Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"Don\'t worry about Master," Hao Ya said. "He\'s too interested in your body constitution to not give you the time of the day. Besides, there are other reasons why he will have to let you see him."

"Other reasons? Like what?" Alex asked.

Hao Ya was about to answer but stopped. Instead, she put on a smug smile on her face. "What\'s the hurry? Just sit around, everything will be clear in time," she said. "Now, tell me what you are doing here when I made it very clear last time that you had to wait around in the Western Continent. What would we do if you had died?"

"We? Does your master care if we live or die?" Alex asked.

"Of course he does," Hao Ya said. "The reason he sent you all out here in the first place is that—"

She stopped herself from speaking anymore. "Nevermind," she said as she shook her head.

Alex\'s eyes narrowed. "He made us play the game for some reason?" he asked. "What reason?"

"Nevermind, I said. He will tell you if he thinks you deserve to know the answer," she said while crossing her arm. She sneaked some glances toward Alex who kept looking at her. "Have… have you learned any Dao?"

"Yes, some," Alex said.

"Good, you might be of some help in the end, after all," she said.

"You\'re not going to tell me what you mean by that, are you?" Alex asked.

"Ask my master those questions when you meet him. I am not going to answer any of your questions regarding him," Hao Ya said.

Alex sighed in the end and gave up. "Fine, let me go give the orders. We should have people gathered by the end of the week," he said.

He left the room and found the elders waiting outside the room.

"Your majesty, are you alright?"

"Are you hurt?"

"Did she do anything to you?"

They asked questions in a barrage that Alex quickly ignored. "I have a new task for you all, an emergency task," he said.

He explained the scenario and exactly what was happening. The elders were shocked to hear that they had to gather hundreds of thousands of players from all around the continent so they could go back home.

It wasn\'t just the mainland either. People had to go over to the Wasteland as well and bring them back.

"Deploy the army for this task. It has to be of ultimate priority at the moment," Alex said.

The elders understood the seriousness of the situation and nodded. However, they acted as if they were hesitating for some reason. "What\'s going on? Just speak your mind," Alex said.

One of the elders spoke to break the awkwardness. "Will you be returning as well, your Majesty?" the elder asked.

"Yes," Alex said. "But only temporarily."

"Can you really go back just temporarily?" the elder asked. "Isn\'t your home… far away?" they asked while pointing to the sky.

Alex couldn\'t help but chuckle a bit. "No, that\'s just a misconception you all came up with on your own," he said. "My home is where the lady inside came from."

"The lady? But she says she came from the Central Continent," the elders said.

"That\'s right," Alex said. "I come from the Central continent. It\'s a little hard to explain right now, so I will do it later. Follow my orders for now."

"Yes, Your Majesty," they all spoke at once and left.

"Linlin, please prepare a room for our guest," Alex said to the girl.

"Yes, your Majesty," she said and left.

Alex returned back to the throne room and found Hao Ya looking all around. "Since you have a week or so to spare, I hope you can stay around. Last time you left the moment you got what you want, so I didn\'t get to ask a lot of questions."

"What do you want to learn about? I don\'t know much since I\'ve been focusing on fixing the formations you broke," she said.

"I will ask the relevant questions to the creator himself as it looks like he might have more answers than you," Alex said. "For now, I just want to learn about what\'s going on back in the Central continent. It\'s been over 40 years since I left home. I was just wondering if things have stayed the same or if it has changed drastically."

Hao Ya sighed for a moment and spoke, "Things have changed, but not to the point where it is unrecognizable. Due to what you did, well we can\'t blame you really, it was your clone after all. Either way, due to what happened, normal development halted entirely for a couple of years as people suddenly lost all sense of motivation regarding anything."

"Schools and colleges had to shut down for months. People didn\'t show up to work. Etc, etc. It was surreal for the first year after the game\'s ending. But, people soon got back on their feet and the world started moving."

"There were other problems, primarily master\'s fault, that caused the world to slow down for some other reason, but 40 years later, the problems have all but disappeared," Hao Ya said.

"I see," Alex said. "Hearing about it just doesn\'t help at all when I know I will see it in a week. Oh right, when I do go, I can come back, right?"

"Yes," Hao Ya said. "But the formations won\'t work that many times due to the lack of resources. We will give everyone a chance to try and live their life back in their home for a year or so, and if they don\'t like it, they can return. That\'s what they deserve anyway."

Alex nodded. "Right, anything we need to be careful about? These people are strong. What if they cause trouble after returning?" he asked.

"Hmm, we should ask everyone to vent away their Qi before returning," Hao Ya said. "Although, there is nothing we can do about people with strong bodies, and will just have to hope that they don\'t cause any trouble."

Alex nodded as he heard that. "Trust that people won\'t abuse their powers," he said as he sighed. "That\'s going to be hard."

"That\'s the only choice we have anyway," Hao Ya said. "The peop—"

Hao Ya quickly turned around as a small metal ball flew out from her robes. The metal ball expanded into four segments that flew around her, creating a barrier that protected her completely.

"You have good senses, little girl," a voice spoke from outside the throne room.

Hao Ya seemed ready to fight, but Alex moved in front of her and gestured for her to calm down.

"Scarlet, you\'re scaring her," Alex said.

Scarlet peaked her head through the door and then her body entered the room. Hao Ya looked at the Phoenix that had entered the room with wide eyes for a moment before quickly realizing who she was.

She put aside the defensive artifact and bowed at the waist. "It is an honor to meet you, Immortal Phoenix," she said.

"You may rise," Scarlet said.

Hao Ya hesitated for a split second before she stopped bowing. She looked at the Phoenix with clear questions in her eyes. Most burning of which was definitely why the Immortal Phoenix did not feel immortal to her senses.

Hao Ya could tell that the Phoenix had a Saint realm cultivation base and that confused her greatly.

Scarlet\'s eyes moved from the girl to the defensive artifact that she had just put away. "That\'s not a normal treasure that one such as you should have," she said. "Who are you, girl?"

"I am Hao Ya, Immortal Phoenix. I come from the Central Continent in hope of requesting you to help gather the ones you know as players, so we can send them all back home," Hao Ya said. "Please hear my request and grant it to me, Immortal Phoenix."

"The players?" Scarlet\'s eyes shined.

"She\'s the creator\'s disciple," Alex explained. "She\'s here to send us all back home. As such, I will be leaving for some time too. Can you take over until I come back?"

"Take over? Did you forget that you are taking over for me?" Scarlet asked. "Also, no. I won\'t be ruling."

Alex frowned a little. "Why? What\'s wrong?" he asked.

"What\'s wrong? Obviously, I want to visit this Creator too. It can\'t be only you that wants to meet him, right?" she asked.

"Oh, so you will be going with us too?" Alex asked with a weird look on his face. "What do we do about the continent then?"

"Those 10 can take over it," Scarlet said. "They handle it all already anyhow."

Alex nodded. "Sure, we can do that," he said. He turned to Hao Ya who still found herself unable to react to the situation and asked, "Your master wouldn\'t mind if Scarlet here comes with us, right?"

"Scarlet… is that… NO! No, I… I don\'t think he\'ll mind," she said.

"Great," Alex said. "You must be tired right now. I\'m sorry I\'m taking so much of your time. My assistant should have prepared a room for you. Please go and rest. We can talk about everything else later."

Hao Ya hastily agreed and bowed her way out of the room before being taken away to her room to rest. Today had been more eventful for her than she had imagined it would be.