Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 3161 Flare Up

Blood elements usually only died when they came in contact with the air. That was primarily the reason why he had to develop a different way to transfer them from one blood to another. However, the chances that these elements came in contact with air on their own inside a blood vessel was downright impossible, so Alex needed to know just what exactly was going on.

The matriarch took some time to recognize the blood elements and slowly nodded as she understood what it was that she needed to keep her focus on.

"So you want me to see why they are dying?" she asked.

"That or why they are disappearing. Once we figure that out, we may find a way to manipulate the amount of anything happening to them and thus improve his rate of improving his bloodline recovery!"

The matriarch nodded slowly and gestured for him to start. Alex poured in new blood and the matriarch followed it with her Divine senses, waiting for it to reach its destination.

Alex followed it with his senses as well and watched as it mixed with Qi and remained there for a while. Xuan Luhei had been doing this for the past few hours, so he knew quite well what it was that he had to do.

Trying to sense what was happening within all of that Qi was like trying to see the riverbed underneath a raging river. His senses weren't strong enough to directly interact with someone else's Qi without being ripped apart.

Since he was gaining nothing, he hoped the matriarch had better results than his. A minute and a bit longer passed, and then the snake moved the blood out of the way, allowing it to be seen more easily. Alex focused and saw the same result as before.

Around four-fifths of the bloodline elements were fully dead, and

about a tenth of the original elements were gone completely. Once again, he had seen nothing at all, so he turned toward the matriarch, hoping she had some better results than him.

The matriarch seemed lost in thought for a moment, so Alex helped place in more blood for the snake to use and waited. Half a minute later, the matriarch finally stirred, looking toward Alex.

"The Qi is doing something to them."

Alex watched her blankly, not knowing how to respond to such an obvious statement. He waited, hoping she would amend her words. The matriarch focused her sense at Xuan Luhei again and began speaking. "When the blood comes into contact with the Qi, the bloodline elements come... alive. I don't know how else to explain it except that they grow excited and agitated, like droplets of water on a red-hot metal."

Alex scratched his chin. "I see. And?"

"Some of the elements get so excited that they practically burn away, turning into pure energy that flows into the Qi," she explained. "The rest of them, however, die before anything happens!"

Alex frowned. "Do the elements come out of the blood? The only time they've died on me was when they were out of the blood."

"Hard to tell. The blood and Qi mix together, and..." she focused harder. "And I suppose the Qi isolates the elements, most of them at least. It can't get to everything at once, so it takes time."

The matriarch continued for some time longer, and Alex asked her various questions to understand more. After a while, he had a somewhat detailed understanding of what was happening in those segments.

As Qi moved through the meridians and came in contact with blood, they mixed with the bloodline elements, covering them. In a way, they caused the bloodline element to flare up with energy. Some of them fully disappeared after flaring up, while most of them died.

Alex had the matriarch focus on just a few of the elements and see what she could determine in terms of difference between the ones that disappeared and the ones that didn't.

"They're stronger," she said. "The difference is hard to tell given how weak they are individually, but there is a definite difference."

"Is that so?"

Even now, Alex was learning more and more. This test turned out to be a great learning experience. After a bit, Alex brought out the blood and used his senses to try and see if he could see the elements himself.

He spread the blood as thin as he could, so he only had to focus on a small amount. He sensed around for a while, leaving the task of pouring blood to the matriarch for the time being.

Alex sensed for what felt like an hour before he grasped at the tiniest hint of difference between them. He pulled out two elements from the blood and hovered them in a single drop of blood on his hand.

"Matriarch, are these two different in strength?" he asked her.

The matriarch turned around and focused her senses on the drop of blood, barely finding the two tiny elements within it. "They are. One is stronger than the other one," she said with a hint of surprise. "It's incredible that you can sense them so clearly when you don't even have a Divine sense just yet."

"I'm an alchemist. I'm used to working with powders that are incredibly tiny too. Not as tiny as this though, but I've improved enough that I can focus on them now."

"Is that so?"

Alex focused back on the droplet of blood and slowly stripped the blood away from the element, making it smaller and smaller. The more he stripped away the blood, the weaker the blood aura became. The thing that kept the two elements safe was disappearing.

As Alex pushed on and on, he reached a point where a single push could destroy both. He had been waiting for that exactly. Time slowed down for him, the world stagnating around him. With a thought, he made the final push, ridding the blood of all aura.

His senses watched the two elements, now unobstructed by any aura.

As they both died, Alex could sense the tiniest hint of difference, now more apparent.

'Oh!' Alex thought as he noticed something he had never noticed

before.