1182 Emergency Guests

Alex opened his eyes after a night of cultivation. His cultivation base of Saint Foundation 5th realm showed some improvement after having broken through a couple of weeks ago.

He left the room and found Linlin waiting for him. He turned to leave for his morning practice, but before he could go, Linlin called out for him.

"Your Majesty, one moment please," she said.

Alex stopped and turned around. "What is it?" he asked.

"Are you going to practice today as well?" she asked.

"Of course," Alex said. "What else will I be doing?"

"Don't you want to take a day off to celebrate?" she asked. "Today's your 3 years anniversary of being a King after all."

Alex paused. "Do kings really celebrate something like that?" he asked.

"I… am not sure," the girl said. "But we celebrated the last two, so shouldn't we celebrate this year as well?"

"Forget about it," he said. "There's no point in celebrating such a thing. But… if people want to, let them. I won't stop anyone from celebrating Scarlet's coronation just because I don't want mine to be."

Linlin smiled. "Thank you, your Majesty."

She went on to prepare for whatever celebration she thought best while Alex went to the backyard to train.

As soon as he went to the backyard, he found that someone else was already there.

"Oh, father. What are you doing awake this early in the morning?" Alex asked.

"Oh, hey son," Graham said as he stopped practicing the sword skill Alex had given him. "I broke through last night, so I came here to practice a bit to help stabilize myself."

"Oh, congratulations father," Alex said while he sensed his father's cultivation base. "You entered Meridian Tempering realm. That's fantastic."

"Hehe, it's alright," Graham said.

Alex nodded and watched and checked his father's cultivation base again. 'Nothing's wrong with it,' he thought. 'It's stable enough.'

He still wasn't sure what was wrong with his father's cultivation base. As far as he was aware, there was nothing wrong with his body to cause him to have such a slow cultivation speed despite the many fabulous pills and formations.

However, there had to be a reason why it was happening. However, since he couldn't learn what it was, he was forced to have his father slug through cultivation.

"Do you want to test your skills on me?" Alex asked.

"Can I?" Graham asked excitedly and controlled the sword in front of him. The sword flew in the air and started moving in certain ways that were not natural at all.

That was the skill behind the sword which Alex had read himself to improve it. He pulled out his own sword and blocked his father's sword.

He stayed on the defensive while his father used every skill in his arsenal. They stopped finally when Alex decided that he should be training.

"I will stay around with Whisker then," Graham said and left the area.

Once his father was gone, Alex fully trained his skills while trying new ways to do the same thing.

By now, he had learned a few things that were helpful in understanding how he could any techniques.

There was a surprising complexity that came with stronger skills that Alex hadn't connected the dots of until now. The stronger a skill was, the longer it had to travel in his meridians.

There were millions of tiny pathways inside the human body where the Qi could flow. There were major meridians that the Qi could go straight through and it would come out weak.

However, if the Qi traveled through the smaller meridians, taking its time to come out, then somehow it became stronger.

Also, bringing out Qi from both sides of the dantian was much better than bringing it out from just one side. As it turned out, the symmetry of one's meridians affected the strength of the skills as well.

Alex had learned 3 new common grade skills and had upgraded all of them to at least Heaven grade. He still had to find ways to improve it further, but that would take even more time.

For now, he was focusing on the other types of skills. Since he knew a bit about skills that controlled stuff, he wanted to learn about skills that created stuff.

He had many such skills, so it was easy to find any that he wanted to improve. There were many that he had learned that he wanted to improve, but only two would be the easiest since they were the worst.

The first one was something he named 'Golden Fist Strike'. It was when he covered his fist in metal Qi and punched someone. At the moment of impact, the physical damage would hit the person first, and then the Qi would explode, dealing secondary damage after the first.

He stopped using this technique after Shen Jing had told him how bad they were due to his lack of understanding of how techniques worked.

His second skill, which he also stopped using due to Shen Jing, was the skill where he used his Fire and Yang Qi to create a small sun.

Now that he was starting to understand a little more about techniques, he planned on improving the two.

He spent the next 3 hours using the various meridians in his body to improve the 'Golden Fist Strike' technique. Since it was a different beginning pathway, he needed some time to adjust to the new pathways to understand what should go where.

Even after 3 hours, there were barely any signs of progress at all. However, that was to be expected. After all, there was no way he could learn something in a single day.

'I should stop,' he thought. He decided to proceed with his pills training. He was getting somewhere with his research on his Dao pill. While he felt like there was still a way to go, he had figured out a majority of the ingredients he would be needing.

'Just a year more,' he thought. 'I should be able to do it in a year.'

Alex walked away from the open area where he was training and walked into the flower garden that Whisker was responsible for.

While many flowers grew here, Alex found it more appropriate to call it an Alchemy garden, as all plants that grew here, were slightly rare ingredients.

"Oh, this flower blossomed quite well," Alex said as he squatted next to a flower. "You didn't even need my help this time around."

Whisker gave a happy smile when he heard the compliment.

Alex checked the flower and it was growing healthily. If it weren't healthy, or if it was finding some difficulty while growing, Alex could easily find out the problem and treat it. He could also easily speed up its growth or help the plants overcome their growth obstacles.

However, Whisker didn't have the Dao of Plant Growth, and even then he had created such an amazing garden.

"Do you want something? Some seeds maybe?" Alex asked.

"Can we go to the big garden again?" Whisker asked.

"The Forbidden Orchard?" Alex asked. "I'm afraid you will have to wait for a year more."

"Your Majesty!" Linlin came running into the garden.

Alex was surprised to see Linlin running in the palace at all. No matter how important something was, she always found the time to be graceful. However, she wasn't being so at the moment.

"Is something wrong?" Alex asked worriedly. "Is someone hurt?"

The girl arrived in front of Alex and quickly shook his head. "No one is hurt," she said before pointing toward the palace. "You have guests."

Alex sighed in relief. "Don't run like that then," he said. "I nearly thought there was some sort of emergency."

"It is sort of an emergency, your Majesty," the girl said. "You… you have guests waiting for you."

Alex frowned a little. "What sort of guests make you say that?" he asked. "Who exactly is here for it to be an emergency?"

"The guests who have come to see you right now… are from the eastern continent," the girl said. "They are members of the Azure Imperium."

"What?" Alex's eyes went wide. "What are the Azure Imperium people doing in the southern Continent?"

He remembered a time some 7 years ago when he saw the group last time as well. 'What are they doing here?' he wondered, just as he did all those years ago.

"Fine, let's go meet them," Alex said and walked into the palace.

Linlin quickly followed him and brought out his royal robes before putting them on him as he walked. Alex wore the robes and brought out his crown before putting it on his head.

The door to the throne room opened and everyone in the room stood up to greet him.

Alex walked over to the throne and sat down. "I hear we have guests from the Eastern Continent," he said as he looked at the men in the center of the throne room.

Each one was stronger than the next, with each having a cultivation base in the upper Saint Soul realm. Not only that, the leader with a thick beard and mustache seemed to have a Saint Transformation realm cultivation base as well.

He wore green and blue robes with white linings all around him, the same as everyone else.

"Greetings, King of the Southern Continent," the man moved toward Alex and bowed. The rest of his group bowed as well.

"Mhmm," Alex nodded. "And who might you all be?"

"I am Long Jianyu, commander of the Scale Legion of the Azure Imperium," the man spoke. "I have come today under the orders of the Dragon Emperor to request something from you, King Alex."