There was one thing about the Yang aura Alex was consuming that he could not make sense of.
Why did it exist?
As far as he was aware, all energy or aura, regardless of any element—even Yang—naturally broke down until it was only as strong as a True Qi. So, he could not make sense of the Yang aura’s existence despite the fact that it was still there.
Of course, he wouldn’t complain about it. He finally had something to consume and grow after all. So, he did so henceforth without stopping.
Months passed soon, and so did years. Alex had some idea of how much time had passed, but since he hadn’t cared to remember, it was hard to tell. The lack of seasons in the desert especially made it impossible for him to tell.
But surely, it had been nearly a decade since he was first imprisoned.
Alex had done what he could within the prison while he was there, and the one thing he had improved the most was his Intent. His Intent was now strong enough to reach past the 18-meter range of the barrier and maybe even reach the 19th if he really tried for it.
The one issue was that the further he went, the stronger the barrier became, and the strength didn’t seem to be increasing at a steady rate either. It was exponentially increasing, albeit by a rather small degree.
So, to cross each meter, he needed to work that much harder.
For his cultivation, there hadn’t been much improvement, but he was sure he would soon break through. The main reason why his breakthrough lagged was because he needed to improve all 8 Origins to their required threshold before he could move on to the next realm.
And that was happening soon.
His Blood Beasts technique had seen no improvement, but that was understandable. He had no way to examine it without beast cores, so he didn’t have the time to see what could be changed.
He had, however, recently noticed something else that could help improve everything else very soon.
The hole in Alex’s prison had now grown much wider, making it a proper place to stay around in. Besides that, it had also been dug deep enough to reach 17 meters.
Two meters away from his maximum range, this was the perfect place for Alex to sit and cultivate to train his mind to handle the burden, while consuming the Yang energy.
That was why he had dug it even further recently, and it was at this time that he noticed something interesting.
The Yang energy at that range was much stronger than what he was sensing just two meters above.
At this range, the amount of energy he could consume was nearly twice as much.
Alex could feel that the Yang energy was in fact affected by the outside Intent that caused it to disperse into a weaker aura. Only, the Intent couldn’t do so much where he was, causing the Yang to disperse rather weakly.
Alex could not understand why that was, nor did he attempt to. Just the fact that he received such strong Yang energy was enough for him.
Although, that did make him wonder. Would the Yang energy further below be even thicker?
He was ready to dig even more, but on second thought stopped himself from doing so. There was no point in digging right now since he wasn’t strong enough to make use of that energy.
Just being in that region took everything he had. If he had to use his Dao of Yang on top of that, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. As a result, Alex knew he had to pace himself.
Alex continued at his own pace, slowly improving his Intent and Cultivation base. Little by little, he made his progress.
Then one day, as he was in the middle of compressing another small orb of pure Yang, the entire ground shook, and sand piled at the top of the opening cascaded down to try and swallow him.
Alex quickly stopped what he was doing and jumped up, getting out of the situation. He watched nearly two meters of sand pour into the hole that would later need to be dug out again.
He was rather annoyed at that. ‘I shouldn’t have left all the sand at the top,’ he thought. He should have moved it aside.
Regret aside, Alex looked around to see what was happening. His prison had only two guards now, and neither of them seemed to know what was going on. They talked in hushed voices among themselves, both trying to figure out the same thing as Alex.
Alex looked toward the city, but with his lowered elevation, he couldn’t see anything. Especially because it was nighttime, everything he saw was a vague silhouette with some glow from lanterns.
Although, he did think there was something brighter there today.
The ground shook again, and this time, he was sure he heard screams. Something was happening in the city. He was sure of it.
A buzz of sounds came a while later, along with more rumblings. The screams got louder and soon he could hear the people shouting more and more clearly.
There were some panicked voices, but seemingly taking actions despite their panic.
“Take that side.”
“I need 20 people here.”
“There’s too many.”
“Someone lure them away.”
“The prison.”
“Lure it to the prison.”
“Here?” Alex thought, curious what was going on. What were they trying to lure to this place?
The glow around the place was getting brighter and brighter, and then suddenly, something shot off into the sky.
A massive bird flew into the air, with burning wings leaving trails of fire in the night sky, flying toward where Alex was.
“A Phoenix?” Alex spat out in surprise. But when the bird got closer and he got to see it clearly, he came to understand that it was no phoenix at all.
“No…” he thought. “A Sun Wraith.”
