Alex studied the Pill Clouds still, but with Shumi no longer in control of them, there wasn't much time for him to learn anything at all. And with Memory needing his help, he soon stopped.

He checked on Shumi afterward, seeing that she was only mentally fatigued. His concerns vanished as he realized it was nothing serious.

"What happened?" Alex asked, checking up on her. "Did they reject your connection?"

"Not exactly," Shumi explained in a small voice. "The Intent within it was too strong. I had to fight back while making use of my authority, and that took more out of me than I could have imagined."

"Oh, so you can't help me again?" he asked.

Shumi shook her head. "I'm going to have to rest before I can help. I'm sorry."

"No," Alex said. "Don't be. We're only just getting started. Even if you help just once a day for the next few years, I'll have enough time to fully understand what I need. I'm sure of that."

Shumi smiled. "I'll try my best."

With Shumi recuperating, Alex closed his eyes and thought through everything he had sensed and come to learn. It didn't last much longer, as the effects of the pill he had eaten came to an end, so he walked over to the Sun atop the hill and began absorbing it, letting not a second of his time there go to waste. Only when Shumi recovered did he go back down and start making another pill, restarting the process all over again.

This time around, he learned a little more, absorbing all of that into himself before going over to the Sun.

The third time, Alex tried giving Shumi some pills to help with maintaining her control over the Pill Clouds, but that proved ineffective. While it did improve her slightly, the amount of time he got from feeding her pills was the same amount of time he could gain by making another pill.

It was a simple enough decision to conclude that making pills was the better option of the two.

One day after another passed as the two fell into a schedule, and Alex learned as much as he could from the Pill Clouds.

Shumi wasn't coming up short either. Her job had been constant practice for her to improve her own Intent. Each week, she could continue for a few seconds longer, giving Alex more time to examine the clouds and understand their makeup.

And Alex wasn't letting it go to waste. A month in, he had come to understand the elemental composition of the cloud, understanding that while it was primarily Water element that made up the cloud, there were strong zones of other elements as well.

Two months in, Alex figured out that these stronger zones pulsed from time to time, coming alive at some points and going dormant at others. Why they did that, he couldn't understand right away.

Four months in, Alex noticed the Wood energy within the strong zones being the strongest, which was most likely why the result of the combination of energies was a lightning bolt.

Seven months in, Alex noticed a similarity between these strong zones and nodes of a formation. These strong zones acted like the pillars of a formation that activated to perform some action—which, in this case, was the creation of the pill lightning.

Eight months in, Alex came to the conclusion that the cloud was closer to blood aura in how it worked than a formation or script. Blood aura needed to take a certain shape to perform something, which the cloud did.

That very month, Alex revised his thoughts, concluding that the cloud was even closer to how human arrays worked than anything else.

Nine months in, Alex gave up on comparing the clouds to anything else. It was something entirely too unique to pigeonhole into some sort of system that it clearly didn't belong to. He came to the realization then that the cloud worked on principles that he hadn't the smallest idea about. Considering it was the gods who made it, it was likely that they were created using that unique energy, and thus it was an entirely different system than anything he was used to.

The chances of him learning anything about the system were nonexistent, but Alex hoped that he could at least learn the minute differences between the various clouds to form his own version of Heavenly Clouds.

After a year passed, Alex finally stopped analyzing the Pill Clouds and decided that it was time to move on to the Immortal Tribulation clouds instead.

This one felt much more dangerous than Pill Clouds, as it would be him that would have to go up against it. And any mistake or overextending on his part could get the Immortal Tribulation to strike down with stronger lightning than what he could handle and kill him, Undying Physique or not.

So, he prepared for it well.

In the past year, various progress had been made, not just by him.

Whisker and Scarlet had both broken through to the Immortal Transcendent realm and had gone a decent way into it. Having cultivated inside the Time Chambers, the single year they had received had been closer to over a dozen years for Whisker and nearly 30 years for Scarlet.

She had not only fully formed her four Origins, but also had done so with the Evolution technique as well. Whisker had done the same, but with only two Origins.

Whisker had only done it recently, so he hadn't had the time to start absorbing aura for his Origins, but Scarlet had already started.

She had begun absorbing Sunhearts and was well into filling up over 10% of her Origin, which she would need to break through to the next realm.

After this, her plan was to start absorbing the Three-Legged Crow's body, and finally the Midnight Phoenix's core. By then, they would hopefully leave this place, and she would find a way to absorb the aura for Godkiller's physique.

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