"Alex, I heard you were back. Are you alright?"
Alex was on his way to find his aunt when Long Huan met him in the hallway. He seemed to be going in the same direction as well and had met Alex by chance.
"Are you on your way to meet my aunt too?" Alex asked.
"Yes," Long Huan answered with a slightly embarrassed look on his face. "I'm trying to get on her good side. I don't think she likes me very much, so I'm trying to appear better in her eyes."
"Good luck." That was all Alex could say to the man.
Long Huan shrank a little when he realized that he wasn't going to get any help from Alex, but quickly put away those thoughts. "I heard from senior Zhou that he found you. I can't believe the two of you actually met."
"Yeah, he took care of me while I was wounded," Alex said as the two of them walked together, while a few royal guards as well as Linlin walked behind the two.
Long Huan looked back at the guards before speaking with his spiritual sense. "I heard you were crippled too, and then somehow got your cultivation back. When he had told that to the elders here, everyone was confused about how that was even possible. I think they want to learn how you did that."
Alex sighed when he heard that. He knew it would have been hard to hide that fact, but he didn't expect it to get out so soon. 'Should I tell them what happened?' Alex wondered.
His elders already knew a lot about him, including the fact that he had learned a physique where he could lose his head and grow it back somehow. They didn't understand how that was possible, but they understood that it did.
Explaining to them that the same thing worked with his Dantian as well shouldn't be a difficult task, even though that wasn't technically what was happening. Healing a Dantian would allow you to be a cultivator again, but not give you your cultivation back, which the Undying God's Physique did.
He hoped he wouldn't have to explain to them how it truly worked because frankly, he had no idea too. Not a single one of the people who he gained the memories from knew how it worked.
Alex then arrived outside his aunt's quarters in the palace and waited for her to leave.
Liz walked out soon enough and looked at the two men who were in front of her room. She ignored Long Huan quickly enough and took Alex's head in her hands, turning it around to look at his head from every direction.
"You look much better now," she said before slapping him lightly on his shoulders. "You will need to eat something for those muscles though. It will take a while to gain them back if you rely on cultivation alone."
"I plan on asking senior Zhou to make me something," Alex said. "Has he made anything for anyone here?" He posed the question to everyone.
Linlin shook her head quickly enough and Liz gave a frown. "Why in the world would we ask our guests to make anything for us? He's being treated like a guest, being made to feel comfortable and all," Liz said.
"Ah, right." None of them had tasted any food the man-made, so they didn't yet understand what Alex was talking about. "I'll go talk to him later on. For now, we have something more important to deal with."
Liz's eyes sharpened instantly. "Is it about Hannah?" she asked.
Alex nodded. "Where is she? I plan to check on her before I go and talk to Lady Beihan," he said.
"Come inside," Liz said before turning to Long Huan. "Not you."
Long Huan seemed troubled but said nothing against the order. Alex walked into his aunt's room and the door closed behind him.
"Why are you so hard on him?" Alex asked. "He'll just grow to hate you later on."
"He's the man that got my daughter like this. Do you think I should be thanking him instead?" Liz asked in a rather angry tone. She wasn't faking it at all.
"I… suppose he was at fault," Alex said. He understood that he should hate on the man for getting Hannah involved in all of this, but for some reason, he couldn't. After all, Hannah had to have known what was happening, and she had made the choice to go with him too.
Besides, they were married in the first place. Anything that had happened to them was just bad luck, and nothing was done out of maleficence.
"Until my daughter tells me she forgives him with her own mouth, I'm not forgiving him," Liz said. "Perhaps, not even after."
Alex gave a dry laugh and quickly shut that up too when he saw his aunt's glare. "Anyway, where is sister?" he asked, looking around the room.
Liz's room was orderly with a large bed in one corner, with two nightstands on each side. There were multiple rugs in the room with intricate details and tapestries that hung along the wall.
The other corner of the room away from the door was sectioned off with a metallic cube that was lifted above the ground with another two large wooden plants, with multiple formation flags surrounding it completely.
Even from where Alex stood, he could sense a faint sense of aura around the metal box that was so very specific for him.
'Time Aura,' he thought. He couldn't tell what was being done with the time aura just from the sensation he got, but he could tell that time aura was being involved there somehow.
"Is sister inside there?" Alex asked as he walked closer to the apparatus.
"She's experiencing slowed time in there," Liz said. "I use my Dao every day to keep it slowed beyond the capacity of the formation. To Hannah, she entered that room just 3 hours ago, but over a month has already passed."
"That… is a very strong time difference," Alex said with surprise clear in his face. It was nearly as strong as the Timeless Palace in the Demon Realm back in the Western Continent.
"You should stop it," Alex said. "Bring her out so I can check on her."
Liz nodded and walked toward the formation. She first used her Dao to take away the effect she had put on there, then she stopped the formation.
Time flowed back to normal, and Alex could feel the Time aura slowly disappear from the room.
Liz then undid a few latches on the side of the metal box and the front metallic plate flung open, revealing Hannah dressed in a simple white robe, asleep with her head on the side of the room.
"Do we wake her?" Liz asked.
Alex thought for a bit and shook his head. "I'm just going to see how her body is handling the block to her Dantian," he said and moved closer to Hannah.
He clutched her left hand with both of his hands and closed his eyes for a few long minutes. Afterward, he opened them with a bright smile.
"She's doing fine," Alex said. "We'll start once we return. Until then, don't bother using your Dao again. In fact, go cultivate and be ready. You will be the most important in this task."
