Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy
Chapter 2812: Cylindrical

Chapter 2812: Cylindrical

The metal wall underground was no different from regular ground with ups and downs. There were hills in some places and valleys in others.

Or at least, that was what Alex expected when he went down the slope.

However, as he continued, he quickly found that the slope did not fix itself. Rather, it got steeper and steeper, to the point that he was now facing straight downward, despite walking on what he thought was just another layer of ground.

Alex was confused out of his mind, as regular land underground would not slope down like this. As he continued, his mind failed to fathom just what was happening.

The slope could not get any steeper at that point, but it did. The slope got inverted. As Alex walked on and on, trying to make sense of the situation, he reached a point where he just had to stop and take it all in.

He stood on the wall now, and yet gravity was overhead. He was upside down. He continued on with an expectation, and as if to prove him right, he walked upward, climbing a slope until he reached the location he had started from.

He had walked a complete circle.

Nothing made sense anymore. What he had thought was a layer of metal wall down here was no wall at all. Instead, it was some sort of circular metal thing.

‘Is it a sphere?’ Alex thought in confusion. He had to check. He walked sideways this time, instead of climbing the slope, but even as he walked hundreds of meters, he found not the slightest turn of angle or slope. It was one long thing.

‘A cylinder then,’ Alex thought with a frown.

‘A metal cylinder… a large metal vein?’ he thought. Was there perhaps not a wall down here but rather a metal vein that produced Elixir?

‘Can’t be a metal vein. A metal vein wouldn’t create anything. The old man is right. The metal would need runes to do something, and it wouldn’t work with Yin.’

Alex frowned. Then, was it not metal?

He felt the vein underneath him and still found it smooth and cold to the touch. His Spiritual Sense failed to sense anything at all, despite just the cold Yin, so it was useless.

Still, Alex wondered if the answer had been right in front of him the entire time. His Yin bead had reacted down here already, and he had thought it was because of the presence of strong Yin, but what if it was because of the thing below him?

‘Is that a Yin spirit vein?’ Alex thought.

A Spirit Vein would be the exact same as a metal vein for him, in the sense that it would not let him travel through it using his Earth Traversing technique.

A Yin Spirit Vein would also likely gather Yin from around the surroundings too.

Had he finally found out what it was then?

‘It’s definitely the correct size for a Spirit Vein,’ Alex thought. ‘Although…’

As he thought about it, two questions kept repeating in his mind.

Why would a Yin Spirit Vein create something so fascinating like Elixir? And why didn’t Hell’s Intent destroy it already?

Surely there were Yin Spirit Veins all throughout the other worlds. He knew for a fact that a few had even been taken away from the Ever Dark realm by the strong cultivators who had made it there.

And yet, there was no mention of any liquid out there that could effortlessly improve someone’s body cultivation. There was no Elixir.

Secondly, Hell should have destroyed this already. Why had Hell not yet destroyed this Spirit Vein? Or had it somehow managed to find a way to escape Hell’s Intent?

Alex couldn’t find an acceptable answer to either of the questions.

There was also the fact that all of Hell had, at some level, access to Elixir that made them body cultivators. Did that mean all of Hell was covered in Yin Spirit Veins?

If all of Hell was covered in Yin Spirit Veins, then why the hell was Yang still so abundant?

The questions only piled up.

‘Is it actually just a metal vein that can absorb Yin?’ he thought. ‘And that direction…’

The vein was either coming from or going to the core region of Hell.

‘Why? What is there?’

Alex wanted the answers so badly. He wanted to know what this was. He wanted to know how to heal Death. And yet there was nothing he had managed to achieve in the past few months despite all of his trying.

In the end, he could only sigh.

As the Yin around him started becoming stronger, he knew it was time to leave. He gathered as much sludge from around there as he could and made his way straight back up.

He met Whisker on the way and took him back along with him.

When he made his way out of the sand, a distance away from where the old man was waiting for him, the shimmer in the sky had dimmed a lot and the sun was ready to set in the west.

The beasts were going to make their transition soon, so they got out of there. Along the way, Alex explained what he had found to the old man, who was surprised.

“So… some sort of metal or Yin Spirit Vein that creates Elixir either ends or originates at the center,” the old man said. “If it’s Yin, I can’t say much about it. But if it is metal… it could be that there is a formation at the center that works through these metal limbs.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. “That could work?”

The old man shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is there needs to be runes on it for it to work, and you didn’t find any there. So it has to be somewhere else. Of course, that’s assuming it’s metal. If it’s Yin, again, I don’t know.”

Alex sighed. “Well, at least the trip wasn’t entirely worthless. I brought back a lot of Elixir, so I should become much stronger yet again.”