He cleaned the cauldron of any remaining by-products and prepared his ingredients. The pill he was going to make was different from the one he had made before dinner.
He wanted to make sure that it was the energy that was the cause of the advancement, and not the ingredients. Finally, when the time arrived, he put in his first ingredient.
Slowly, one by one, he put in ingredients and turned them into power. Finally, when the time came, he used Elemental Guidance. The energies started being moved. They weren't being guided but moved once more.
"It's happening, I was right," Alex thought but concentrated on the pill once more. He moved the energies towards the forming pill which were absorbed in a higher amount by the powders.
Once again, a simple stream of Qi ran out of his body involuntarily and moved into the cauldron through the path established by his previous Qi. The pills were splitting into two once more.
The powders were separated into two parts and formed into pills. As soon as they were pills, they started to vigorously suck in the remaining energy in the cauldron. Finally, after a while, the pill was ready.
Alex expectantly brought out the pills from the cauldron. He was somehow both amazed and disappointed by what he saw. The harmony levels on the two pills were 43% and 45%. They had a combined harmony of 88%, which would have been amazing if it had been a single pill, but he knew that the pills rarely accepted that much energy. Which was why being split into two was good.
However, neither of them had ended up being a heaven-grade pill which was disappointing.
"Sigh, at least my theory is correct. Metal energy is in fact being controlled much easier than the rest of the energies." He didn't still have complete control over the metal energy. However, compared to the other energies, it was as good as being fully controlled.
"I will have to ask master what this means." He proceeded to make two more Metal energy pills. Neither of them split, so one of them ended up having 57% harmony, and the other one ended up with 59% harmony.
The rest of the energies were still being let go of into the air. 'Sigh, if only I had complete control. I wonder if I would if the energies inside were fully Metal instead of Metal just being the highest amount,' he wondered.
Finally, he stopped making pills and decided to cultivate for the rest of the night. He put his cauldron into his storage and walked over to the next room.
Before starting to cultivate, however, he took out one of the 3 remaining Spirit Cleansing Lily. He was going to increase his Spiritual Sea once more. Although they only increased in size, it was still worth it to him. The spiritual sense lasted longer now.
"Ah, I should let master know that a Spirit Cleansing lily can be used twice. She will probably want to know about it," he thought and contacted Ma Rong using the communication Talisman.
He let her know what he learned about it in the Tiger sect and returned back to cultivating.
He took the flower in his hand and started meditating. Qi inside his body started moving on their own as he let go of all control and as usual, he fell into a trance, unaware of his surrounding.
Alex slowly opened his eyes. He slowly sent out his spiritual sense and looked at his Spiritual Sea.
"Huh?" he was surprised. The size of the sea hadn't increased at all. He looked at the water in his spiritual sea and realized that that wasn't the case either. It was then he saw it.
The Spirit Cleaning lily in his hand hadn't disappeared at all. It was perfectly intact, just the way it was last night.
"What's going on? Why didn't I use up the flower?" he started wondering. He tried to think of any records he read that spoke of these things, but couldn't find any.
"Did I make a mistake somehow?" he started to worry. He looked to see if there was any change to the flower, but just like the first time he looked at it, it was intact.
"I must've done something wrong then," he put the blame and forgot about the flower for now. He looked at his surroundings and noticed something out of the corner of his eyes.
"Huh? No way."
He immediately ran out of the dark room and into the courtyard. It was bright, unusually bright. Almost as if it were…. He looked out at the corner of his eyes once more.
"So I'm not seeing things. I did over-cultivate. It's already 10 am."
He didn't know how or why, but for the first time since playing the game, he had ended up cultivating till it was 10 am. The only other times he had woken up this late was when he had genuinely fainted.
But that was different from the current situation where he was fine and it was just normal cultivation.
"Thank god I don't have college today or I would've missed it. If I were in the dorm, I would've already missed breakfast. Whatever, let's go eat some food. Sister must be waiting for me."
He went back into his room and logged out of the game.
He had been in the game for over 14 hours, so he decided to take a bath. After bathing, he walked out into the kitchen and saw Hannah eating her food alone.
"You took quite some time. Why did you log out so late?" she asked.
"Sorry, Sister. I was cultivating and woke up only just now," he replied.
"Woke up?" Hannah looked at him weirdly. "Aren't you in the Organ Tempering realm?" she asked.
Alex wondered why she could ask this, but he still answered, "Yes, sister."
Hannah then asked, "Then why are you still falling asleep while cultivating? That should have stopped after the first few times."