Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 2064  The Mind Palace

Ninerise's eyes narrowed and he looked at those white lines more sharply. He quickly turned around, following the lines with his gaze.

He then turned back to Alex, a look of shock clear on his face. "Are these…"

Alex grimaced a little, understanding that the young man had realized what was happening. "Your uncle, huh?" he asked, scoffing a little. "I thought you were a rogue cultivator with no family."

The young man slowly took a step back. "Yeah, umm… my uncle," his words sounded incoherent. "I'm sorry, I need to leave."

He quickly turned around and walked away before sprinting a bit down the line.

Alex sighed. It appeared the young man had realized the truth. But that wouldn't stop him as he was already done with most of what needed to be done. Everyone who joined now would hopefully be too late.

So Alex put his attention back into his work and continued his investigation. It took him barely any time to go through the entire plaza, but checking all the viable paths through his own meridians that followed the pathway laid out in this location did take him a full day.

Once he had mapped out more of his body, he went to the other breathing garden where he stayed for nearly 2 days before he left that place as well.

After coming out of that place, Alex finally made his way toward the Mind Palace.

A few people came out to see who he was and returned upon seeing who it was. Alex ignored those people and focused on himself, going toward the low ground where the white pillar stood.

The white path he had followed until now from all directions came this way and depending on how they acted, this would be the last thing he needed to know before he could have the technique.

He still missed one vital part of the technique, but that would hopefully be evident somewhere in this secret realm. He had about 50 days to search for it, and he hoped that would be enough.

Alex landed at the base of the pillar, seeing the white pathway mess into it. He frowned, not understanding where it led. There were still a dozen or so possibilities for all the pathways, and just checking whether the meridians went behind the spine, in front of the spine, or through the spine was enough to knock those possibilities down to just 5 or fewer.

But, from what he could see, there was no answer. The white path simply melded with the spine. Unless the entire spine worked as a meridian, which it didn't, Alex would have no idea.

"Either I'm not supposed to know which path to take, or he needed to use this material to support this palace," Alex thought, looking at the top of the spine. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

The latter theory made sense given how even after the attack on the Belly of Treasure, there was still a pathway there. Ever since then, he had known that white material was tough, which was why Sixghost had likely used it in almost every location that was important.

Alex flew up to the palace, landing in through the door. A long corridor ran through the center of the house, and on either side of it was a large hall.

People were inside those halls, meditating or simply talking around. Alex looked at the white path that came in front of the house and saw the direction it entered.

It was the left one. And judging by the thickness of it, Alex knew there had to be either a single meridian that led here or two. There could be no more than that.

Alex entered the room intending to find where the white path led when he saw that it had simply ended in a room with fully white floors. Nothing else spread from the room, so this was where it ended.

Alex walked through the room, somewhat confused, but also happy that he had gone through it all. He had come to the very end of the road.

He wanted to sit down and figure out what the technique actually was in the end, and if he had landed on a single possible route when he noticed something on the wall in front of him.

It was a painting hung at the side of the wall of a tall man in brilliant blue robes, standing tall with two sabers in his hand.

Alex walked up closer to it and realized the headache he had been ignoring this entire time had come in hitting harder. The closer he got, the stronger it became.

'So this is the source of all this headache,' Alex thought, looking at the painting. He tried to reach out toward it, and the headache increased even more.

The Intent within the painting didn't let anyone get too close to it. Alex withstood the headache as it wasn't anything unbearable and pulled on the painting.

He tried to take it off, but it was attached to the wall on the top. It did lift, letting him see on the back. It was a simple backside of the canvas with no techniques written onto it as he might have hoped.

Alex stepped back and sighed, looking at the painting again. He felt the Intent to see if it was anything special, but from what he could sense, it was a simple Intent with no actual aura to it.

Alex even wondered if this was the Intent that he was searching for, but it didn't seem like it. At least, he couldn't feel the aura of any technique from the painting.

As someone with the Dao of Techniques, it was more obvious to him than it would be to other people.

Alex looked at the painting again. The man with his back faced against him, the two sabers, and the vast ocean of darkness that stood behind him. Darkness that seemed to want to swallow him.

Alex got a peculiar feeling seeing the darkness like it was so large his mind couldn't comprehend it.

He moved his eyes away from the painting and moved to the side of the room, finding an empty location where he could sit down and cultivate.

Pearl came out and sat by his side, waiting there to stop him from being disturbed.

Alex closed his eyes and finally began focusing on the meridians that went into the brain.

Knowing what he knew, he immediately cut down the possibilities from a dozen, down to 5.

Alex then retraced the steps and made sure all 5 of those were correct. Once he made sure they were, in fact, correct, it was time to know which one of them was the real one and what it did.

Unfortunately, Alex had no way of learning that at all. He stayed there for a moment and wondered if the Dao of Technique helped him by any chance. Assuming the technique here was the same Replication technique he had heard Godslayer talk about, he technically knew what the technique was supposed to do and thus had the Intent required to use it.

So, Alex decided to check all of the 5 remaining pathways under that scenario.