Whisker went through the walls and appeared outside, right at the edge of the tower. He looked at what was around him and Alex got all the information.
There were cracks in space everywhere around him, but there was a gap between the tower and the cracks that Whisker could navigate through.
Whisker needed to go straight below, but Alex wasn't sure how much more the tower went on before one could out. Because of that, he had to first send Whisker outside safely and then send him below.
It turned out that the base of the tower was still quite high in the air, so Whisker had to go down for a couple hundred more meters before he reached the ground.
Towards the ground, he stopped on the ground and used his spiritual sense to look around.
"Go around the tower, carefully," Alex said. Whisker nodded and started moving. He scurried along the side of the tower, hugging it at every step so as to not hurt himself on some spatial fractures by accident.
"Stop!" Alex said when he noticed something through Whisker's spiritual sense. "To your right, about 20 meters into the floor. Do you see that?"
Whisker sensed the ground and nodded. He saw a formation flag that was intact there. It didn't look like there were any spatial fractures, so he went down.
He arrived in front of the formation flag and Alex checked it carefully.
He quickly copied the design down and tried to map out as much of the overall design as he could. He wanted to see if this was the space stabilizing formation or not, and find out how many more flags there would be out there.
'Not enough information,' he thought. "Continue along."
Whisker ran out of the ground and appeared back outside where he started walking again.
The tower seemed to be the only thing remaining in this secret realm, so Whisker had a faster time going around.
There was some fractured space that had moved onto the tower, and in those cases, Whisker had to fly around it and continue.
Alex kept searching for the formation flags as he had a general idea of where it would be. He found 2 more and added them to the design.
As he worked on the formation design, Whisker found another one.
Alex let Whisker get to it himself when he realized something was off about this formation flag. He stopped what he was doing and focused on it.
"It's slanted," he realized. "It's not straight. Whisker, try and see if you can push it straight."
Whisker went up to the formation flag and started pushing it.
As soon as he did, Alex felt the space shudder a bit. "More, some more," he said and kept an eye on how stable the space was in here.
As soon as the weird feeling of being inside a secret realm returned to him, he stopped Whisker. "That's it, stop," he said.
Whisker stopped and moved away. The formation flag stayed upright and the space stabilized. Whisker came back outside, and as soon as he did, Alex could see that the shattered space had started healing again.
It wasn't immediately okay to walk around, but it was much better than before, and the chance of propagating was most like gone. It would continue to heal before it was fully stabilized, at which point whenever the people were called back in, they would most likely appear outside the tower, if there was any space there at all.
Alex called back Whisker and went to tell the spirit what had happened.
"That's fantastic news," the spirit said. "I also noticed that have access to the 38th floor now. Although most of it is still broken and needs fixing."
"Now, tell me how I can refine this treasure easily," Alex asked.
"Well, it's as you would do all treasures," the spirit said. "Give it a bit of your Qi and use your blood essence. Although, given the massive size, I'm not sure you can do it so easily."
"That's… that's going to take me a long time," Alex said. "Is there no easier option?"
"There's no shortcut, master White Tiger," the spirit said.
Alex frowned a little. He did in fact want to try and get this treasure, but if the spirit was correct, he would have to stay in here for a very long time to do so, especially since it was an Immortal treasure.
He didn't have that sort of time. He had already wasted 5 months fighting the assassins, he now needed to go find his father.
"Urgh!" he thought. "Fine! I'll do it later. When will you open next? 10 to 12 years?"
"I believe there is a part of the tower outside the secret realm, right?" the spirit asked.
Alex nodded.
"Why don't refine the treasure from the outside? Whenever you are free that is," the spirit said. "I would really want to have you as my new master, so I will try to not resist as well as I can."
"Oh," Alex said. "That's not a bad idea. I could come through the secret realm directly too, but that might be dangerous for a while."
He thought for a bit longer and nodded. "Yeah, I think I'll do that. That sounds like the best way for me right now."
"I'm happy that you're satisfied with that, master White Tiger," the spirit said.
"I mean, what can you really do about it?" Alex said with a disappointed look. "Anyway, I should be going."
"I see," the spirit said. "Before you leave, master White Tiger. Since you did not receive anything despite going through all the trouble, even helping to save my life, please let me give you something to take away."
