"You took part in it personally?" Alex asked with a serious face.
"All 10 of us did, along with many others," Qiu Jianhong said. "We're not proud of it, but yeah, we did what we thought we needed to do."
"You thought you needed to kill people from another continent?" Alex asked. He remembered about Puma and the others talking about how they had lost their parents to the attack by the rest of the continent.
"We only killed to protect ourselves," the man said. "Yes, we were there to steal things and were in the wrong. We understood this, so there was one thing we made sure to do, and that is to never kill another person unless it was in self-defense. Even then, we would hurt them at most and let them live."
"Many still died, both from that side and our own," the man said with a saddened tone in his voice.
Alex stayed silent. There was just not enough information about what had happened 5 thousand years ago in the Luminance empire as the royal family had changed just a thousand or so years ago. Most of the records from the past were either destroyed or were not accessible to Alex.
All he learned, he had learned from the beasts and they told him the tales of people dying left and right. However, since there were 3 different continents involved in this matter, there was a chance that it was the other two that were so aggressive.
Also, he couldn't just refute the man given his status, so Alex chose to stay quiet regarding that.
"The barrier in the north, you set that up from the spirit veins you robbed from the Western Continent?" he asked.
"Yes, all of it," the man said. "That was what we went there for anyway."
"All so you could stop a few body cultivators from coming to this side?" Alex asked.
"No, of course not. Stopping the people was not our intention, it was just the result. What we really intended was for them to stop trying to spread the Phoenix flames," the man said.
"Could you not stop something that simple? They were just weak body cultivators after all," Alex said.
"The flame is dangerous. If it ever gets out of control it can destroy everything. If we allowed them in, those people who learned the strength of Phoenix flames were certain to do something like that by accident. In the end, we chose to just exclude them altogether," the man said.
"Is it really that dangerous?" Alex asked. "Can't you just extinguish the Flame? Surely you have someone with Fire dao right?"
"Fire dao doesn't work on Phoenix flames. The only thing you can do is control its intensity by a certain degree. In the end, it will still continue to burn. The only way to stop Phoenix flames is by having the Phoenix itself extinguish it, but ever since… oh, that's tricky," the man said as he placed his palm on the chest.
Beads of sweat formed on his face as he breathed in and out rather quickly. "Nearly broke my oath."
'Ever since… the phoenix went to seclusion? He's talking about after the battle right?' Alex thought. He wanted to think about it more but there was something else that he had learned about that he couldn't make sense of either.
'Fire Dao doesn't work on Phoenix flames?' he thought. That was most definitely not true. He had used it multiple times in different places. It most certainly worked.
'Is it because I have a True Fire dao?' he wondered. 'Or is it my connection to Scarlet?'
Even if it was either of those things, then he was certainly one of the very few people in the world, maybe even the only one who could control Phoenix fire and extinguish it all by himself.
"Do you have any more questions?" the man asked.
"No, senior. Thank you for answering everything," Alex said.
"I don't know how much you care about us repaying the Western continent, but if we ever get an opportunity, we would do it. Especially if there comes a day when we no longer have to have the barrier in the north keep on going," the man said.
Alex's eyes perked up. 'I can make that happen right now,' he thought to himself. However, he didn't know what sort of trouble that could cause him.
What if they decide to get rid of him because he had the power to control phoenix flames? Or they realize that he had bonded with a phoenix which was considered taboo for some reason.
So, he kept quiet for now and nodded to the man, while looking around at the passing scenery.
The mainland of the Southern continent was far greener than what the wasteland, making one think they weren't even part of the same continent.
After a few hours of travel by air, Alex saw large mountains in the distance and realized that they were the mountains that surrounded the Sunborn Sanctuary.
A few spiritual senses passed through him from beasts that were obviously stronger than him, but not by much.
None of the senses felt like they belonged to a Saint Soul realm beast, and Alex was pretty confident he could survive the attack of anything below that just by the virtue of his teleportation dao and his blood aura.
He may need to sacrifice a few of his beasts in order to secure his escape, but that was not a problem for him.
The beasts did not approach them as the old man next to him made apparent his cultivation base as they flew.
Alex himself was surprised when he sensed it. 'That's… high in the Saint soul realm,' he thought. 'Maybe even Saint Transformation realm.'
They weren't lying when they said that the people in the council of 10 were the strongest in the entire continent.
He kept quiet for a while and looked a the passing mountains. From time to time, he would see flying birds that got as high as their ship, but they still never approached them.
"Look, can you see it?" the man next to him suddenly said.
Alex looked to where he was pointing and saw a barrier far away in vibrant blue color, which was certainly appearing that way only to his eyes. "Are we there?" he asked.
"Yes, right past that barrier," the man said.
Alex kept watching as the barrier got closer and closer. "Didn't you say that people without any registered aura couldn't enter?" he asked. "You are sure this won't just knock me back right?"
"Huh? Oh no, there is no barrier that stops anyone from entering normally. It's only for teleportation that there is a restriction. What this barrier will do is let us know whenever someone enters the city," the man said.
Alex felt the cool barrier go past him and a few seconds later a bunch of spiritual senses flew out toward him. Truly, if someone were to try and sneak into the sanctuary, someone would notice them immediately.
Alex then looked in front of him and was surprised at just how massive the city was, far beyond what he could have ever imagined at all.
"Welcome to the most important place in the entire continent, the Sunborn Sanctuary."
