"You made the Earth pill and the Water pill," Gong Liuxian said. "You truly are amazing, young man."
"Does this mean you will start on the dao pill next?" the other man asked excitedly.
Alex gave an awkward smile as an answer. "To be honest senior, I don't want to work on any pills for a very long time now, especially new ones," he said. "So it will take me a while before I get to that pill."
"Oh, that's… well, take your time. There's no hurry," the old man said.
Since the pills were handed over, Alex decided to return back to his room.
He spent the next several days going through everything he thought he had missed. He read the talismans from the insight pavilion that included the information for anyone that was looking for his information.
Surprisingly — not that it should have been— there wasn't much information to look through. Most who were curious about him for the first 3 months or even 6 months had died off in the latter months, leaving not many that were still trying to learn about him.
There was still a lot of information, but it was closer to what would've been 5 months' worth, instead of the 15 he had missed.
Alex wasn't mad about that though. Having less information meant that only the ones that really wanted to know about him would look for him and that would help try and find the ones that wanted him assassinated.
He was still getting a few questions about if Graham was related to him in some ways or not. This meant that despite the investigators that the leader of the Alchemy association had put up to the work had died, there were still others that were working on it.
"Must be the sects and families," Alex thought. It was easy to guess that the council member's tasks wouldn't be ignored by their relatives and disciples.
Still, there was a question as to the fact if one of them was actually trying to find his father or not.
If they were going to go so far as to give that information to the assassins to use against him, then there was likely no reason for them to continue with that task. Although they could be trying to find his father to try and use him against him, he could never forget about that angle.
He then looked at details of the assassins that were given to him by Zhu Shaofan and read it.
There were 7 different assassins, and not all of them had titles attached to them.
Alex's eyes went to the Jade-Faced Assassin who was more infamous of the bunch. He quickly read through the assassin's details and saw just how much he liked poison.
The remaining 6 assassins were the ones Alex didn't know about.
He went from the start. The leader.
The leader of the Dark Pheonix was a person no one knew about. He was a secretive man with barely any information at all. The information read that he was most likely behind a killing of a big figure from the Jade Fire sect, and thus was thought to use a whip as his weapon because of the markings.
Another assassin was one that liked to use explosives, mostly talismans, and pills. Alex remembered the young man that did the same during their fights back in the Tiger sect. How long ago was that?
The explosion-using assassin was pictured to be some old man, although it was likely he would never appear with such a face in the public.
The third one was someone who could apparently freely change his facial features and go wherever he liked.
"Oh, that's the one I fought, wasn't it?" Alex thought. He nodded his head thinking just how credible this piece of information was. The nearly 11th member of the council had gone far and beyond with the information he had gathered.
Another one was a fiery assassin with bright red hair that seemed to have a smoldering personality around her. This one didn't have a name or a description, but just that one image of her.
Alex was surprised at how beautiful this assassin looked. He would've even admired her beauty with a better outlook had she not been coming for his head.
The image showed her surrounded by deadly fire as well as a group of shadowy figures that weren't visible at all.
Alex could tell that this was most likely a scene of a battle and that this was one of her assassination attempts.
The last two assassins were twins that had done some heinous crimes and were on the run. It was suspected that the leader of the Dark Phoenix assassins had recruited them a long time ago and was using them.
Zhu Shaofan made a notice that nothing on the list was final, so Alex had to be careful, but Alex still appreciated the information.
Given how he was right on at least two of them, he could at least be sure that he was correct on at least some of the others as well.
'So I know who to look out for,' Alex thought.
He looked through the list again, just to see if he missed something, and his eyes fell on the red-haired woman again.
He shook his head. With her beauty, she could have obtained so many things that normal people wouldn't be able to, however, she was using it to kill people instead. What a waste.
Alex closed the talisman and put it away. Then, he sat there on his bed… doing nothing.
How long had it been since he had done… nothing? He couldn't remember. Even before coming here, he was testing out the various ingredients in the alchemy association, and before that, he was worried about the assassination attempt.
Perhaps the only time he had sat down doing nothing was back in the Spiritsong city when he waited for his turn of the match to come along so he could fight.
He missed that a little. He had thought he was making some steady progress there, but he was robbed of that. Now, he was trapped in a place with people that may be the ones who he needed protection from.
Alex sighed. 'I can't stay here anymore. I need to leave,' he thought. He knew that was not the best idea right now, but he had to do it.
There were two things that he desperately needed to do that he couldn't do while he stayed in the palace.
First, he couldn't make the spiritual root-improving pills for himself.
Sure he could eat the ones he had made, but he would rather eat the ones with pill veins in them. If possible, he wanted ones with 6 pill veins in them. However, to have 6 pill veins, he needed a strong power to protect his pill from the 6th lightning bolt.
That brought him to the 2nd reason why he needed to leave. He needed to improve his blood aura. For the past year or two, his blood aura had stagnated and hadn't improved.
The only kills he had yet that he possibly have gotten the blood from were the two assassins.
However, the first one was a man that was poisoned to the core and was later immediately burned to death, leaving no blood for Alex to use.
As for the second one, he had exploded himself, once again making it impossible for Alex to use his blood.
Alex desperately wanted to improve his blood aura to prepare himself against the rest of the assassins that would most likely be coming for him.
In the process, he also wanted to get some more blood beasts for himself.
During his fight with the faceless assassin a year ago, he used 7 of his best blood beasts to stop him from leaving, which forced the man to blow his core and destroy his blood beasts.
So, Alex was looking to gain a few more of them as well.
There was also another reason, although he didn't feel like this was making him act this way at all. He wanted to go get some more of the cultivation pills for Scarlet.
If she could have high cultivation, she could most likely help him too. Although, he wasn't putting much hope there. He was sure he was bound to get disappointed anyway.
Alex left his room to go talk to the two seniors that were awake at the moment. He met them and told them that he wanted to leave this place to go train and improve himself.
However, as expected, both of the two old men were adamant about him staying back. He tried to argue that he would be fine outside since he would be hiding his face and all, but the old men simply didn't trust him.
A part of him believed they were doing this for his good, however, another more suspicious part couldn't help but suspect that they were trying to keep him here so they knew where their target was.
Even if not that, they simply wanted him here just because he was so good at making the pills they need.
Alex needed to find a way out.
So, that night he concealed himself as well as he could using his technique and left his room with a new face. He went outside the palace and then walked through the city as a mortal.
The teleportation formations would know who he was, so he instead decided to go through the forest in the mountains that were the closest to him.
The beasts were there, but he trusted his concealment and escape capabilities. By the time the sun was out in the sky, he was already far away from the Sunborn Sanctuary.