Chapter 409: 409: Different Tests

Alex was handed a book about the different ingredients that he could end up using soon. The book didn't have that many ingredients, however, as such books were expensive to get.

"If only the ingredients book in the library explained the energies and effect of the ingredients just as this book did. Although, knowing how they looked and where they were usually found isn't that bad of information to know either," he thought. 

He reached back to his home, and by that time he was done reading the book. He could've done that right in front of Zhou Mei and returned her the book, but that would be showing off way too much. 

He went to his master's home to check on her and saw that she was still sleeping. 

So, he returned back to his home and decided to test his pills. He sat down in his courtyard and took out the pink pills. There were way more than 20 of them, and honestly, he did not know what to even do with them. 

He quickly checked the harmony of all the pills and recorded it in his mind. He took out one of the pills that was exactly 20% in harmony and waited as he took a short breath.

Although he was sure it wasn't poisonous, he still got a little scared about using the pills on himself as they weren't something he could guarantee wouldn't hard him. 

"Dammit, I need to stop being scared so much. I'm pretty sure my body will destroy anything it deems toxic," he thought. He looked at the time and waited, waiting for the perfect opportunity. 

The time was currently 6:34, so he waited. Then, it became 6:35. 

He ate the pill. Suddenly, the energy from the pill spread through his body, and the nails in his fingers started to grow. They grew until they were about 2 centimeters longer than before and stopped. 

"Damn, that's really long," Alex mused to himself. He didn't know the exact length, so he took out a piece of paper to mark the exact length. 

"Now… do I just wait?" he thought. There really wasn't much to do other than wait and test how long the nails lasted. 

"Wait, I do need to check their strength too," he thought and decided to test the nails of his left hand. He thought for a few minutes about how best to test the strength of the nails.

Finally, he came up with something. He looked through his storage bags and pulled out a few things to set up a little contraption for the testing. 

He dug a little and stuck block of wood that was flat on top. Then he took a really strong string and tied it to one of the black cauldrons and tied the other end of that string to the nail on his pinky finger. 

He pulled up the pinky finger until it was placed on the flat top of the wooden block. After that, he made sure only the part that needed to break was the only part that was part that was exposed from the wood's surface. 

Meaning, he only kept the newly grown 2 centimeters of nail out of the surface. Once that was done and the cauldron freely hanging, he started to bring out the empty pill bottles he had. 

He dunked them in the lake and put the filled bottle into the cauldron. One after another, he added one by one. 

No matter how many he put in it though, the nail just didn't seem to break. He kept on putting in more, and that was when he started wondering, 'Does me being a body cultivator influence the strength of my nail at all?' 

He had just thought that when the flexing nail snapped in half. Thankfully, he had secured his finger in place, so it didn't hurt a single bit. 

"Finally," he said as he picked up the fingernail and weighed the cauldron with all of the bottles in it. Even with his body cultivation, he could feel a slight weight to it. 

"That… should be around 30 kilos hung from a single fingernail at the very front. Not bad," he thought to himself. 

He kept back all the stuff into his storage bag and decided on the next thing he had to do. He was already testing the duration and had tested the durability. So, it was time to test the limitations of the pill and see if it affected anything other than a human being. 

So, he called out Pearl. 

"Meow!" Pearl called out, finally free once more. 

"Brother!" Alex heard in his mind; he smiled. That was what he had been teaching Pearl to call him for the last few days in the formation and he finally did. 

'I probably shouldn't have thrown him in the water the moment we returned. He might have called me that yesterday,' Alex thought. 

"Hey, little brother," he started calling him now. "Do you want to eat something?" he asked. 

"Eat?" Pearl's voice came into his mind, followed by an intense emotion of want. "Meow!" He shouted in elation. 

Alex felt bad that the thing he was going to be eating was actually a pill. In addition to that, he wasn't sure of the effect of the pills on animals, so he couldn't really bring himself to force pearl to eat it right away. 

"Sigh, I should at least test once on an actual beast," Alex thought and walked out of the house with Pearl behind him. He quickly took out a piece of meat and gave it to him for now. 

"You want to hunt? I'm going out to hunt," Alex said as he walked through the evening sect valley and went up the outer sect mountain. However, he didn't go down to the gate. Instead, he hid Pearl in his robes and flew west from where he was currently. With him activating invisibility and completely killing away any aura, it was impossible anyone witnessed him leaving at all.

The walls of the Hong Wu sect entrance were actually the wall of the Scarlet City, so Alex could be outside the gates of the city from the very start and didn't need to leave through the city. 

