Alex stumbled back as the loss of blood finally started catching up to him. He barely held himself as the pain was slowly overcoming his adrenaline.
However, it was still not potent enough to make him make a sound.
The referee quickly ran up to him and caught him before he hit the ground.
"You stupid child, why did you tell me not to help?" she asked angrily as she produced a pill from her storage bag to quickly feed it to him.
Alex didn't care what percentage the pill was or what pill it was even real. All he knew was that was a healing pill and that was all he really needed to know.
He quickly swallowed the pill and everything that was damaged, including his right eye was slowly healed.
Before a minute even passed, all the charred and burnt skin around his body came back to normal. However, he was once more stuck with a stump for his right hand.
Without even thinking much about the stump, Alex instead started thinking if he should eat the pill during the tournament or after.
'People will get suspicious if I get my arm back now. Maybe I should wait a bit,' he thought.
"I'm going to get reprimanded because of you now," the referee said. "Look at your arm. We could've— Your majesty!"
The referee quickly bowed and did not dare look up again. Alex slowly turned around to find the Emperor standing behind him on the stage.
"Your majesty," he bowed as well.
"Congratulations on the victory," the Emperor said. "But you pushed yourself a little too far. Fighting for victory even when the odds are against you is a fantastic trait to have in a cultivator. However, this is a friendly battle. You didn't need to go so far for this."
"I was wrong, your majesty," Alex said.
Everyone in the crowd was surprised to see the Emperor there and many even bowed from the stands. The crowd was mostly silent and listened to the Emperor speak as it wasn't always that one got to see him.
"Well, I do applaud you for giving your all to defeat an opponent that is clearly supposed to be stronger than you. As a reward, you may have this."
The Emperor threw something onto Alex, which he caught with his left hand.
He scanned the item with his spiritual sense and a look of understanding came onto his face. However, he quickly hid it behind a facade of confusion.
"What is this, your majesty?" he asked.
He knew damn well exactly what it was. It was the pill to regrow his arm. He understood that Zhanrou must have found some incredible blood to create this pill so quickly, and from what he could tell, she had done an incredible job.
The pill was very much an immortal grade pill.
He was very happy to get it at the moment as he would no longer need to be in a dilemma on when exactly to get his arm back.
Still, he had to act it up for the sake of the audience so no one knew that he knew.
The Emperor smirked at Alex's acting. "It's a pill that can help heal your body entirely and even regrow limbs," he said.
A look of surprise appeared on so many people's faces that they didn't even see the obviously fake shock on Alex's face. No one cared about it at the moment.
"A pill to regrow limbs? Something like that exists?" Zhou Tianqiu looked at the pill in Alex's hand in shock.
"How did he get that?" Zhou Zirong wondered from the side.
"Could it be the Emperor has been hiding something like that from us?" Xue Mufan wondered.
"We'll ask him later, damn it." The Jin family lord was in a sour mood since his grandson had lost the match against someone who had yet to enter the True Emperor realm.
Down at the stage, Alex decided to waste no further time and popped open the vial to eat the pill.
His stump started itching the moment the pill reached his stomach and started wriggling.
The crowd watched in absolute awe as Alex's arms came back to him.
He felt it a bit, moved his new arm around, and was surprised to find that it had the newly grown arm also had body cultivation.
'Was the last one not matching with body cultivation because it was weak when I lost it?' Alex wondered. He couldn't help but analyze the situation and come to the conclusion that body cultivation not only made someone's body strong but also rewrote their DNA to say that their body was stronger by nature.
He then couldn't help but wonder if this rewritten DNA was part of the reason that when he did eventually have children, it would pass down as a trait of his body, giving them what people would refer to as 'bloodline' powers.
"Come, let me take you to the medical room," the referee took him and Alex had no more time to think about what he had been thinking.
Even as he left, he heard the Emperor explain the situation of the pill and how it had only recently been discovered in the Imperial Treasury.
Alex smiled as he understood that the Emperor was following through with his promise.
Alex was forced to stay in the medical room for some more check-ups and was thus forced to skip the remaining two matches of the day.
The next two matches had obvious victors in his eyes. Guo Chiang and the prince would in no way possibly lose to their opponents. Still, he wanted to see them fight more, reveal more powers.
However, it didn't matter much for him as he had already seen his next opponent fight.
Song Shing, the True Emperor 9th realm cultivator that fought with blood. How was he possibly going to fight against someone whose entire body was filled with nothing but Saint Qi?
There would be absolutely no True Qi in his body at all. At least, not initially. True Qi would slowly fill him back without cultivation, but he would have to use up the Saint Qi he would obtain through cultivation first.
And by the time he was done with that, Alex would have already lost.
He had just won a super hard battle and he would have to fight an even tougher one the very next day.
He slumped on the bed in the medical hall as he thought about what he could do.
He had many different skills, sword techniques, mental attacks, superior physical body, and even a few goddamn Dao. However, when he thought about which of them would be useful against Song Shing, there was really just a single answer.
Nothing.
That was the only answer he could come up with. Nothing. There was nothing he could possibly do to win against Song Shing.
No, there was one thing he could do, but he didn't want to do it. He could try and break through to the True Emperor realm. However, given that he was right in between the two realms, and given that he was doing it out of fear of fighting someone vastly stronger than him, he was absolutely sure that he would face an Inner Demon.
If he fought with the Inner Demon and didn't win, he would at best end up going through Qi deviation. At worst, he would most likely cripple his own cultivation.
'That's not the way to go,' Alex thought. 'Maybe it's time I give up. I did end up at Top 8. That's the top 8 out of thousands upon thousands of youths that tried to take part in the competition. I've done my best.'
'Maybe I should concede? No,' he thought, bringing himself back out of demotivation. 'I might lose tomorrow, but that does not mean I will lose giving up like a weakling.'
'I will fight the best I can and lose like a warrior,' Alex thought. He nodded to himself as he came to the conclusion of what was going to happen tomorrow.
Once the staff was certain that he was fine, they let him go. When Alex came out of the area, the arena was mostly empty, except for a few people.
Alex saw his mother in the stands and had the staff members allow her to visit him.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yes, mother. I'm fine. I'm not hurt," he said. "Listen, I need you to do something for me."
