Ma Rong left the hall and went back to her mountain. The other elders had already been informed of the decision and the disciples were let known that they could request an ingredient from the elders in either garden.
The elders usually kept a list of what they could find in the gardens so that they could pick it later if needed. The students could also use that list as a sort of menu to order for it using their contribution points.
Ma Rong quickly reached Alex's place in the mountain and looked for him.
'Is he back or not?' she wondered.
She checked the house and found him asleep in one of the rooms. So she decided to leave him alone for now.
Around 4 hours later, Alex opened his eyes. He had gone to his classes and come back online just now. He stood up and suddenly noticed something, there was some sort of vibration from one of his storage bags.
He instinctively checked what it was using his spiritual sense. He was a mental image of his nameplate slightly flashing with light as it vibrated inside his storage bag.
'Wow, I can check the items in my bag with a spiritual sense too? So, I don't even need the inventory anymore,' he thought. He thought of taking the nameplate out, and suddenly it came out on its own.
'Wha- do I not need to take it out on my own? Does it come out as soon as I think?' he tried a bit more with a few more items and turned out he was right.
He looked at his nameplate to see why it was shining and realized he could read the plate with his spiritual sense. He was learning some very important things with his senses.
The nameplate read, "You are still an outer sect disciple, but you now have free access to anything you want in the sect. In exchange, you will have to gather ingredients from the alchemy garden per a list given by the elder at around 8 pm. I will continue your alchemy lessons tomorrow morning at 8 am."
"Oh, I have work now, huh?" he got out of his courtyard and walked down the valley. He thought of what he could do now that he had free access to everything.
There was so much he could do now, so he had a hard time choosing what he could do. He thought for a bit and walked to the sect market.
He walked up to an elder and asked, "Greetings elder, Can I get all the recipes in the sect?"
The elder looked at him with a blank expression. "Do you have the points for that?" the elder asked.
Alex passed along his nameplate. As soon as the elder scanned the nameplate, he understood what he meant. "So you are the sect leader's disciple huh. I didn't expect you to be an outer sect disciple still." The elder was surprised, and he continued, "You don't need to buy the recipes here. Since you have free access to everything, you can go read the recipes stored on the top floor of the library."
"You can't take them away, like normal techniques, and will have to stay there and read. But, since you are allowed to stay there as long as you want, it's not really a problem." The elder explained to him quite a few things.
Alex thanked the elder and walked to the library. He had thought of learning some new techniques but ignored that thought right now. First, he had to learn some recipes, and then make some pills. It had been a long time since he had done anything alchemy-related.
He greeted the elder at the front door and walked straight to the 4th floor. He showed his nameplate to the elder on the 6th floor. He knew he would get distracted if he started looking at the techniques now, so he rushed to the 9th floor.
He had to show his nameplate once more on the 8th floor. Apparently, only elders were allowed on the 9th floor, and there were no techniques there, only old records and pill recipes.
There were only 2 shelves on the top floor. One was filled with normal pages of paper that held records that were either very important or very old. The other shelf was filled with all types of pill recipes.
He started to learn every single one of the recipes there. He was worried that having to learn so many recipes meant that he couldn't remember them all. But somehow, every single recipe he read, he could immediately recall.
This was different from instinctively knowing what to use, and when to use it. It was more like his memory power had upgraded several times. He tried to think of what else he could remember, and realized, he actually remembered every single thing he had experienced from this morning till now.
He was genuinely surprised. 'Do I have eidetic memory now?' he wondered.
It took him around an hour to fully read every single recipe in there. In total there were about 200 recipes in the room. About 140 of those were for common pills and the rest for true pills.
Although he read a lot of recipes, once he reviewed them in his mind, he realized that most of them were actually just worse or better versions of other pills. Or they did just the same thing but targeted a different part.
He spent a bit more time in there basically trying to learn what he had memorized. His genius memory once more came in very handy. With his spiritual sea already so big, he had no problem understanding the process of the alchemy behind the recipes.
His master had now given him a task, to gather ingredients at the alchemy garden, that he had to do every night, and it was about time for that. So, at 6 pm, he got out of the library and went back to his residence to log out.