711 Inner Demon

"Who are you?" Alex asked. By now, the only explanations he could think of were that someone was either using spiritual sense to talk with him or that their spiritual sense was way too strong for him to notice it.

Or… he was back. He was back and he was taking it back just like he said he was.

"You know who I am," the voice said. "You know what you took from me."

"NO!" Alex said. "It wasn't yours to begin with."

"I cultivated so hard, day and night, not you. I took all the pain, the suffering, not you. It was I who lost my arm, not you," the voices said. "It was I who had to watch my master die, not you."

"If you think you can just take over the life I created and live it out like you were the one who worked hard, then you are a bigger idiot than I would have thought you to be," the voice said.

"No!" Alex said. "You're wrong. It wasn't yours. It's mine."

"Yours? Like Pearl is yours?" the voice asked. "You already know you are ruining his cultivation by keeping him, and yet you still haven't taken him back?"

"There is a chance he will die if he goes back," Alex said.

"There is a chance he will die if he stays with you," the voice said.

"You know he will soon be very weak for you. At that time, I know you will just abandon him. I know that because I am you," the voice said.

"No, I would never abandon Pearl," Alex said.

"Never? Like you never abandoned MY master? Like you never abandoned MY senior sister? Like you never abandoned all the relationships that I created back in the Crimson empire?"

"The moment you saw a way out, you took it. Because that is what you do. You abandon people," the voice said.

Alex tried to ignore the voice, but it was getting to his head.

"A dead father, a dead master. I bet Hannah is already dead on the other continent too. Same for Aunt Liz in the Northern continent."

"Soon, there will be a dead and abandoned Pearl too."

"How many more family members do you need to lose before you realize just how weak you are," the voice said. " You are going to lose mother--"

"NOOOOO!" Alex suddenly got out of his cultivation trance in a fit of rage.

The Qi circulation he had been maintaining suddenly went haywire and Alex started feeling pain all over his body.

It wasn't a very intense pain, but it was worrying as he felt it all over his meridians and even his naval area.

Alex quickly sat back down to circulate his Qi and only after a few minutes did he get it back on track. By that time, however, the damage was done.

Alex put on a sour face as he realized that his peak True Lord 9th realm cultivation had dropped to the point where it felt like he had just broken through a month or so ago.

He had lost nearly 2 months' worth of cultivation because of a single mistake.

'I went through Qi Deviation?' Alex thought with nothing but shock on his face.

'Why? How?' he thought.

The fear and anger he had felt just minutes ago when he had been cultivating were no more.

'Was that… not real?' he thought to himself. 'It felt so real though.'

Alex felt like he had been in a dream moments ago. When in the dream, he didn't realize that it was a dream, but now that he was awake, he could tell it wasn't real.

'What happened again?' he thought to himself, but slowly he started forgetting what the events that led to him going through Qi Deviation were.

It was the same as dreams. Once awake, he forgot what the dream was about. Not even Alex's eidetic memory helped with that.

Right now, Alex only remembered the feeling he had felt. Slowly, he was starting to forget the feeling too. Soon, he would only remember that he remembered feeling fear and anger.

"So many days of cultivation wasted just like that," he thought as he checked himself.

In the end, since there was nothing else he could do, he sat down and started cultivating to start fixing what he had just broken.

* * * * * * *

A week later, Alex was standing on top of a Teleportation formation in the DawnSpring city, ready to go visit the capital to see the Formation competition.

After his failure during cultivation, he told what happened to his mother and sect master Qin, both of whom seemed to have no idea what he was talking about.

So, Alex had gone to check the library to see if there was any information there. Unfortunately, the library wasn't as useful as he would have hoped it would be.

The only other way he could think of was to either go to the Han family or Heaven's Peak school and find Han Hongqi or Shangguan Quan there to ask them what had happened to him.

However, if he did so, there was a chance they would put him in their debt and force him to join them. He didn't like the idea of that one bit.

So, he decided to go to the capital and see if there is information there. Unfortunately, due to the competition, the teleportation formations were packed and he couldn't use them at all.

Except, the Formation guild could, and he had been invited to go with them not long ago.

So, Alex took the chance to go together with them and watch the competition while at the same time trying to figure out what could have possibly happened to him during the breakthrough that made him fear and angry to the point that he went through Qi Deviation.

His mother was happy to see him go see the world after staying with her for 2 years. Now that Alex thought about it, 2 years was the longest he had ever stayed anywhere in this world.

It took the Formation guild 2 trips to reach the Capital, with them having to go through Lightborn city.

Once they reached the capital, all the guild membered were taken through the afternoon heat towards a busy street that ended on a massive hotel that would be housing them for the next week.

Alex got settled onto a room all by himself, one of the perks of being a True Heaven ranked formation master. Once he was settled, he decided to leave and go to the capital library.

Since the competition was tomorrow, he could spend the rest of the day today looking through information.

Alex quickly found the library not far away from where he was staying and started searching through books that had anything to do with problems on breakthroughs or Qi Deviation.

The books gave many reasoning such as a mismatch between one's cultivation path and cultivation technique, a deep injury to the body or the soul, lack of potential, and poisons, and yet none of the explanations matched Alex.

Alex continued searching for the information, but even until the next morning, he found nothing in the nearly five-story tall building.

Of course, had Alex known what he was searching for exactly, he would have realized how useless his search was.

Things that were only related to Saint realm experts were something that he would never find out in the open. Especially not in a public library.

Alex had yet to even know of a single Saint realm beside Saint Condensation that Qin Shan was in as there was no information out there.

There was no way he would ever find out information about Inner Demons on his own.

Finally, after realizing that his search was fruitless, Alex returned to the hotel, from where he was soon taken to the competition ground.

Over the next 7 days, for 4 different days with a break between each, Alex watched the Formation competition take place in a massive location that the guild had prepared.

From what Alex could see, the location was the exact same as the one for the Talisman competition.

It was perhaps the same location that was used for all 7 or maybe even 8 of the competitions.

The competition went smoothly throughout the entire week. There were a few twists and turns, but in the end, the winner of it was the person everyone had expected to win in the first place.

A young woman by the name of Fu Fanrou. The woman was 32 years old and had a cultivation base of about True Lord 8th realm and hailed from the Fu family, whose ancestor was a Saint rank formation master.

Her final, winning formation had been a formation with an Efficiency of 77%.

Judging by the rest of the group in the competition, Alex guessed that had he taken part, he would have most definitely come in the top 5 amongst them.

He was feeling glad he didn't take part in it. Seeing the people surrounding the woman before she could even leave the competition ground, Alex was sure the swarm he would get would not be less than this.

Once everyone started leaving after the cultivation was over, Alex too stood up and left. Tomorrow, after the rewards were distributed, they would all be taken back home.

However, along the way to the hotel, Alex saw something that gave him a feeling that he should perhaps not return.

'I've done so much already,' he thought to himself. 'I can't stop now.'

So, instead of returning with the group back to the DawnSpring city, Alex decided to stay.

He decided to stay and go join the LightSworns.

It was time to once and for all figure out if the princess could get him his arms back.