The first method was where you refined a dead body to become your clone using a piece of your soul.

One’s soul couldn’t become united with the dead body completely, since that wasn’t your body, Alex knew he wasn’t that.

Which was why he believed himself to be the second type of clone. One that was made using various resources, that had a soul grown in it, even without using the owner’s soul.

This made controlling the new clone very hard, but not impossible.

However, Lady Ren was saying that it was impossible for him to be the second type of clone as well because of the resources that would require to make his body.

Then… was it really true? Was he really… not a clone?

If Lady Ren had exaggerated the requirement for a body such as his by hundreds of thousands of times, it would still fall short of the number of players that would have to be cloned in this world.

And most of them had great talent, constitutions, and spiritual roots.

”Then… am I not a clone?” Alex thought. If he wasn’t a clone and was in fact the real Alex, that would mean that everything he got from the start was not luck, but rather something he was born with.

The body, the talent, the spirit roots, everything he thought he was handed without having to work for it, was something he was born with.

Had he really had such an amazing body even when he was on the farm?

He remembered his father’s incredible physical body that could easily work on the farm even at his age. He remembered his mother’s incredible intelligence and talent at everything she did from being an accountant for his father to cooking every food to perfection to teaching him everything when he was homeschooled.

His aunt, his father’s sister, also had a body that remained youthful even when she was as old as his father.

Not to mention his cousin, who had a Celestial grade body to begin with, the only one to ever have it in the game.

’That wasn’t all a coincidence, was it?’ Alex started to realize and finally believe it. ‘This is my real body.’

He looked down on himself with awe at the fact that he had been wrong for the past many months.

He wasn’t the clone at all. The other guy was the clone.

’Since he is a clone, his body mustn’t be very good, wo—’

Alex suddenly thought of something. His eyes went wide as the piece fell into place from a simple change of thought.

When a player died in the ‘game’, they would be able to log in once more, but this time they would get a different body from the one that died.

The players called it ‘reincarnating’ as it was a second chance at life. The players that reincarnated would always be stuck with something very much worse than the last one they had.

But what if that was not it? What if it was simply the real body dying, so the creator was forced to create a clone of them.

However, since he didn’t have great resources, all of the reincarnated players would get a really bad body with garbage talents and constitution, sometimes even missing spiritual roots.

If the creator really did make the body Alex currently had, then there was no reason why he would not make a good body for the reincarnators.

Realization enlightened him like dawn’s first light after a particularly dark night.

”It’s true then,” Alex finally came to the understanding, as a swell of emotions stirred within him, causing his drought eyes to moisten up a bit.

”I am not a clone, but the real Alex.”

Suddenly, Alex heard a thunderclap. Was it just something he heard because of what he had come to understand? The truth certainly hit him like a thunderbolt.

However, this thunderclap felt a little more… real. Actually, it felt more than just real— it felt terrifying.

Alex slowly looked up, and as expected there really was a thunderstorm here, one that he had momentarily forgotten about.

However, he shouldn’t have forgotten about this. This was perhaps one of the most terrifying things he had seen in all the time he had been a cultivator.

In fact, the knowledge he had just gained seemed so minuscule in front of the massive vortex of black cloud with the occasional lightning sparking within it.

The colorful clouds had come together and were just about to do something that scared Alex.

Lady Ren started to wonder at her chance of survival. She wondered how many bolts would fall down from heaven.

One she could survive. Two she could probably survive as well. Three would surely put her on the verge of death, so she couldn’t tell whether she would die or not.

Four, she would surely die.

She prayed that it was no more than 2, or at the very least, no more than 3.

”Go take everyone away from here,” she ordered the beasts. While she knew that it would only target her, she couldn’t take the chances of the force destroying everything around her.

The beasts immediately ran away to save the common beasts around this place.

”It will come down at any moment now,” Lady Ren said softly. She started preparing.

”Boy, please do not take Pearl away. This place needs a king, and there is no better choice than Pearl,” Lady Ren said.

”And let him die?” Alex asked. “No, I won’t do that.”

”I understand that there is a chance of him dying. But the chances are low. Besides, if he doesn’t go through the ritual, he will never have a chance to reach his full potential,” Lady Ren said.

”No, thanks. I would rather have a weak Pearl with me, than a possibly dead one,” Alex said.

Lady Ren was feeling irritated. She wanted to simply grab Alex and keep him there.

However, the thing above her head was stopping her from getting close to him.

It wasn’t just that she was afraid the bolts would harm him if it came down while she was close, but it was also the fact that it would see him as an accomplice and become stronger when it came down.

At that time, she doubted she would survive even 2 of the bolts.

”Please, don’t take Pea—”

Suddenly, a bolt of white lightning dropped from the sky, directly hitting Ren Xiao. The bolt itself was wider than that white cat was, and had a really destructive property to it.

No matter how much preparation she did, it still overwhelmed her.

Alex, who had been moderately far away, still felt the force of the lightning bolt. The immediate force stripped away some of his skin, while the remaining force sent him flying away at a speed that he could never move at with his current cultivation base.

It took him a while to even realize that he was in the air.

As he felt himself tumbling through the sky, he immediately employed his movement technique, making the friction around him more powerful, and quickly came to a stop.

When he finally stopped, he felt the blood drip from all over his body where his skin had been lacerated.

Alex immediately brought out a pill and ate it. He felt the wounds close up and he was no longer battered from the lightning bolt. However, the ‘wounds’ he had suffered from the black thing weren’t healed at all.

His body still remained a stick-like figure with his skeletal figure seen through his body.

He breathed heavily ignoring the pain, as fear appeared in his heart. He had never felt fear like this before.

‘What the hell was that?’ he thought. He had expected the lightning to be strong, but not this strong.

It had nearly killed him even when he was a distance away. He didn’t even begin to wonder if Lady Ren was alive or not. With such a force attacking her directly, she should have died.

”I should leave,” he thought.

Suddenly, he saw another lightning bolt drop down far away in the distance, sending roaring sounds throughout the entire secret realm while at the same time sending out a gust of wind that pushed Alex quite a bit.

Alex finally realized just how far he had been thrown away. He was hundreds of kilometers away from the location of the original lightning bolt.

Even at this distance, he could tell how much force the lightning bolt had produced.

Not a single Saint realm expert had ever made him feel such helplessness against pure power. Even Lady Ren herself failed to make him fear as much.

’I can’t stay here any longer,’ he thought and immediately turned around to run away.

As he flew he realized that he wasn’t able to fly very quickly. It wasn’t just his body, but rather his cultivation base itself that had been harmed by that black thing.

He would have to cultivate for a while to heal himself.

As he flew, he heard another lightning bolt. For some reason, it felt… weaker. Maybe it was because he was very far away now, or maybe because there was no target anymore since Lady Ren was likely dead.

Alex continued flying. Very soon, he saw something white shine through the forest, while beyond it was a shimmering white wall of nothingness.

He had arrived at the border of the secret realm.

He landed on the formation platform and immediately got to open it. He was afraid the saint beasts would come for him, but with how destructive the lightning bolt was, they probably wouldn’t.

He fought through the pain in and out of his body to produce the Yang Qi and concentrated through his fatigue to pour it onto the nodes of the formation.

Once it was done, the formation glowed with white light, and with that, Alex vanished from the secret realm.