Alex woke up early in the morning, completely revitalized after breaking through.
Pearl was still cultivating and there were cuts all over his body, but they didn't hurt him at all. After all, his body cultivation had already exceeded Pearl's own cultivation thanks to the clash of yang and yin.
"True King 7th realm," he thought to himself. "3 more breakthroughs and I enter the True Emperor realm as well."
When that happened, Alex wondered if he would be the strongest under the Saint realm.
'Probably not,' he thought. There was too much of a gap between the True Emperor realms themselves due to the existence of Saint Qi.
Alex woke Pearl up from the cultivation and went over to the Elder's hall to register himself as a referee.
He got the 9 to 3 schedule for Stage 12 and was handed a talisman that was used to keep track of the fighters.
Once it was time, disciples came in one by one to fight.
Alex called out the first fighters and watched them come aboard the stage. He then took their two badges, 332 and 1432.
That was quite a bit of a gap in numbers, but their cultivation was about equal so Alex watched the fight carefully.
As the fight started, he watched carefully so that he could intervene whenever needed. However, there wasn't any need to.
The person with the 332 badge won easily to his surprise and only then did Alex realize that the challenger had most likely increased his cultivation base too fast.
Once the match was over, he handed back the badges and commenced the next match.
Half a day went by before Alex realized how boring this task was. Watching Organ tempering realm cultivators fight didn't bring him the same excitement as when he himself was in that realm.
After his time was over, Alex promised himself to never go through that again.
As he walked away from the location, he saw Du Yuhan walk out too.
"Brother Du, wait up," he said, catching his attention and arriving next to him.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Do you have some time? I need you for something," Alex said.
"I… I have about an hour free right now. What do you need?" he asked.
"Is there any empty location we can go to? A place where people won't disturb us?" he asked.
"Uhh… we can go to my master's training hall," Du Yuhan said.
"Yes, that will work. Let's go there," Alex said.
The two of the went to the Training Hall and Alex pulled out a formation plate from his storage bag.
"What's that?" Du Yuhan asked.
"It's… you'll see," Alex said as he set up the formation.
When the formation activated, a white fog streamed out of the plate.
"What's this?" Du Yuhan asked.
"It's a formation to test your spiritual roots," Alex said. "It's much better than the ones you will find here."
"Is that so?" Du Yuhan said. "And… do you want me to test here?"
"Yes," Alex said. "Just place your palm on the plate and take in the Qi it gives you before sending it back out."
"I… I have trash roots, you know," Du Yuhan said. That was the main reason why he became a swordsman in the first place. With bad roots, there was no other option for him.
"I know," Alex said. "I'm actually kinda hoping you are correct. Let's test it just to be sure. This will show more."
"Sigh, fine," Du Yuhan said and placed his palm on the plate. Half a minute later, he finished the test.
As soon as he released the Qi he had taken in, the white fog suddenly changed color.
Red, green, blue, gold, and brown. The five colors flew about, but none were vibrant at all.
"You really do have inferior five roots," Alex said as he looked at the colors.
"I know," Du Yuhan got dejected.
"No, that's a good thing," Alex said. "That means you have a chance to improve them and gain Dao of those 5 elements."
"Dao? Improve? What do you mean?" Du Yuhan asked.
Alex brought out a pill bottle as he was certain now that Du Yuhan needed one. "Eat this pill and cultivate," he said. "I will explain everything later."
Du Yuhan hesitated for a bit, but accepted the pill in the end and ate it.
As he sat down to cultivate, Alex placed his own palm on the formation plate and closed his eyes to circulate.
Pearl's head popped up from Alex's robes as he watched the white fog curiously.
After Alex finished circulating the Qi, he sent it back to the formation plate and the fog changed colors.
Red, Green, Blue, Gold, and Brown were obviously there, but Yellow and black floated along as well.
Gold and Yellow were so vibrant that they were easily distinguishable. The Black was the most vibrant after those two, but could never reach their level.
Red and Brown were of the same vibrancy coming after the Black.
Blue and Green on the other hand were weak, almost the same as Du Yuhan's own Spiritual roots.
'I need ways to improve my Water and Wood roots,' Alex thought. He placed a hand on his chin as he started thinking about what he could do.
Could he make an all Water, or all Wood element pill and eat it? Would that work?
Or would he have to go find the Blood Essence of the legendary beasts and eat those like he did with the White Tiger's Blood Essence?
Or maybe there were some techniques like he received yesterday for the Fire roots?
Whatever it was, Alex wanted to get those soon enough.
Just as he was thinking that he noticed something golden out of the corner of his eyes. His focus wavered from his thought as he was pulled back to reality.
"What are you doing?" Alex asked Pearl who had his paw on the formation.
"Same thing as you," Pearl said.
"Are you checking your spiritual roots?" Alex asked with a bit of a chuckle in his voice.
"Yes," Pearl said.
"You don't need to," Alex explained. "You have the White Tiger's bloodline, meaning you will only have Metal—"
Alex's words stopped in his mouth as he saw something in the fog down below.
The golden fog moved around as he had expected, but out from it also moved some green. While the gold overshadowed it, the green was still very visible to Alex.
"What the hell?" Alex couldn't help but shout in surprise. "How do you have Wood spiritual roots?"
"Is that bad?" Pearl asked.
"No, no, that's great… but I can't understand why you would have it," Alex said. "All White Tigers are supposed to only have Metal roots. That's what Lady Ren told me."
Alex suddenly sent out his spiritual sense and noticed the Jaguar's senses on them. A few seconds later, the Jaguar was in the room.
"You know about this?" he asked the jaguar.
"We indeed learned about his roots back when you were gone," the jaguar said.
"How is this possible?" Alex asked. "This is different from what I was led to believe."
"We believed what you believed too. We had to see to find out as well," the jaguar said. "But we believe there is a simple explanation for this."
"What explanation?" Alex asked.
"We think he got the Wood root from his father."
