813 Rewards

Alex woke up not even a few hours later. When he did, Helen explained everything that happened.

"Makes sense," he said as he nodded to himself. "I revealed my true strength, so they would obviously be curious."

"Do you plan on telling them why you are strong?" Helen asked.

Alex mulled for a bit, but he couldn't see any reason to not explain it to them. Explaining would actually help him get these elderlies off his back.

However, at the same time, his explanation wouldn't make sense to them. Would they believe him when he told them that the reason why he could fight those above him was that his Qi was very, very dense? Would he tell them how they had to be born with one-of-a-kind bodies to have these sort of dense Qi?

Or would he tell them that he happened to find a cat that could help his body cultivate without any other aid?

Could he even tell them that the reason why his spiritual sense was so strong was that he had been improving it by not only eating pills but also eating beast cores wherein he absorbed the mental capabilities of the beasts whose cores he ate?

None of these would ever make sense to them and they would only think of him as a liar who was trying to hide something much more important to himself.

At that point, it was better just to keep the answers to himself.

"I won't tell them. They can find on their own," Alex said.

He spent the rest of the night cultivating to get back the Saint Qi he had used up today. Saint Qi even by itself was so very strong, and given that it was extremely dense as well, he could switch up his Five Yang Divine Path technique and go one step ahead.

Once he entered the Saint realm and his Qi was naturally always Saint Qi, Alex could start using the Immortal cultivation technique among the five techniques.

After the night was over and the sun rose up, Alex stopped cultivation. He went around the city with his mother to view the various things.

Around early noon, he then went to the arena once more.

The old man, from the time when he was accused of cheating, was inside a room, waiting for the top 16 to gather.

Alex arrived and immediately mingled with the elites that were more than welcome to talk to him about various things.

He could see their elder's influence in their voices when they asked how he was strong or had better spiritual sense and stuff. But he mostly played it safe and didn't say anything other than some vague hints at some backing helping him.

With the jaguar's presence known, they would assume that Alex was talking about the beasts.

"Gather up everyone," the old man spoke up a few minutes after everyone had arrived. "First of all, let me congratulate you all on achieving what most would only ever even dream of."

Alex listened to the old man speak, but his eyes were always focused on the group of people gathered behind him with storage bags in a golden tray.

"Those who placed 9th through 16th, please walk forward," the old man said.

8 people stepped forward from the group of finalists and 8 staff members walked forward holding a golden tray with a storage bag on it.

Each one of them was awarded one of the storage bags, the contents of which were not made public at all.

The staff disappeared and 4 new ones appeared with the same thing.

"All 4 Quarter-finalists, please step forward," the old man said.

Alex saw Lu Yan, Han Daiyu, Song Shing, and the princes walk forward and accept their rewards.

"Fu Tao, please step forward," the old man said and brought out a sole storage bag.

Fu Tao walked up and accepted his reward.

Finally, it was time for the Top 3 to accept their rewards. Alex stepped forward and so did Liang Qiu and Guo Chiang.

Unlike in the alchemy competition, none of them were told what the reward for winning the competition would be. As such, Alex was more than excited to learn what they were.

The old man handed them all each their own storage bags and congratulated them.

Alex wasted no time and checked the bag with a speed that nearly matched the other two. His spiritual sense entered the storage bag and… he was shocked.

'So much stuff,' he thought. From what he could see, there were about 40 to 50 thousand True Spirit stones, quite a few talismans, and pills. A few different foods and ingredients that would aid one whether it was for Alchemy or artifact creating.

There was a True armor, sword, and even a defensive mental artifact in there that totally surprised Alex. He hadn't expected to get so many items, but even then he thought something was missing.

'There's no Saint ranked item?' he thought. Even the Alchemy competition had 3 saint-ranked items. Surely something like this tournament didn't miss it, right?

As Alex thought that, the old man brought out a different storage bag and handed it to Guo Chiang.

"Look through them and keep what you like," the old man said. "You only get one."

Guo Chiang nodded and peeped through the bag. Alex couldn't help but wonder what was in that bag, but it would take time for him to see it.

It was most likely Saint-ranked artifacts that Guo Chiang would get to see. However, if Alex wasn't wrong, the bag would then pass onto Liang Qiu before coming to him, in which case, he most likely would not have a choice on what he would get.

'Well, a Saint-ranked artifact is a Saint-ranked artifact nonetheless,' Alex thought.

Guo Chiang's face was one of a dilemma as he stared at the bag for a good while. He couldn't seem to choose anything at all.

Alex wondered what could be in it that he had to be so deliberate about everything.

In the end, he took out a magnificent sword that was dark blue all over and looked at it out in the open.

"I will take this," he said roughly.

The bag passed onto Liang Qiu, whose face changed to delight when her sense entered the bag. As if she understood what she had to take the moment the bag fell in her hand, she quickly took something out and placed it directly onto her bag.

The motion of it was so quick that Alex couldn't even see what she had taken out.

Finally, the bag landed on Alex's arm and his senses hugged it like it was his long-lost child.

As soon as it entered, he saw exactly 3 different things inside.

The first one was a green armor with a talisman attached to it. Alex read the talisman and learned about the armor.

It was called the Gardener's Armor. It was a Wood element-aligned armor that was capable of protecting people from any attacks below the Saint Foundation realm, given that the person wearing had Saint Qi in them.

Otherwise, it was still capable of such protection, but for a single attack only.

In addition to that, when activated, the armor was capable of increasing your movement speed by a lot. The increase depended on the person, but generally, it was always over 50%.

Alex thought for a moment. The armor wasn't bad at all. Ignoring the movement thing, it could block attacks from anyone under the Saint Foundation realm as long as he had Saint Qi, which he was starting to have.

However, when he really thought about it, Alex quickly realized how bad this was for him.

'Wait, the moment I hit saint realm, this armor becomes useless to me,' Alex thought. With Saint realm's saint Qi, Alex's own defensive technique would make him better than the armor.

He shook his head and moved on to the next thing that was in the bag.

His senses fell on a bow and Alex immediately frowned. He read the information for the sake of reading it, but nothing about the weapon appealed to him at all. He shook his head as it was an automatic skip for him.

Finally, Alex's eyes fell on the third and final saint artifact that was inside the storage bag.

A pristine, white mask.