Alex stood before the Matriarch once again, this time all alone. He didn’t have to worry about her like he did before.
"You are interesting, you know that?" she asked. "Seven Daos in a single day, four of them relating to Time; that’s not the sort of thing you see every day."
"I’m happy to hear such praise from you, Matriarch," Alex said, bowing slightly.
"It is not empty praise. I’ve sensed the Dao you’ve learned. I have three of them as well, so I can say with a great deal of authority just how incredible it was. Learning them on their own would be incredible enough, but at the same time? That’s unprecedented."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "You’re missing one of the Daos, Matriarch?"
"The Dao of Time Awareness. I’m afraid I never had the talent to learn it," she said. "My daughter knows it though. Thankfully, it’s not that useful a Dao when it es to being a ruler. The other leaders do fine without it, so I should be the same."
Alex smiled. He could see some usage of the Dao, but there was Voidsand that one could just use instead. It did the same thing.
"Could you tell us how you did it?" she asked. "It is fine if you don’t want to tell us why you can learn Space and Time Daos, but I would love to hear how you were able to learn seven of them at once instead."
"Oh, that’s simple," Alex said. "I had already learned the Daos to near-pletion a long time ago. I just happened to be at a place with no Heaven for a long time, so I couldn’t actually learn the Dao."
"After I came here a few months ago, I’ve been searching for a time when I could break through and learn the Dao at the same time. Truthfully, I was only expecting five, but to my pleasant surprise, I learned seven instead."
Ningzhu’s face was agape the entire time Alex spoke.
Even the Matriarch wasn’t short on a stunned look.
"You were at a location with no Heaven?" she asked. "Does such a place even exist?"
Alex nodded. "I told Senior Ningzhu about it a while ago. I was in Hell. That place has no Heaven that could give me a Dao."
Ningzhu rotated his head slightly, conveying confusion. The Matriarch looked toward him, not to find whether he had known it before or not, but to see if he knew anything at all.
Ningzhu shrugged, so the Matriarch turned back around. "I’m sorry, but... what is this Hell you are talking about?" she asked.
"Uhh... Hell," Alex said. "I’m sorry, do only the humans call it Hell? It’s the Immortal Realm. The Immortal Prison Realm."
"The Prison Realm?" Ningzhu’s eyes suddenly widened. "The Prison Realm?"
"I’m sorry, do you mean the world that can only be entered and never exited?" she asked. "With an anomalous spatial barrier surrounding it?"
"That’s the one," Alex said.
The Matriarch looked skeptical. Anyone would. "That’s not possible. That is not a world you can just leave."
"There has been someone before who left it," Alex explained. "Someone by the name of the Hell Emperor, who later became a Human God. He was the one who popularized the name Hell for it. So, I was the second one to do it."
"I... I have never heard such a thing being possible," the Matriarch said. "I thought that world was cut off from ours. How did you leave it?"
"Through the Void," Alex answered.
The Matriarch paused for a long moment. "The... Void, you say."
Alex nodded.
"You’ve been to the Void."
"I traveled through it to e here," Alex said. "Well, not travel exactly, but rather did my best to not get lost. I had no destination really, except getting into the Void through Hell and ing out of it literally anywhere else in the world."
"But you can go into the Void?" she asked. "How... how were you able to get into the Void? Was there a broken Voidgate perhaps?"
"No, my Master helped me with that," Alex said. "She made an opening to the Void for me."
"The Sword God? I don’t understand. Can she travel the Void too? How did you guys municate? I thought nothing could travel between the Prison Realm and outside," she said.
"My Master was in Hell too," Alex said. "That is where I became her disciple. She helped me escape."
The Matriarch was surprised once more. "The Sword God was in the Prison Realm? Why?" she asked. "On that note, why were you in the Prison Realm?"
Alex gave an apologetic look. "I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to answer that if I can. I don’t believe that has any bearing on our current conversation, does it? I had to learn about Space and Time to navigate Hell in order to escape, that’s how I learned it all. That is all you wish to learn, is it not?"
The Matriarch paused for a long second before slowly nodding. She wanted to learn much more, but it was clear Alex had no intention of answering anything else. She forwent the topic, moving on.
"Well, I don’t know what else to say then. It seems more and more clear that you are the true avatar of the God. Only they should be capable of such a thing," the Matriarch said.
"Nearly," Alex said.
"I wish I could help you in your journey," the Matriarch said. "But I’m afraid whatever you face must be a trial for you alone. Only when you can pass them can we truly give you our undivided support."
Alex stared at her for a long moment, slowly realizing what she was saying.
While he had the Sun God’s body, he wasn’t the Sun God just yet. Only when he became the Sun God would she be willing to help him. Until then, he would gain no help from the Four Families. At least, not from the Vermilion Birds.
"I see," Alex said. "I understand. I hope to soon pass these trials."
The Matriarch smiled. "I wish you the best of luck on your future endeavors."
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