Chapter 14 - The Library

"Remember, you have 1 hour to look for whatever book you want. After 1 hour has passed, you will have to come out. If you stay in there for more than an hour, you will be fined for 10 contribution points for every 10 extra minutes you spend in there."

The elder gave him the last warning before sending him in.

Alex went into the library and was immediately amazed. The number of books in there was simply astronomical. There were dozens upon dozens of shelves each holding at least a thousand books of their own.

Alex was surprised at how many different books there were inside the library. "Do people really read all of these?" he wondered. He looked at the first book on the nearest shelf to him.

It was called [Sleeping Mantis Scythe]. He read a bit to learn what it was about. The [Sleeping Mantis Scythe] was a mortal ranked fighting technique that was specifically made for scythe users.

The technique could only be used if one had a scythe. Alex was surprised to even find a fighting technique here. He had assumed that there would only be Alchemy-related techniques in Hong Wu Sect's library.

He returned the first book to where it was and checked the second book. The second book was also [Sleeping Mantis Scythe].

"Huh… what's going on?" he was taken aback a bit. He looked at the third book, and it was still the [Sleeping Mantis Scythe].

The fourth, the fifth, all the way up to the twelfth were all [Sleeping Mantis Scythe].

Only on the thirteenth one did he find a new book called [Flickering Leopard]. This was a mortal-grade technique that could make a cultivator run as fast as a leopard could for small bursts of time.

There were once more 12 different [Flickering Leopard] books in the library. He finally understood why that was.

"I see. So they have a dozen copies of each book. They must've done it so that a student can borrow a book for a week, and the other student can also take the same book at the same time, and not worry about waiting for another week before getting a chance to borrow the said book."

He then went on to look at the rest of the books on the ground floor. All of the books on the ground floor were of mortal grade. So, he decided to skip them and went up to the first floor.

The first floor had some good techniques, but they were all still of mortal grade.

"Is there no techniques for alchemy here? Why are all the books related to fighting?" he wondered. He wanted to learn alchemy, but somehow he could only find battle techniques in the library.

Finally, on the second floor did he find his first alchemy technique. It was a mortal grade technique called the [Swirling Mists] technique. It focused on moving the ingredients inside the cauldron in a spiral manner before condensing them to form a pill.

The technique felt hard, and not so useful to Alex. It was nothing but a fancy method of forming pills, and not very helpful to the entire alchemy itself.

He left the technique where it was and walked around the 2nd floor looking for other different alchemy techniques. He found a few others, but most of them were either forming pills or increasing their efficiency at the last second. While they did look promising, they were all mortal-grade techniques, so Alex skipped on them.

Finally, walking up to the third floor, he saw his first earth-grade technique. Granted it was a battle technique, he was still happy to see an earth-grade technique after a literal slew of mortal-grade techniques.

He walked around the third floor and found a particularly weird technique. The technique was a mortal grade technique, but, it was neither a battle technique nor an alchemy-related technique. It was actually a formation-building technique.

He read it with particular interest. The formation was called [Qi Gathering Formation]. Its function was to gather Qi from spirit stones placed inside the formation to a single spot and make it many times faster for the cultivator to absorb the qi in them.

Alex liked the idea of having a formation technique, but he needed to get an alchemy technique first.

"I should earn a bunch of contribution points and come back to get these books," he said to himself. He searched around for other books.

He found another unusual book. This time it was an artifact refining technique. While artifacts did sell as well as pills in the outside world, Alex would still choose an alchemy book right now.

After getting an alchemy technique, and getting into an alchemy-focused sect, it would be a joke if he decided to learn artifact refining technique here.

He couldn't find any good techniques on the third floor, so he went up to the fourth floor. This was the last floor he was allowed to enter. If he didn't find any good techniques here as well, he would have to leave empty-handed.

His one-hour time was close to being up, so he hastily started looking for good alchemy techniques. Most if not all of the techniques on the fourth floor were of the earth grade, so he didn't have to worry about getting a low-grade technique.

He searched and searched, but couldn't find one he was satisfied with. Finally, he found one but it was a mortal grade technique. He was about to instinctively skip it, but he stopped.

"Hmm… This!. This is my second time seeing such a technique." He thought. This technique was unique in the sense it fell under both Battle and Alchemy techniques.

It was a mortal-grade technique, but the reason why Alex was interested was simple. He read the techniques name,

" Flame Mastery Scripture. Grade Mortal. Growth." That was it. Similar to his amazing mortal grade [Alchemy God's Knowledge] technique, this was also a Growth type technique.