454 Storm

Alex walked through a tunnel.

For the last 4 days, he had spent his entire time either making pills or learning to craft formations on formation rods.

He started off slow and only carved formations with a lower amount of strokes. He was slowly learning how to make the formations on the rod.

During the nighttime, he also went to the Southern Forest for a few hours of fighting. He had his boat with him, which would help him reach the Mind Tempering realm beasts a lot faster.

Thanks to that, he had managed to gather quite a lot of Mind Tempering realm cores. He also killed as many Meridian Tempering beasts as he could to get cores for Pearl as well.

Finally, the last thing he did was send close to 700,000 dollars to his account once more, which he immediately distributed amongst his retirement fund, different shares, and his current account.

Once that was all done and it was the morning of the Friday, he came here, the tunnel to the Forbidden Fields.

It took Alex a bit of explaining to make Ma Rong let him go to this place. However, he finally managed to when he said that he was close to something and only needed a few more Yang Jades.

He wasn't lying when he said that. He was indeed more than 70% done with his Yang Purity and would technically need about 3 Yang jades to reach 100%.

He finally walked out of the cave and looked at the vast grassland as well as the desert further away. There was something far away over there that he wanted, and he was going to get it.

The place was completely abandoned now as this was no longer a punishment place. Thus the elders guarding this place were removed as well.

Alex brought out a single thing before walking down the slope. The thing he got out was a common sword. He didn't bring out his Steel Sword but kept it at an accessible distance in his storage bags as he could take it out later.

He also made sure some foods and pills were at an accessible distance over the other storage bags too. Once he felt like he was ready, he ran.

He took massive steps as he quickly ran down the mountain slope. As he got lower and lower, he could start feeling the force of the outside pushing in his cultivation base and spiritual sense.

Alex tried his best to push it all back using his cultivation base and spiritual sense, but he couldn't.

His spiritual sense could barely push it away a little bit, but his cultivation base was completely useless. Not even True Realm cultivators could use their cultivation base here, so he had no chance.

Alex ran through the grassland and within 10 minutes, he reached the riverside. However, he didn't stop. After all, his destination lied beyond.

Alex jumped when he reached the bank of the river and flew through the air, guaranteed to reach the other side.

However, just as he was landing, he saw a scorpion shake itself out of the sand on the shore. The scorpion immediately targetted Alex who was midair with its tail ready to attack him.

However, Alex wasn't worried in the slightest. There were two things different about him from the last time he had come here.

The first thing was that he knew now that toxins, or at least, all poisons and venoms he had come across to at this point, including the scorpion's venom were useless against him.

The second thing was that he now had a body cultivation base at Meridian Tempering 1st realm, which was a lot different than what he had last time.

So, the scorpion was no threat to him.

He brought up his sword as he reached the other shore and slashed it down before him. The scorpion's tail was cut in a single slice.

With the next strike, he cut the scorpion's head off. Once the scorpion was head, he slashed his sword in midair to throw away any blood that was on it and started walking.

He had about 3 days to go somewhere and return, so he started searching for yang jades along the shore.

He decided to go around in a zigzag way so he could cover the most area while not missing a single yang jade along the way.

He walked for a few hours while constantly fighting the beasts. The beasts around here were mainly around Muscle Tempering, so he didn't have to worry at all.

Alex grabbed the giant snake's lower jaw and pierced his sword from the bottom before cutting open the snake's skull.

He didn't even get out of breath when he killed the snake. It was all too easy for him. At least, for now.

"Damn, why are there no yang jades around at all?" he wondered. He took out a piece of food from his storage bag and ate it.

He was till not getting any sense from his body at all about the yang jades, which was very weird. He walked on for a few more hours and there was still no sign.

Soon, night fell and chilly air started running through the desert, or at least he expected it too, but there wasn't any chill in the air.

"Why does it not get cold in here? Why does it not rain? Why do clouds never stay in the sky long enough?" Alex asked, but there was no answer.

So, he shook his head and walked further along. "Damn this is slow. I wonder if the boat works here," Alex thought and forcefully brought out the massive boat.

Alex could barely cover the entire boat with his spiritual sense, so it was to pull it out under the suppression. Even then, he did it and it fell with a thud.

It didn't float up in the air like it should have so Alex went to the front compartment and checked the True Spirit stones there.

"I see," Alex said when he realized all the spirit stones had grown dull. They has lost their slight glow and were simply a normal stone now.

