Alex let Pearl fight for a bit longer. He kept finding monsters a little stronger than last time and had Pearl fight them. In the end, it was still the massacre. The cute, little guy could kill anything a realm lower than him in a single swing of his palm. Even monsters in his own realm struggled to stay alive.
Only monsters 2 realms higher than him could threaten him.
Along the way, he had seen quite a few alchemy materials by now and had taken them whenever he found one. He then found an area devoid of alchemy ingredients and no other monsters around.
"Alright, that's enough training against monsters. I came here to train and see exactly how strong I have become compared to the environment."
He stood in front of a giant tree and reeled in his Qi so that it was hiding in his meridian and was no longer available around his body. His natural defense and offense dropped by over an entire minor realm.
He made a fist and punched straight into the tree. The tree was about 2 meters in thickness and Alex punches the exact center.
BOOM
The tree rustled as hundreds of leaves started falling. As for the place itself where he hit, there was a gaping hole, at least 20 cm deep. "Wow, that is more than I would've imagined. "
He looked at the hole and realized just how strong he was. "Fighting against people in your own range doesn't exactly help you understand this sort of thing, does it?" he thought.
He punched the tree a few more times and decided to use different attacks. Legs, elbows, shoulders, fingers, palm, chops. He used whatever he could. In the end, the tree fell down from the overwhelming amount of holes in it.
Alex wasn't even a little bit out of breath. He looked around with his spiritual sense to see if he had attracted anyone, but thankfully he hadn't. He proceeded to the next tree about the same size as this one.
He let the Qi he was keeping inside his meridian flow out to every part of his body. Power coursed through his body once more as his cultivation base returned back to Organ Tempering 3rd realm.
"Alright, let's see what happens with a minor realm higher cultivation base. Although I don't think my cultivation base counts as a normal cultivation base," he chuckled to himself as he thought about it.
He separates his cultivation from his body, but he couldn't separate his body from his cultivation unless he resorted to Qi-based attacks.
He prepped his fist once more, expecting to make a deeper hole this time. Without further ado, he punched the tree.
BOOM
This time the sound was so big, that it caught Alex himself off guard. He looked at his arm, or rather, he tried to look at his arm, but it was so deep inside the tree that it wasn't even visible anymore.
He sent his spiritual sense to see inside the tree where his fist was and realized that his fist wasn't actually touching anything. He slowly sent the spiritual sense forward and realized that beyond where he punched was another massive hole.
Following the hole, he realized that a chunk of the back of the tree's trunk had been entirely destroyed. He quickly pulled out his arm and walked to the back to look at the tree.
"Holy…" he was genuinely astounded at what he was seeing. The hole behind the tree was massive in size, almost as if an explosive had been set off right there. The small bits of the tree trunk were all over the ground in front of the hole.
"Am I really that strong?" he was curious. Without hesitation, he gave one solid kick to the side of the tree and the whole tree fell to the ground. Its truck had been decimated.
"This is beyond comprehension."
He tried attacking a bunch more trees, and the result was the same. Some trees were stronger and could survive a few more hits, but in the end, they didn't take more than 5 kicks and punches to go down.
"What about my techniques?" he wondered and took out his True Mortal sword. With the sword, it only took him a single hit to cleanly chop off the tree. He didn't even have to use the Smiting Blade technique or the 1st strike of Elusive Heavenly sword.
He threw around other techniques, sending Qi-based attacks to the trees nearby. Most of them fell down with a single attack. Especially Iron Fist Punch and Palm of the Sun, they were the cream of the crops among the abilities he had.
"I wonder when the growth abilities would level up," he wondered. He looked at the time and realized it was close to half-past 6, so he had to hurry back to the sect.
Instead of running, however, he decided to see how fast flying would be for returning. He manipulated his Qi to carry himself and was pleasantly surprised that he was taken off the ground pretty easily.
"Woah," he immediately slowed down the Qi outpour and balanced himself in mid-air. Then, he used the Qi to slowly push him from behind. At first, it was really slow, but soon enough, as he started using more and more Qi, he was flying at phenomenal speed. It was much slower than when using his movement speed but still moderately fast enough.
"Hmm… How about if I use the movement technique to remove all friction?" he wondered. He started moving his Qi to use Fluctuating Friction dance, as he coated his body with his Qi to make it have zero resistance with the Air.
Suddenly, his speed in the air pretty much tripled. It was now nearly as fast as when he walked, and before he knew it, he had arrived back to the sect.
He walked into the small gate and registered his name back. Thankfully, nobody had bothered to challenge him for a fight while he was gone.