He could have asked the elders before he left, but he didn't know if he would ever get approval that way from them considering his worth to the sect. 

He flew at top speed, but still took a little over 10 minutes to reach the forests outside of the walls. From there on, he wanted to rush inside, but he needed to scour the forest for what little ingredients he could find. 

He dropped down and walked through the forest. His spiritual sense spread the full 22 meters it could and looked at everything. He took Pearl out, who was walking beside him to let him know of any dangers if he wasn't fast enough to catch any. 

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He felt another spiritual sense being spread out from right next to him that didn't intrude with his own and did its own thing. Alex smiled as he saw Pearl freely using his spiritual sense. 

"Don't overextend it, okay? Keeping it within range lets you expend it at the same rate it regenerates," Alex taught him. 

Alex started focusing back on his own thing. As his aura extended, his Qi extended as well, and one after another, he picked up any ingredients that he recognized, which was everything.

Some of the ingredients were abundant, while some were rare, but Alex made no discrimination and took all of them in. 

"Ooh, that's rare," he thought as he saw something. 

"I have enough of that… but taking more shouldn't hurt me at all. I can use it later," he thought as he saw something else. 

"Finally, I needed that too," he thought as he saw something else. 

He was like a kid in a toy shop, with all the money in the world in his pockets. One after another, he picked all the ingredients in the area as he walked deeper inside. 

"What's the time now?" he thought as he checked the clock. It was around 8 o'clock. "Alright, let's search for a cat-like beast. Maybe a leopard or a lion," he said. 

It took them another 15 minutes of walking to find such a beast. During this time, Pearl was the only one fighting and he ended each attack with a single punch. 

Perhaps due to his child-like intelligence, he didn't know when to hold back and always hit everything at near full strength. 

'I will need to teach him how to stay low,' Alex thought. 

Finally, they found a jaguar beast that had a cultivation base at the beginning of the Bone Tempering realm. 

"I guess this will work," Alex thought. 

"Don't attack this one, okay Pearl?" Alex said. 

"Not Attack?" Pearl sent back in confusion. 

"Yeah, don't attack. I need to do something to it," he said and walked forward. The beast tried to attack Alex seeing that he did not have very high cultivation. 

However, before its paws could even land on him, Alex grabbed it. He saw the nearly an inch-long claw coming out from within the fingers of the jaguar. 

Alex then pulled out the pill and fed it to the beast. He used his Qi to force it down the jaguar's throat and just waited. 

For the first few seconds, it didn't seem like anything was going to happen at all, however, Alex didn't lose hope. Then, the fingers on the jaguar started to wiggle a little. 

Alex was still holding the paw next to his face, so he saw the nail claw of the jaguar increase by nearly 2 centimeters once again. 

'So it does work on beasts. Not only that, but it also has almost the exact same effect,' he thought. He then let go of the Jaguar's hand and waited. 

The jaguar was scared, but it still couldn't see any cultivation base coming off of Alex, unlike Pearl who was way back and had the aura of an 8th Organ Tempering realm beast. 

The jaguar decided that it was not worth fighting Alex and decided to run away.

"Well, that is disappointing," Alex said. "Come on Pearl, hit him," Alex said. 

Seeing that he was given the go, Pearl immediately dashed forwards and stuck the Jaguar directly on its back with his paws. 

A massive cracking sound rang out a Pearl not only broke the poor jaguar's back but also split it in half. He heard the notification that said that his bonded beast killed something and that he got the materials from that. 

However, the material he got wasn't the claw or the nails, so he drooped down to check on it himself. He first separated the hind leg's fingers to pry out the claws hidden in there and broke them out. 

Then, he pried out the claws hidden in the forelegs and broke them out, but with a much higher difficulty. He then put the two together and started testing. 

He did a few random tests like comparing durability and sharpness. Surprising, but perhaps not, the longer claw won every single comparison. 

So, Alex came to the conclusion that his new pill helps animals gain better claws. He still needed to check the duration and the length of the nail that would change with each increase in the harmony of the pill. 

But he could safely say that not only did eating the pill harmer neither human nor beasts, but in some cases, it enhanced their fighting techniques too. 

"Well, that was a successful test. Wouldn't you say that Pearl?" he asked back. Pearl didn't know what was going on, so it just meowed in confusion, not speaking a single word in response. 

Alex just shook his head and brought out another pill before placing it before Pearl. 

"Eat this and we can go forward," he said. 

Hearing that, Pearl gulped the pill down with no hesitation.

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