”Is lady Ren fine with that? Oh actually, how is Lady Ren? Was she hurt? Is she fine?” Alex asked. The last time he saw lady Ren, she had taken the brunt of 3 different Heavenly Judgment lightning attacks.

That attack had been so strong that Alex felt fearful just being in the vicinity of it.

”Lady Ren is doing… okay,” the jaguar said. “She did suffer a bit of damage from the lightning, but it’s nothing a little bit of closed cultivation won’t heal.”

”I see,” Alex said. “I’m sorry how it went the last time I was back there. I was way too focused on protecting Pearl and I ended up disrespecting and even hurting you all.”

”It’s… alright,” the jaguar said. “It’s in the past now. You can go and focus on your own thing now.”

’My own thing,’ Alex thought. He thought about what his thing was and realized what he needed to do now.

”Senior, I have a request,” Alex said.

* * * * *

2 months passed by in the blink of an eye.

Alex stuck to his room making pills one by one. Since he was ‘dead’, he made his mother go and get the ingredients for the pills for him.

During this time, he refined the healing pill the best he could and found other ways to make them besides using just his own blood.

Now that his body was full of unadulterated Qi, his blood was the best resource for the pill. However, Alex found that blood from beasts that had a wood element to them also worked to a certain extent.

They were still slow in terms of transferring aura over to the ingredient, but using Beast blood was a much safer way than humans. In fact, Alex now believed that he could reveal this information to the world without fearing the unnecessary loss of life.

Of course, as his status was still unknown in the empire, he was going to keep it that way for a long while.

Alex finished making the pill and brought it out to look at it. Even without focusing on the process much, Alex was still consistently making over 85% pills now. That was just how well his body was working.

He truly felt reborn.

Alex did a logistics check on all the pills and pastes and recipes he had.

He made sure he had enough prepared and finally left his room. He walked over to his mother’s place and found her ready to leave.

Qin Shan was also with her asking questions, but Helen didn’t have many answers to give him.

”Young man, you’re finally here,” Qin Shan brought him in. “Tell me, what are you planning? You’ve been holed up in your room and even told your mother to get ready. Are you leaving for somewhere?”

”Yes, I am,” Alex said. “You can come with us if you want to. Although I’m not sure how the sect will take it if you take a few months-long breaks.”

”Where exactly are you going?” Qin Shan asked.

”A place I consider my home now. The Crimson Empire,” Alex replied.

”The Crimson Empire?” Qin Shan’s eyes narrowed for a bit before widening. “The place beyond the northern forest? Are you joking? You will die.”

Alex smiled. “No, we won’t. I can assure you that,” he said.

”Why are you going there?” Qin Shan asked.

”As I said, it’s my home. My master, disciple brother, sister, and many friends are there. Also, they desperately require my pills, so I need to go back there,” Alex said.

”I see,” Qin Shan said. “What about the competition?”

”Competition?” Alex asked. “Ah, I completely forgot about that. How long do we have?”

”Around 9 months. But you will need to go through a preliminary test around 3 months prior to even registering, so really just 6 months,” Qin Shan said.

”Oh, then it’s fine. We’ll make it. I plan to stay there for a few months only. Maybe try and bring some of them here, but that’s it,” Alex said.

Qin Shan thought for a long while and asked, “How sure are you that we can go across the forest?”

Alex chuckled. “You must be worried about the dangers we will come across in the passage. Well, worry not. After all, it will be the dangers that will take us through the passage,” he said.

Qin Shan couldn’t understand the cryptic sentence.

”I am taking my mother through there. You can rest assured that I am not making a hasty decision,” Alex said.

Qin Shan finally thought for a while and said, “Fine, I’m in. I want to see what this place is like too.”

”Great,” Alex said. “We leave in an hour.”

”AN HOUR?” Qin Shan exclaimed. “I will have to go give some commands while I’m not here then.”

Qin Shan left to handle the matter of the sect for when he wasn’t around, and Alex helped with his mother’s packing.

After an hour, the 3 of them along with Pearl flew to the east where the beasts waited for them.

Qin Shan couldn’t help but tremble a little when he sensed the aura of the two beasts.

”Sa-Saint Core?” he couldn’t believe it. He finally realized what Alex meant by ‘dangers taking them’.

”Young Lord!” the two beasts bowed down towards Alex.

”Young Lord? You?” Qin Shan was surprised, but Alex only chuckled and shook his head.

Pearl jumped down from Alex’s embrace and stood in front of the two. “If you try to hurt my brother or my mother, I will tell my grandmother,” Pearl said.

”Of course not, young lord,” the two beasts said.

”Hmph!” Pearl snorted and looked at Helen with a smirk on his face.

The jaguar ignored his young lord’s show-off attitude and looked towards Alex. “We can leave whenever you are ready,” he said.

Alex nodded and they left.

Helen held Pearl while sitting on top of the jaguar, while Alex sat on top of the leopard. Qin Shan was forced to fly all alone.

Due to Helen and Pearl’s presence, the jaguar didn’t speed up very fast, and that let Qin Shan keep up with them.

After flying for what felt like half a day, the group finally saw the forest in the north. They were getting close.

Alex looked down below and saw the nightlife of the Riverweed City, the first city he had been to in the empire.

Once they went past that, Alex patiently waited for what was to come next.

The formation platform.

Once they reached the formation platform, the ground finally got down and the jaguar brought out a medallion from its armband.

However, before he could activate it, Alex spoke up. “Senior, may I try instead?” he said.

”Try? The formation?” he asked.

”Yes, I want to try something,” Alex said.

”Sure, go ahead,” the jaguar said.

Alex nodded and placed his hand on the platform. Then, he forced his body to produce yang Qi which he instantly poured into the formation.

Before anyone was ready, the formation activated.