8th Year

If Alex could make the pills he was requested to make as quickly as he was allowed to, he could have completed the entirety of it in less than 2 weeks. With the involvement of pill clouds, he would need less than 3 months to complete making all the pills.

If he wanted to not arouse suspicion that he was making too many pills at once, Alex would have to spread those out over more than 6 months. And that was exactly what he did.

During his 'closed cultivation', Alex took around 7 months to complete making all the pills. He had to slow down his rate of making pills by making time for his cultivation of all sorts.

His Qi cultivation was still stuck on the 1st realm of the Saint Soul realm, but he was starting to see it coming to a crescendo beyond which he could break through in a short amount of time. As for when that would be, he wasn't yet capable of telling.