Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 552 - The Source

<Toxic substance detected>

<Sun God's Divine Yang body is attempting to disintegrate the toxin>

<Disintegration unsuccessful>

<Trying again>

Alex looked at the notification in front of him with a shock on his face. He had thought he won, but it seemed to be at the cost of his own life now.

"Shit!" he cried out. His anger reached sky-high as he pulled the broken sword out of the old man's body and immediately cut off his left arm all the way up in the shoulder. He wanted to stop the old man's poison from reaching his body so soon.

"Don't you dare think you'll be dying so easily," Alex said. He pulled out a healing pill and ate it to heal himself as much as he could and looked down towards the old man. 

That was when he noticed the many broken pieces of metal all around him. The old man had fallen on top of his own broken sword and somehow managed to find the tip that held the poison. Likely due to it cutting himself and poisoning him.

The old man was bleeding out of his abdomen would as well as the giant gaping wound on his left shoulder. 

"J-Just kill… me," the old man spoke in between spurts of blood escaping from his mouth. 

"Your death won't be so simple," Alex said. "I promised you will feel the pain my master felt a thousand times over."

"I had to watch my master die, and I cried. Now I will do the same for you and watch you die. Only this time, there will be nothing but a smile on my face as I do so," Alex said. A deep-seated hatred flared from within him, telling him, urging him to torture the man as much as he could.

Alex dropped the sword as it was no longer necessary for the next thing he was going to do. 

  Alex put up his palm and a small fire appeared on top of it. He pushed it down at the old man's stomach and left arm, and burnt it as badly as he could. 

The old man cried miserably, but Alex only smiled when he heard that. "Now that your wound has been cauterized, you won't die of blood loss," he said.

He then turned the flame into a sharp, arrow-head-like shape. "Let's begin." He brought the flame close to the old man's eyes.

"D—"

Before he could even say anything, Alex put the flame into the old man's eyes and burned it from the inside. 

"ARGHH!" the old man cried out loud. 

"Shut up!" Alex said. "We're only beginning." He brought out the flame, the old man's wound never bleeding due to it being cauterized on the way out.

He then put the flame onto the other eye of the old man and burned it as well. Both of those times, he made sure not to touch the nerves so that the old man could feel it.

"My master lost her eyesight first," Alex said, remembering Ma Rong's question of if he was there. 

"After that, she lost her hearing."

The old man understood what was coming. He tried to cry to stop Alex, but Alex never did. He burned both of the old man's ears. 

"Then, she lost her sense of touch," Alex said and stood up before he started burning the old man's body. He made sure that the fire had as low of a temperature as possible so that the old man would suffer much longer.

"She couldn't speak after that," Alex said and got rid of his fire before turning his hands into a golden claw. He grabbed the old man's neck and ripped out his vocal cords.

The old man could no longer cry out and started gasping for air.  Alex moved to the side as he watched the old man burn and choke on his own blood. 

For nearly 10 minutes he struggled to find a way to live before his lungs were filled with blood and he could no longer keep breathing. 

The old man drowned in his own blood, feeling the hot flames on his skin the entire time as he died.

Alex breathed heavily, huffing very quickly as the anger in his heart slowly started calming down. 

"Did you see that, master? I killed him. I hope this helps you find peace," Alex said. He walked upto the old man and used his broken sword to stab him through the head one last time to fully make sure he was dead. 

He then increased the flame's temperature and watched the old man burn to cinders. 

Now that his strong emotions of rage and motivation were gone, the other emotions in him finally started taking over him.

The yang source was still calling for him, and Alex wanted to go find what that is. Now that he was poisoned, he at least wanted to see what it was that drove this man to kill so many people just to get to it. 

The Qi in the area was considerably stronger than previously, so Alex brought out his boat and flew away on it.

He had lost many things in the past few days. His arm, his master, and now he lost the sword that had been with him since the very first day. 

Still, he had one more thing he was going to lose today. That was himself. With how hard his body was trying to get rid of the poison and still failing, Alex was sure he would die very soon. 

He would likely never be able to return back to the game ever again, back to this world. That was why he wanted to see it. He wanted to see what was so attractive to the old man, and to him for the last time before he disappeared from this world.

The boat kept on flying, while Alex saw the red veins creep upon his body. It wasn't as fast as with his master, however, and Alex couldn't figure out why. 

