12] – [Stone Forest]

Walking through a forest made out of stone, Alexander, along with the chatting duo, suddenly stopped in place. Not asking questions, the duo also stopped.

His eyes fixated ahead, Alexander snorted before he resumed walking, not paying attention anymore.

Curious, the two wanted to ask why did Alexander stop, however, they knew better than to open their mouths.

What they did not see was that Alexander scared away humanoid stone creatures that were trying to ambush them ahead. While he did not use his Divine Sense, for a cultivator of his caliber, even if he were to also remove all of his senses, his instincts alone would let him fight evenly with some of the most notorious of beings. So how could Alexander fail to notice their presence?

After a few hours, the trio soon found an open cave on a mountain cliff. The mountain was not very steep, while still difficult to climb. And, some distance up high, a natural platform could be seen protruding out of the cliff side.

The mountain was dug out inside, creating a peaceful cave entrance giving its inhabitant a beautiful view high above the stone trees.

Flying there, holding the two, Alexander quickly went inside the cave entrance, before coming back out shortly after.

"Alright, the cave is, while small, empty. This will be our residence for now. You two can sit on this platform right here and cultivate!" Pointing at the grey platform outside the cave, with the grey sky looming over it, giving away a sage-like feeling, he then sat down at the cave's entrance, blocking the way in.

Looking at each other before simply nodding, they sat cross-legged next to each other on the natural, flat rocky platform before closing their eyes as well.

Like this, an entire day passed by, with the both of them finally giving off the aura of cultivators.

They had been recognized by the Heavenly Way!

Nodding happily, Alexander did not say anything and simply waited cross-legged too.

It was three days later that Alexander saw the two almost simultaneously breakthrough the peak of the Qi Sensing Realm.

In these three days, both Krysfer and Sophia had managed to sense the Qi outside of their bodies, before getting used to absorbing it inside. Soon after they could rule the Qi inside them with enough confidence to start forming their Dantian.

The process took them over an entire day as Krysfer failed one time as well. Luckily, this was only the first major realm, so failing a breakthrough did not cause anything more than a feeling of nauseating discomfort.

In the end, they both managed to form their Dantian fairly quickly. This gave them an idea of how tedious and difficult cultivation truly was.

Just to form their Dantian they had to constantly keep an extreme focus to hold the Qi inside them in the right place, with the right movement.

The problem however was the need to keep this insane focus for over ten hours! Ten hours of sweat and tears just to reach the peak of the first major realm! With Krysfer even failing at the sixth hour mark, having to restart all over again!

Exhausted, they looked at Alexander, their bodies drenched in sweat.

"Master, how many major realms are there?" Hoping to hear a small number, they only saw Alexander shake his head at their question.

'You are already losing determination, as your master, I won't crush your spirit! Do you think I'm dumb?!'

Indeed, knowing how many major realms of cultivation were inside this Universe, Alexander did not want to shatter their hopes into pieces.

Saying that the Qi Sensing Realm was the first, would he really tell them that to be as strong as him, they needed to reach the Ascension Realm, technically the thirty-third major realm? Did they really think that Alexander had not reached the very peak of the Ascension Realm because he was lazy?!

'Do they think I cultivated for a few years before sleeping for millions of years?'

"Just know there are more than one."

Hearing this, they could only narrow their eyes.

'No shit! If you don't want to say it then don't say it, why try and mitigate the damage it would do to our confidence?'

"Alright, you guys must be hungry, here." Waving his right hand, Alexander made a table with chairs appear. On the table, delicious looking food could be seen everywhere.

Gulping at the sight, they both sat down without asking, and started to munch on everything they could see, choking a few times in the process.

With his mouth full, Krysfer turned to look at the cross-legged Alexander.

"Master, are you not hungry?"

"No, I only eat or drink food when I want to taste things, never to actually eat, it will be the same for you guys at some point."

Sophia, swallowing some fried food, asked next.

"By the way master, how do you do all of this, teleportation and summoning things like this?"

Hearing her question, Alexander smiled.

"For teleportation, it requires a high cultivation base as well as some understanding of the Dao of Space, some artifacts would do the trick as well. For summoning stuff like this however, I used, like most others, a space ring." Pausing a moment, he showed the uniform, thick, green colored ring on his right hand's index finger.

"Depending on how it is made, the space inside will differ as well as its properties. Just see it as a portable room, mine for example can put in almost anything you can think of within this Universe, including living things. Time inside is frozen and the space span for over one million cubic meters. Depending on what I do, sometimes I also put on other space rings."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"And, I say this knowing what you are thinking, no, you should not try and put a space ring inside another." Looking sternly at the two, to be sure they would not try their luck with it later, he continued.

"I, of course, have tried doing it. Since I was very strong even back then, I didn't really care about the potential health hazards, and I was kind of right you know." Pride filled his face, before this same pride turned into embarrassment.

"But I still was a tad bit too arrogant, I did not receive injuries, to my body at least, but seeing the other space rings I had around me at the time explode, with all of their content drowning me… Let's just say that having to store and organize millions of items was a major pain in the ass, so I count that as mental damage."

Nodding slowly with dark expressions, the duo continued to shove the food inside their mouth, seemingly lost in thoughts.

—–

Meanwhile, within a courtyard inside the red tiled castle some distance away from Alexander's group, a middle aged man was standing tall, determination filling his eyes, on a wooden platform a dozen meters high.

His blazing gaze looked down at the crowd below, dozens of strong warriors were standing between the gentle grass and heavy grey sky. Looking up at the platform they did not make a sound.

