1823 Dilemma

Upon Alex's orders, the ship began moving out immediately. They wasted no time and left the capital, flying toward the eastern ocean.

The ship carried with it everyone injured and weak. As for the remaining people, they began flying themselves.

The beasts as well as the others that were from the Eastern Continent began flying back toward their home, perhaps to hide there or to take away their family and go hide.

As everyone began leaving, Alex, Hannah, and the rest were the last ones to leave.

Hannah looked toward Long Huan and her mother and helped them move from the area. As she did, she turned out to look back toward Alex who kept staring toward the Dragon Emperor who was ready for the first bolt of lightning.

Pearl was beside him, looking toward the Dragon Emperor all the same.

"Alex?" Hannah called out to him, confused. "What are you doing? We need to leave."

"Should I?" he asked, his voice unfocused.He continued staring toward the Dragon Emperor.

"What are you talking about? We need to leave," Hannah said.

"Al, come on. We should hurry," Liz said.

Alex finally turned around. "If we leave, if I leave, it's all over," he said. "I can't let it be over just like that."

"King Alex," Yan Yating looked at Alex. "We must leave now. Whether he fails or not, we will figure it out once we are safe. We need to hide and reassess our situation before returning."

Alex shook his head. "There is no reassessing happening. There is no second chance here. This is it," he said. "If we don't finish what we came here for today, we will never get that chance again."

"Surely that's not…"

Yan Yating wanted to argue about it, but he knew just as well as anyone else that what Alex was saying was the truth.

Alex turned to look toward his family. "If we leave now, he won't come after us. He is too scared of the other immortals. Instead, he will leave this world immediately and go to an Immortal world that we would have no idea about. He would forever escape from our grasp."

He looked at each person that remained in their eyes. "This man has done so much to us all. Put us through so much hurt and sadness. We cannot let him leave just like that, not after everything we sacrificed to get to this moment."

"We owe it to every single person that died today that we finish what we started," Alex said. "We owe it to them that the Dragon Emperor die today. Whether that is before he becomes an Immortal, during that, or after it."

The first of the lightning bolts fell down the Emperor who casually destroyed it with his own lightning bolts. The two attacks clashing together sent out powerful gusts of wind throughout the surroundings that threatened to whip them away with it.

Hannah stood before the weaker ones of the group and stopped the force from affecting them.

"Brother," Pearl spoke at that moment. "It is true that I wish to see him dead for everyone he killed, but I do not wish to see you die because of that. We have lost those who died to him, but we cannot lose more in revenge if revenge is impossible."

Alex nodded. "I understand that more than anyone," he said. "That is why I sent away everybody. But there has to be something we can do."

"What is that?" she asked. "Attack him before he breakthrough?"

"No," Alex said immediately. "That will only make us a target for the heavens. Now that his breakthrough has started, it will only end when he either fails, stops, or succeeds."

If the Dragon Emperor failed, he would then be too weak to survive any person in their group, that was if he survived failure itself.

If he instead had some artifact or talisman to hide from the heavens, like how Xue Kuangren did, he would still be lacking Qi and be wounded in the immediate second. There was no way he would stop the breakthrough unless he was entirely wounded.

In that case, too, Alex and the group had an almost guaranteed chance of victory.

However, that was not what any of them thought was going to happen. Failure or abeyance of the breakthrough was out of the question in their mind as the Dragon Emperor had been planning for this for thousands of years at this point.

As such, what they all believed they had to deal with was none but an Immortal Dragon Emperor at the end of it all.

"How are we going to beat him when he becomes an Immortal?" Hannah asked. "Fighting him at that point would be just asking for death."

"I know," Alex said, his mind already rushing through the many ways he could find ways to defeat the Dragon Emperor using all the resources he had at his disposal.

He had already used the Mirror of Barren Truth and the White Tiger's protection on him had been used as well. There were no defensive techniques on him and that made the situation all the more dangerous.

Not to mention, he had sent the ship away. He had to do it so everyone could survive. However, in doing so, he had lessened himself of another advantage he had for himself.

He could no longer use the Hell Emperor's formation to give himself or anyone fighting on their side a boost in strength.

With such disadvantages, Alex still didn't see any way he could defeat the man at all.

Even his cultivation base only put him around Saint Transformation 9th realm, making him stand before the giant gap that would be between the Saint realm and the Immortal realm.

Even with the arrays, he wouldn't be able to bridge that gap.

"But…" a thought came to Alex. "What if I break through as well?"

It was a simple thought that he would've come across sooner or later. Alex's first instinct was to ignore the thought. That was a thought he had for a long time now, ever since he reached the peak of the Saint Soul realm.

To break through to the other realm would come with a burst of power that would be quite handy for him, but at the same time, it came with a possibility of failure, which was why Alex had chosen to ignore this pathway for a safer one.

There was simply too much riding on the success of this war that he couldn't allow for a chance of failure due to his own cultivation base regressing at an unfortunate moment.

However, at this moment, the consequence of remaining where he was and the consequence of failing brought absolutely no changes in their situation.

What did make a change was success. If he broke through, there was a chance he would reach a strength where he could fight against the Dragon Emperor without worrying about instantly dying.

Without reaching the next realm, Alex wasn't sure how much stronger he would be. But he had to take the chance, the leap of faith.

It was now or never.

As the 2nd bolt of the tribulation lightning fell from the sky, brightening the entire world in its purple glow, Alex knew what he must do.

He had to break through to the Saint Transformation realm.