"I shall allow you to enter the Forbidden Fields, but only for 3 days. We don't have much time otherwise. We will have to leave for Cardinal City on Friday if we want to reach it," Ma Rong said.
"When exactly is the competition starting, Master?" he asked.
"It should start around Sunday, but it will take us time to reach there. So, you will only have 3 days of searching inside the forbidden fields. I don't know how useful that would be, but you will get the time."
"Thank you master!" he said from the bottom of his heart.
Seeing that there was nothing more to talk about, Alex walked out of Ma Rong's house and walked all the way down to the Disciple hall in the sect valley.
'Let's see. I had 12 when I started, I used up 2, 4 were used by the folks at tiger sect, 1 was given to auction, and I just gave 2 to master. Meaning, I only have 3 left.' Alex sighed as he counted the amount of Spirit cleansing Lily he still had.
The sect valley was bright and full of light as the lanterns in the road gave it the feel of a festival. "Ah, I've missed this," he thought. He reached the Disciple Hall and went directly to the third floor under the stares of different people.
He walked up the stairs to the third floor, and just as he was nearing the 2nd floor, he bumped into someone walking outside. Both he and the other person stumbled backward.
"Hey, watch where you're going," a voice came from in front of him. He saw a person being caught by another person they were with. They were both female disciples.
"I'm sorry. It was my fault," he said as he looked more closely and realized that he knew one of the two females. The female disciple he had bumped into was a tall woman with black hair and an emotionless face. Although she looked a little angry right now.
On the other hand, the girl who caught the tall girl was a little shorter than her and looked the same. Only, her face wasn't as emotionless.
"Oh, it's you, sister Zhou Mi. I'm sorry about that, I was in a bit of a hurry," Alex said as he looked at the smaller girl. This was the girl he had met when he had attended Kong Yuhan's ascension.
"Junior Brother… Yu Ming, right? What are you doing here? The upper floors are not for outer sect disciples," Zhou Mi said.
"You know this guy?" the taller girl asked.
"I've met him once before when I was with my other friends," Zhou Mi replied.
As the two sisters were talking, Alex noticed something finally. 'A core disciple,' he thought. He had only seen core disciples before, and only now he was interacting with one, finally.
"I'm letting you go just because my sister knows. Be wary of your surroundings next time," said the taller girl, and started walking past Alex to go down the stairs. Zhou Mi nodded a bit and walked after her sister as well.
'But you bumped into me,' Alex wanted to say, but he decided not to prolong the drama and simply went to the 3rd floor. He registered his new pill with the Elder in there and walked back out.
Seeing that he had nothing to do, he went back up the mountain to his house.
"Let's make a few pills before logging out to have my dinner," he thought. He walked into his familiar alchemy room and sat down in front of the fire pit. He took out his cauldron and put it on the fire to heat it up.
In the meantime, he looked through the different recipes in his mind that he could make right now. After choosing one, he gathered up the materials separated among multiple storage bags into a single one.
He started making the pills and in less than 20 minutes he made one easily. The pill ended up having a harmony of 36%, which he found quite disappointing, however, since it was only the first pill of the day, it wasn't as bad.
He prepared another set of ingredients and started making his next pill. This one took a little less time, and by 15 minutes, he was done with it. He managed to make this one with a harmony of 43%.
"That's more like it," he thought as he smiled a little.
He rested a little more and prepared another set of ingredients for a different pill. After the cauldron had heated plenty, he put in the first ingredient and started making the last pill before dinner.
He started moving the ingredients inside and the energy started to get slowly released. He added another ingredient inside and slowly started moving that energy as well. Those two energies mixed and formed a new form of energy where one energy had the other energy suppressed for a new type of energy.
He put another ingredient and the energy from this pill mixed with the energy in the cauldron as well, forming a different type of energy that was a mixture of all of these energies.
Of these energies, there would mostly be a single type of energy that would be at the forefront in it due to the other energies suppressing each other. As Alex put more and more ingredients inside, it was soon revealed that the final energy that was at the forefront was Metal energy.
Although the Metal energy wasn't abundant, it was still abundant enough to make the pill's energy alignment be Metal. Once everything was done, it was time to form that pill.
He started forming the pill and used Elemental Guidance at the same time to move the energy towards the newly forming pill in hopes of adding more energy into it.
Suddenly, he noticed something very weird. Usually, Elemental guidance was only there to help him guide the energy, he would have no way of forcing them to move in any way he wanted them to.
But, for some reason now, a lot more energy was being guided around with elemental guidance. In fact, they weren't even being guided anymore, but just moved around.