"Oh," Alex was surprised. "What is it? Is it one of the gifts that you're supposed to give for every floor?"
"Oh no," the spirit said. "I don't have those anymore. Those were all gone so long ago and without anyone to add more, we have nothing to give."
"So what is it?" Alex asked.
The spirit waved its hand and something appeared in front of Alex.
Alex looked at the thing in front of him with a surprised look. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"Please, take it," the spirit said. "This is my thank you."
"I…" Alex was flabbergasted. "Thank you," he said as he took the gift.
The spirit told him a few things about the gift that he needed to know about before he could use it properly.
Alex realized that it wasn't a simple gift as it had restrictions, but it was still quite the gift for him.
Alex prepared to leave, but before he did so, he had to change his face again. After his last face-to-face encounter with an explosion, his pill had lost its effect, so people could see his real face now.
The woman was most likely telling her people who she saw come in through the cracks on the 44th floor.
"Have a safe journey, master White Tiger," the spirit bid him goodbye.
"I'll see you in the future when I take over the tower then," Alex said and teleported back to the base floor where he activated the formation that sent him back out.
Not much time had passed since everyone had come out of the tower, so there was still a huge amount of people there. They were all leaving, but some were wondering if the one who won the challenge was going to reveal themselves.
Alex quietly moved away from the place, intermingling with the other people.
"Young man, here," a voice spoke into his head. Alex recognized the voice and looked in that direction.
Very far away was a single person who smiled and waved at him.
Alex looked at the man and walked towards him. "Senior Zhu, you're still here," he asked.
"Of course, I'm waiting for you," Zhu Shaofan said. "So, how did it go? Did you do well?"
"Yes, I did," Alex said. "I even got something from the Sanctum, a gift."
"Oh," Zhu Shaofen's eyes widened. "I didn't know the Sanctum still gave gifts."
"It did, but people saw me take it, so I had to give it over to someone for safekeeping," Alex said. "Can you call sister Xue? She has it."
Zhu Shaofan's face changed almost imperceptibly, and he shook his head. "Xue'er is already gone," he said.
"So early? She only just got out, didn't she?" Alex asked. "And she had my item too."
"She didn't tell me," Zhu Shaofan said. "Let's go catch up to her group."
"No," Alex said. "Please call her here."
"It's easier if we go there ourselves," Zhu Shaofan said. "I can fly much faster."
"No, I feel much safer staying here," Alex said.
Zhu Shaofan paused and gave him a weird look. "What do you mean 'safer'?" he asked. "Do you think I'll hurt you?"
Alex said nothing.
"Wow! You think so, don't you?" Zhu Shaofan said. "Why would you think that?"
Alex pulled out a talisman. "This is the exact same type of paper your insight pavilion uses, wasn't it?" he asked. "This is what the assassins were using to track me down."
"So?" Zhu Shaofan said. "Our pavilion isn't exclusive to using those papers."
"Maybe," Alex said. "But it sure as hell was convenient for an assassin to come with us on the way here. We even went out of our way to get her."
"Are you saying Xue'er is an assassin?" Zhu Shaofan asked.
"Yes," Alex said.
"There's no way that's true," Zhu Shaofan said.
"Are you saying she came out of the Sanctum then?" Alex asked. "Call her here right away and let me find out I was wrong."
"Yes, she did," Zhu Shaofan said. "Whatever assassin you met, it must have been a coincidence that she was just like Xue'er."
"Oh! Was it a coincidence that the assassin was also called Xue Mei and had very similar proportions and attitude to her?" Alex asked. "Now that you mention it, there are an awful lot of coincidences aren't there?"
"Was it a coincidence that from the list of assassins you gave me, aside from the first two that were already dead by the time, not a single one of them matched?" Alex asked.
"Was it a coincidence that you came back to the Sunborn Sanctuary right after the elders had taken me back there?" he asked. "Or the fact that two of the assassins were taking orders from you before we went in."
"Or the fact that you tried to make me fall for a charmer when we first met her," Alex said.
"What are you trying to get at?" Zhu Shaofan asked.
Alex looked him dead in the eyes and asked, "You are the leader of the Dark Phoenix assassins, aren't you?"
