Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 2571  The Shimmering Sky

'Is this really hell?'

The sounds of the waves crashing gently on the shore, the sounds of birds chirping in the early morning, and the sound of wind rushing through the empty beach were all a bit too calm, perhaps even soothing, for it to be a place as feared as Hell.

Alex almost wanted to believe the gods had made a mistake in where they had sent him, but it was obvious that they would make no mistake.

This was most certainly Hell.

'Only it's not as bad as I had thought it would be.'

The lack of Immortal Qi, or even Saint Qi, was certainly not what a cultivator would want, but that didn't mean the place itself was bad.

'Why do they call this Hell then?'

Alex tried to use his Demon Eyes to look around him, but because of the Storm God's suppression of his senses, he couldn't see much of anything. There were no colors he could see at all to tell him what type of energy was around him.

He could only rely on his spiritual sense, which barely went any further than three meters around him.

That was one of the two most curious things about this world that Alex had come to know for now. The fact that his spiritual sense dissipated so easily made him curious as to the reason.

The other thing that was curious to Alex was the sky. The shimmering sky was not something Alex had seen. It looked as if, instead of clouds, it was covered in light that rippled around like a reflection of the sea beneath it.

Alex had never seen such a thing before in his life. He wondered what it was that caused it to shimmer. He remembered the feeling of being in a storm when falling from the sky. Was that shimmering caused by the same thing that gave him that feeling?

Since it was unlikely Alex could just arrive at an answer by simply staring at it, he sat by the beach and watched the sun come up. He felt the warmth of the sun caress his body. Around the same time, he heard people beginning to wake up and get to work in the morning.

His senses were drowned, but they were still far better than a mortal's, after all.

It wasn't long before the man from yesterday came running to where Alex was sitting.

Alex turned to look at the man, getting a better view of him under the sunlight.

The man was middle-aged, with dark hair and a rugged face. He wore two pieces of cloth, both poor in quality—one wrapping around his legs up to his knees, and the other diagonally wrapping around his chest.

He had bits of leather around him, some tied around him like a belt, some tied around his arms and shins. There was a long knife attached to his belt with no sort of protection at all.

The man said something to him, sounding both worried and angry, but Alex could understand none of it. He chose to smile in return, which stopped the man.

The man only seemed to remember then that Alex couldn't understand his words.

The man sighed and pointed to Alex's wounds before saying something short.

Alex could understand that he was worried about his wounds, which he didn't need to be. But Alex had no way of relaying that to him. In the end, he could only walk with the man, going back to where he had let him go.

As the sun rose higher in the shimmering sky, Alex saw more of the village. The place he had come to was a small village, with about seventy houses, all lined close to the mountain, about a hundred meters away from the shore.

The ground here, while sandy at the surface, felt solid enough that he could see why they had chosen to make their houses here.

Many people had woken up by now and went by their everyday tasks, which seemed to be different for each gender.

Alex couldn't see many men, but he could see most of the women, who were either taking care of their kids, washing clothes, or cooking food. The smell from the food wasn't strong, but Alex feared that it was because of the Storm God too.

All of his senses were destroyed because of that man.

Alex was taken back to the house where he had first left from, which, now that he was paying attention, was much larger than the rest of the houses. He looked to the man accompanying him and wondered what his standing was in this place.

If he wasn't wrong, this man would be the leader of the tribe in the place.

As Alex arrived at the house, he noticed something outside, piled up to the side. A few women were bringing it out from the back of the house.

They were bones.

'Such sharp bones,' Alex thought for a moment before he realized he was looking at fish bones. 'Was the meat I ate last night fish?'

Was that fish where he got his Qi from?

Considering the size of the fish, it had to have a high enough cultivation base to be this large.

'It's clearly a species of fish that is not large by nature. So the only way it can grow is through cultivation,' Alex thought. But there was something wrong with his assessment of that.

For what the fish could be based on its skeletal anatomy, the only way it could be this large was if it was at least in the Saint realm, if not the Immortal realm. And yet, there was no Saint Qi in this world at all, let alone Immortal Qi.

Alex wondered if there was a mistake in his knowledge of what this fish was. He didn't want to believe so, but that mistake would be the only explanation for its size.

Otherwise, how the hell could this species of fish get so big without Qi?