Alex walked up to his residence in the middle of the night. The last few days had been tiring, with all the nonstop pill-making, especially today.
'Or should I call it yesterday since it's already past midnight' he thought.
Alex walked straight to the courtyard as soon as he returned. It was time to learn some books. He quickly took out the Earth Grade [Veiled Light technique] and started reading it.
As soon as he finished, he got the notification.
<Congratulations. You have successfully learned [Veiled Light Technique]>
"Alright then, let's try it." He started using the technique. His Qi started flowing across his body and slowly seeped out of his entire body. As it touched the air, the Qi started to move on the surface of his body, slowly warping the lights around him.
The Qi would take the light coming from one direction, move it across his body and send it out of the other direction. To anyone looking from the outside, it looked like there was nothing between the viewer and the source of the light.
This worked omnidirectionally and always kept the light moving towards its original destination. Alex slowly looked down at his hand and realized, they weren't there anymore.
In fact, his entire body was gone. He tried to use his spiritual sense and found out that there was no problem while looking at his hands through the spiritual sense.
He tried walking around with the veil active and trained to keep the veil even under difficult situations. He tried flying with the veil active and realized he could do that as well.
'Oh… I'm flying faster now,' He thought. Getting to the 4th Bone Tempering realm had made him just a tiny bit faster at flying now.
He got back down, still invisible, and took out the next book. He started flipping through the book. This book was about the same length as the first one, but somehow it took him double the time to finish reading.
<Congratulations, You have successfully learned [Immortal Concealment Technique]>
Suddenly, all his Qi inside his body started to stop giving out an aura and stayed inside all the time. His cultivation base started to keep in its aura as well, and he started becoming more and more like a mortal human.
"Woah, that's quite good." He didn't have to do anything for this book, it worked by itself. He opened the description to check.
[Immortal Concealment Technique
Grade: Immortal
Hides your cultivation base and Qi from cultivators that are not at least a major realm higher than you]
'Hmm… so only someone in the True realms can truly know what cultivation I have. And even then, it's hard for them to instantly figure out. Add that to the invisibility, no wonder Song Zun got away with so much theft.'
'Just being invisible meant anyone without a Spiritual sense could not find them when they had the Immortal Concealment technique.'
Alex finally realized how Song Zun had managed to keep his actions hidden from the different elders.
'What else do I need to do?' he thought. 'I still need to absorb that yellow stone. I kept it aside since I had to make the pills, but now that it's over, I should do it… maybe tomorrow.'
He practiced with the technique a little longer and started cultivating.
At exactly 6 am, he woke up. He logged out and got back into the game about an hour later. He waited for Ma Rong to arrive, and learned alchemy from her for a bit.
"Give me your nameplate." Ma Rong said after the classes were done. Alex took out his nameplate and handed it to her. Ma Rong quickly scanned the nameplate and frowned.
"Why haven't you registered a single pill? You should have made at least 5 different ones by now." She got a little irritated at how slow Alex was with becoming a Core disciple.
"Uhh… I will, master. I will start making pills today onward exclusively for registering." Alex got a little embarrassed. He didn't think his master would ask him for the pills so soon.
"That reminds me, master. Here." He handed the 2 books he got from Song Zun to her. "It's the techniques Song Zun was using to sneak around in the alchemy gardens."
Ma Rong took the books and flipped one to the front page. She read the page and said, "It makes you invisible, huh?"
Alex was surprised she was able to tell what the book did from the front page alone. 'Can she actually understand the unintelligible words?' he could only read the letters but was never able to tell what anything meant.
The only thing helping him was the fact that at the end of the book, he would somehow thankfully learn it.
Ma Rong checked the next book and was surprised. "An immortal grade technique? There is only one of those in the sect. Where did that thief get this?"
"There is an immortal grade technique in the sect?" Alex got surprised when he heard this.
"You don't know? You have full access to the library, haven't you checked yet?" she said.
"Uhh… I was so focused on making pills, I forgot about learning new techniques." Alex said with a bashful face.
"Anyway. Keep these books, they are yours now. You can give them to me after you've learned them." Ma Rong said as he gave back the book.
But Alex didn't take them and instead just said, "Oh, I've already learned them, master. That's why I am giving you these."
"You already learned them? But you only got it last night. It hasn't even been 8 hours since you got these." She was surprised.
"I learned it last night at around 2 am. I stayed up late instead of cultivating."
"WHAT? You learned it in less than 2 hours?" Ma Rong was getting more and more shocked. "Show me," she said.
Alex had simply stopped the technique from automatically working, so when he let it work again, all of his presence, cultivation base, and aura disappeared in a flash— All Ma Rong could see in front of her was a mortal Alex.