Alex absorbed it again and again, and every single time he felt the space aura from the silver thread.
"How is this possible?" he couldn't help but ask himself.
How long has this mountain been with him? It was a day before he graduated from the Tiger sect that he had gotten this.
All this time, he had wondered what it was. He had even stopped caring at some point because he wasn't getting any answer from anywhere.
And now he was learning about what it was? He grabbed some more threads and absorbed the Space aura in them.
It was weird, to say the least.
"Why now?" Alex wondered.
If he thought back, there had been some subtle improvements in Space since the very start for him.
The first time he had ever manipulated space was the day when he killed the girl that was teleporting in the Demon realm.
He had no idea what he had done there, but that was when he started showing signs.
The next time was when he noticed space being manipulated. It had been in the royal palace in the Radiant city where he felt something happening in the Beast realm.
After that, it was in the Beast realm when he woke up one day after absorbing a lot of these threads that he was consciously starting to notice the change in space.
After that, it had been a rather swift journey as he learned more and more about the space laws right until today.
"But why today?" Alex asked himself. He had been absorbing these threads for the last 25 years, so it didn't make sense for him to only just notice it, did it?
"When did I last absorb it?" he thought. It had to be a few days prior to when he made the final pill for the madman to heal himself.
"Something must have happened between that day and today," Alex thought. "What happ—"
Alex paused for a moment. "Ah! Space Dao. I learned the Dao of space after my last time. Is that it? Is that why I'm sensing this? I can sense it because I'm not just absorbing it, but I'm understanding it as well."
That made perfect sense to Alex. With the understanding that came with Dao of Space, he was able to tell whether or not there was anything Space related within himself as well.
"Still, this thing either must not be space or be very stable space for me to not notice until now," he thought. "Either way, if this is what has been helping me in understanding Space laws then I should continue absorbing the threads. I can't leave any behind."
With that thought, Alex went around his mental space, gathering all the threads that still floated in the sky.
It took him a while before he was done. Then, he came back outside to his body that was still cultivating the Undying physique.
The world got silent as night fell. The only sound was that of the trees rustling or the waves of the ocean crashing onto the island in the distance.
Alex continued cultivating for the entire night and only finished it the next morning.
He opened his eyes and got up. "5 days," he thought to himself. That was the amount of time required before he could cultivate again.
"Should I really go find my father right now? Or should I consider helping Godslayer first?" he thought.
There was another problem that he was starting to come across the more he got closer to the day he needed to leave for the wasteland.
"That's a massive place that I will have to fly through and scan every single person I come across," Alex thought. "Do I go around walking if I run out of Qi?"
There were two methods to not have this problem in the first place. One was to make some Saint rank pills which he could eat to gain some Qi.
Or, he could use some beast cores in the same way. For that, however, he would have to kill a lot of beasts.
"I was going to do that anyway since I need to provide Godslayer with some energy too," Alex thought. This was a good way to test his fighting capabilities after not being able to fight for the last 10 years.
He flew out of the island and went to the ocean where he had to fight the beasts. That was quite dangerous as he had no idea just what sort of beasts lay in here.
If he accidentally caught the attention of a strong beast, he would be in danger. So, instead of searching for beasts, Alex decided to let the beast find him instead.
He flew around the sky in a small area and soon enough a spiritual sense caught onto him. Judging by the strength, Alex was sure he could fight it.
A beast came out of the water, one which Alex had never seen or heard of before. The beast was massive at nearly 5 meters long. It looked to have crab hands with pincers, but its body was that of a trout.
The beast flew into the sky and snipped at Alex with its pincers.
Alex sensed the beast's cultivation base before even it came close, so he was certain that he could defeat the beast.
At the 8th Saint Condensation realm, he had the power of an 8th Saint Foundation realm expert. On the other hand, the beast was only at the 5th Saint Foundation realm, so fighting it was rather easy.
Alex dodged the pincers and pulled out at midnight. He poured Yin Qi into the sword and slashed at the fish.
In a single strike, the fish's body was gravely wounded with death and darkness aura entering its body. The wound on its body grew black as if infected and the beast cried.
"You damn bastard!" it shouted. Hearing a fish speak felt surreal to Alex, but only because this was the first time he was seeing an aquatic beast in the first place. Otherwise, he was used to seeing beasts be able to speak.
"I might have baited you here, but you came to kill me anyway. Don't go crying when you die."
Alex swung his sword again, and the fish was cut in half.
Space twisted as Alex pulled on the fish's remains and put them into his storage ring. For the beast core in the corpse, he could check that once he was done. For now, he needed to go find some more—
Alex saw a gigantic tentacle shoot out of the water as it rose to hit him. He teleported just in time and arrived some distance away, but it seemed the beast that was attacking him could teleport as well.
The beast wasn't using any dao, but rather skills that came with its bloodline. The tentacle came out once more from the water and shot at Alex.
Alex slashed as hard as he could, trying to cut the tentacle. However, when the tentacle slammed onto his sword, he knew that he had made a mistake.
The tentacle slammed onto his body, sending him flying into the sky.
Alex felt and sensed his broken bones. The attack just now from the monster was enough to harm his body which currently had Sword Qi and standard Qi protecting him on top of body cultivation.
Alex fell into an arc, and even as he fell, his wounds were already healing. The cut-up wounds had healed up and the broken bones were half-mended.
Just a few more seconds and he was going to be healed.
However, it didn't seem like he had much time. He teleported immediately, running away from the current location and back to the island that was in the distance.
Alex landed on the island and frowned slightly. There was no Qi in this place. However, that wasn't the problem he should be focusing on at the moment.
"Those beasts… will they come onto the land?" Alex wondered. He hadn't seen any beast come up to the land. If they could do it, the land would be filled with those beasts anyway.
However, as if to disprove his theory, a giant tentacled squid jumped out of the water and onto the land.
"You're quite strong," Alex said when he sensed the beast's cultivation base. "I guess I will have to play it safe too."
Blood poured out of Alex's body, pooling around him to form armor. At the same time, the blood dripped from his hand onto Midnight, forming a coating around it powered by blood aura.
The beast looked confused a bit. The beast wasn't used to seeing such a sudden difference in fighting ability, not to mention the blood aura itself was quite care.
The beast slammed its tentacles once again, this time sending shockwaves through the air.
Alex struck back with his own sword. With the Sword aura and Blood aura helping midnight, the attack easily blocked off the Squid's attack.
Finally, he looked at the Squid properly and saw that it had rather hard skin with scales growing on it.
The squid had 2 eyes that stared at him viciously, with 2 tentacles and 8 different arms. As for its cultivation base, it was a Saint Core 4th realm beast.
'Shit!' Alex thought when he finally sensed its strength. 'This is going to be hard to beat.'
He had no idea how strong his blood aura was, but it was definitely not this strong. In which case, all he could do was pray that his understanding of Dao would be the thing that saved him in the upcoming fight.
