he read that. "That should have been obvious," he thought to himself and put the talisman back.

"We're going to the Blazing Earth sect," Alex said and pulled out his ship. "Although, they can wait for half a day while we take out detours."

The three got onto the ship and flew in the direction of the Blazing Earth sect. And if they just changed direction by a little bit, they would arrive at the Endless Tunnel.

This time, instead of going over them, Alex was going to go into them. He was on the other side of the Endless Tunnel this time around and landed outside the tunnel on his ship.

"Can you become small for a bit, so we can go through?" Alex asked.

"Fine," Scarlet said and became the size of a parrot once more, landing on Alex's shoulders.

Then Alex and Ronron got off the ship and went over to the opening of the tunnel where the disciples of the Heaven's Frost sect were keeping guard.

"Please hand over your storage bags before you go in. You can use this storage bag to carry whatever it is you think you will require inside instead," the disciple told them. Alex handed over his storage bags without any hesitation, but Ronron was a bit worried.

"Just transfer the items over," Alex said.

Ronron shook her head. "I can't. The items are tied to this storage bag. They are set up to attack whoever changes their space," she said.

"I see," Alex said. "Give me that storage bag for a moment."

Ronron handed it over to him. Alex took the storage bag and immediately turned around to hand it over to the person that was waiting for it. "Here you go," he said and tossed it into the box.

"Father!" Ronron spoke in a horrified tone. "You can't do that."

"Don't worry, you'll get it back when we leave half a day later," Alex told her.

The disciple closely checked for any other storage bag they may have been hiding, but he couldn't find any. So, he handed over 2 empty storage bags and let them go in.

Alex walked away in strides, but Ronron was a little saddened. She couldn't believe that her father had just given away the storage bag without even letting her know beforehand.

What was she going to do if the storage bag was looted somehow and her master's items were lost?

"Stop being so gloomy," Alex said as he walked a little further into the cave.

"How can you say that when you just gave away my storage bag?" Ronron asked.

"He didn't," Scarlet said and turned around toward Alex. "You looked like a professional thief just then."

"Did I? Haha," Alex laughed a little.

Ronron looked at the two of them with a confused look. "What's… going on?" she asked.

"Here," Alex reached up next to him where half his arm vanished. When he pulled his arm back, a storage bag came back along with it.

"What? What was that?" Ronron asked in surprise.

He tossed her the storage bag. "Did you really think I would give away something so important so easily?" he asked her.

"But… I saw you give it to her," Ronron said.

"That was a storage bag he stole from the box and changed with yours. He hid yours in a fold in space next to him," Scarlet explained. "To think you can now move folded space along, that should have required quite a bit of talent."

"Talent and concentration," Alex said. "I didn't move the folded space but rather teleported it around. Using both the Dao of Space and Teleportation at the same time turns out to be quite harder than I thought."

"Stop underselling yourself," Scarlet said. "Let's focus on the task now that we are here. What do we do now?"

"Let's find a corner we can work on for now," Alex said and spread his spiritual sense through the many pathways inside the cave until he found one they could work on.

He followed the path until he arrived at the location and brought out a formation place before placing it down to stop others from coming in.

"Right, let's get to it then," he said. "Time to mine this ore in front of us."

Scarlet stood where she was and Ronron looked confused. "Mine with what? Did you bring any tools?" she asked.

"Ah, you can't mine it yet," Alex said. "It's too tough for you. It would take Saints hours to knock down a fist-sized ore from this place."

"It's that tough, huh?" Scarlet asked. "How do you expect to mine it then?"

Alex rubbed his head for a little bit. "It would've been so much easier if I had the sword," he said softly. He was sure that sword wasn't lost at all and was instead still floating somewhere in his soul space, along with many other items of his which he had still to find.

"Should I start hitting it or what?" Scarlet asked, seeing that he wasn't answering her at all.

"No, I think I have a better Idea," Alex said.

"Oh, let's hear it then," Scarlet said.

"Ronron, go stay against the wall and take out your defensive treasures," Alex said.

"What?" Ronron asked in surprise.

"Scarlet, protect Ronron from the heat," he said.

"What? What heat?" Scarlet asked.

"We don't have time to waste on attacking this wall to break it off as much as we can," he said. "So, I'm going to melt it instead."

"Oh… oh!" Scarlet realized what was happening. "That thing will need a very high temperature though. Will you be alright?"

"I'll be fine," Alex said. "I have the perfect dao for it after all."

Scarlet flew and landed next to Ronron, immediately creating a wall of phoenix fire around her.

Once Alex saw they were ready, he put up both his palm toward the wall and started heating it up to the point that the ore would melt like snow in the sun.