"So… what do I do now, Master? Do I not take part in the upcoming Core Disciple exam? I thought that was what you had told me," Alex said.
Ma Rong made a judging face and said, "Of course not. You're still taking place in the Core Disciple exam. You will just have to give me a pill that is not as good as the Heaven grade pill and I can immediately register you for the core disciple exam."
"Oh, okay," Alex said.
"So, do you have one or did you spend the entire time in the Tiger sect just fighting?" Ma Rong asked with a chuckle.
"Most of my days were just fighting and training, so I was only able to make pills for a single day last Sunday. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make a Heaven-grade pill at that time. I think my last one was just a fluke and I will have to still train quite a bit to produce a Heaven grade pill again," Alex said.
He then reached into his bag and took out a pill bottle with a single pill. He then handed it to Ma Rong. Almost instinctively, Ma Rong took out a pill tester and put the pill inside it.
She slowly watched the fog rise up along the side of the glass until it reached 39% and stopped. She nodded affirmatively and took the pill out to look at it. She looked for a bit, and the more she looked at it, the more her eyebrows furrowed.
She looked at it for a bit more and without any information, decided to ask Alex. "What is this pill? I have never seen such a pill," she said in curiosity and amazement.
"Oh, that pill is called the Great Illusion pill. It's like a Face Changing pill, but instead of changing one's face, it puts an illusion on top of it for a limited amount of time. It can be maintained for a long time. Much longer than the Face Changing pill. However, the illusion disappears if you stop feeding it your Qi."
Hearing Alex's explanation, Ma Rong was stumped. She had never heard of a pill like this so she was confused as to whether her disciple was lying or not.
"How did you make this pill?" she asked.
"Oh, it's quite simple, as long as you have the ingredients. I have the recipe right here," he said and took out the recipe from his storage. Ma Rong looked over the recipe and was surprised that it was actually a new recipe.
"Where did you find this? Was this in the tiger sect? Can't be. I know their entire catalog of pill recipes and this is absolutely not one of them. Did you get it from somewhere else then? Where? I have never seen such a pill before in the entire Crimson Empire."
Ma Rong went off with her questions and speculations leaving Alex not a single room to answer her questions. Only after she finally stopped did he answer her questions.
He told her how he was taken to an amazing place in the southern forest with a high amount of Qi and how he found tons of alchemy material there. He also told her about the skeleton where he found the recipes from.
"So, you found recipes from the dead person? How many did you get?" Ma Rong asked in anticipation.
Alex simply took out the storage bag and handed it to Ma Rong. "Take it, Master. These are the recipes. Also, there are quite a few formation blueprints that might or might not be useful to the sect."
Ma Rong took the bag and used her spiritual sense to look at it. At first, she only showed amazement at the number of different recipes. But as she looked through more and more of the recipes, she was shocked. Absolutely shocked.
"Th—Th— This…" she wasn't able to form any sentence. Her eyes stayed wide while her jaws fell to the ground.
"This is a Saint rank pill recipe," she said.
Alex nodded while understanding her feeling. He was also quite shocked when he first saw them. Ma Rong went ahead and checked the rest of the pill recipes as well.
Every time she saw a Saint rank recipe she would cry out in shock. This lasted for quite a while. At the end of this, she was breathless from all the shock. She tried very hard to calm herself and asked, "You really found all of this at the place?"
"Yes, master. I think that man might have not been from the Crimson Empire and had instead come from outside," Alex said.
"That could be the possibility. After all, there have been other such cases as well," she said.
"Oh yeah, that reminds me, master," Alex said garnering Ma Rong's attention. "Come out Pearl," he said.
In bright white light, a 20-25 cm long white cat appeared in front of Ma Rong shocking her once more. She looked at the small white cat and could tell that it was a child. However, she could also see that it was giving off an aura of Bone tempering realm.
"Is this…" she asked without finishing the question.
"This is my beast companion, Pearl. Pearl, this is my master okay. She is a good person," he taught Pearl.
"Meow," the cat meowed in affirmation.
"He is quite good, isn't he?" Alex asked.
"You got a beast companion in the Tiger sect? Did Wen Cheng not deny this?" she asked.
"Oh no. I didn't get pearl in the Tiger sect. I actually had him all the time since my near-death experience back in that crater in the southern forest," Alex said.
"The crater?" Ma Rong tried to recall back to what had happened there and suddenly remembered something. "The mother and child cat?" she asked in shock.
Alex nodded. "Yes, master. Pearl is the little cat I told you guys about in the crater. He had made a bond with me when I was nearly dead, so I never knew about him. But after being released back in Tiger sect, I have been training with him," he said.
Ma Rong's eyes remained wide open. "You bonded with the child of a monster that was in the Saint realm," she said in shock.