Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 2722: Whisker’s Exploration
After learning that Alex wouldn’t be needing him for a while, Whisker left back to the desert where he wanted to continue his research from the last time.

He had confirmed that most of the Yin that formed in Hell was dragged underground for some reason. Now, it was his job to try and figure out why.

Whisker thought of how he was going to do this. He had a movement technique that allowed him to travel underground, but he would rather that he didn’t have to spend any Qi at all.

Unlike Alex, he had no way of gaining back his Qi while out in the desert. He had to return to Alex where he could safely use the spirit stones he had to refuel himself.

To begin with, Whisker wanted to test out the situation of Qi through the beasts of the desert themselves, so he tried to find one.

Finding a regular beast during the night time was as easy as looking up at the sky during the day and locating the sun. Outside of the cities, it was harder not to find one.

Giant beasts crawled the desert at night, so Whisker climbed onto one of them.

It was a giant porcupine beast with long bristles on its back, which Whisker held onto. Because of his size and lack of Sunhearts, the beast didn’t notice his arrival on its back.

The beast roamed the desert, trying to find food. Whisker was worried that the beast would be attacked, and thus he would have to find another one, but the beast found a corpse of another beast instead and began feeding on its carcass.

Seeing the porcupine eat, Whisker brought out some meat that he had collected too and began eating it. His body cultivation had been slowly improving thanks to eating the meat, so he made sure not to miss any moment.

Whisker spent his time with the porcupine, learning more about the beast’s habits. By True realm, a beast should be more or less intelligent enough to even communicate with other humans.

It was only speech they weren’t capable of. Some beasts with special bloodlines, such as Pearl, had even been able to talk right from True realm.

These beasts, however, were different. Whisker wondered how these beasts could have such stronger blood aura, and yet have such a terrible bloodline.

As he continued thinking about it, Whisker did understand that greater bloodline didn’t necessarily mean greater intelligence. Just because that had been the metric for comparison in other places didn’t mean that would be the metric to be used in this place as well.

In Hell, a world surrounded by nothing but Yang energy where body cultivation alone made one strong enough to destroy mountains, it was unfair to assume that the beasts would have any other priority than survival.

Clearly, the bloodlines had improved in such a way as well. The ones with better bloodlines could survive against the Yang much better, simply by creating something in their body that could help them against the Yang.

Sunheart.

Whisker had some curiosities in those areas as well, but for now, it was time to focus on the main matter at hand. As the sun began to rise in the east, the porcupine readied itself to go underground.

Whisker held onto one of its bristles tightly and waited.

Soon, the porcupine moved, shaking its body at unnatural speed only possible through body cultivation. There was also some Qi being used, that helped the sand around the porcupine to liquefy.

The porcupine then went down the sand, as if sinking in water, making its way further below. Its speed in going down was slow, but not due to any factors Whisker could see.

The sand around Whisker shifted too as he was pulled downward into darkness. As he went down, he sensed a heavy accumulation of Yang around the top layer of sand. However, as the porcupine slowly retreated further, he could start sensing more Yin aura.

For a moment, Whisker thought this was it. The Yin was simply trapped in the sand, doing nothing. But then he realized that the amount of Yin there was far too little compared to all that was dragged in.

There had to be a greater amount further below, but the porcupine took its sweet time getting there.

Whisker knew the porcupine could go nearly twice as fast underground as it currently was, but for some reason, it chose not to do so.

The answer came a minute later when the porcupine suddenly shifted its whole body and moved sideways, instead of going straight down.

In the darkness, Whisker couldn’t see anything, but he could still sense things. There, he suddenly sensed the Yang aura in the sand around him move all of a sudden.

It was dragged elsewhere, leaving a region in the sand that had a lower amount of Yang aura than normal, making the Yin aura suddenly feel much stronger than before.

‘The stronger beast is going up,’ Whisker realized. It only made sense now why the porcupine was so slow. It was scared of the beast with the Sunheart and didn’t want to get in its way on its way down.

Now that the beast with the Sunheart had left to go up, the porcupine sped up.

Whisker was fascinated by the underground ecology of the beasts in the desert, how they respected each other and how one feared the other. Given their lack of intelligence, whatever they were doing had to do more with instincts at this point.

With the porcupine speeding up its descent, Whisker sensed the surroundings, which grew colder and colder.

There was a much stronger concentration of Yin down here, but it was still far from being all of the Yin that was gathered underground.

Whisker had only started to wonder how much colder it was going to get when suddenly he found himself entering an underground region filled with water.

He had entered an aquifer.

And there the porcupine finally stopped, settling down as if it was finally home.