563 Testing and Training

-True Lord 1st Realm-

"Oh, I got a little stronger huh? 1 step above my cultivation realm," Alex thought at first, his mind unable to comprehend the increase in strength his body had shown through the puppet.

However, when he did, he had to look back once again to make sure he read it right.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. True Lord? What the… how did I reach True Lord already? That's like 3 minor realms higher," Alex thought.

He was about 5th Mind Tempering realm in body cultivation when he fought the old man, and now he was at 1stTrue lord realm.

'Did I get stronger due to my body surviving the poison… or? No, it's gotta be the fruit of the tree, right?' he thought.

If the tree alone was able to make the ground molten lava, then surely he was burned really bad by it as well. He couldn't imagine how much pain he must've gone through at that time.

He silently thanked the poison for damaging his pain receptors at the time.

"Then what about my cultivation base?" he wondered. He couldn't use his body to hit the puppet due to his body cultivation interfering with the result, so he needed to use a ranged attack.

'Hmm… I only have 3 attacks I can use,' he thought. He had a Supreme Metal root, so it would give a wrong assessment as well. So, the Iron Fist punch was out of the question as well.

He decided to use Palm of the Sun in the end. Alex pulled back his hand and sent out a palm-shaped vibrant yellow attack forward.

The flying palm hit the wooden puppet and showed another piece of information.

-True Disciple 9th realm-

"Wait what?" he exclaimed. That was 7 realms higher than his cultivation was at before. Considering he could always fight 4 realms higher in the self-tempering realm, which would become 3 realms higher in True realms, this meant that his cultivation base was now at True Disciple 6th realm.

'I broke through 4 times without knowing?' Alex thought in surprise. He wondered how he even broke through while his body was busy evolving into a higher grade one.

"Oh wait!" he thought. "Since my body's grade went up, my Qi must've improved along with it as well. That would make sense why I got so strong, instead of it being me breaking through."

"Still, it got strong enough to make my strength go up by a whole 7 realms? That's busted," he thought. Just as he was thinking that another thought came to his mind and a sneaky smile appeared on his face.

"Wait, does that mean I can put out True Master 1st realm attack if I use my metal skill?" he thought.

Alex got into stance once more and punched towards the wooden block. A fist-shaped golden attack flew through the air and struck the wooden puppet again.

Alex waited to see the result, and when it popped up… he got confused.

-True Disciple 9th realm-

"Hmm… wait, what?"

Both of his attacks returned the same damage. This was super confusing to him since he was expecting his metal attacks to deal damage a step higher than his yang attack.

Suddenly, a thought came to Alex.

"No way," he thought. Without thinking, he created a ball of fire, turning it into the shape of an arrow and shot it directly at the wooden puppet.

-True Disciple 8th realm-

"Woah!" Alex thought. His disbelief slowly cleared away as his excitement started reaching sky high.

Without hesitation, Alex put up his palm and tried to create yang Qi from it.

Yellow Qi escaped from his arm and moved in the air, all according to his will. It changed shape, increased in density, and even went back to his body.

"YES!" Alex shouted out loud.

His Yang spiritual root had evolved to become a Supreme Yang Spiritual Root.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Alex jumped around excitedly. "I can't believe I forgot about root promoting. After encountering such a rare Yang treasure, obviously, it would've evolved."

He smiled happily and said to himself, "2 down, 5 to go."

Alex continued his testing for a while and understood that those two elements were indeed anomalies. Other elements as expected gave him an attack equivalent to that of a True Disciple 8th realm cultivator.

Still, all of this wasn't really necessary since his physical body alone was stronger than half the elders in this sect.

He was now a little more confident that he could save Pearl easily.

Once he was done testing his strength, Alex felt annoyed that he still couldn't tell his own cultivation base at all. He was way too used to having the system tell him what his cultivation base was that he himself couldn't tell it anymore.

'Dammit, I will have to learn that all over again. For now, let's forget about it. I will ask master later when I see him,' he thought.

He finally stopped testing and started training. He started training.

The training was simple. He just had to follow what the technique in the stele had instructed him to do.

Alex took a deep breath and started by releasing his spiritual energy. Unlike the spiritual sense, the energy came directly from the spiritual sea itself.

Alex could see the slight yellow liquid changing to a slight yellow mist as it appeared in front of him.

"Release a bit of the spiritual sea," he said to himself. He continued with the instruction and said, "condense the energy as dense as you—"

The mist dissipated before he could even move on to the next step. "I need to concentrate more," he told himself and restarted.

He released a bit of the spiritual sea which came out of his mind in the form of a mist and landed on top of his palm.

He then concentrated hard on slightly yellow mist to condense it as well as he could. He concentrated for minutes as he condensed the mist as well as he could, and then released more to condense that onto the condensed mist as well.

Soon, the mist was starting to take a pale yellow, ethereal form that was slowly taking the shape of a sword. The sword he had chosen was the Steel sword he had now lost.

Alex concentrated to keep it in that shape. He couldn't focus on anything else.

Finally, the sword took form and Alex tried to grasp it. However, when he did, his hands passed through the hilt, giving him a bit of a surprise.

In his surprise, he lost a bit of his focus, and the whole sword came unraveling into wisps of mist once again and disappeared.

Alex sighed. He hadn't assumed this would be an easy task, but he hadn't expected it to be this difficult either.

He focused once more and tried to recreate it. It took a while, but he successfully made it again.

He then tried to grasp it again, and same as last time, his hands went through the hilt of the sword.

"Hmm… how am I supposed to use this if I can't even hold it?" he thought. Just keeping the shape in the form of a sword alone was taking all the concentration he could afford.

If he wanted to use this ability, then he would likely need to be more proficient in making the sword.