Alex didn’t know if he was more angry or impressed at his current situation. Despite his Immortal realm strength, a bunch of people with cultivation strength no higher than True realm had managed to tie him down to a point where he couldn’t even do anything to escape.
His body itself did not listen to him, let alone his Qi.
Somehow, these people had managed to come up with an array that could effectively neutralize any enemy they came across.
Alex was dragged through the desert, with his hands tied to a long spear that was held on either side by two people that pulled him forward. Multiple spears were pointed at him, ready to attack the moment he did anything he shouldn’t have.
The pressure on his mind from the array had lowered significantly, but everyone was still alert at every moment, ready to increase the intensity of the array at a moment’s notice.
While the pressure had lessened, the only thing that went away was the pain. He was still incapable of doing anything else. In fact, he would likely still be feeling the pain had he not been constantly fighting back against the combined Intent of nearly 50 different people, all used effectively through an Array.
They mostly left him to his own thoughts, not a single one trying to converse with him. He did hear the talk between the others and gathered as much information as he could.
The first thing he now knew was that these people thought he was an enemy of theirs, a saboteur who had come to disrupt the ceremony. He didn’t yet know what the ceremony was though, as none of them made any comment about it.
The other thing he knew now was that these people believed him to have come deeper from the desert. Alex didn’t know how they judged him to be that. Had they realized that he had a strong Qi somehow?
Did they even know what having a strong Qi was like?
“It’s the Grayhounds, no doubt,” the chief’s daughter, Xichen’s angry voice carried through to Alex from the front. “That bastard Tailun wants to stop me from becoming an Extolite. I’ll kill him the next time I see him.”
“Could it be Grayhounds?”
“I was sure it was the Stoneclaws who hired him.”
“Are we sure he was hired by someone?”
“I’m still not entirely sold on the fact that he’s not Death.”
“I can’t think straight. I need someone to switch places with me in the array soon.”
“Hang in there. We just have a few more hours.”
Alex paid attention to everyone’s conversation, noticing different things. ‘I’m not the only one suffering from this. The people holding up the array are suffering too.’
That was the clearest evidence that the array they were using wasn’t powered by anything but Intent. And because of how much untrained Intent depended on a person’s cultivation base to improve their Spiritual energy, these people were individually not as strong.
Alex tried to imagine thousands of Immortals using this very array in a battle. He feared they could even take down a high-level Divinity. ‘Such a strange, and yet incredible array.’
Alex noted the other things that were said. Stoneclaws and Grayhounds sounded like the names of tribes. Were these rival tribes, perhaps? He wondered what the name of the tribe these people belonged to was.
The other thing that Alex noted were these people’s names.
Runin, Xichen — these were names that were so very similar to the ones from outside of Hell. It was as though Hell was still somehow connected to the world outside, even though it clearly wasn’t.
However, nothing he had learned today could surprise him more than what he had learned just an hour earlier.
Death was a woman.
He envisioned a woman with black hair and fair skin. Hundreds of images came to his mind, ranging from Hannah to Hao Ya to many other women he had seen in his lifetime.
Unlike everyone else in Hell, Alex didn’t find such a figure surprising at all. Now that he knew what Death looked like, he wanted to know who or what Death really was.
What would someone have to do to be named something as sinister as Death? To have their stories spread to the far edges of the continent.
Alex tried to continue listening for much longer, but he was slowly losing the battle against the array. The constant struggle to fight against their Intent was slowly whittling down his own spiritual energy.
And the more it was whittled down, the harder it became to keep pushing against the pressure.
Slowly, the pain returned — not excruciating, but not bearable either.
Alex knew that if this kept up for longer, he would have to fight the pain or let it keep attacking him until he could no longer fight back. So, he decided to go out on his own terms.
He slowly lowered his side of the struggle, letting the pain hurt him deeply. At the same time, he directed his Intent elsewhere, attacking the seal.
The combined strength of the array and the rebound from the seal was strong enough that in just one sweep, Alex was knocked out, no longer having to feel any pain.
Alex didn’t know how long he had been knocked out for, but when he got his consciousness back, everything he owned had been taken away, leaving him with nothing but his clothes.
As he got up, he looked around. It was the middle of the night, but he could see the structure he was in. He was in a patio of sorts, with four large stone pillars holding up a roof that seemed to have been made out of bones and leathers.
He was on a simple bed, no different than what he had with the Baylords. They seemed to have left him out in the open for some reason.
He looked around to see if that was true and noticed half a dozen people standing around the place, seemingly guarding him, facing away from him.
His head still hurt.
‘Where the hell am I?’
