4 Challengers and 2 possible rejections meant Shan Wangjiu would have to fight someone here.
"I challenge you," the man who had come there with Alex and Wangjiu was the first to send out a challenge.
And to Alex's surprise, the man pointed at him.
"You wish to challenge me?" Alex couldn't help but ask curiously. He had expected the challenge to fall on the weaker of the two.
"Yes," the man said. "Do I still get pills when I win?"
"You do," Alex said, hiding his relief from his voice.
'This is good,' he thought. 'As soon as I win, I can challenge Wangjiu and lose to him. He can get saved on getting however few Losses he can still get.'
The thought was fleeting, but it brought Alex some sense of relief. He had been about to accept the challenge when he heard someone else speak next to him.
"Do you want to fight me?" one of the girls with Saint Soul 5th realm cultivation base called out to Wangjiu.
Alex didn't turn around to look at her or Wangjiu, but his spiritual sense reached out to him and told him what he planned.
'I'll finish it quickly. Drag on the rejection and I should be done by then,' he told the young man. Once finished, he turned back to his own challenger and spoke.
"I accept."
"I accept."
Almost at the same time, Shan Wangjiu's voice floated next to him, almost like an echo, surprising Alex.
"What are you doing?" Alex asked, turning to look at the young man. He hadn't realized when it was, but over the past half a year he had been with him, Alex truly had ended up thinking of the young man as more than just an acquaintance.
"What's the point of rejecting, master?" the young man asked with a smile on his face. "I came here to fight and grow. Can't do that without actually fighting, now can I?"
Alex felt a little stunned, and then he smiled.
"You're right," he thought. "You don't need me to save you."
"No, you don't," the young man said excitedly. "I'm not so weak that I will lose without putting up a good fight."
"Your Majesty," the young man that challenged him spoke. "You should focus on your own battle."
He attacked after giving only moments for Alex to pull his attention back into their battle.
Four horses made of dense Fire Qi galloped from in front of the man, running toward Alex at a furious speed. Alex only punched once, four golden spears forming at his punch, each easily targeting the four horses to destroy them.
Not a shred of the horses remained.
The young man looked surprised, but it only lasted for a moment before a serious expression replaced it. He brought out an artifact.
A copper lantern with a black roof and a golden handle at the top with 6 sides of glass hung from the man's hand, with a small flame of green fire burning inside of it without any source.
Alex looked at the flame in quiet curiosity. It reminded him of the Zhou family's White Flame back in the Western Continent before it did Phoenix fire.
'A different type of flame?' Alex wondered. He wondered too what the properties of the flame might be. As an alchemist, he was told he would need unique flames to help him during his Alchemy sessions for better results.
Would this sort of flame help him in any way?
The young man poured Qi into his lantern and one side of the glass opened up, releasing a green flaming bird that flew out of it and charged toward Alex.
The bird seemed nearly corporeal, its form more real than any beasts he had seen made out of Qi. The bird was a hawk with nearly 3 meters of wingspan. Green flames burned from the corner of its eyes that stared at Alex.
The hawk flew right toward him.
Alex did everything in his hand to hold himself back from attacking the bird or destroying it. The only thing he did was make his body more durable with Qi and then let the bird smash into him.
Green flames covered him. Hot fire burned at every inch of his body, prickling all over his skin even though he had the True Fire Dao.
The flames were hot, much hotter than normal flames, but nowhere near hot enough to compare to the Phoenix fire. Also, while it pricked all over his body, it didn't exactly hurt.
The flame had a higher temperature, but that alone should not have made it special. One could just use a technique that increased the temperature of flames or even just use a Dao.
There was something about the fire that was abnormal for sure.
Alex looked for understanding in his Flame Dao and reached it in the Dao of Burning.
Burning.
The fire burned for much longer than normal.
'So that's it,' Alex realized.
Despite the temperature of the fire, it didn't burn what it was on. The parts that it consumed, it consumed slower so that the flames could last for much longer.
'It takes time to burn through things, so the heat ends up dealing more wounds than normal,' Alex thought. 'Not very useful for Alchemy.'
It wasn't even very useful for anything for him given that he had the Dao of Burning in his True Fire Dao.
With but a thought, the flames vanished from all around him. Countering the green fire's traits with his Fire Dao, Alex easily got rid of it all as if it never existed.
Darkness returned in the ash-covered land as Alex stood there with no harm to his body at all.
Everyone, including Shan Wangjiu and his challenger who were supposed to fighting on the other side, looked at him. Some had eyes of fear, some of confusion.
None expected what had happened to happen.
"Your majesty," the young man slowly called out before gulping heavily. "Are you okay?"
"I see," Alex said. "I must have scared you all. I was only inspecting the green fire. No need to get scared. My talisman would've saved me had I needed the help."
The young man in front of him couldn't believe it. His lantern was something he gained after killing someone long ago, who he now guessed was a player. Since then, since he refined the artifact, there hadn't been anyone who was his equal, or weaker than him that could stand those flames.
And yet… Alex had somehow managed to do that while being nearly 4 realms weaker than him. How was that possible at all?
"This is your first battle of the day, isn't it?" Alex asked the man.
The man listlessly nodded. He had been challenging everyone, but everyone had rejected him. He had paved the way for his fellow cultivators to gain the points.
"A shame," Alex said. "I do not know how many losses you have gathered in the past year, but here you will have to gain one more."
"No," the man said softly, the possibility not making sense to him.
"Unfortunately," Alex replied. "You lost your right to win the moment you challenged me."
