Alex walked out far enough out of the city that even if another Sun Wraith were to suddenly be born in a similar explosion, no one would have to be worried about anything.
It was morning still, with the sun somewhat up in the shimmering sky that they called the Prison Wall. There was no Shadow Dance happening yet as it wouldn’t happen in the morning.
‘There aren’t many beasts close by,’ Alex thought.
Most beasts with sunhearts tried to stay clear of other beasts with sunhearts. And since the city had a massive collection of sunhearts, every beast believed it to be the strongest creature around and stayed very far away.
So one had to go a large distance out before they found any beast during the day.
Alex felt an intense heat in the desert even though it was only morning. He hadn’t felt it be this hot even in the noon when he had walked to the city with Tala.
That only went to show him just how good the sunheart was at guarding a person from the heat of the desert.
Alex had 7 sunhearts until yesterday, and now he has zero. All of his sunhearts had ended up infecting the beast cores, which now carried all the energy of a sunheart, but none of its effects.
A True realm beast was nowhere near strong enough to have a soul of its own, so the Sunheart had to use what little scrap of Spiritual energy that was inside of the core to create the Sun Wraith.
That reminded Alex of how it was with his own body. He could eat a beast core and a mindless beast would form in his Spiritual Sea, attacking him.
It also weirdly reminded him of what Bai Jingshen had done to the Dragon Emperor’s body, reviving a soul from the corpse despite it having already died long before.
‘The same fundamental rule must be being used in all of these cases,’ Alex thought. What that rule was, he wasn’t certain exactly.
Alex continued walking through the desert in search of any place where he could just sit and wait, but he couldn’t find any. It was all sand dunes as far as his eyes could see.
All he could do then was find a tall sand dune and wait in its shade for a few hours before the sun climbed higher into the sky.
Alex sat and looked around for any emerging beasts. Most beasts hid during the day, so it was unlikely he would meet any here. He pulled out one of the glowing beast cores and looked at it.
He had it on him instead of in a storage bag, since it was bound to explode at any time, and in doing so would destroy the storage bag it was in. Storage bags were easy to come by with so many beasts, but he still didn’t want to waste any.
He looked at the beast core closely, and saw the yellow energy inside of it swirling wildly. The energy was incubating the spirit inside, slowly turning it into a Sun Wraith.
“What an apt name,” Alex thought at that moment. “Did they intentionally name it that, or was it a coincidence?”
Alex still felt the burning sensation that came from his touch with the Sun Wraith. It burned his skin exactly the way the sun did in space. It wasn’t of the same intensity, but it had the same effect.
He couldn’t wait to meet the next Sun Wraith. He waited for a long time for the Sun Wraith to form. The others had told him that the rest may end up taking some time, but he hoped it wouldn’t be so.
He didn’t want to have to stay in the desert for too long with absolutely nothing to do.
His hopes didn’t pan out in the end, and by noon, Alex was already busy training his Intent. The glowing beast core flew around his palm, moving in and out while following his command.
He had gotten far better at controlling something and making it float, so he needed to start changing things a little, adding other obstacles in the way.
Alex got bored after a while and began meditating to see what answers he could gather regarding his blood technique. Without the heaven to aid him in finding his answers with the help of his Dao, Alex had to entirely rely on himself, and that was a problem.
At least if he was in a place with heaven, he would at least figure out by now whether the Dao was even of use in fixing Blood techniques or not. Instead, he had to carry on doing the same thing, hoping it would work.
He was, however, beginning to see the threads that made up this tapestry. He would soon find a frayed edge somewhere and begin to unravel the entire thing. The day he was done with it, he would have all the pieces he needed to form a new tapestry, one that would be in his design.
He would make the technique work that day.
The sun began setting as evening fell. Soon, beasts would begin pouring out onto the surface, so Alex wondered if he should continue staying where he was, or if he should leave this place to go to another location that might have fewer beasts.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t imagine what other place there would be where there were no beasts at all. So, he decided to stay all the same. He prepared to fight the beasts that would come out at any time soon, but instead of beasts showing up, Alex felt something else instead.
He looked down at his waist and felt the heat from one of the beast cores get uncomfortably strong. He pulled it out of his sash before it burned it and looked at it.
The core now fully glowed a pale yellow like the sun, with the energy swirling inside too bright for him to see. The energy inside was growing strong and hotter, a clear sign that the Sun Wraith would be born at any moment now.