Like this, time passed, before suddenly, the sky turned bright red, mixed in with the grey clouds, the sight looked heavenly. As rays of red light started to shine on the earth below, sparse, red colored droplets fell on the world gently. It had started to rain blood!

At the sight of such a phenomenon, the crowd did not seem bothered or even surprised for that matter, they stayed still, looking at the middle aged man on the platform. This man was the Martial King Gregory!

Gregory adverted his gaze from below, looking high up instead, as the sparse blood rain fell on his face, he then closed his eyes.

Only after a minute had passed did he open his eyes once more. This time, the flames of battle could be seen burning within.

"I, Martial King Gregory, ask of you to share your blood with mine!"

Roaring as loud as he could, he followed, his voice blasting throughout the entire castle.

"We must slaughter all of them! For our future generations!"

"This is war!"

Before his voice could fade away, the crowd below roared even louder, their Qi blasting away the faint bloody rain around them.

"WOOOOAAAHH !!!"

"Kill all of them!"

"Death to the stone demons!"

Jumping down, Gregory led the group of warriors in direction of the stone forest!

—–

"Alright, what are your feelings on the Qi Refining Realm?" Looking at his two disciples, Alexander stared calmly at the cross-legged duo sweating atop the platform.

Taking a deep breath, Krysfer was the first to react, his skin glistening under the grey sky.

"Master, this is really hard, I originally thought it would be quite easy, but each time I try and circulate my Qi through my meridians, it just feel sluggish at best… I could barely finish the third revolution…"

"Reaching the Skin Cleansing Stage is not that bad, taking a couple of hours was average." Not bothering to encourage his disciple, Alexander turned toward Sophia.

"Master, I had to stop midway through the fourth one, I felt something weird at many points of my body."

"Yes, well this sensation probably came from your acupoints! The fourth revolution is all about opening your acupoints."

Krysfer's ears twitched when he heard this, the matter of acupoints intriguing him, he knew from Alexander that they also were a major point at the Foundation Establishment Realm.

"I won't spoil too much, once you reach the peak of the Qi Refining Realm, then I'll let you know."

Krysfer, knowing that he did worse than Sophia, could not contain himself from asking.

"Master, what if we can't make it to the hundredth revolution?"

Not hiding anything Alexander looked at him swiftly.

"It's simple really, reaching the hundredth revolution means you are beyond talented, if any of you two can even make it to half of them, then you can be proud, so don't sweat it."

"Well, it could also mean that you are a reincarnated expert, in which case I don't mind turning your body into meat paste!" Laughing at his own 'joke', Alexander watched them gulp in horror.

Not bothering anymore, Alexander closed his eyes.

Just as they were about to discuss with each other about their progress they heard a shrill cry from under the platform.

Looking at Alexander, still unmoving, they slowly crept to the edge of the rocky platform, looking down at the stone trees.

On the branches of many stone trees, they could see figures staring at them menacingly.

"W-What is that?!" Krysfer jumped back from fright, questioning if he saw correctly.

"I don't know either! They look creepy!" Sophia shivered at the sight below, the three meters tall humanoid figures made out of stone, their fingers and toes ending in long claws made it for a gruesome sight, their pupilless eyes shining a bright yellow. They were thin yet muscular, without any hair, razor sharp fangs instead of teeth complimented by a deep blueish grey color.

"Some little creatures, they are not half bad for a Tier-3 World."

Hearing Alexander behind, they regained their bearings.

"Master, what are they?"

Looking expectantly at Alexander, their faces soon changed at his answer.

"Don't know, don't care. I've seen many creatures, but weaklings like this, I tend to forget easily. I could check what they are using records and books, but knowing that there exist countless different beings in this Universe, even if you gave me a trillion years, I might not find the answer."

"Does it really matter though?"

Knowing that their master was actively not looking out for answers they could only beg.

"Master! Please tell us how strong they are at least!" Sophia pleaded, much to Alexander's annoyance.

"Alright, fine!"

Spreading his Divine Sense downward, encompassing the stone forest, Alexander frowned slightly.

'So it's this kind of world…'

What Alexander saw was the lack of proper Dantian or beast core inside the stone figures. This meant that this world was not using cultivation techniques, they forced Qi inside them as much as possible before using it when necessary.

This method was not approved by the Heavenly Way as a valid way of cultivation, and therefore, while they would never go through Heavenly Tribulations, this also meant that even reaching the Sky Realm's equivalent in ability would be the limit of their potential. The exact reason they did not even need the use of Heavenly Tribulations.

These worlds called Qi 'internal energy' and quantified it in years' worth. The way it was done often meant that using Qi in any way would put them in danger.

These people could be called 'Qi wielding mortals', since without Qi, they were useless. Especially when compared to cultivators who still retained some battle prowess, especially after certain major realms where the physical body or even soul were strengthened.

Another difference would be in the recuperation of depleted Qi. Cultivators could refill their Dantian in a matter of hours at worst. While these people would need days, weeks, months or even years to refill their Qi reserves. While the use of pills and medicine was a viable option, it was not so in the long run.

"The natives here simply missed the greatest opportunity of their lives, trampling on the potential of this entire world!" Snorting, Alexander simply waved his hand, reducing almost every stone figures beneath to dust, except for a couple of them.

"Here! You guys fight one each, the two I spared have the battle prowess' equivalent of a Qi Sensing Realm cultivator!"

Looking below, the duo jumped down, preparing to fight with the stone figures!