Alex walked towards the Tiger Sect with many thoughts running in his mind. The main thought obviously was the fact that his home was in the same world as the game.
'So it was never 2 different worlds. We were just… isolated,' he thought. It was not that dissimilar to the situation of the Crimson Empire itself.
'Isolation from the rest of the world, huh? I wonder how we turned out so differently compared to the Crimson Empire. The technological improvement we have had for years is better than anything the mortals of the Crimson Empire could ever make,' he thought.
He wanted to know what his future was like now. Hao Ya had told him to wait for 30 years. He was told to just sit tight and cultivate.
So what if he did that? Would waiting 30 or 40 years to go back home even be worth it? What would he even do at that time? What would any of them even do at that time?
The world would have moved on by then. Their friends and families would have moved on.
What would even be left for him to go back to? Alex started feeling very anxious.
He couldn't wait to go back home right now because it had been months since he was stuck here. However, if he could only go back 30 or 40 years from now… there was no point to going back.
Especially now that he knew that his other soul was back at home, fulfilling his duties and responsibilities.
He no longer saw a reason to just wait around to go back home. Yes, he still wanted to go back home and see everything he had missed.
But, he no longer viewed it as very important. The priority of having to go back home plummeted to the very bottom.
He reached the Tiger Sect's gate and called his master as well as his senior brother to tell them he was there.
He also made sure to let them know that his face had changed.
Surprisingly, all 3 of them came to see him at the gate.
"I knew it. You wouldn't go die by yourself," Wen Cheng said with a proud face.
"Are you okay, little brother?" Luo Mei asked.
"He's fine. Look at him," Liu Xun said.
They took him back to Wen Cheng's manor and have him sit down to talk. They started asking how he was, and how he was feeling now that Ma Rong was gone.
He told them the truth that he was still sad but was working through his grief quite well. It had especially helped since he managed to kill the man that killed her.
Alex decided not to drop the burden on them of knowing that he wasn't the one they were waiting for.
At least, he didn't want to let his sister know that. He didn't want them to act differently towards him after knowing the truth.
However, he did want to tell his Wen Cheng. He already considered him his master, so he was ready to tell him everything.
After an hour of talking, Liu Xun left to go back to his duty. While Alex asked Luo Mei to leave as well since he had something to talk to Wen Cheng privately.
"You really killed the second elder?" Wen Cheng asked in surprise.
"That's… what I wanted to talk to you about, master," Alex said. "You see… it wasn't me who killed him."
Wen Cheng was confused at first, but once Alex explained everything his eyes went wide.
"From another continent?" Wen Cheng asked in surprise.
"Yes, the real me was from that continent, but now he's gone back, leaving me behind with all the skills and memories," Alex said.
"So… what does that mean? Are you not the Yu Ming we know?" Wen Cheng asked.
Alex struggled to come up with an answer and sighed. "I don't know, master. I still have the same memory, and the feelings I have towards you are the same as well."
"The only way I'm different is that I never got to experience the things that evoke these feelings and memories. I don't know if that makes me a different person or not. In the end, I believe we are the same person, with different souls," Alex said.
Wen Cheng put his hands on Alex's shoulders. "If you have the same memory and feelings, then I will consider you the same person. Don't think too much about it," he said.
Alex's felt a little relieved in his mind. "Thank you, master."
"Alright, go rest. You must be quite tired," he said.
"Not now, master," Alex said. "We have something more important to discuss."
"Something important?" Wen Cheng looked at him with a curious look. "What's more important?" he asked.
"Along the way back from the desert. I looked into the second elder's bag. He didn't have many things, but he did hold a talisman with him regarding information about the sect that was previously lost to you all," Alex said.
He took out the storage bag of the old man. It didn't have anything Alex would consider important aside from a set of ingredients and formation plates, but the talisman with the information was one that he would consider truly important.
Alex handed the talisman over to Wen Cheng who started reading it. As he did, his eyes went wider and wider in shock and surprise. He had never expected the origins of the Tiger sect to be… this incredible.
