Alex couldn't stop his tears from forming in his eyes as he spoke to his master.
The one-sided conversation included Alex talking about the various experiences and the knowledge Alex had gained throughout the years.
There was no one to speak back to him, but he continued talking for nearly 15 minutes.
He felt like a weight had been lifted off of him. Like he did something to help himself connect back to his roots, instead of forgetting it.
He wasn't sure why, but he felt like this would improve his chances of a breakthrough now that he had come here.
Alex sent out his spiritual sense around the grave and sensed a weak life force on the other side of the tree.
His master's beast companion, the snake was resting calmly behind the tree.
Alex smiled and stood up to leave. However, before he did so, he thought he should do something for the tree, for his master's sake.
He stood next to the tree and placed his hand on it. Then, he closed his eyes and started cultivating the Winter Moon technique.
Deep and cold Yin Qi flowed out of his naval area, nearly turning his skin blue. As it flower around his body, little by little, he poured some of it into the tree to help it.
The tree graciously accepted the Yin and Alex increased his input a bit more.
After a certain amount of time, the tree's third for Qi ended, and Alex slowed down his input until completely stopped his Qi circulation.
After that, he left the garden and arrived outside to see Lang Shun waiting for him.
"Come, the sect leader wants to meet you," he said.
Alex went to the sect leader's mountain, walking through the familiar yet different sceneries.
He saw his old house to the side, now occupied by someone based on his Spiritual sense.
He wanted to visit that house, but that was no longer his. He only just realized how much he had moved on from this place.
But that was what he was taught since childhood. To not be held back by something as fickle as emotions. No matter what, he had to keep moving forward.
Alex reached the sect master's house. This house looked completely different from what his master used to live in. After its destruction, it seemed they had decided to make some improvements.
Alex went into the house and met with the dark-haired, middle-aged man that was the new sect leader.
Alex remembered seeing this man, but he had never interacted with him, so this was in a way his first encounter.
"Greetings, fellow Daoist," the man said.
Alex greeted him back. It felt weird being greeted as equal rather than a junior. While Alex had been giving off some of his True King cultivation base's aura, he still expected to be treated like a disciple.
Seeing the sect leader refer to him as a 'fellow' took him aback a bit.
The man remembered Alex being talented, so he wanted to know how far he had come.
Alex didn't hide much, but he also didn't bother showing off much. So he simply told the man that he was a True Heaven alchemist and nothing more.
The sect leader was mostly interested in learning if Alex had new recipes and knowledge from the other empire he had gone to and wanted to know if he was willing to sell it to the sect.
Alex thought for a bit and said yes. He would sell a few of the new pill recipes he had, but instead of spirit stones, he wanted a book from the library.
"From our library? Sure," the sect leader said. No matter what book Alex got, it would never be as expensive as the recipes he would get, so he was totally up for it.
"I will pass along the recipe through some teachings I want to do for the disciples if you are okay with it," Alex said.
"Sure," the sect leader was more than happy to accept Alex's knowledge.
Once they finished talking, they walked out of the sect leader's house and walked down the mountain.
"Why did you give up so much for practically nothing?" Lang Shun asked.
Alex shook his head. "I care too much about the sect to care about giving things away for free," he said. "I was already planning to spread a few recipes here and there. Now I will get a technique in return," he said.
"What technique could possibly be worth so many new recipes?" Lang Shun asked.
"Well, there is one," Alex said as he walked towards the library. Along the way, he met up with his mother and took her along as well.
Once they reached the library, Alex was allowed free entry throughout the many floors of the library, but Alex didn't need much of it.
He quickly went to the place where they kept the Earth rank technique books and found the Mortal ranked book he was looking for.
"Here, mother. This is for you," he said.
"For me?" Helen was surprised. "What is it?"
She took hold of the old, rugged book and flipped to the first page before reading its name. "Flame Mastery Scripture? I think I've heard of this name before, haven't I?" she asked.
"It's the fire skill book I told you about that helps so much with handling flame during Alchemy," Alex said.
He poured a little Yang Qi into the book to test and as he had expected, the seal on it came undone.
Helen sat down right there and started reading it. Lang Shun was shocked to see the seal gone, but he simply assumed that Alex had learned some special techniques that worked on seals.
"She doesn't have to read it here," Lang Shun said. "She can take it back."
"No need, Martial Uncle. It won't take long," Alex said.
Helen closed the book not even a few seconds later and closed her eyes to read through her memories.
About 5 minutes later, she opened her eyes, completely learning the Flame Mastery Scripture. Or so Alex thought.
"I don't think I know the last bit of the language," she said.
"Sorry?" Alex said and took the book before reading through it himself.
The first level of the technique helped control the shape and temperature of the fire.
The second level gave more control over how fluid the shape and temperature were while allowing one to create fire on their own. This level of the technique made it an Earth rank technique, which was why this book was kept amidst the Earth rank techniques.
Looking at only the descriptions that would pop up on the screen, Alex would've never known this when he was a player.
Finally, the third and last level of the technique gave the user control over Fire Qi itself and could even help them wrestle control of it from someone else so long as their Qi was strong enough.
Furthermore, to Alex's surprise, there was a flame technique in there that slowly improved one's Fire spirit root if used for a long time. Granted, it seemed one needed to find fire treasures to do so.
The better the fire treasure was, the better it would improve one's roots.
This came as a big surprise to Alex as he had never expected something like that to be possible. However, when he thought about it, using elemental treasures was the way to improve one's spiritual roots.
Alex tried to recall the technique he just read, but he couldn't at all. It was like there was a part of his mind that was locked away from the rest of it.
'Is the technique stopping me from learning how to use it?' Alex thought. He read the book again to see what it wrote and only now did he realize that it was written in the Human language, rather than the demon language everyone was used to.
"No wonder you couldn't read the third part," Alex said. "I think there's a way to read this. I will try and ask sister Yao Jia for the language books. She should be able to help us."
"Still, you can only use the first two parts, for now, so you're not really missing anything," Alex said.
"Yes, I think I did understand the first two techniques," Helen said.
Alex looked through the book one last time before keeping it back on the shelf and walking out.