560 Celestial Grade
Pressure crashed on Alex like a rock being tossed over him. He felt his knees buckle as he was pushed to the ground.
He gritted his teeth as he kept his bones from cracking under the pressure.
Suddenly, something warm appeared from deep within him. No, this wasn't warm. This was hot. It was undoubtedly hot.
Once the heat traveled all over his body, the pressure on him subsided by a lot. Alex no longer felt the pressure pushing him to the ground and stood up perfectly fine.
The girl's eyes shined in surprise when she saw him stand up. She noticed something and let go of her aura.
Alex took the chance to attack her again. He rushed towards her, with his arm glowing golden.
"Hey don—" the girl had decided to stop fighting, but Alex attacked her anyway.
Just then, something very fantastical happened. Right when Alex's punch was about to reach her, her body turned illusory, like she was a ghost.
Alex's punch went through her without even touching her. Even the talisman she held in her hand had turned illusory.
"What the hell?" Alex thought in surprise. However, he didn't let the surprise hold him back. He immediately turned around and sent out a palm attack.
A yellow palm flew towards the girl.
"You should know by now your attacks won't harm me," the girl said as the palm reached her. She expected the palm to go past her, but instead of doing that, it actually pushed her back a little bit even in her illusory form.
'What?' her eyes went wide in surprise. 'How did he manage to do anything to me in my Ethereal form?'
Just as she was thinking that another attack landed on her. A mental attack.
Suddenly, she felt her mind burn in slight pain. "Aah!" she cried out, momentarily coming out of her illusory form.
Alex noticed that and smiled. He could steal it now. However, he extremely over-expected how long his Heaven's impact would work on her.
In a fraction of a second, the girl got rid of her headache and sent her her own mental attack at him.
Alex felt a brain-splitting headache and fell to the ground in pain. "AAHHH!" he cried out in pain. This was the first time he had ever suffered mental damage in all of his memory.
The girl looked at him in surprise, maybe even a bit of terror. 'How the hell is he still okay after taking the spiritual attack of a Saint Core cultivator?' she wondered.
She also started wondering as to why his mental attack even burned her. Not only that, the yellow palm, it had done some negligible damage to her too.
'That can only mean that his Yang is just that pure,' she thought. 'Does his body still hold the yang from the source he ate perhaps?'
She remembered how terrible the Yang energy that transferred to her master's mansion was. It was continuously being transferred for nearly 3 days, wrecking everything they had worked hard for the past few decades creating.
Not only that, her master actually wasn't able to stop that Yang at all. It had stopped on its own. All her master could do was try his hardest to free the suppressed soul of the players that were sent to the other world while removing the formations he had set on them.
About a minute later, Alex started recovering. His headache had become a lot more manageable.
The girl looked at her talisman and saw that there was merely half a minute before she disappeared.
'He's recovered already? So fast,' she thought. All the things that had happened with him had surprised her quite a bit.
She suddenly thought of something and asked, "Do you have a unique body?"
"What?" Alex asked, trying to stand up.
"I don't have time. Do you have a unique body? The system must have given it a name right?" she asked.
"Ughh! It was Sun God's Divine Yang body," Alex said. Nobody really knew or had even heard of this body from what Alex remembered.
"I knew it," the girl silently said to herself. "So it's you, huh?"
"What?" Alex looked up at her in confusion only to see her hand in front of him, asking for a shake.
Alex hesitated for a second, but after seeing her not retaliate despite him attacking her, he decided to reciprocate and shook her hands.
"My name is Hao Ya. You can call me sister Hao," the girl said.
"Sister Hao?" Alex asked.
"Yes, and congratulations," she said with a smile on her face as she understood something.
"For what?" Alex asked.
"Your body… it's evolved. That yang source you ate, while it destroyed the system, it also helped you evolve," Hao Ya said.
"My body… evolved?" Alex asked.
Hao Ya sensed the Qi gathering around her, just ready to teleport away.
"Wait around for 3 or 4 decades, please. Just cultivate and wait. You don't need to worry about your family and friends either. You have the other copy in there in your place," She said. A silver glow started appearing around her.
Alex sensed the energy coming off of the silver glow. Surprisingly, it was not energy he knew of.
'It's not one of the 7 elements?' he thought.
