Alex sighed as he felt the talisman buzzing inside of his robe. He looked at Teng Roukang with a rather disappointed face. 'Maybe it was meant to be?' he thought.
He had recognized that Teng Roukang had been slowly getting agitated due to the lack of fights, but he hadn't thought that he would so openly show his annoyance with the new system.
"Stand back," he said to both Pearl and Whisker, who moved away to give Alex some space. Then, Alex turned around toward the excited man.
"What do you think is going to happen next?" Alex asked him.
"Hehe, I don't know," the man said with a small grin. "You're either going to have to accept my challenge or reject me, Your Majesty. Either way, I suppose I'll be getting my healing pill."
The gathered crowd whispered amongst themselves, and Alex could see many become curious if they could employ the same method to get more pills. If this little stunt of Teng Roukang was going to work, everyone would follow suit as well.
The pills were just so good that they were ready to offend the person who made them.
Alex sighed again. "My rules were clear. If you break them, I will give you an Out of Bounds. Are you not worried?" he asked.
"Worried? About what?" the man chuckled out loud. "Your Majesty, did you think you could add mysticism to your cultivation by simply hiding your cultivation base from us? Everyone here that had won against you knows exactly what your cultivation base is."
"Saint Soul 3rd realm. We knew it the moment you lost to any one of us. We were all handed 33 points, you know?" the man said.
Alex knew that, but it seemed they hadn't noticed his reason for not caring. He scoffed a little. "You thought I was hiding my cultivation base to add mysticism?" he asked, slowly letting his cultivation base fill him once more.
Everyone could sense from him what they already knew by now.
Teng Roukang didn't say anything and instead just smiled. "You are delaying the battle, Your Majesty," he said. "Accept or Reject my duel, but do so quickly."
"Very well," Alex nodded. "I accept your duel."
The man smiled and pulled out his staff, ready to fight, his Saint Soul 6th realm cultivation base flaring to overshadow Alex's Saint Soul 3rd realm cultivation base.
He pointed the staff toward Alex, waiting for him to bring out his sword, but Alex did nothing.
"Hmm? Are you not going to fight back?" he asked. "Where is your sword?"
"I don't need my sword to fight you," Alex said barehanded before gesturing for him to come attack him.
The man paused for a fraction of a second to process what he said and then charged as the disrespect in those words angered him. Arrived next to Alex, his staff glowing with golden energy as he tried to hit him with the end of the staff.
Alex parried the staff with his bare hand, sliding it to the side before grabbing it tightly.
Teng Roukang tried to pull on his staff to attack again, but to his surprise, Alex didn't budge at all, and neither did his staff.
"Hmm?" he was confused a little. He tried to pull harder again, but Alex didn't budge at all. Before he could figure out why his staff was stuck right now, Alex pulled on the staff, pulling the man's entire body along with it.
When he arrived next to him, he slammed the open palm of his left hand onto his chest with enough strength to crush a few good ribs.
At the same time, silver threads of light quickly coalesced around the man, emerging from both Alex and the air itself. The threads took practically no time to surround the man and when they did, Alex activated his Dao of Teleportation.
Instantly, the man was teleported over a kilometer away at once. And having been sent that far away, his talisman buzzed at once, giving him not just a Loss, but an Out of Bounds as well.
The man coughed hard, spitting out a mouthful of blood as he felt intense pain in his chest like he had never before inside the secret realm. He felt the ribs pierce his lungs, so he quickly took out a regular healing pill and ate it.
Once his body healed, he quickly checked his talisman just to learn what he had feared. "I… lost?" he couldn't believe it. How had that happened? Not only had he lost, he had been sent out of bounds.
How was that possible?
"What did he do?" The man wanted to know. He needed to know.
He quickly flew back to Alex, but Alex had already prepared his formation barrier and entered it. "What happened?" the man shouted. "Your Majesty! Come answer me."
"You lost," Teng Xuegang spoke from the side. "You can give up now. You lost quite a bit of face too."
"Bastard! I don't want to talk with you right now," Teng Roukang shouted. "Your Majesty!"
"Look at you," Teng Xuegang continued. "So pathetic."
"Shut up!" the man shouted. "I will have you killed."
"Why don't you do it yourself?" Teng Xuegang asked. "I challenge you to a duel."
Roukang felt his talisman buzz and was angered even more. "Stop getting in my way, you—" he had only just turned around to curse when he noticed something that made his eyes go wide.
"That's…" He noticed the staff Teng Xuegang was holding. "That's my staff."
"Is it?" Teng Xuegang gave an evil grin. "I hadn't noticed. Do you want it?"
"Give it back!" the man shouted.
"Then fight me for it!" Xuegang roared with laughter.
Alex was unaware of the commotion happening outside and had already started watering his trees and feeding them. After doing so, he looked at the amount of pills he had again and knew that he had to make some pills this time around.
So, after cultivating for a while to get rid of his accumulated Yin Qi, he proceeded to prepare to make pills.
The first few hours were spent with him preparing the ingredients, bettering it to the point that he wouldn't require the usage of World Defying Mushroom. Once he was done, he started making pills.
When the dark clouds covered the sky and the lightning strikes thundered the secret realm, he did not doubt that everyone had realized he was making pills. If they didn't, they would still come to see what was happening and figure it out afterward.
What he was doing to make pills was certainly going gather even more people to take those pills away from him.
'It's just for now,' he thought. He had steadily been improving, so the amount of people that could fight him would lower. At the same time, he would last longer during fights as he got stronger.
With that in mind, he continued making as many pills as he could before the 2nd day of his break was over. Right before it was over, he fought one more person from the Loss queue to not go into the next day with a Loss.
Then, it was time to train once more.