He had a few hypotheses. The first was that the poison didn't work very well against people with Yang-type energy and was slow to take effect. 

That seemed plausible in his eyes. Another was that it just took a slower time to take effect on body cultivators. 

Another reason could also be that his master didn't have any Qi at the time to fight off her poison, while he currently had some. 

He noted the speed at which the red veins grew and made an estimate that the poison would kill him in about 3 hours. He hoped that was enough to reach the source.

Alex flew for an hour before he started noticing the symptoms of the poison. His body started going into a fever to fight the poison. He felt hot, despite the winter dawn. 

He couldn't handle the heat, even as a cultivator, and started taking off his robes. He took the outer robes off, then the inner. 

A little later, he also dropped the lower pants as well, until he was fully naked. Even then he felt it burning. 

He knew the burning was good, it was his body fighting the poison, but the discomfort of it all made him annoyed.

By the next hour, however, Alex had stopped feeling hot, and instead, he stopped feeling most things his body was starting to go numb as the red veins crept up close to his neck.

Alex sighed and shook his head. 'Just a little more,' he thought. The boat slowed down considerably on the last foot of the journey, so Alex jumped off of it.

He left the boat where it was as it wouldn't be necessary for him anymore. He left his possessions there as well, wishing the best of luck to the next person that found him, hoping it would help on their cultivation journey. That was all Alex could do at the moment. 

He looked up ahead and saw a massive dune he would have to climb. After that, he could feel the source of the Yang being just behind this dune. 

He slowly climbed up the dune. The sand threatened to slide down, but Alex used what little Qi he could use to keep the sand in place as he walked up.

He looked the east along the way and saw the sun just about to come up over the horizon, and looked at the top of the dune, seeing another sun about to rise up the horizon as well. 

He sensed the red veins crawling up his neck as well. Very soon, he would lose vision for sure. 'Not so fast,' he thought and sped up his climb. 

He reached the top of the dune and look beyond it. Down below, A bright white light shined with the shine of a burning sun. The light made him feel like he was looking directly into one. 

He took a step forward while blocking his eyes and suddenly, slipped. He rolled from the top of the dune all the way to the bottom. 

He didn't feel it anything at all thought. He rolled for nearly a minute before he reached the ground. 

He felt disoriented and even a little nauseous from all the rolls. "Argh!" he shook his head as he stood up. He was starting to hear some sounds that he had never heard before. 

His heart skipped a beat when he realized what he was. He looked in front of him and saw the source of the bright light. However, it was just too bright to understand what it was. 

Alex put his hand in front of his eyes, and he could somehow see the veins light up in his palm. 

He squinted his eyes as well as he could and watched not the source, but rather what was beyond it.

Dark, blue, and murky waters. Splashes that came up the shore. Unending to the furthest horizon he could see.

"The ocean!" he said softly. That was something he had wanted to see all this time, and right before he was about to die, he got to see it. 

The ocean was huge, and it covered his entire vision. He turned his head from left to the right, and besides the light and the shore, he could see nothing but the ocean. 

He felt a bit of melancholy as he realized that he would likely never get to see this sight again. 

Tears started rolling down his cheeks. He too didn't want to die. But he couldn't stop the inevitable at all. 

He watched the ocean through his blurry vision. It looked so beautiful. He wanted to see so much more of this world, but he wouldn't be able to. Just as he thought that the image in front of him was gone. 

He lost vision in his eyes and could only hear the splashes of the giant body of water. Before he knew it, even that was gone. 

Alex could neither see nor hear anything. He soon realized that he had fully lost his sense of touch as well. 

All of his senses were gone. If not for his body cultivation, he would've likely lost all ability to move as well.

He felt pain and regret in his heart. Pain that he was going to die, and regret that he didn't make more of his time. 

However, those weren't the only feelings in him at the moment. There was also the intense attraction he was feeling towards the source.

Since there was no point at all, Alex let go of all restraints and started walking towards the source.

The source got closer and closer. He assumed he was burning at the moment, but he felt nothing. 

When he felt he reached the location of the source, he put his hands forth. Even though he couldn't feel it, he felt the source appear on his palm.

Alex felt the intense urge to eat the thing. Since he had already let go of all restraints, he decided to not restrain himself on this one either.

He opened his mouth as wide as he could and put the source inside of it.

Immediately, everything went dark and Alex opened his eyes.. He had logged out.