"Thank you for your patronage," the receptionist said with a bright smile as he took the 300 True Spirit stones from Alex's hand.
Alex wanted to punch the man's face when he saw that goddamn smile.
'Such a fucking rip-off,' he thought to himself. 300 True spirit stones could buy a person a high-grade pill made by the best of the best True rank alchemists. That was including the cost of the ingredients.
And here, he was being sold the recordings of a competition that took place for only 4 separate days for 300 True spirit stones.
This wasn't even an exclusive talisman or something. It was a mass-produced talisman that was likely copied from the original with little regard to the quality of the copy.
The worst offense of these talismans in Alex's eyes was the fact that they were single-use talismans. He wouldn't even be able to sell them after looking through them once.
'Fuck,' he cursed once more and sat on a bench in the corner of the hall to view the talismans.
The talismans were ordered according to the date of the recording. So, he took the talisman for the first day and looked into it.
The moment his spiritual sense touched the talisman, it was like he had opened a floodgate of information as visions of someone else entered his mind.
He suddenly felt like he was standing in the midst of a crowd, seeing different things, but focusing on a single one.
He tried to move his eyes, but he couldn't. He was forced to see what the recorder of this talisman was watching.
'Wow,' Alex couldn't help but say. If he had known the recording would be this amazing, he likely wouldn't have cursed that poor receptionist earlier.
He immediately put all thoughts aside and started searching for his mother, or someone that was wearing a similar robe as her.
When Alex started focusing on the crowd, he was truly surprised by their sheer size. 'So many people,' he thought. The arena the recorder was staying at was larger than the coliseum from the Crimson Empire.
That was not all, the number of people was also clearly larger. And each one of them was a high-ranking cultivator.
Alex tried to keep down his shock while he searched for his mother, but it felt impossible.
The man had recorded not much from before the competition started, and once it started, he would only focus on the cultivation.
"This isn't it," Alex thought and stopped watching.
When he did so, Alex felt his vision cut off and he was staring blankly back into the real world. 'Damn, if I was anywhere else, this would've been dangerous. I shouldn't view such talismans out in the open from now on,' he thought to himself.
Since it was the guild, there would be security, so he was free to watch the talismans as much as he wanted to.
Alex was about to view the second perspective when he noticed something. The talisman in front of him was empty, as expected of a one-time use talisman.
However, the information was still in his brain. He could sense a small pocket of energy floating in his spiritual sea that he could tap into to view the information back again.
'That's pretty nifty,' he thought and moved on to the second talisman.
As soon as Alex started watching, his vision drifted to another side of the arena. While not on the complete opposite side from the first perspective, it still gave a different group of people for Alex to search from.
He was sure that there was a group of people close to him that were in his blind spot and would never notice these visions. All he could do was hope that his mother wasn't amongst the group.
Soon, he started searching for the same group again but alas he wasn't able to find her.
He sighed, but he had one last hope still in him.
Alex hadn't seen anyone young from his mother's group when they had teleported, so he had little hope, but he still held some.
'I hope her group was one of the participating groups and thus she is in a special seat somewhere and watching this all privately,' he thought.
After all, if he thought about it logically, there was no way that someone who could use the teleportation formation so early from the capital couldn't even enter the arena in the first place.
So, this time when the competition on the first day started, he didn't stop and watched the starting ceremony.
The contestants were called one after another as their information appeared in a small panel on top of them.
Alex recognized a few of the family names of the competitors that appeared on stage.
Shen, Jin, Zhou, Fu, Lu, Han, Song, and even the royal family, Wei had participants in there.
Aside from them, Alex noticed the robes of a few other disciples as belonging to the elite sects too.
A man of big stature walked onto the stage after them. He looked quite bigger than last time, horizontally that was.
The fatty Tian Ye appeared on the stage and suddenly everyone cheered.
'He won this competition, didn't he?' Alex thought. That had already been spoiled to him. He could see that he was a definite crowd favorite for sure.
Alex looked at his name on the flying screen on top of the stage.
Tian Ye - 38 years old - True King 2nd Realm - Demon Whisper sect
'Oh shit, that fatty already entered the True king's realm?' Alex felt slightly shocked.
Last he remembered, this man was in the True Lord 5th realm. In just 3 years he managed to break through 7 times to reach his current realm.
'Given how much time he must have spent on talismans, he must have worked hard to reach this realm,' Alex thought. Still, he wasn't sure if this was fast or not, but from how people reacted to hearing True King realm, he was sure this was at least better than average.
As he looked at the floating screen, the information changed to something else.
Hei Lin - 49 years old - True Lord 3rd realm - Flowing Brush sect
'49 years old? They allow such old people to take part?' Alex looked at the information with a bit of shock.
All the ones that had come before this person were at least younger than 40 years old, so Alex had assumed the age requirement to be less than 40 years old.
However, it turned out that he was wrong. 'Is this person allowed because of how weak thei—'
Alex's words stopped in his heart as he saw the person walk onto the stage.
She wore a magenta robe with light blue linings. Her gaze looked down on the stage, away from the crowd with clear nervousness visible. None of the crowd cheered for her as they did for Tian Ye, but there was still a round of applause.
Alex saw her look up after gathering enough courage on the stage. Then, he finally saw her face clearly.
This vision was much clearer than the split-second glance he had made back in the teleportation building.
There was not a single doubt in his mind now.
This was absolutely his mother.
It wasn't just the face that gave away, however. There were other hints as well. His mother had been about 43 when he had left home to go to Oakleaf city.
Now, 6 years later, she would be 49 years old. Besides that, her name was an absolute giveaway.
Hei Lin. She had either very thoughtfully named her so, or more likely, she had called herself her real name, Helen, and people here just misheard her.
Without even knowing, tears streamed down Alex's cheeks. He didn't understand how or why his mother was here. At the moment, he didn't care.
All he could care about was that his mother was here and he knew who she was.
A member of the Flowing Brush sect. With this information, Alex could easily find her no matter where the sect was.
He wiped his tears and continued looking at the competition. The competition soon started and the first day's contests were soon concluded.
His mother had done quite well, ranking in the top 10 amongst the nearly 300 participants.
Once the vision ended, Alex brought out the next one and watched it.
The competition reminded him of the Annual competition back in Crimson Empire.
Alex was nearly sure that it was these competitions that inspired those in that empire. After all, the first emperor was someone from the Fu family who would have had knowledge of such things.
The first day was about recognizing ingredients and such.
The second day was about cognitive skills and how fast one could learn something. Alex could guarantee that his mother was one of the best in this.
He had gained his talent in learning everything fast from her after all.
This time, his mother had ranked first easily.
The third day was about speed. Alex was sure his mother would struggle in this, but it seemed he was wrong. She still managed to place in the top 10 towards the lower end of it.
Finally, the last day was about putting everything to the test and creating the best talisman you could make in as little time as possible.
Alex watched that one entire competition in shock as his mother placed second in it.
His shock only deepened when the final results arrived, and his mother placed 2nd in the whole competition, only behind the fatty Tian Ye.
