Alex walked up to the registering area and queued up. He waited for a while before it was his turn.

“Hello elder, is the 3rd rank still Bing Li?” he asked.

The elder was a little surprised, but when he saw who was asking, he understood. “Yes, it’s her. Don’t tell me you want to directly go for Bing Li?” he asked.

Alex smiled and nodded. The elder just shook his head and registered the fight. Bing Li was the 4th ranked disciple of the sect, and after Luo Mei’s absence, she rose up the rank of 3rd by simply challenging the empty rank of 3rd.

Now, Alex was going to take that rank from her and then go to Du Yuhan to learn about sword intents.

He wasn’t sure how long he would have to wait, so he went around the sect crater looking through the different kinds of stuff.

On his walk, he once again came across the Black stele. The rock didn’t shine with any light as the sun was starting to set and there wasn’t enough light around him. Still, it looked as majestic as ever.

‘Should I try once more?’ he thought. He was after all in the mind tempering realm now and that meant his mind was a little stronger than before, as well as having a little larger spiritual sea.

‘Let’s try,’ he thought as he got ready and sent out his spiritual sense once again. Just as the spiritual sense reached the text on the black stele, something crept up his connection with the spiritual sense and tried to enter his mind again.

Alex quickly shut off his connection once again before even half of his spiritual sea was empty.

“Damn,” he thought. “Still no other information. I will need to have a stronger mind.”

He left the place and went back to stage 1 to wait for his opponent to arrive. He had to wait around for nearly 2 hours before someone other than him responded to him being called.

He walked up the stage and saw a white-haired girl climb up on the other side. She was a little shorter than Alex and had a cold expression on her face.

The moment she reached the stage, she gave an angry look towards Alex and got ready to fight. From her storage bags, she pulled out a white rod of some sort.

‘Does she fight with a staff by some chance?’ Alex thought while he prepared himself. He realized that his opponent’s cultivation base was in the 3rd Mind Tempering realm, just like Yang Ma, but she was most likely weaker than him.

Alex couldn’t decide if he should fight bare-handed or use his sword, so he took out a common sword just in case. He didn’t know what the rod could do, so he had to stay ready.

“FIGHT!”

The moment the elder gave the go, Bing Li started pouring her Qi into the rod. Alex could see a light blue outline creeping up and from the center of the rod where she held it.

Suddenly, the rod started deforming and started getting flatter and more flexible. A line separated from the middle and soon Alex realized what it actually was.

‘A bow?’ he was surprised. He was getting ready for close combat between a sword and a staff, but it turned out that it was going to be different.

Immediately, the girl pulled the string of the bow, and light coalesced on her bow as it soon turned to a light blue arrow.

She immediately let it loose and the elemental arrow flew towards Alex. Alex struck the arrow with his sword to stop it, however, instead of being blocked like a normal arrow, the light blue arrow simply disappeared in a burst of light that sprinkled all over Alex.

Bing Li made a fist and suddenly the floating motes of blue light converged towards Alex and started freezing him.

Alex tried to move away, but the lights quickly followed him and soon fully froze him over. He looked like an ice statue completely.

The girl looked at the fight and made a ‘hmph’ sound, thinking he got what he deserved for looking down on her.

She was about to celebrate her victory when the ice cracked all over and Alex walked out.

“That’s a really interesting ability,” Alex said as he was completely unphased by the attack. He even had a smile on his face.

The girl immediately picked up her bow again and pulled the string once more to shoot the same shot.

Alex knew he couldn’t stop it, so he dodged the attack. However, just as it was going past him, she once again made a fist and the arrow burst into lights of motes once again and converged on him.

Alex created some fire and started burning everything around him. The fire quickly took care of the light.

Without even turning back, he hit the incoming arrow with his sword and then drowned the with fire.

“So you have an ice-type mutated spiritual root huh?” Alex asked. He was surprised to see something so different here.

“Why would you care? Just fight,” Bing Li said.

“Sure,” Alex said, and immediately his sword started burning red.

Bing Li understood what was going to happen so she quickly moved her hands and light blue Qi released from them to quickly form an ice barrier in front of her as well as ice armor on herself.

Ice was a sub-type of Water, so if Alex used his most certainly weaker Fire elemental attack, he would definitely not succeed in this confrontation… was what Bing Li believed.

However, she had no idea how dense his Qi was.

Alex slashed his sword without hesitation and it flew right up to the barrier and crushed it at once. It blocked most of the attack but the remainder that reached her armor also managed to put some sort of damage on the armor.

She was so surprised by the turn of events that she didn’t even realize that a sword had already appeared next to her throat.

She looked up in fear and barely managed to say, “I concede.”