Hannah's father insisted on visiting her apartment, but Hannah didn't let him go there, so he had to reluctantly drive to the train station in Oakleaf city and catch a train to their home city.

Once they left, Alex and Hannah drove back to their apartment.

Emily had once more prepared a meal for them. Sarah wasn't there and was busy playing the game. They didn't get angry as they could understand her sentiment.

Once they were done eating, Hannah returned back to her room. Alex stayed around with Emily in the living room and spent the next 2 hours talking with her.

Eventually, he laid forth the idea of them becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. They liked each other and were very compatible so there was no reason to keep it dragging for any longer.

Emily was flustered for a bit, but once she settled down and thought, accepting his proposal was just a superior choice. He kissed her once again, only this time, she didn't shy away like last time.

Seeing that she was quite accepting, he kissed for far longer this time. Eventually, it was too much for Emily, so she decided to stop and made excuses to go back to her room with a red face.

Alex was very shocked himself. He couldn't believe that he had the gall to do what he had just done. However, he did not regret it in any way.

A smile appeared on his face and he made his way to his room.

"Urgh… I need to fix it if it's fixable or just throw it away,

" Alex thought when he saw the pile of torn-off helmet pieces on the side of his bed.

He changed his clothes to something more comfortable and got into the capsule.

He opened his eyes back in the game and sighed a little. 'So the formation is still on, huh? How long has it been? A month?' he thought.

According to Zexi, if his words were to be believed, the formation would be undone in the next few days.

So, Alex decided to follow his routine until the end. He called Pearl to train with him.

Pearl was still venturing out in the fog and came back as soon as he called for him. Pearl came running at him and as soon as he saw him, he jumped.

For a second, Alex thought Pearl was trying to attack him, but he was really just trying to get into his embrace.

"Hey, are you that happy to see me talk again?

" Alex said with a laugh, but then he felt slight shivering coming off from Pearl.

"Huh? What's wrong Pearl? Are you scared? Were you nervous because I left?

" Alex asked.

"Meow,

" Pearl said, which rang in his head as 'Yes.'

"Aww, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you. There is no need to be nervous now; I'm here,

" Alex said.

Eventually, Pearl calmed down enough to train with him. After a couple of hours of training, Alex stopped and went to make some more pills of his own.

He was learning to add more than 10 ingredients now and that was incredibly hard. Not only did the entire cauldron get extremely volatile when there were more ingredients, but Alex also had a general lack of the same ingredients to compensate for his mistakes.

So, he had to be careful, and make his efforts have fruit. That was impossible when every 10th and 11th ingredient exploded the cauldron.

The most he had succeeded was a 13 ingredient recipe, and that was after nearly 30 different iterations. It was hard, and he complained a lot, but he still stuck with it at the end of the day.

For the next 4 days or so, he trained and practiced alchemy as per his routine. In this time, Pearl had grown to enter the 8th Organ Tempering realm, while he himself had entered the 6th Meridian Tempering realm.

On the 5th day, Alex was fighting with Pearl early in the morning when suddenly, something happened. While he was distracted, Pearl was able to get a hit in.

"Ow, Pearl stop,

" he said and looked around him. His eyes slowly changed from confusion to happiness when he realized what was happening.

"The fog is clearing up. Haha, the fog is clearing up,

" he said in excitement. As he watched the fog slowly started to dissipate and the open land that he was in started to shrink rapidly on itself.

As the fog disappeared, Alex could now see the barrier at it was. The fog disappeared and the space that it was occupying turned out to be nothing more than expanded space just like the one in the coliseum.

He looked down on the ground beneath his feet and found a hilt sticking out from the ground.

"Finally, there you are,

" he said and bent down to grab it.

He wanted to see if he could pull the sword now that he was in the Meridian Establishment realm with Organ Tempering realm body.

He tried to pull hard, but it didn't budge even a little. He then pumped Qi into it in hopes of making a difference. Unlike last time when it was full of Qi, there was nothing around this time.

Even then when he pushed in the Qi, it barely stayed there for a second before it was rejected. There was no way he was going to be able to refine this sword any time soon.

So, he just poured in his Qi once more and the sword disappeared into his storage bag.

He walked over to the barrier and looked for something. He took out his True Sword and used Smiting blade to attack the barrier. The barrier was sturdy but the attack made waves that traveled along the surface of the barrier.

He kept an eye on the barrier and finally noticed something. He flew up high to a certain location on the barrier and used the Smiting blade once more.

SLAM

The barrier didn't make waves this time. This time, the barrier dissipated completely.. Alex had managed to destroy the True Rank barrier formation.