"Wait, I'm sure I changed these a little while before I  came back to the Scarlet city. So, it must be the environment. Well, it at least proves my hypothesis of artifacts not working here, I guess," Alex thought and put the boat back into the storage bag.

He then looked back and realized that he could barely see the silhouette of the cliffs now. They were so far away.

"How far have I come? 2 kilometers? 3 kilometers?" Alex wondered. The distance from the river shouldn't have been that far away when he really thought about it.

"If logic were to work in this place, given the way the Crimson Empire is set up, there should be an ocean at the top of the map, which is where I'm headed. But…" Alex thought as he looked further ahead.

"It should take me days to fully traverse the whole place. Given the average width of the crimson empire based on the maps, it's about a little longer than the distance between Scarlet city and the Cardinal city."

"So, if I wanted to see the ocean… I would have to walk straight for days. But who knows how dangerous the beasts get as I go forward," Alex thought.

"Whatever, let's just find whatever it is I am attracted to and retu—"

Suddenly, Alex felt a very low level of vibrations from the sand below him. He looked around and saw that the sands slowly slide down from the small dunes around him.

"An earthquake?" Alex thought but it wasn't. The low-level vibration persisted for a while and instead of going away, it got bigger and bigger.

Alex didn't dare move as he was unsure of what was happening and just looked around carefully. Finally, he saw what was causing the vibration.

'A storm?' he thought at first when he saw the clouds, but soon he realized that the storm was made up of yellowish-brown particles.

"A storm of sand," Alex cried out in surprise. He looked around for places to shelter himself, but couldn't see anything aside from the dunes of sand.

He then once more looked at the storm and decided to handle it himself. He braced for the impact and took the full brunt of the storm's attack.

Surprisingly, it was very easy. It looked like the storm wall would be quite dangerous, but there wasn't any damage.

"Oh, it's quite f— COUGH COUGH-COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH" unknowingly, he breathed in a lot of sands in the air and started coughing very loudly.

Without hesitation, he took off his upper robes and hid his face with them. He started breathing through the cloth as he coughed out the sands he had just taken in.

He got onto his knees and hid his face in his laps while breathing through the cloth. He was currently a mortal. A very strong body cultivator, but a mortal nonetheless.

If he couldn't breathe for a few minutes, he would easily succumb to death.

Alex did nothing but keep his face hidden from the storm as the storm raged on for another 10 or so minutes. But these 10 minutes seemed t last an eternity for him.

He waited and waited and waited, and finally, the storm was over. He could finally let go of his cloth.

Alex tried to lift his head up to see if it was alright but soon realized that there was a lot of sand on top of him.

He quickly jumped out of the sand and dusted himself. He started spitting out sand and even took out some water to cleanse his mouth before drinking some.

"God! What was that? I don't want to experience that ever again," Alex thought. He looked around and realized that the general location he was in just now was totally changed.

Nothing around him looked like what it used to just a few minutes earlier. 'That storm changed everything here?' he thought in surprise. He really didn't know a lot about deserts so he was surprised to see this happen.

"Huh? That's weird," Alex thought and spit on his finger before lifting his finger up high. "There was just a storm, why is there no wind anymore?"

This confused him quite a bit, but no matter what he did, he couldn't feel any wind. ' That's not how storms work, right?' he thought trying to remember if the calm after the storm was ever a thing.

Just as he was thinking that he heard something move in the sand. Alex immediately turned back and saw a worm wriggle its way out of the sand.

Alex looked at it and suddenly noticed another one wriggle out, then another and another. Soon, there were nearly 15 worms that came out of the sand at the same spot.

"That's quite unusual. Why didn't your guys come out before the storm? I'm sure I was making more noise before that. Or was it the storm that woke you up," Alex asked and gripped his sword?

Without a single hesitation, he ran towards the closest worm there was. The worm saw Alex approach it and opened its mouth to attack, but a single slash from Alex killed it immediately.

Then, the other worms started making their way towards him too. One after another, Alex killed every single one of the worms.

He chopped in half the final worm and finally sighed. "Damn, that was hard. These were either very high Bone Tempering realm, or low Organ tempering real beasts."

"How are they even here? Aren't there only supposed to be weaker bone tempering beasts here? Or am I mistaken?" Alex wondered.

He looked at the corpses around him but had no way of finding an answer. So, he just cleaned his sword and started walking in his original direction once more.