Most people in the training grounds were focused on their training. They seemed to be practicing some of the new techniques that they had learned.
Alex wondered if there was a reason for that. 'Do techniques become easier to train here?' he wondered.
Unfortunately, in the last 2 years, he had trained every technique to a great level. Even his spiritual sword technique was decent enough for him.
So he only decided to check his strength at the stone wall in front of him.
Alex took out his refined sword from his ring and without any augmentation, attacked the stone.
As expected, True Lord 1st realm appeared on the stone slab. However, next to it were also the words 'Physical Damage'.
"Oh, does it tell me the difference in damage types too?" Alex thought. None of the puppets back in the Crimson empire did that. But then, that was the Crimson empire.
Next, he tried the same attack but with Sword Intent. When he struck, another reading popped up on the stone slab.
[True Lord 5th Realm - Total Damage]
[True Lord 1st Realm - Physical Damage]
[True Lord 4th Realm - Weapon Intent Damage]
"Woah!" Alex cried out in surprise.
Pearl jumped out of his robes and ran up to the stone wall to attack it. He used the White Tiger's Golden Claw technique so that when it landed, Alex got two separate values for the damage again.
[True Lord 8th Realm - Total Damage]
[True Lord 5th realm - Physical Damage]
[True Lord 7th realm - Elemental Damage]
"Oh wow, was that because of your Qi or because of your technique?" Alex asked curiously. He thought of ways to check, but Pearl didn't know any other techniques.
"Can you even learn other techniques aside from metal-related ones?" Alex wondered. "After we leave, I will find some projectile-based attacks for you so that you never have to reach close to the enemy."
"Meow!" Pearl said happily and attacked the wall multiple times, but each time the result was the same.
"Come on, get back. It's my turn next," Alex said and tested his attacks.
With normal Qi attacks from a distance, his damage reached True Lord 5th realm.
With metal and Yang Qi, his attacks from a distance yielded True Lord 6th realm in damage.
When mixed together and attacked with the sword, his damage yielded True Lord 6th realm for normal Qi and True lord 7th realm for metal Qi.
With the lack of Yang Qi skills for short-range, Alex couldn't test it at all, but he supposed it would be the same as the metal Qi.
Finally, Alex took out his sword which he couldn't pour Qi into, and attacked the stone. When it struck, Alex left a sword mark on the stone.
"Holy…" he looked at the wall in shock. He hadn't expected the sword to be so strong. Alex wondered if it could in fact cut through the rock, but Alex himself was too weak to make that happen.
'Just what sort of expert could have crafted this sword,' he wondered. 'Could I ever refine it? I will have to try.'
Alex shook his head and kept the sword back in his ring. Then, he turned around to leave.
Immediately after however, he stopped and turned back around to the stone slab.
"Hm… if it can find the difference between the 3 types of damages… can it also test the 4th type?" he wondered and strolled back towards it.
He got close to the stone and let out Heaven's Impact at it. When it hit, a few words appeared on the stone slab.
[True Emperor 9th realm - Mental Damage]
Instead of getting happy, Alex frowned. 'True Emperor 9th realm? That's the peak of the True realm,' he thought. 'Did I coincidentally happen to reach this damage amount? Or is the stone slab unable to quantify my damage? '
'Surely a Heaven's Impact would be weak against a Saint Realm who opened their own Spiritual sea and have a large amount of it, unlike me. At the same time, most True realm experts would be vulnerable to such an attack.'
'Is it trying to say that the damage I do with Heaven's Impact is enough to hurt everyone below the saint realm?' Alex thought.
Alex also tried the spiritual sword, and it gave the same result.
In the end, Alex was forced to leave with the understanding that his spiritual sense at the moment would be considered second only to those in the saint realm.
Even the ancient demons didn't have figures with a spiritual sense that could reach him if the stone slab was anything to go by.
Finally, Alex left the training ground and roamed in forging rooms in the mountain. Alex saw quite a few doors that were open and not a single hint of fire was inside.
On the ones that were closed, Alex saw two types of doors. One was with glowing runes, and another one was with closed runes.
Alex placed his palm on one of the rooms with dim runes and poured in his Qi. The door shuddered a bit and opened to reveal a person in the process of forging inside.
Alex frowned and hurriedly apologized before closing the door. 'What the hell? Why did the door open if there was someone inside?' he wondered.
"Are the dim ones supposed to represent the one with people inside?" Alex wondered and placed his palm on one with a glowing rune.
When the room opened, he realized that he was correct. He walked into the room and the door locked behind him.
There was a stone slab in the middle of the room and a heart in the corner of the room. Alex sighed, thinking that he couldn't make pills here, but when he noticed a small hole in the middle of the stone slab, he held his conclusions for now.
He looked inside and saw nothing, but there had to be something there. He sent his spiritual sense over the entire thing and noticed a small blockage that was stopping the fire from entering the stone slab.
After looking around for a bit, Alex noticed a rune to the side. He placed his palm and poured Qi into it.
Suddenly, the blockage hit away, and fire rushed into the stone slab.
"Hey! It works," he thought and brought out his cauldron.
Once he got himself comfortable, he started making some random pills to pass some time.
Over the course of the whole day, Alex did nothing but make pills in the room. As for what pill exactly, he didn't care.
His pills only came out to be around 45%, however. He needed to do extensive research with his spiritual sense to understand exactly how to improve the harmony of the pills he was making.
In the last 2 years, he had gathered the perfect recipe for about 20 or so pills. When he did make those pills, his results improved to about 65% for each pill.
Since there were many more such recipes for True pills that he had gathered through the sect, the corpse in the southern forest, and random purchases from shops he visited, there were still close to 30 pills he needed to research.
Alex wasn't worried, however since he knew how easy it would be as he continued doing this.
Somehow, Alex managed to make close to 70 pills with barely any mental fatigue.
Based on the time he wasted here, he was sure that morning would come very soon.
He sat down in the room for a few hours and cultivated to recollect his Qi. Once he was done, he left.
Sun had barely come out of the east, so Alex knew he still had some time before he had to be back in the 3rd mountain. Since it was less than 10 kilometers away, Alex could take his time.
He leisurely walked down the mountain as he watched the many others train down at the training field.
'Quite a lot of those from the elite sects and clans,' Alex thought as he saw the different robes. Those unique robes were quite easy to recognize.
Pearl walked by his side with no care in the world as the two of them made their way to the 3rd mountain.
He had his spiritual sense withdrawn out of fear of meeting those True Kings that did have spiritual sense.
As such, when he stumbled onto a crime scene, he was surprised. Two men and one woman seemed to be robbing a cultivator. However, Alex couldn't call it robbing at all. This was more of a murder scene.
The victim was so bloody, that Alex wouldn't be surprised if they were already dead.
Alex wanted to turn around and walk the other way, but the three of them had already seen him and were starting to make their way toward him while dragging their nearly dead victim.
'That robe looks familiar,' Alex thought for a moment before he saw the person's face.
And Jiang Zhilan saw his.
'I'm about to be implicated in this, aren't I?' he thought with a frown. But since they were already coming after him, maybe that didn't really matter.
"Junior brother!" Jiang Zhilan said with as much energy as she could muster.
'Here it comes,' Alex thought as he looked at the three robbers in front of him.
"RUN!" she shouted.
"Huh?" Alex froze.
"Run, quickly. They're st—" one of the men in pink robes punched her in the face mid-sentence, cutting her off.
The girl pointed a saber at him as she said, "Don't think of running away, or We will kill you."
Alex's face grew solemn as he truly hadn't expected Jiang Zhilan to be selfless when she was down.
"You know what? I was planning on running away. But… now I think I won't."