"I hope to see you doing well in a few decades, younger brother. Until then, just sit tight and cultivate," she said. The light consumed her and she started disappearing.
Just as she was gone, she said one last thing. "Please don't die. You are one of the only ones we can depend on." And she vanished.
Alex looked at the place where Hao Ya had previously been in with a surprised and confused expression. The information he got in the last half a minute was just too much for him to comprehend at once.
'Wait, what did she mean by depending on me? What am I supposed to do?' Alex thought.
He played back the things that had happened in this place as he walked out of the warehouse. His had been the longest time spent inside, so people started asking questions.
Alex gave them as clear of an answer as he could. He told them that if they stuck around for another 30 or more years, they would get a chance to go back to their home.
People got disappointed and even sad. That was expected. Alex himself felt similar feelings too. But just the information he had gotten about the 5th continent being his home-world, and that his body had evolved was enough to make him feel a little happy.
As for going back home, he just had to wait.
* * * * *
Hao Ya appeared in the mansion of her master. She went back to the courtyard to find him.
"Oh, you're back quite early, Hao Ya," the thin man with a ponytail looked at her as she appeared. He was sitting next to the small lake behind his house.
"Yes, master," she said.
The man looked at his clock and asked, "this was quite early though. I thought you would stay there for a few more days to gather information. Don't tell me you already gathered it."
"I did more than that actually," she said. "I found the culprit behind this."
"Oh," the man looked surprised. "There was a culprit?"
"Yes," she said. "Your guess of it happening on its own was wrong. The culprit, this kid named Alex, had eaten a yang source at the northern shore of the western continent."
"He ate a yang source? Such powerful yang should have incinerated him in an instant."
"That's what I thought too, but he was alive and well, aside from missing an arm. But then, I had this thought and I asked him to confirm this."
The man listened intently.
"The person that ruined all of this was the same person you had put so much of your expectations on," she said.
"I… did?" the man asked.
"It's the player that had the Sun God's Divine Yang body," she said. "And what's more, it's evolved."
"WHAT?" the man suddenly stood up and reached in front of her in an instant.
He grabbed her shoulders and looked at her with only seriousness in his eyes. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"Y-yes, master," she said. "He used a yang attack on me and managed to interact with me even when I was in my ethereal self. Also, his mental attacks have yang affinity to them."
The man sat back down on the ground.
"Oh yeah, there was also this weird thing. He had a storage ring with him, just like this one, but as far as you've told me, there shouldn't be any in the Western Continent, right?" she asked. "What more, he said he found it in the desert."
"A ring?" the man looked confused for a second before his eyes went wide. A memory from so long ago flooded back to his mind.
"THE RING!" he shouted. "The plant! That plant! He found the plant. Oh my god! It all makes sense now. No wonder our formations were destroyed. He found the plant!."
"Master?" Hao Ya looked a little scared seeing her master acting this crazy.
"Haha! I'm not even mad now. If having our systems being ruined means him evolving his body to a Celestial grade, then I'm all up for it," he said. [A/N: Ancient will now be replaced with Celestial]
"Aren't you too happy right now, master? Last time when you learned he had the Sun God's body, you were a little more serious, angry even," she said.
"Ah right, but that was only because I didn't know what sort of person he was. It would be a really bad thing if he wanted to do the wrong thing instead of the right."
"We would have to nip this in the bud if it were that," the man said. "So, how was he? Does he seem nice?"
"Well… he's impulsive, but that's probably because he saw the teleportation talisman in my hand and wanted to come back here. But, I don't think he's really a bad guy. He seemed polite enough, I guess," she said.
"Well, as long as he is not bad, I'm fine with that," the man said. He happily turned towards the lake and said, "you heard that old friend? I might just have done it this time."
The lake's water moved a little as a response.
"Right, what else happened? Tell me from the start," the man asked. Hao Ya recited everything about him, including the fact that he was aware of the game even when he should have been suppressed at the time.
"Hmm, maybe I made some mistake there," he said. "Also, you said he had an arm missing?"
"Yes," Hao Ya said.
"Poor kid," the man shook his head. "You gave him a pill to heal him, right?"
Hao Ya stopped talking as a feeling of embarrassment came over her. She scratched her head a little and said, "Ah… oops."
