While the other group had gone ahead to the Scarlet city, Alex's group had made their way to the southern regions of the Southern Forest.
They flew by themselves for a while, going toward the teleportation platform that was outside of the Beast realm.
Pearl had started out with them, but soon enough everyone realized that he couldn't keep up at all. With how weak his current cultivation was as compared to everyone else, Alex took Pearl back into his beast space so they delayed no longer.
"How long do you think it will take?" Alex asked. "Will we be done in a month?"
"It's hard to tell. It could be faster or slower," Hao Ya said. "The thing is, because we do not know the exact distance between the two formations as the records have already been lost for millennia now, we will have to go through a lot of trial and error to figure it out."
"If we're lucky, it could be a day. If we're not, it could even take 6 months. Fortunately, your aunt is here, so we can use her powers to increase our efficiency and do a lot of those trials in a very short amount of time," Hao Ya said.
"I see."
He wondered how long it would take for Pearl to evolve if he could at all. He wondered if, in that time, he could go find his mother in the Luminance empire at that time.
As they arrived closer, his eyes narrowed as he saw something from far away.
"Beasts?" he spoke softly with a confused look. As the group got closer, a wave of spiritual sense passed through them all, surprising Alex and the rest.
"Saint beasts?" Alex thought. "How are there saint beasts in the Southern Forest?"
Even finding a peak True realm beast was impossible in the Southern Forest, and somehow there were Saint beasts out here. And they all seemed quite strong as well.
The beast flew into the sky to intercept them. One of them was a golden-furred gorilla, and the other one was a bear with black and white stripes all over it.
Alex was ready to fight the beasts, but before he could do anything, the beasts bowed immediately.
"We are honored to be in your presence, blessed Phoenix," the two beasts spoke at once.
Scarlet flew to the front and looked at the two beasts with curious looks. "Since you can recognize me, I will assume you are not from around here. Let your master know that I am here and that I have brought along a few humans that wish to make use of the Intercontinental Teleportation formation," she spoke.
"Right away," the two bowed toward Scarlet and moved down to the platform. Alex saw a talisman fly out of one of the beast's storage bags which it used to contact someone inside the beast realm.
'Master?' Alex couldn't help but be surprised. 'Surely she couldn't mean…'
A deep sense of worry appeared in Alex's heart. He quickly turned toward Scarlet only to see her serious face. "Scarlet, what do you mean by a master?" he asked.
"What do you think I mean?" she asked. "The throne that has been empty for the past 5 thousand years has been occupied once more. The Western Continent once again has a ruler."
"What?" Alex couldn't help but be surprised. "How do you know that?"
"Senior Luhei told me," Scarlet said simply. "That's why I am here, after all, to check if what he said was true."
Alex felt his heart skip a beat. He remembered the small bit of information he had received a long time ago.
Back when Pearl had first been brought to the Beast realm, he was told that within the next 100 years, another ruler would come if the throne remained empty for much longer.
The beasts were worried that the prideful nature of this new ruler would bring forth war over the lost resources of the Western Continent. That was why they wanted Pearl to become the new ruler, to keep the peace.
However, it seemed that even though not even 50 years had passed, another ruler was already here. Was he as bad as everyone assumed the next one would be? Alex didn't know, but he sure hoped not.
He worried what that would mean for him and Pearl too. Because he had the White Tiger's bloodline, would that cause problems today? Would Pearl even be allowed to go through the ritual?
Alex suddenly felt as if everything was about to go very wrong. He took a deep breath and prepared himself as someone appeared on top of the teleportation formation.
A snow leopard with very light-yellow fur and a deep black spot had appeared before them. "Greetings," the snow leopard spoke. "May I ask if you're lady Nuanhuo?"
Hearing the snow leopard's voice, Alex was surprised that it was actually a female.
"You recognize me?" Scarlet was a little surprised.
"My apologies, senior Nuanhuo. It was my lord who guessed who you might be," the leopard spoke.
"I see, and who might you be?" Scarlet asked.
"I am called Han Kexiu, I am my lord's third wife," the leopard spoke. She looked at everyone apart from Scarlet as well. "Our lord is waiting for you in the throne room. Please, follow me."
Scarlet was the first one to go down to the formation with Hao Ya a little behind. Liz followed the two and Alex was the last to arrive.
When he arrived, he couldn't help but instinctively try and figure out the cultivation base of the beast in front of him. When he did, he felt her cultivation as deep as an abyss that his senses couldn't see the end of.
Without a doubt in his mind, Alex knew that the leopard in front of him was most definitely an Immortal cultivator.
"Let us go," lady Han spoke. The teleportation formation activated instantly, sending all of them into the Beast realm.
Alex arrived in the familiar underground cave of the beast realm. The crystalline stalactite over them still glowed a bright white light into the room. The room looked familiar to Alex, but the aura within it was anything but.
He could sense many, many saint beasts roaming the palace, each one stronger than the other. The number of different cultivation bases he was sensing from where he was felt absurd to him.
Never in his life had he sensed such a large amount of strong beasts in a single place.
"Please, follow me," the leopard said and began walking. The group followed lady Han and went along with her through the various hallways.
Multiple beasts dropped to their knees and bowed as they moved across, each one of which was in the Saint realm.
Alex looked around him in half-wonder, half-worry. His heart grew more and more anxious.
Lady Han arrived outside the throne room and stepped to the side. "Please, get in."
The door to the throne room opened and Scarlet walked in along with the two other girls. Alex followed behind and stood beside the two.
The throne room which used to always be empty was filled to the brim this time around, with all sorts of beasts sitting on the seats that were so vacant back then.
And it wasn't just feline beasts either. Monkey, Zebra, Bear, Deer, and all sorts of beasts were present, all of which could be described with a single word.
His eyes fell on a White Cat that sat on one of the seats and was surprised. "Lady Ren?" He had believed that she had died during the Heavenly Judgment, so why was she here?
"So, it really was true," Scarlet spoke all of a sudden, grabbing Alex's attention. He looked toward her and saw her staring straight ahead.
So, he looked ahead as well.
There were 3 seats in the front. One for the heir, one for the Lady, and one for the Lord.
The seat for the heir was empty.
On the seat for the Lady sat a brown-furred, white stripped Lynx that looked very majestic in her own way. She wore a golden robe that draped all over her body.
Alex's eyes then moved onto the seat for the Lord, and on that seat, he was surprised to find not a beast, but a man.
The man had a handsome face, framed perfectly by his flowing golden hair that came to his shoulders. He wore a pure white robe and had two spherical earrings on him, each of which had spikes all over it.
Alex's eyes went wide in surprise as he couldn't believe what he was seeing at all.
"B-Brother Shen?" he blurted out without even thinking.
"Yo!" Shen Jing spoke from atop the throne, with a wide smile.
Scarlet turned to Alex with a weird look on her face. "Brother Shen?" she asked.
"That's brother Shen Jing," Alex said quickly. "What… what are you doing here? Why are you on the throne?"
Alex didn't even have time to process anything before Scarlet turned back toward the throne and spoke.
"Shen Jing, huh? You could've at least tried a little harder when coming up with a fake name," she said.
"I wasn't really intending to use it for more than a few minutes, so I just used what I randomly thought of at the time," the man said.
"Scarlet, what are you talking about?" Alex asked, as suspicions grew in his heart that he knew what was happening.
"That is not Shen Jing. He is the White Tiger that came with us all those years ago, Bai Jingshen," Scarlet said. "The one that had supposedly died in the Central Continent over 5000 years ago."