Nearly a thousand years ago, a group of people saw a meteor shower in the night sky. Some of the meteors landed nearby, so they when to check it.
When they did, they found a small, growing tree about 2 meters tall at the northern shore of the empire.
The golden tree put them in awe and they decided to live around it in hopes that it would bring good luck to them. And good luck it brought them.
Not far away from them, they started finding other various materials. Some spirit stones, some books, some pills, some weapons, some artifacts, and many other things.
The people of that time used these materials to start a small sect. Within a few years, they finished using the spirit stones.
They used the pills, weapons, and artifacts to make themselves stronger as well and improved their sect until it was big enough to become a well-known sect at the time.
The books, however, were useless to them. Aside from maybe 10 or so books, the rest of them were written in a language that wasn't legible to them.
So, the tiger sect could only use some of the books. The rest, they kept them safe for a time when they would understand the language.
During this time, something incredible happened. The tree that they set their sect around started growing hotter and hotter until the ground beneath them melted.
Now other trees in the vicinity were starting to die, and no other plants were growing there.
So, the sect had to move further away and made the location of the tree be known as a sacred land that no one could step in.
As time went by, the tree grew more and more, forcing the sect all the way back to the scarlet city.
Then, 150 years ago, the Emperor ordered all capable sects to set their base closer to the southern forest just to have them protect the civilians.
When they did swap the location, they came across the Black Stele. A stone stele that was written in the same language as the other unreadable books they currently held.
The sect leader was truly fascinated with this stele and didn't want to return back to their original heritage, while the second elder wanted to slowly return back to the place with the tree.
The records mentioned after all that the tree would bear fruit, an incredible treasure in about 50 years.
Seeing that the sect leader was still not agreeing to go back, the second elder tried to become the leader himself.
However, things didn't go as he wanted. The fight that broke out was way too big and many people died.
That was when the second elder realized that in this chaos he could be the only one to learn about this stuff and have the treasure for himself.
So, he either destroyed or stole all the books and records for himself. He also stole some weapons, but was caught in the end and was exiled out of the sect, left to die.
Wen Cheng didn't really care about reading the Second Elder's life after that. While it did mention something about living as a mortal for a few years, having a daughter, Wen Cheng quickly skipped over it and stopped reading.
"They found so many treasures huh?" Wen Cheng said softly. "They were quite lucky."
"Yes," Alex said. "Although it's a shame that so many of the books that were in another language were destroyed or stolen. He probably destroyed what he took too."
"You may be right," Wen Cheng said.
Alex took out two books from his storage bag, something his master had returned to him not long ago.
"Here," he said. "I believe these belong to the Tiger sect."
Wen Cheng took out two books and handed them to Wen Cheng. The first was the Veiled Light technique, and the second one was the Immortal Concealment technique.
"I got these from the old man, which he must've stolen from here," Alex said. He finally knew why some random old man was walking around with an Immortal Grade technique.
These were likely some things that came with the meteor shower. There were various other things that Alex could say came with the meteor shower.
For one, the Black Stele in the Tiger sect was definitely something that came down in the form of a meteor. If it didn't, it wouldn't have made such a massive crater in the sect.
Alex remembered his Heaven's Impact technique was the other thing written in a language that did not belong to them. The person who sold it had claimed that the ones who gave his ancestor the book were immortals that came down from heaven.
'Is this the language of the immortals?' Alex wondered. That also made him question if all of these other things also came down with an immortal.
The ring he was wearing was certainly not something that could be found in the empire, or even the Western Continent itself. Did it come down in a meteor shower as well?
Alex went so far as to think that the Flickering Shadows technique that the Hong Wu sect had was also a skill that came down in a meteor shower.
He wondered what else could have come down in that meteor, and who else had gotten anything from it. That was a question he really wanted the answer to, but he couldn't get it for now.
So, he asked Wen Cheng if he could leave and went back to his sister's place to spend the night there.
