Alex arrived back on another island, free of any human meddling as he was going to cultivate until the Saint foundation realm. For him, that was the stage at which he could consider himself strong enough to do what he wanted without others blocking his path. He would love to get stronger too, but he needed to start making a name for himself so that his father could find him. "Come, you should watch me make some pills to learn from me," Alex told Whisker who was by his side. He brought out a bunch of ingredients, all of which he had prepared during the many months he hadn't cultivated. Then he brought out the Sun's Womb and started making pills. Whisker watched from the side as every single time Alex finished making a pill, a storm would gather in the sky and strike down on them. Whisker knew that this was happening because of Pill vein but he would still run away from time to time just in case the lightning struck him too. This continued for about 4 days with some pauses in between where Alex had to restore his blood aura as well as his Qi. Once done, he would continue until he couldn't. 5 days later, he now had a total of 27 95% harmony and above pills as well as 32 4-veined pills. Thanks to the occasional double lightning strikes, he had managed to make quite a bit. 'With these, I should be able to go for over a year easily,' he thought. Then, he ate one of the pills and started cultivating. The pill helped him improve quickly, which was exactly what he needed. Time passed by day by day and soon weeks went by and then months. Alex's weeks were separated as thus. For the first 2 days, he ate the pill and cultivated. Then, he would spend the 3rd day focusing on Undying Physique and Demon Eyes. For the 4th and 5th days, he would go out and fight beasts to get their beast cores and corpses. On the 6th day, he would use the blood he had gathered throughout the week to form a new beast. On the same day, he would also absorb the blood aura of the dead beast's blood and get stronger with it. Finally, on the 7th day, he would let his blood beast beat him up as badly as it could without killing him. While he healed, he would teach some new things to Whisker, which he would use to train his own Alchemy knowledge for the rest of the 6 days. Over a year passed doing just the same. Alex ate the final pill he had and started cultivating once again. The next 2 days went by in a breeze as he absorbed every bit of Qi from the air. By now, his Qi had reached a point where it was so thick that even viscous would no longer define it as well. If Alex didn't know any better, he would've thought that he must have made some sort of mistake during his cultivation. But, since he knew that this was a normal process before one reached the Saint Foundation realm, he wasn't worried. 2 days later, when he finished the cultivation, he went straight to cultivating his Undying Physique and Demon eyes, which he also finished in a day. Then, he left the island to go fight some beasts. Instead of moving towards the continent, he moved away from it, going towards the ocean where stronger beasts were. Since his blood aura had gotten stronger, and since he had so many blood beasts with him, he felt safe. Still, he did not go very far away just so he could remain within enough distance to run away if needed. Alex pulled out Midnight and waited for some beast to take the bait. Once they did, he started fighting. This was where most of his training came for the last year and a half. He used many different techniques while constantly trying to improve his own sword. Since he knew that it was intended that he needed to improve more than anything, he worked on that. Once his Sword Intent got stronger, the rest of it, which was the sword Qi and sword Aura, would also get stronger as a result. Alex's sword aura was now slightly stronger than his Qi, still falling quite a bit of way behind his blood aura. He even used mental attacks, usually the spiritual sword, but that wasn't very useful against the beasts he was used to fighting. Most of them could simply shrug it off. As for the ones it did work on, normal attacks alone were enough to beat it. However, while everything improved, his body cultivation lagged behind quite a lot. When he realized that he could hurt himself and heal himself over and over to improve, he was quite happy. However, only now was he understanding a normal body cultivator's pain as he was only just realizing just how long he had to keep it going before he even improved a bit. From time to time, Alex even wondered if he was wasting time on it. All he had to do was find Pearl and he could get everything he was working for right now just by staying next to him. However, same as right now, there would be times in the future when he couldn't stay with Pearl and would have to cultivate on his own. At that time, he would most likely be disappointed by the speed given just how slow it was. As such, he found it better to continue training his body right now. It's not like it was useless anyway. It was just slow. He could work with slow if it meant improvement at some level. Alex returned back to the island to see Whisker still working on his pills. He was starting to make Heaven-grade pills using Alex's recipes and lessons. There were still ways to go as he couldn't make them every single time, but this was still far from what anyone would expect a mouse to be able to do. Alex left him be and moved on to make the new blood beast. For today, it was a Saint Core realm 2 beast he had killed 2 days ago. He placed the beast's core into the cauldron and started forming another blood beast. An hour later, there was a Blood octopus standing before him with its wide head and 8 long tentacles. Alex kept the octopus and started absorbing the blood from its body and various other beasts he killed during the last 2 days. Once his blood had advanced just the slightest amount, he pulled out the Blood God's Manual and brought out 5 of the strongest beasts he had been keeping in there. "Come one Whisker, time to fight," he said and moved away. Whisker, who was ready for this, walked out to the field as well. Since Alex was going to focus on getting beat up while also trying to improve his own fighting method at the same time, he needed Whisker to control the beasts to fight him. Due to their bond, Whisker had plenty of control over the beasts, his authority only beaten by Pearl or Scarlet, and their's by Alex himself. Pearl and Scarlet had initiated the bond on their own while Alex was unconscious, so as a result their bond was one of mutual, unlike Whisker, whose was one of a servant. Still, in the other two's absence, he was the only authority that could help the blood beast's limited intelligence understand what they were supposed to do. Whisker commanded the Squid to start attacking with its right tentacle. Then the bird was to fly at Alex with its talons. The snake monster moved at the same time to slam its tail on Alex, who was already busy with the Squid and the bird. The octopus also attacked with multiple tentacles, trying to grab Alex if it could. The flying fish threw its entire body on Alex, trying to make use of its physical strength. Alex fought the beasts empty-handed while keeping most of his attention on dodging rather than fighting back. His evasive abilities were getting stronger by the day and if it continued, it would be hard for the beasts in the ocean to attack him. That was of course until they got tired of using their limbs and decided to use their Qi. Since the Blood beasts held no abilities of their own, there was no training Alex could do with these beasts on that front. Still, he enjoyed the current training. Getting beat up hurt, but the happiness that came afterward when his wounds healed was something he was so used to that he was almost addicted to it. After the battle was over, and Alex was beaten black and blue, he stayed next to Whisker to teach him about Alchemy, while he himself slowly healed. He taught Whisker a few different things today and hoped he took in mind everything. He watched Whisker make a few more pills before ignoring him for the most part. Then, the next day arrived, and with it, the entire weekly cycle refreshed again. Except, this time he was out of Qi and had no way to get some more such pills quickly since he was lacking in money as well. But, the good news there was that he would no longer need any such pills on this island before. Alex sat down and closed his eyes to begin cultivating as he prepared himself for the breakthrough that was going to happen any hour now.