The door was still a few steps away, and the colors had bee formless again. As such, Alex understood there was at least one more such trial he would have to go through.
"I'm going to see her next, aren't I?" Alex asked out loud to nobody in particular, already knowing where this was going. If it was going to take the most hurtful deaths from his past, then there was only one that had affected him the most.
As he stepped forward, the world came to shape with greenery surrounding him.
Alex waited for it all to take the shape of a mountain, which it did. Then, the woman appeared behind him, lying on the ground, nearly dead.
Alex turned around to look at his master, Ma Rong, who lay dying. He simply stood there, watching her, doing nothing else. He could feel something trying to toy with his mind, as if trying to make him believe that this illusion was real.
Had his mind been weaker perhaps, he would have fully believed this to be the real situation. At that point, it would have been harder for him to get out of this. If there was even the slightest chance that this was real, Alex would no doubt run to her and try to save her.
"This death did hit me the hardest," Alex acknowledged to the tower. "And there hasn't been a time when I haven't regretted being unable to save her. However, for that exact reason, I know for a fact that there is nothing I could have done back then."
Alex let out a small laugh after speaking as much. "The pain remains sharp as ever, but I have long since moved on from her death. This memory of mine that you've chosen to show cannot stop me."
Alex took the next step forward resolutely, and the world fell back into colors once again. It hurt to move past Ma Rong without even giving her a single moment's time, but this was what he had to do. He could not let her death keep him dwelling on her for too long.
With the next step, however, the world began taking shape once again.
There were now two more steps remaining, and yet something else was beginning to form. Alex couldn't even begin to imagine what this could be.
"My master's death is what has affected me the most," Alex said slowly. "What else can you show me now that I've moved on from her?"
The tower didn't answer, obviously, so Alex took the next step to see what it was that he was missing.
The world took form, being a forest with tall trees and foliage surrounding him in all directions.
"What's this?" he thought curiously, looking around. It was far too mundane a location for him to quickly realize where this was. He looked to his left and saw a small cave over there. And inside the cave, he saw colors of silver and purple.
"Is this…"
He heard movement behind him again and turned around.
Just as Alex realized where he was, he saw the Dragon Emperor standing next to him with a wrathful look on his face. While he was next to Alex, his spear pointed to someone else.
Alex looked at who the third person was and recognized her immediately.
It was Yao Ning.
Yao Ning stood some distance away, with the Dragon Emperor's spear pointed at her, the lightning charging upon the spear at a rather slow speed. Alex could sense the Immortal Qi present within this attack and knew just how strong it was pared to Yao Ning.
Alex looked toward the old woman with her haggard look.
Yao Ning had been the old woman to acpany Alex through the Eastern Continent, alongside Liang Shufen. And when he had finally found Hannah and her husband, it was thanks to her that he had managed to send them away.
What he unfortunately hadn't managed to do was protect this woman. Instead, she had protected him back then. It was thanks to her death that he had survived.
She was a grandmother to him, who wanted nothing more than his best. And she had died for him with that very intention. Her death had allowed him to escape from the Dragon Emperor that day, and it was partly for her that he had gone to war against the Dragon Emperor.
It had been a while since then, and many things had happened to him in life. Along the way, he had forgotten about her. He remembered many of the people he left behind, but not the one who had died.
In some ways, this was so much worse.
Her death hurt him, but the fact that he dared not remember her until now hurt him even more. Just how fixated was he on everything else that he simply forgot about this woman?
The Dragon Emperor's spear charged fully, and the next moment, he would let the lightning strike out. Alex knew what would happen now. The lightning bolt would hit her, and she would be incapable of stopping it. She would die now, without even a corpse left behind.
He couldn't let such an atrocity repeat a second time around. He had to stop this.
Alex lifted his hand, power coalescing around it as he got ready to attack. At the very last moment, however, he stopped.
His eyes widened slightly, and he turned back around. The black door now remained just two steps away from him.
Alex heard the lightning bolt strike the old woman and a scream that cut off immediately. His body convulsed slightly upon realizing what had happened, but he had to remember that this wasn't true.
It was only an illusion.
"You almost had me there at the end," Alex told the tower. "But I still succeeded."
He took the next step, breaking the world down into the amorphous fog of colors, and then with the next step, he walked in through the black door.
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