"Thank you," the senior said.
Alex nodded once and didn't speak after that.
The 5 of them remained silent for a while, with no one saying anything.
Alex and the senior simply didn't have anything to say after that, while the others didn't know what to say.
The silence was broken by Hao Ya. "Master, you need to prepare for the Northern Continent," she said.
"Oh, right," the man said and quickly stood up. He looked at Scarlet and Alex. "Do you two want to stick around? Or do you want to leave?"
"I'm going to stick around," Alex said. "I still haven't done everything I came here to do."
"What else do you have to— Oh, right," the man remembered. "Come, she's cultivating inside right now. You can meet her there."
Alex nodded and stood up as well. He walked away with the senior, going back to the mansion he had come out of. Hao Ya followed behind them as well, going into the mansion along with them.
Alex quickly understood where he was going. It was the separate space that he had felt when coming into the mansion.
As expected, he arrived in front of the two massive doors and the man stood in front of it. He was about to open the door, but stopped.
"Uhh… try not to touch anything in there, okay?" he asked.
"I won't," Alex said.
The man sighed a bit after hearing the lingering anger in Alex's voice and turned around to open the door. He pushed the door open, and Alex's eyes went wide when he sensed what was inside.
"Qi?" he couldn't help but ask.
"Come on in," the man said and walked in.
Alex quickly walked into the room and found out that it was filled with Qi. Not only that, the space aura was quite thick in this place.
"Is this a spatial pocket?" he asked.
"In a sense," the man said. "It's not a natural one. I created this place with various formations. It's no different from a natural spatial pocket, except for the fact that it does not have an edge to it.
"If anything, the walls are the edge of this space," the man said.
"How large is it?" Alex asked, sensing the vastness of space in here. He could check for himself, but he didn't feel that it was right to use his spiritual sense here.
"A few kilometers wide," the man said.
"That's big," Alex said softly. He closed his eyes and sensed everything that was around him.
"Why is there Qi in here? Shouldn't it be sent to the Qi barrier?" Alex asked. "Or is it because it's inside this space that it is not disappearing?"
"No, that's not it," the man said. "Even if there was a natural spatial pocket here, the Qi would still escape it because of how strong the Intent behind it is."
"Then?" Alex asked.
"That's exactly it. There is no such intent in this room," the man said.
Alex was slightly confused. "Why would there not be such intent here? Was it because this place was made afterward?" he asked.
"No, that would still have the intent flow through," the man said.
"Then?" Alex asked.
"The reason there is no Intent here is that I'm fighting back against it with my own intent," the man said.
"You can do that?" Alex was surprised. "But I thought the Intent came from someone very strong. Won't you get spiritually hurt if you try to fight the intent of someone so strong?"
"Normally, yes," the man said. "But there are 2 different things going on here which is allowing me to do this."
"First, the Intent behind the Qi wall itself is over 5 thousand years old. As with everything, Intent slowly whittles down with time as well, especially if the intent's originator is no longer around to back it."
"Secondly, I'm only stopping the intent from working in this very small room. While the Intent might be strong, I can handle it for just this small room," the man said. "You shouldn't try it though. You will most likely die if you try."
Alex nodded. He wasn't planning on doing so anyway. "So that's why there is Qi here, huh? And you can use the Qi to cultivate as well?" he asked.
"Not so much," the man said. "While there is Qi here, it's not very dense since its from a single spirit vein. I have multiple spirit veins here, but almost all of them are attached to the teleportation formation, as well as the many formations I was using as the system for the game."
Alex nodded when he heard that. This truly was a very unique room and he was glad he came here. He looked around the room, finally actively observing what was inside of here. He was hoping to see his clone's daughter immediately, but it seemed she wasn't close by.
He saw something next to him instead that was covered with some sort of dark cloth.
"What's that?" he asked. It wasn't just that either. There were many such large objects that were hidden with black clothes, all of which had similar shapes.
At a single glance, he could see thousands of such objects in his periphery.
"You want to see?" the man asked and walked over to it before pulling down the cloth that seemed to have been gathering dust for years.
Alex stepped back a bit as he heard something fall. A few pieces of glass fell to next his feet, clattering a bit. He looked at the glass and the back at the object in front of him that was uncovered.
It was a cylindrical glass chamber with metal plates covering its top and bottom, with tubes coming into the glass. The glass had mostly been shattered and it didn't look like the object had been in use for a long time.
Alex found it hard to tell exactly what he was looking at. Was it some kind of glass container?
Given that it was nearly 3 meters tall and a meter wide, he knew it was something important.
"What is this?" he asked.
"It is an Incubation Chamber," the man said.
"Incubation Chamber?" Alex asked. "What were you incuba—"
He realized something and turned quickly back toward the chamber. Now that he was looking at it again, it had the perfect size to fit a human in it.
"This is where I made the clones," the man said.
Alex couldn't hide his awe at all as he looked at the incubation chamber where the clones were made. He quickly turned around and looked at the thousands of such chambers that were hidden beneath the dark clothes that were now covered in a layer of dust.
"Did every single clone that was created get made here?" he asked the man.
"Every single one," the man said.
"How?" Alex asked. "Did you have clones of every single human prepared before they even joined the game? How did you have the clones prepared for every single person that wanted to play the game?"
"Oh, that's simple," the man said. "I didn't. I didn't have any clones prepared. I made the clones concurrently as the people joined the game."
