1037 Foundations

The air rippled around the island as the Qi rushed into Alex from all directions.

The Qi in his dantian was ever so thicker, and now it was reaching the level where it was starting to turn solid even.

The Qi was starting to crystallize to form small flakes of crystal in his dantian that he had never seen before. But Alex still kept going, pulling more and more Qi from the surroundings to improve his cultivation base.

As he pushed, the points of crystallization helped the other Qi crystallize as well, forming a structure.

The structure soon found its way to the walls of the dantian, attaching to them. Those crystals soon touched each other, forming a complex web of crystals like a house filled with spiders next.

At the crystal pillars formed, there remained a massive gap in the dantian as most of the Qi had gone into developing those very pillars.

Alex had done it. He had formed the foundations of his cultivation base, which was the requirement for one entering the Saint Foundation realm.

Having formed the foundations, it could be said that Alex was in the Saint Foundation realm.

He could see the gaps in his dantian where he could store more Qi, but before he could see if that was possible, Alex lost himself to a dark world where his mind muddled and his thoughts ran astray.

He forgot what he was doing. He forgot where he was. Everything he remembered felt like mere information to him, rather than memories.

At the same time, a voice spoke to him, one that felt eerily like his own.

"How does it feel to be fatherless?" the voice asked.

Alex felt a sense of anxiety hit him when he heard that. His father… was his father dead? Didn't he deduce that he was gone to the South?

"That is just you lying to yourself. You know deep in your heart that no one that goes there stays there. He is dead."

Was that true? Was he lying to himself? He was lying to himself, wasn't he? But, there was still a chance his father was alive.

"Give up. He is dead. You are better off trying to find a way back to Pearl. But then… by the time you reach him, he will die too, ripped apart by the winds you left him in."

"No… that's not true," Alex finally spoke. But instead of confidence, his voice was filled with hesitation and denial.

"You know it is true. Your little White Tiger will die soon, and there will be nothing you can do about it."

"You are a weakling who always has to run away. You ran away from the Western Continent. You ran away from the Northern Continent. What will you do next? Run away from the Southern Continent too? Where will you go next? The Eastern Continent?"

"You are such a weakling that your little Vermilion bird left you the moment she could. She did not want to be associated with someone like you. Just wait, a few months later, she will bring back her family and force you to destroy your bond."

"Where will you go next when the Immortal Phoenixes come for you?"

"You lost your mother, then your aunt, the Pearl, and now your father. Hell, you lost everything you have ever owned too. Soon, you will lose the little birdie too. What will you have after that? Just that little mouse that's even more of a coward than you."

"Whisker is not a coward!" Alex spoke back in anger. "He is a good child that gives it his all to learn what I teach him. So what if he doesn't want to fight? If he doesn't want to, then he doesn't have to. Not as long as I am here."

"As you said, I lost a lot of things, but those are only temporary. I will get them back. What do I really need to get them back? Just a bit more of a cultivation base right? I can get that easily. If you think I will remain weak forever, you underestimate me."

"And yes, you are right. I did run from those two places. But not anymore. I do not know who you are, but I will tell you this. From today onward, I, Alex, will never run away from a foe, no matter how strong they are."

The darkness remained silent for a bit before laughing. "Hehehe~ and what about you dead father?" it asked.

"There is a good chance he is not dead," Alex said.

"There is a good chance he is dead," the voice replied.

"It does not matter whether he is dead or alive. It does not change what I must do. If he is alive, I will find him and reunite our family. If he is dead, I will find his corpse and give him the burial he deserves."

"His death will not stop me. I am his son, and as his son, it is my duty to do what he has always told me to. I must always keep moving forward."

The voice did not speak anything else and slowly, Alex's mind cleared up. The realization that it was his Inner Demon talking to him came to Alex just as everything was starting to grow hazy.

Soon, he forgot all of what he talked about with his Inner Demon, but the conviction he felt was not gone from his heart yet.

He could tell what he wanted to do.

He opened his eyes just as the breakthrough was completed. He had now entered the Saint Foundation realm.

The crystal web of solid Qi in his dantian was proof that he was in the Saint Foundation realm.

The yang and yin orbs that were in his dantian continued floating around each other in one of the larger pockets between the structures. It was too much of a coincidence for that to happen, so Alex was sure that the Qi couldn't attack itself around them.

Alex continued looking at the pillars and wondered, "how does it work exactly, now that I don't have any moving Qi?"

He used a simple technique and saw that the crystalline structure melted to give him the Qi he needed.

"Oh, that's how," he thought. He tried a few more times, but for some reason, it got progressively harder to use his Qi. Also, for some reason, it felt to him as if he didn't have any Qi at all.

"Am I perhaps not supposed to use the pillars?" he wondered. That would make sense as you wouldn't want to destroy the 'foundation' of this realm.

"I should continue cultivating a little more."

Once he started cultivating again, Qi flowed into him, some turning into the crystal pillars again, while most remained out in the open as the dense Qi they were.

"Will they not crystallize or do I wait for the next realm for that to happen?" he thought.

He finished cultivating not long after and stood up. "Come on, Whisker," he called to Whisker who was not far away from him.

"It's about time the Southern Continent knows my name too."