1193 Ronron

"It's a beautiful house," Graham said. "Did you use the money you made from the game to make this?"

"Ah, yes. The old house was… well, old, and small. We needed more rooms, so I decided to destroy the old one and replace it with a bigger, better one," the old Alex said. "I tried to keep the aesthetics of the old one, but it's been so many years that I don't think you can find the semblance of the old house at all."

"To be honest, I don't think I would know even if there was," Graham said. "It's been quite a while since I last saw home after all. I'm surprised you even came back at all. With the money you said you had made, I would've assumed you would've stayed away from this place that was so far away from the rest of the world."

"Honestly, that was what I was thinking at all. A few years past the game's abrupt end, I lived in the city and was fine doing so. However, I would regularly get calls from mother complaining how father wasn't listening to her at all and was doing everything by himself, despite no longer being capable of."

"By the time I was 24, I decided to come back and help you set up the farm with workers. I had intended to come back temporarily, but I liked the quietness of the countryside I had grown up to. So, I decided to stay here permanently and help manage the many fields."

"Besides, it was not like I had to make more money. I was making enough from all the investments I had made, and the farm would earn us enough as well," the older Alex said.

"I married Emily a year after that, and we love living in this place," he said.

"It truly is a wonderful place," the old woman said.

Alex nodded and looked around the place. He felt the nostalgia too, but he had been away for too long to now want to live in a place like this.

"Oh right, Where have you been, father?" the older Alex asked. "Were you really in the Southern Continent?"

"Yes," Graham said. "Alex here only found me less than a decade ago. Oh right, you have a mother too, in the Western Continent."

"Yes, Pearl told us," the older Alex said. "And Aunt Liz in the Northern Continent. You haven't been to the Eastern Continent yet, right? That's where sister Hannah said she was."

"Oh right, how is she doing? And Liz, and Rob too," Graham asked.

"Uncle Rob and Liz died about a decade ago. Sister Hannah died a little before that in a car accident," the older Alex said.

The two father-son's eyes sharpened with shock. "They are all dead?" Alex asked. "How did the two die?"

"Uncle Rob and Aunt Liz divorced a decade after the game ended. Aunt Liz had suddenly started aging all of a sudden and she couldn't handle it mentally. She started showing abnormal behaviors and had to quickly be put in a psychiatric facility after their divorce."

"Uncle Rob is said to have died from cancer too, although none of us were at his funeral. As for Aunt Liz… she simply couldn't handle her changed self and… she committed suicide," Alex said.

The two remained dumbfounded at the information.

"Sister Hannah never managed to conceive a child, so after her death, her husband moved elsewhere, and we lost communication," older Alex said.

"I heard you found Pearl and took care of him. Thank you," Alex bowed to the couple sitting in front of me.

"You don't have to thank us. We didn't do anything," the older Alex said. "Besides, it was actually Pearl who found us."

"Oh, he found you? How?" Alex asked.

"I can sense him, brother," Pearl said. "After you were gone, I tried to follow you, but it turned out he was the one I sensed and arrived near here."

"I was surprised to find him in the middle of the night. He had crashed right outside where the Qi barrier is. The crater there is as large as his mother made back then," the older Alex said.

"How… how hurt was he?" Alex asked.

The older Alex took a deep breath. "Very. He had major blood loss, he had lost most of his skin, and…" the old man paused.

"And…?" Alex asked.

The old man sighed. "And he burned through his spiritual roots and bloodline to make it out of the  barrier."

"What?!" Alex stood up suddenly. He turned around to Pearl. "Is that true?" he asked.

"Y-yes," Pearl said meekly. "I… I seem to have used whatever I could at that time to save myself. I… I don't think I can follow you on your journey, brother."

Alex was still shocked to hear the first set of news, that he almost didn't register what Pearl told him next. "Wh-what do you mean you can't follow me? It-it's just blood and spiritual roots," he said. "You are a White Tiger, you can create the lost blood on your own. As for your spiritual root, I will help you improve it with time. Don't worry."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," the older Alex said. "He didn't just use the Bloodline or the spiritual roots, he basically sacrificed them for his own survival."

"It's not just that he has low White Tiger blood, but rather that he burned through the source inside him that makes more White Tiger blood. Similarly, he also hurt his Spiritual root to the point where it cannot function nearly as well as an average spiritual root could function."

"All in all, without some sort of miracle, Pearl now has zero chances of entering the Immortal realm," the older Alex said.

Alex took a deep breath to not let the guilt and rage inside of him show immediately. "How do you know all that? You should not be able to make such a comprehensive diagnosis," he said as he crouched by Pearl, doing his own test.

He let his Qi flow inside Pearl to test him. Most of the Qi he was bringing out was quickly being pushed to the Qi barrier, but even then Alex didn't stop.

"Of course, it wasn't me who did the diagnosis," the older Alex said. "It was Ronron's master."

Alex frowned a little. "Who is this Ronron?" he asked. "And who is their master?"

The older Alex gave a weird look and looked to his wife, who seemed surprised as well. "Did you… not meet with the senior yet? I assumed you had come after meeting him," he said.

Alex frowned. "Are you talking about…"

"The game's Creator," the older Alex said. "He was the one that checked on Pearl. Have you not met him yet?"

"No, I have not," Alex said with a stunned look. "You've met him?"

The couple nodded. "A couple of times," Emily answered. "I think it's 4 times in total."

"How did you meet him?" Alex asked. He simply couldn't comprehend that someone like his clone could even possibly be able to meet someone like that. "Do other people meet the creator too? Does he like coming out every so often to meet the mortals?"

"No, no," the older Alex said. "He is a very seclusive person. The fact that we managed to meet him 4 times is already a lot. Almost no one else has even met him once."

"Then how?" Alex asked.

"Because of Ronron, of course," Emily said. "He is Ronron's master."

"Ronron? Who is—" Alex paused for a moment. He only then remembered that he had heard about everyone in the family but one other person.

"Ronron is our daughter," the older Alex said. "She has been a disciple under the senior for quite some time now."

"Right! I have a granddaughter, don't I?" Graham asked as he looked around. "I completely forgot about her as soon as I saw the house. Where is she? Is she shy and hiding in her room?"

"Oh, no," Emily quickly said. "Ronron is not home right now. She's staying at her master's place. Senior came to take her about 2 weeks ago, saying that soon there would be a lot of people coming back to this place and he didn't want to risk her being around some potentially harmful people."

"Ronron… that's her name?" Alex asked. "Ronron Benton?"

"Oh no," the older Alex quickly said. "Her name is Maron. We call her Ronron lovingly."

"Maron… that's…"

"I named her after master," the older Alex said. "I was still saddened for a long time after my master's death, and knowing that the world I left behind was a real one didn't help at all. It was only after Ronron was born that I managed to lose some of that sadness as she filled my life with sunlight and happiness."

Alex started remembering his master as well, and while most other times he would've been saddened after remembering her, this time he smiled. "Maron… that's a nice name," he said.

The couple nodded.

"Sigh, here I was hoping to meet her immediately. Alas, it seems I will have to wait," Graham said. "We are going to meet this senior tomorrow, right?"

"Yes, father," Alex said. He turned around to the couple. "Speaking of which, why is she a disciple exactly? I can't seem to think of any reason."

"Oh, it was because of what happened during Maron's birth," the older Alex said. "There was a massive hurricane and the sky seemed to split in the middle of the night."

"The senior came just as she was born and said that the phenomenon meant that she was someone that would be born once in a lifetime. That was the first time we met him."