1546 Evening Mist Lake

Alex reached into his soul space to water the two seeds. The seeds were surrounded in the darkness, dozens of meters apart, such that their roots were not touching each other at all.

Each time they grew larger, Alex was instructed to move them further apart. And they had grown larger in the time he had been in the Central Continent.

Given that he had only known what exactly to do with the seeds after talking with the senior, Alex could now help them much more than the time before.

There were formations all around the two roots. One was the Enriching Mist Formation that he had bought from the Golden Auction. Its job was normally to draw in Qi from the outside and keep it centered at one location. 

Right now, Alex was instead using it for that purpose, on top of keeping the World Tree's Qi inside the boundary.

Another formation was something the senior called Borrowing Life formation. It was his own product and he used it to gather Life Energy from his Soul Space to further improve the two seeds.

Their growth was slow but apparent. That was what the senior had said it would be. They were incredible plants that wouldn't grow in the span of a few years. Decades would pass before they could even be considered an actual sprout. 

It wouldn't be a surprise if it took them millennia to reach any form of maturity. Alex could only take it all slow, and wait for the trees to grow slowly. He used his spiritual sense to grab onto the Bottomless Jade Flask and poured a bit of the water around the trees.

The trees would take a few days to take in all the water there and grow again. One of the trees turned everything to light, heat, and Yang, and the other one turned it all to Qi.

As a result, their growth was slow and that was why Alex was going to have to wait for a long time.

'Land,' he thought to himself. 'Where will I possibly find the perfect land for this?'

He didn't need a very large land, just a couple hundred meters wide and a few dozen meters deep. But he also wanted it with a Spirit vein inside of it. He had an extra spirit vein on him, but finding a land here without anyone else finding out about it would be hard.

Maybe he could find fertile land during his visit to the Ivory Kingdom. "Ugh, maybe not in the North," Alex thought. "I will have to go south. Ivory won't do it. Silver Kingdom maybe?"

But then he remembered the Great Blightwind region, where all the plants had died and the soil toxic. "Whatever, I'll find someplace certainly."

He wasn't in any hurry yet.

His attention moved away from his Soul Space when he heard a voice coming from outside of his room. Queen Song had returned.

He quickly opened the door and let her in. She walked through the white marble floor, her feet creating a sonorous sound with each step as she arrived in front of the bed he sat on.

Alex could feel the presence of others with her, but it was her alone that was here inside.

"Your Majesty," she said hurriedly. "Can you repeat the name you told me to search? It was Yan Shumi, right?"

Alex nodded. "Yan Shumi, that should be correct," he said.

The woman shook her head. "There is no Yan Shumi in the Ice Mist Palace," she said. "Are you sure that is her name or that is the sect she hails from?"

"That is definitely the sect she's from," Alex said before falling into a thought. "As for her name, maybe I'm mistaken there. I assumed it was Yan Shumi, but if it was not, then… it has to be Bing Shumi."

The Queen thought for a bit. "Are you sure about this? If you don't know her name clearly, I can use other descriptions of hers to find her," she said. "Any notable feature."

"That shouldn't be necessary. It isn't like the person I'm searching for is some unknown disciple in the sect. Her name is Shumi. Her father is Yan Changying, a person I have heard is quite bad at managing his anger. Her mother should be the twin sister of the sect master of the Ice Mist Palace… uhh… Bing… Zheshuang?" 

"Master Bing?" the Queen asked with a curious look. "Her… twin sister's child?"

Alex nodded.

"Senior Taizhen's child?" she asked again.

"Ah yes! Taizhen. That was her mother's name," Alex remembered.

The Queen slowly nodded while thinking about a million things. "I will try to contact them again," she said. "I wasn't aware senior Taizhen had a daughter. Did they hide it from me?"

The queen walked away from the room, her sonorous footsteps leaving with her.

Alex returned to what he was previously doing, thinking nothing of what had just happened. He would wait for the Queen to return once again.

The Queen returned 2 hours later, this time her footsteps hurried, disorderly. She didn't have the grace that she had when she left.

Alex opened his eyes to look at her worried look and frowned. 

"What is going on?" he asked.

"I am being told that there is no such person as the one you are looking for," she said. "I could have told you that, but I checked just in case, and it's true. Lady Yan Taizhen has never had a child."

Alex frowned. "She most certainly has," he said.

"That's not true," the Queen said. "It's just not. You might have been duped, your majesty. Someone used their name."

Alex nodded. "That is possible," he said. "But I won't agree with that until I've seen them myself."

He got out of the bed. "Let's go," he said. "Let's go to the Ice Mist Palace."

"Right now?" the Queen asked, worried. "It's the middle of the night."

"Doesn't matter," Alex said. "It's important."

He called out his two Elders and they quickly arrived by his side. "What are we doing, Your Majesty?" Yao Ning asked.

"We're going to find a young girl," he said as he continued walking outside the palace.

The two elders looked at each other, worried and confused. "Why are we going to look for a girl in the middle of the night?" they asked.

"Because I say so," he said, not bothering to explain how special this girl was.

The Queen had no power to stop Alex, so instead she went ahead of him and prepared for his departure. However, Alex didn't bother with ships or anything. "We're flying there ourselves," he said and left off.

The two elders flew next to him, and the Queen as well as a few of her subordinates flew by him as well. Together, about 7 of them made their way to the Ice Mist Palace in the dead of night, their path lightened by the silver glow of moonlight on the white snow.

The Queen quickly took the lead and showed them the way to the Ice Mist Palace. Two hours later, they saw they saw a large body of water, large enough to be considered a sea.

Evening Mist Lake.

And on the southern side of the lake, covered in the mist that grew from it, was the Ice Mist Palace.