Alex arrived in Blindheart City early in the morning when the city started to wake up. He got out of the place and walked around the city.
There was nothing really that seemed to be done in the city, so he only roamed it without ever stopping anywhere.
After going around the city for a while, he finally stopped in front of a carriage that was filling up with people ready to leave.
"Where is this carriage heading?" Alex asked.
"To the Spiritsong City, brother," the man at the head of the carriage said.
'Spiritsong,' Alex thought as he placed the city on the map. It was in the mountains northeast of the Sunborn Sanctuary and was home to the Ren family.
"Sure, why not," Alex thought and got on the carriage.
The inside of the carriage was much larger than he could have expected, fitting nearly 20 different people at once with room for more if need be.
There were a few couples, lone riders, and various other people on the trip along with Alex. Alex smiled and gave a nod before sitting on a seat.
The other people nodded him back in greeting but did nothing else to start a conversation, so Alex let it be.
A man in his early 40s walked into the carriage as well and looked at the empty seats that were in there. "Hey, are there more people coming?" he asked the carriage driver.
"I'm sure there is sir. Please sit around, we will leave as soon as it is all filled up," the driver said.
"Sigh, hurry up," he said before getting onto a seat close to Alex.
Alex looked at the man and was surprised to find that he was a Saint realm cultivator too.
"You seem to be in a hurry, my friend," Alex said.
The man looked towards him and was surprised to notice that Alex had a saint realm cultivation base as well.
"I… am," the man said slowly. "What are you doing in this carriage?"
"Me? I'm just relaxing as I make my way around to new places," Alex said. "What about you?"
"I'm on my way to the city to fight," the man said still quite curious as to why Alex was there. "I'm sorry, are you poor?"
"Poor? No, I wouldn't say that," Alex said slightly surprisedly. "What makes you ask that?"
"Well… I don't see why someone would take the carriage if they are not poor," the man said.
"As I said, I'm just taking it slow while I travel," Alex said. "Are you here because you're poor?" He couldn't understand how someone in the Saint realm could be poor at all. Even if he was, why would he need to take the carriage when he could fly to wherever he wanted to?
"Ahem! Yes, I'm lacking a bit of money," the man admitted. "I made the wrong bet on my match last week and lost everything. I barely had enough to buy healing pills."
"Your… match?" Alex asked with a confused look on his face.
"Yes, my match," the man said and was surprised to see Alex still confused. "You know… the match in the Battle Hall?"
Alex tried to remember those words, but nothing came to his mind. "I'm sorry, I've not been around long enough to know what that is," he said.
"You don't know about the Battle Hall in Spiritsong city? Have you been living under a rock or what? It's all the craze amongst the cultivators that are looking to show off their skills," the man said.
"Oh, so it's like a competition?" Alex asked.
"More like a place where you get matched up with random opponents to fight with," the man said. "I'm surprised you haven't heard about it."
"I'm afraid I have not," Alex said. "So wait, I can understand that you are out of money, but then why are you not flying to the city? You seem to be in a hurry anyway."
The man hesitated a bit. "My match is tomorrow and this carriage is most likely going to take all day. I just want it to reach there in time. As for why I'm not going there on my own, it's because I need to cultivate for a while."
"Since I don't have any money on me, I was hoping to use this opportunity to cultivate for the entire day before I reach there. If I go to the city right now, there aren't any places I can go to cultivate in peace," the man said.
"I see, then please go ahead, don't let me bother you anymore," Alex said.
"Thank you," the man said and closed his eyes to start cultivating. 3 more people walked into the carriage afterward and the carriage finally continued.
Alex was surprised at how fast the carriage was. He had been expecting a simple carriage, but it seemed this one was pulled by a tamed beast, making it incredibly fast.
Still, it would take him some time to reach Spiritsong city.
'The Battle Hall, huh? Sounds like a fun place,' he thought. He was interested in the place now that he knew he could randomly fight someone. He could absolutely learn from the experience there, making it worth his while.
Since he had so much waiting to do anyway, he decided to take advantage of his time here.
"But, that has to come later," Alex thought to himself. "I should be going somewhere else for now."
The carriage continued moving through the streets that were filled with other people and carriages that were moving all the same.
It looked like a highway and was thus a busy street that made its way to and from various different cities. Alex felt the breeze that came in through the window which he was using to look at the outside world
The road ran through open farmland, then through the sides of some mountain, and finally through a large forest.
The forest was full of trees that reached incredible heights. From his position, Alex couldn't even see the top of the trees at all.
The sun was getting low as it was getting closer to nighttime. Once the night was over, only then would they reach their destination in the pits of the mountain.
The carriage continued down its path into another open space before going into another forest. It was already nighttime by now and the sky was dark with only a sliver of the moon visible through the cloudy night.
As the carriage moved, Alex felt it get closer and closer. Then, at a certain point, he sent a message to the driver at the front.
"I'm getting off here!"
Without anyone else realizing it, he teleported out of the carriage directly deep into the forest. He watched the carriage continue far away from him and looked back into the forest as he started walking deeper into it.
Whisker appeared on his shoulders a moment later as he too looked around. "Do you think you can recognize any plants that can be used in Alchemy here?" he asked.
Whisker had some knowledge regarding the various plants so he started looking around the forest with his spiritual sense. He pointed at various places around him to show different plants and named a few.
"That's correct, that one is a 2-leaved thornbill plant as you can see from the leaves, that one is indeed a Puffed Twilight flower, but it is too young so we should leave it for now," Alex explained everything that was right and wrong with Whisker's explanations.
The two of them went along as Whisker jumped out of his shoulders to go bring back some ingredients from time to time. Alex put the ingredients into his storage ring so that Whisker could use it later.
After going far enough, Alex stopped Whisker from looking at any more ingredients, and instead he started focusing on what was around him.
"Weird," Alex thought as he looked around. He walked a bit further into the forest following what he was sensing but he couldn't find what he was looking for.
"Is she not here?" he thought as he looked around.
His bond with Scarlet told him that Scarlet was around here, which was why he had come here in the first place to meet her.
She had left so suddenly that Alex wanted to learn more, so he had come here trying to find her. However, from what he could see, she wasn't here at all.
In his entire sense, he couldn't find her at all.
"Is my sense wrong?" Alex thought. However, that couldn't be the case at all.
She had to be here, but he couldn't find her at all. "Is she hiding?" he thought and tried to look around at the aura in the air, but there was nothing indicative of Scarlet anywhere.
"Is she really not here… or is she hiding somewhere my eyes and senses can't reach?"
With that thought, Alex released his spiritual sense again. However, instead of searching for Scarlet, he searched for something else.
And as he expected, in the direction where his bond was telling him Scarlet was, there was a patch of space that wasn't normal.
It was more warped than the rest of the other spaces around that place.
"A spatial pocket," Alex said with a smile on his face as he understood what he was looking at. "A secret realm."
He walked close to the normal-looking space and lifted his hands towards it. A moment later, a rift opened right in front of him, creating an opening that led to the secret realm.
