A tongue of fire exploding had caused about True Lord 3rd or 4th realm equivalent damage to him.

A single tongue of fire.

Alex found that a little unbelievable, but he had been the one to do it, so he had to believe.

Next, he thought about what had happened with the tongue of fire. When he wanted it to explode, his body had involuntarily surrendered Qi to it.

At the same time, Qi from the atmosphere had gathered into the fire, as if the world was following Alex’s orders. His wish seemed to be their command.

Only Fire Qi had gathered onto the flame, but that was all that was needed. Then, as per his understanding of the explosion, the flame had reached a very high temperature, creating destruction of such a scale around him.

Unrooting trees or turning them to smithereens within the 10 meters range, and destroying a lot up to 20 meters distance. That was a lot of damage.

Alex looked at himself and saw that he wasn’t really burned at all. In fact, the single piece of cloth he now wrapped around his wait had visibly taken no fire damage.

The trees were the same as well. Not a single one of them had burned, unlike when he was hit by the monkey’s exploding fireballs.

Alex nodded his head as he understood why. Explosions… only used fire to start themselves. The real damage came from the destructive force of the air around it.

Surely there could be fire in the explosion too, but a tongue of flame wasn’t enough for it.

For that, he would have to make more fire before exploding them. However, that destruction would certainly kill him if the massive Qi being pulled from within himself didn’t do it first.

’Let’s think about that,’ he thought. Qi had been involuntarily drawn from him, and a fraction of a second later, the fire had exploded.

There were a few things he wanted to know. How much Qi did it take? Did it have to be his Qi? Did the speed matter?

There were other questions that he cared about too like the size of the fire, the shape of fire, and the damage it did.

So, for the next two days, he did nothing but simply practice that.

By now, Alex understood how much fire he could use to explode. Even if a lot of fire was burning, he could choose to explode just part of it as well.

The distance, however, needed to be short. Beyond a certain range, it was as if the connection he had with the fire that was forged by the world itself was destroyed.

While he could freely control the fire, he couldn’t explode it beyond a certain range. For now, that range was somewhere between 4 and 5 meters.

That meant, Alex had to be extra careful how much fire he wanted to explode without hurting himself. This also meant, that as long as his body wasn’t hurt, he could create an explosion that consumed all the QI in his body. That damage would be massive.

Other than that, Alex understood that the speed of his Qi also mattered as well as the quantity of how much Qi was taken by the explosion.

The faster he released his Qi to the fire, the faster it would gather Qi from the world and explode. Delaying or stopping the transfer of his Qi only did the same to the explosion.

Alex thanked Shen Jing for helping him widen his Meridians. By now, it had completely become twice as big and was even becoming a bit larger at times, although that hurt Alex quite a bit.

However, he didn’t doubt that he could expand it more if he cultivated his body with Pearl which also included tempering meridians.

After understanding all of that, Alex went out to train. Every day, he would go into the forest, marking every tree he came across on the way to show a way back to the cave.

He forgot about the BlueFlame monkey for now. It was too strong for him, and he would only likely kill himself if he kept on going for it.

So, he fought other monsters, weaker ones, and trained his explosion skills. At the same time, he also practiced his other skills.

He hadn’t been able to practice the spiritual sword for a while, so that was something he decided to learn later on.

He wasn’t worried about running out of time at all. After all, if he did what Shen Jing said and reached True Lord 1st realm with his cultivation base, going normally, it would take him another 15 months for sure.

That was almost double the time he had been in this world. It would be certainly enough to practice everything.

Days passed by in a flash, and soon months passed by as well.

3 months later, Alex was surveying a gazelle beast drinking water from a river he had come across on his path around the mountain.

This location was about a few kilometers away from his cave, but that didn’t bother him.

Since he knew the way back, he simply had to fly there and he would reach there within a few minutes.

His spiritual sense reached 120 meters ahead of him without any forced extension. By now, Alex had realized that just as absorbing a monster core gave him Qi, absorbing their spiritual body in his mind also gave him some increase in his spiritual strength.

It was only because common beasts didn’t have good spiritual strength for him to steal, so he had never realized that. However, after the Mind Tempering realm, they sufficiently gave him 2 to 3 meters of spiritual sense for everything he ate those beasts.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep on eating the same strength of beasts, or the return would be diminishing. He needed to continuously find better and better beasts to consume.

Today, Alex wasn’t here for that. He was here for a simple fight.

The gazelle sensed something and tried to run away, but a massive crocodile jumped out of the river and ate it whole.

The dark purple-skinned crocodile had the size of a school bus and strength in True Lord 4th realm. That was perfect for Alex’s training.

He walked out of the trees, not intending to hide from the crocodile at all.

The Crystalscale Crocodile saw him and got curious at first, but once it saw his strength, only disdain could be seen in its eyes.

’Intelligence? It must have a good enough mind to stop my heaven’s impact then,’ Alex thought and tried it out.

The Crocodile’s eyes suddenly rolled upwards and its giant head slammed onto the ground. However, a moment later, it stood up and shook its head again.

As expected, it had some level of mental defense. ‘I should really get one after I leave this place,’ he thought and flared his True Disciple 8th realm cultivation base, letting the beast know he was on his way.

Alex dashed forward, leaving sand flying behind him. The sword in his hand gleamed golden, something that he supposed was visible currently as well.

Alex couldn’t tell what time of the day was with his spiritual sense alone as the light was not something he could see through it. However, stuff like heat to his senses and the number of shadows from his teleportation techniques always told him what time of the day it was.

The Crystalscale Crocodile opened its jaw, the inside red with the dead gazelle, trying to devour Alex whole.

’Idiot!’ Alex thought and stopped his attack. The beast still wasn’t taking him seriously, giving away its vulnerable parts for Alex to attack.

Unlike the outside, the inside of the crocodile had no scales. So, if Alex had attacked just now, he could’ve killed the Crocodile in one hit.

However, that wasn’t what he was here for at all. He didn’t want to kill it; he wanted a challenge, to push himself to grow stronger.

He wanted an experience that he couldn’t get otherwise. How was he to get that if the crocodile easily let him kill it?

Alex created a tongue of fire, floating it a bit ahead of him, and exploded it instantly. The damage the fire produced just now was equivalent to True Masters 8th realm.

It was well within the range of what his body could handle.

The crocodile wasn’t damaged either, but it finally understood that Alex wasn’t someone it could so easily ignore.