Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex paused upon hearing Silvermist's words. He wasn't sure if he understood what the man had just said.

"What do you mean, master?" he asked. "Do you find it boring to make all of these pills?"

Silvermist didn't answer the question and instead presented one of his own. "Do you know how old I am?" he asked.

Alex took a moment to think. "I believe you said you were over 200,000 years old?"

"230,000, yes," Silvermist said. "And do you know how long I've been practicing alchemy?"

Alex thought for a moment. He got the feeling that his master was like him, someone who had embraced this life from the moment they became a cultivator.

"All of it," Alex said.

Silvermist nodded.

"So, you're bored after making pills for 230,000 years?" Alex asked. He didn't judge his master for this. He didn't have the right to. The period of time he had been alive was but a grain of sand in his master's hourglass. He didn't know what happened to a man who had practiced alchemy for so long.

Silvermist scoffed, mostly at himself. "Bored? That would be great, wouldn't it?" he said. "Take some time off, find joy in making pills again. I think I could easily fix any issue if I were bored."

Alex was surprised by this. "If not bored, then why don't you like making pills, master?"

Silvermist took a long moment to gather the courage in his heart to say out loud what his mind had been telling him for thousands of years.

"Every time I make pills—and by that I mean when I seriously make them, trying my best to create divine pills with Pill Souls and succeed—I am reminded how much of a failure I am," Silvermist said.

It took Alex a moment to realize he had in fact heard his master's words correctly. How could he say he could successfully make pills with Pill Souls and then, in the same sentence, call himself a failure?

It was a paradox, surely.

Silvermist saw the confused look in Alex's eyes and gave a small smile. "You don't have to worry about me," he said. "It's something I have to deal with myself."

But Alex couldn't let it go. He couldn't even understand what his master meant.

"How can you be a failure when you can make pills of the highest grade?" Alex asked. "Surely if a Peerless Alchemist like you calls yourself a failure, other alchemists might as well stop making pills and find another profession."

Silvermist thought for a moment, wondering whether to bring up this topic or not. "You are a Prime Alchemist, so with a little bit of teaching, you can become a Peerless Alchemist once you reach the Divine realm," he said. "So I suppose it is okay to ask this question of you."

Alex became curious as to what this question was and waited patiently.

"Do you think," Silvermist started, "that Pill Souls are the best a pill can become?"

Alex froze for a moment, the question ringing in his mind. He had never even considered something like this. Was his current level of alchemy knowledge lacking? Was there more to pills than Pill Souls?

"I do not know, master," Alex said. "Are Pill Souls not the best a pill can become?"

"Maybe," Silvermist said. "Maybe not. I don't know."

The shock of the moment lowered a lot at this point for Alex, most of it being replaced by confusion. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Is it or is it not?"

"As I said, I don't know," Silvermist snapped.

Alex frowned. "So you worry about something that might not exist and call yourself a failure for not reaching the possibly non-existent realm of pills?" he asked. "Master, that's not healthy, is it?"

Silvermist shook his head. "I do not consider myself a failure for not reaching it. I consider myself a failure for not having a way of knowing if it exists or not," he said. "230,000 years, and I do not know the answer to a simple question like this. Every time I make a Divine pill, I get struck with the same question, one thing leads to another, and my mind begins calling me a failure once again. So, I just don't like making pills anymore except when they're simple."

The issue of not knowing what lay beyond Pill Souls, or if there even was anything to begin with, weighed heavily on Silvermist's heart.

Alex thought for a moment and asked, "How would one know what lay beyond? Are there records we can read? Or someone we can ask who knows anything about it?"

"The Alchemy God may know about it," Silvermist said simply.

"So we can ask him," Alex said. "Or should we wait until after the tournament? Do I have to win for you to get a chance to ask that question, master?"

Silvermist looked at Alex and couldn't help but smile. "Thank you for trying to help me, but the question is not what bothers me, really," he said. "The lack of knowledge is not the issue I have with myself. It is the fact that I am still at a state where I lack the knowledge."

Alex failed to understand what his master was really trying to say. "I'm struggling to follow, master," he said. "Why exactly do you consider yourself a failure?"

Silvermist sighed. He leaned back on his couch, his body slumping. He seemed to visibly age as he did that.

"There is another way to find the truth, to know things without having to rely on others," Silvermist said. "And I consider myself a failure because I haven't been able to learn it despite being so old."

Alex couldn't take it anymore with these cryptic sentences. He wanted straight answers. "Learn what exactly, master?" he asked.

"That which we all pursue with this profession in the end," Silvermist said.

"The Dao of Alchemy."

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