1034 Searching Continued

2 Days later, Alex finished his cultivation. He was getting closer to his goal of breaking through to the next realm.

After finishing his cultivation, he went out to fight again. He had the squid with him this time around, so he wasn't very scared about meeting something strong.

In the worst-case scenario, he could sacrifice the blood beasts to go and fend off his enemy while he ran away.

Alex fought a few different beasts that were strong, but not as strong as the Squid he killed. If he wanted to fight some stronger beasts, he would have to move away from the main continent where the Qi was siphoned off to burn the Phoenix flames eternally.

"I can find stronger beasts later," he thought and went back to the island again. Since he couldn't cultivate for the next 5 days or so, Alex cultivated the Demon Eyes and Undying physique for the next two days while gathering blood.

2 days later, he felt his right shoulder plate buzz a little as Whisker came back out.

Whisker jumped out from behind him and onto his palm.

'Did it work?' Whisker asked with his spiritual sense.

Alex smiled. "Yes, it worked. You did great back there," he said. To Whisker, the last thing he had done was destroy the formation flag that kept the lightning formation running in the Lightning Peninsula, a moment after which he died at the hands of the madman.

"It's been about over 3 months since then," Alex told him. "A lot of things have happened."

Alex told Whisker everything that happened after his fight with the madman.

Whisker worried for Pearl, but Alex was sure that Pearl was fine. At the very least, he was alive.

Alex spent the next 3 days either fighting or gathering materials. He also had his beasts beat him so he could body cultivate a lot.

"Do you want to do it too, Whisker? You can heal easily so you'll get stronger," Alex said. However, Whisker did not like fighting or being hurt so he refused to take part.

Alex made another two pills, of which only one came out a 100% pill. He upgraded it up to having 4 pill veins, but given how his blood aura was getting steadily better, it wouldn't be long before he could reach 5 pill veins as well.

Alex spent another 2 days cultivating, which was worth 40 days of normal cultivation.

"My cultivation base is reaching close to peak," he said to himself. "A few more of these and I can break through."

However, he couldn't wait around for that. He would have to cultivate when he could, but for now, he needed to go look for his father.

"Let's go."

Alex flew from the island and immediately turned invisible. Whisker rode inside of his robes and as a result, he became invisible too.

With no cultivation aura or any other aura for the matter, the beasts in the ocean didn't find him so easily.

However, a few spiritual senses did cross him from time to time. A few beasts sprang up each time to kill him for food, but a single hit from Alex was enough to kill most.

The stronger ones rarely bothered coming out for something they weren't sure was even worth their time.

Alex arrived at the edge of the Wastelands and continued flying through the coast, sticking to the region that was right at the edge of the small body of water that separated the Wastelands and the rest of the Southern Continent on the map.

As he flew through the sky, he stopped from time to time to check on any group of people he found. Tribes and Oases took longer to search as there were a lot of people to search through.

He was by the mountain ranges where the barrier to stop the tribal people was set up, so from time to time, he would sense cultivators as well.

However, most that were stationed there were too weak to notice his spiritual sense, so Alex could continue his search without any pauses in his journey.

Due to how slow he was, it took him way more than just 5 days to search through everything in a single line from east to west of the southernmost locations of the Wastelands.

Alex had to do it east to west, or west to east so that he could stop to cultivate on either side of the Wastelands which was the only place to find Qi.

If he spent too long in the Wastelands, he would most likely miss the optimal time to cultivate, while also having to unnecessarily eat the beast cores, which reduced in effectiveness the more Alex ate them.

Unfortunately, Alex did not find his father in search, so he had to do it all over again. This time, his searched range was a single straight line from west to east, slightly away from the place where he previously searched.

Before that, however, he had to spend some 3 days cultivating again.

Alex found a random piece of land to the west that had Qi in it and started making some pills.

This time around, he made nearly 5 4-veined pills using the ingredients he had previously prepared while he was on the other side of the continent.

He cultivated using one of those pills and spent another day cultivating his Undying Physique and his Demon eyes.

Once done, he got up to go back to search for his father again.

However, before he did, he flew up into the sky and looked towards the west.

"Just how far away is it? I can't even see anything that far away," he thought. He remembered having the same experience outside of the Demon realm when he tried to look for the Southern Continent and didn't find anything.

While he should have been able to see something that was far away, his vision was still blurred by all the white haze and light refraction that was caused due to the ocean water heating up.

"Well, it's not like I can just fly there even if I did see it anyway," Alex thought and turned around. With just how weak he was, he was never going to be able to make it even halfway there.

"I need to continue becoming stronger!" he thought.

He then turned around and left back towards the Wasteland.

He spent another week trying to find his father, but once again, he was unable to. He would have to keep on searching for a long while.

Alex went back towards the west a few days after reaching the east and once again didn't find what he was looking for. He arrived on an island where he could cultivate and decided to take a bit of a break.

He spent a few days cultivating and then a few more days fighting. He fought some sea beasts to help himself train while also gathering some more beast cores and blood to absorb.

He also had his own blood beasts fight him so he could improve his body cultivation as well.

Whisker on the other hand wanted to do nothing. He didn't have to cultivate, and neither did he have to learn how to fight since he was never going to.

Seeing that, Alex gave him a task. Whisker was to make True rank pills and make it so that they were Heaven grade each time around.

Whisker hadn't had many chances to make pills, so it was a bit hard for him to just go back to making them. Even when Alex was confined by the old man, Whisker rarely got to make pills.

Most of his time was spent on learning about the ingredients, and the recipes, or simply learning how Alchemy worked in general.

After a week or so, Alex finally left the place again, sweeping through new parts as he made his way to the eastern side of the Wasteland again.

This was already the fourth time, and even so, he couldn't find his father at all. At this point, he was starting to worry that something might have happened to him.

What if…

"No, don't think about that," Alex told himself. "He is fine."

Alex arrived at the eastern seas again and cultivated for a while. After 2 days when he stopped, he didn't immediately get back.

First, he would have to break through.

He sat in the grasslands of a small island and closed his eyes as he heard nothing but the waves and the winds.

He slowly pulled out the Qi from his dantian as it moved around his body through the various meridians, becoming denser at each turn.

As he made the Qi even denser, at some point it was simply so thick that it had difficulty moving around in his dantian.

As a wave of energy rushed through him, Alex realized he had broken through to the 9th realm of Saint Condensation.

It had been 14 years since he broke through to the Saint realm, and in just those few years, he had somehow managed to break through 8 different times.

5 of those had been hasty cultivation due to the madman's urging, but the rest had been stable cultivation which Alex was very proud of.

Around the same time, Whisker had also broken through to the True Disciple 9th realm and was just a little far away from reaching the True Master realm.

"And I can reach the Saint Foundation realm very soon," Alex said to himself. "We will have to keep working hard, Whisker."