Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Silvermist's words hung in the air for a long time, neither he nor Alex saying anything to it.

Silvermist was just happy to have finally spoken out loud his feelings to someone else, someone who might understand him a bit more than Grimsight, someone who was an alchemist.

Meanwhile, Alex was simply stunned speechless at the fact that his master was aiming for something so grand. In the first place, Alex wasn't even sure if the Dao of Alchemy existed or not. He had cultivated for so long and had made pills the entire time, and yet he had not even felt an inkling of gaining the Dao of Alchemy.

His master searched for it, but he hadn't succeeded yet.

"Dao of Alchemy," Alex finally said after a while. "Does it really exist?"

Silvermist raised an eyebrow. "Of course," he answered. "Why wouldn't it exist?"

"I just… I never learned it, so I assumed it wasn't something that existed at all," he said. "I assumed because it was a profession and not something like an element, maybe it didn't exist."

"All Daos exist," Silvermist said. "What is Dao but the pinnacle of understanding of a single concept? You can learn all you can about any certain topic, and you will gain its Dao."

"I… I wasn't aware," Alex said. "After I learned about pill veins and pill souls, I believed I had learned all I needed to, and yet I still failed to get a hint that such a Dao even existed, so I began doubting its existence. At some point, I just gave up looking for it."

"But if you are certain that it really exists, then…" Alex didn't know what he was supposed to do here. Should he be trying to learn that Dao instead of doing anything else?

"I am certain it exists," Silvermist said. "While I have no reason I can present to say why I am certain, I can only say that I am."

"Did you learn about it from somewhere?" Alex asked.

"Not precisely, no. It's just a feeling I have," Silvermist said. "A feeling like I am still missing something about pills. As I said, I do not know if something exists beyond the Pill Souls, but I do know deep within me that the Dao of Alchemy does exist. I simply haven't managed to learn about it."

Alex thought for a bit. A certain memory came to his mind right then, one of Bai Jingshen and his teachings. He had followed his words back then for a long time, and even now, he remembered it clearly.

"The more you learn something through others," Alex said. "The less likely it is that you will learn it's Dao. Is that not true, Master?"

Silvermist paused and nodded. "You've gone straight for the issue at heart, huh?" he asked with a light chuckle. "I do believe that to be the case as well. We've learned Alchemy so much from others, relied on every little recipe, ingredient, and whatnot, and by the time we've learned anything worth learning, we may no longer be eligible to learn the Dao."

Alex nodded along. That was what he was getting at. "So that really could be the case."

"I do believe there exists truth within those sentiments, but there exists a fallacy in there that most people don't think about," Silvermist said.

"A fallacy?" Alex asked, surprised. "What sort, Master?"

Silvermist thought about how to approach this matter. A moment later, he had a rough idea. "Let's take fire, for example. You have learned the Dao of Fire, have you not?"

Alex nodded in confirmation.

"So say you record your understanding down and present it to someone else without the Dao. If they read your understandings, would they be unable to learn the Fire Dao?" Silvermist presented the question.

Alex wasn't sure. "My understanding on the matter has taught me that there is a great likelihood that they won't be able to."

"Let us believe for a moment that this is the absolute truth—that you cannot learn a Dao if you've learned the mysteries from someone else," Silvermist said. "Why do you believe that happens? Think for a moment, see how many reasons you can come up with."

That forced Alex to take a moment from all the thoughts that roamed in his mind currently and focus on just this question. His master had brought up an excellent question.

He had thought about this a few times throughout his life, trying to understand what the cause could be. It was but a stray thought that would come across him from time to time, and he would simply have an answer that made sense for the time being and move on from it.

Even now, the answer showed itself almost immediately, but Alex forced himself to dwell on the topic a little longer. He distanced himself from his knowledge, his bias, and his preconceived notions of the matter, and tried to look at the topic from a first timer's perspective.

Why was someone incapable of learning a Dao, or even had a hard time with it, if they were taught the Dao? This was different from presenting people with the aura of said Dao.

Presenting aura was like presenting them with questions to ponder. Presenting one's understanding was simply giving them the answers.

Alex looked through the answer that came to him first.

He believed that one couldn't learn a Dao by reading someone else's record of it because the Heavens didn't like it when someone took a shortcut.

A person had to work for their Dao, and putting absolutely no effort into learning the topic was something the Heavens abhorred. That was why they refused to give someone the Dao.

That was Alex's answer, but his master had asked him to think of all the possible answers, so he tried to look at the problem from a different direction.

What other answer could he have been ignorant of this entire time?

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