Alex woke up in the morning from his cultivation and logged out to get some food. When he returned, he immediately went out to the garden with Pearl.

After yesterday’s sudden departure, he hadn’t seen Yao Jia yet and was wondering what was up with the intruders that had come to the secret realm.

“Ah, there you are. I was searching for you everywhere,” he said when he found her tending to the flowers in the garden.

“Oh, you came out early. Do you want to start training this soon?” Yao Jia asked while looking towards the sun that had barely come up past the horizon.

“Sorry, no. I’m not here for training. We can do that later. I’m here to ask what you learned about the intruders. Are they bad people? Should we be worried? What’s going on?” he asked.

“Oh, you were worried about that? There’s nothing to be concerned about. I went to report to my father and uncle but turned out they already knew about it. They got reports from the other part of the kingdom that at the various entrances, humans had entered,” she said.

“Humans? The intruders are human?” Alex asked. Suddenly his eyes widened with fright and asked, “It can’t be those people from the other continent right?”

“Oh no, these are just some kids from the Luminance Empire. Father said that they did the same thing some 1000 years ago too,” she said.

“Oh, so we don’t have to worry about it, it seems. What’s going to happen to them?” he asked.

“Nothing. At least, nothing if they don’t make any trouble. I hear that almost all of the humans from last time died because they offended beasts in the kingdom they shouldn’t have. Hopefully, they are smart enough not to this time,” she said.

“All of them died? Isn’t that too cruel?” Alex asked.

“Not if what you did is try to steal some beast’s children, or destroy their home by attacking them. Also, not all of them died. One of them managed to escape out to the north I heard,” she said.

“I see,” Alex said. Suddenly, he felt like he had heard something similar before. He tried to rack his brain and immediately realized what it was.

“OH!” he exclaimed. “1200 years ago, the founding emperor of the Crimson Empire, Fu Qing came from the southern forest. We knew he came from the south but never knew how. So this was how, huh?”

“Oh did something like that happen? Good for him,” Yao Jia said.

“Anyway, there won’t be any Saint realm expert amongst the humans, right? You did say that saint realm experts were denied entry except under special cases,” Alex said.

“Yes. Those who entered are all in the True realms,” Yao Jia said. “Do you want to go help them perhaps?”

“No,” Alex said. “I don’t really feel any closeness towards strangers. I see no reason why I would help them unless I was feeling generous.”

“You are not that different from a beast in that regard then,” Yao Jia said. “Alright, I will go tend to the garden for a while. We can train later.”

Alex nodded and Yao Jia left the area. He sat down on the grass and felt the sun hit his face as it proceeded to get higher and higher into the sky.

He felt at peace with his current state of being. But then, he started thinking about his sect and friends once more.

‘I wonder how master is doing. Is her constitution still harming her alchemy ability?’ he wondered. ‘Is sister doing well? I hope master hasn’t lost his spot as master yet.’

‘Since I will be entering the True realms soon, I can’t even help him keep his spot,’ he thought. He chuckled a little when he thought about his other friends.

‘Is Kong Yuhan still trying to get together with Zhou Mei’s sister, or are they together by now? I hope she doesn’t mind them being together. Is Fanfan doing well? She wasn’t as cheerful after Wan Li left. I hope she’s doing better now.’

‘I hope Wan Li is doing better too. Hopefully, Martial uncle and 3rd elder found him by now and brought him back to the sect already,’ he thought.

The morning slowly passed as Alex’s homesickness slowly came and went away. Once the sun was higher in the sky, he went looking for Yao Jia and trained for a little longer.

And then, his usual schedule started once more. He rested in the sun for a while and went to his alchemy room to make some pills. He made as many as he could, and sold just a few to the beasts while keeping the rest for himself.

He did so for a few days when he finally got to hear a piece of incredibly good news.

“Senior Chen has accepted your request. You can come with me right now to ask what you want to him,” Yao Jia said.

“REALLY?!” he asked in surprise. “That’s amazing. Let’s go.”

Alex was forced to leave Pearl behind since he was going out of the palace, but he didn’t mind it at all.

“I’ll be back in an hour or two, okay buddy?” he said and left with Yao Jia. They walked out of the palace and Yao Jia took him through the forest to an area with a lot of zebras.

It was a small open area with a meadow in the middle, but the trees still put a shade in the place. Some of the zebras were resting while the younger ones were running around in the field.

Surprisingly, on the other side of the field, there were houses made up of wood and leaves that had zebras going in and out of.

“Let’s go,” Yao Jia said and walked through the field to reach the biggest house amongst them.

The zebras looked at Alex as he walked in between them, just behind Yao Jia.

“Senior Chen, we are here,” she shouted from the outside. “Careful, there should be a lot of formation around this area.”

“Oh, I’ll keep that in mind,” Alex said.

They waited for a bit, but no answer came from inside. Yao Jia was about to call him again when a zebra came from the side.

“Calling him won’t work, you know. There is a sound barrier set up around this place. You will have to knock on the door to let him know you’re here,” the zebra said.

Alex was a little surprised to hear the zebra speak. There hadn’t been any beasts out of the palace that had spoken in a human tongue yet.

“Oh, okay,” Yao Jia said and walked up to the door to knock on it. She waited for a few minutes and the door finally opened.

An old, wrinkly-skinned zebra walked out on all fours with a sour look on his face. He looked at Yao Jia and then at Alex and asked, “Is he the one that requested the meeting?”

“Yes,” Yao Jia said. “He said he has some questions about formations that he wants you to clear him on.”

“Goddammit. Ruining my free time just to ask a bunch of questions anyone could probably answer. If it weren’t lady Ren’s request, I would’ve killed him right now,” the zebra grumbled.

“I’m sorry for intruding upon your rest, senior Chen, but I really needed to know the answers to these questions,” he said.

“The questions better be worth my time. Ask, what is it?” the zebra said.

‘He isn’t even going to let us in first?’ Alex thought as he brought out the talisman with the formation on it.

“Can you tell me how I can set up this formation on the ground so that it starts on its own?” he asked as he handed the zebra the talisman.

The zebra took the talisman and started reading it with an annoyed face. However, just as suddenly, his annoyed face changed to that of incredibly surprised.

“How did you find this?” the zebra asked with wide eyes.

“From an enemy of mine,” Alex said. “That person used it to improve his physical durability. Can you teach me how I can do that too?”

“You got this from a human? What cultivation base is he in?” the Zebra asked.

“Uh, I don’t remember. Something like Meridian Tempering realm, maybe. But that shouldn’t matter since he used this formation to strengthen himself in a place devoid of any Qi,” Alex said.

“A self tempering realm human? That can’t be true,” the Zebra said. “How the hell would a self tempering realm human get his hands on an Immortal rank formation blueprint?”

Alex’s eyes shined. ‘I was right then,’ he thought. Given the number of strokes, he had already guessed that, but still hearing the confirmation from someone who really knew about formations made it happy.

“I don’t know how he got it, senior. Can you tell me what the formation does and how I can use it? Preferably with it activating on its own since that is what he did,” Alex said.

“This formation…” the Zebra looked through the Blueprint and said, “from what I can see, this is a formation that is meant to temper just one aspect of the body. The intensity of the tempering depends on the ingredients and amount, I suppose.”

“As for what part it tempers, let me see,” the Zebra looked through the formation and tried to find his answers.

“Ah, here it is. This formation can help you temper the skin, and skin alone. Depending on what you use as the energy source, you can get your skin to be very durable after using this formation.”