10 battles, and Alex finally won one.
"You... you are sothing, senior," Alex said, out of breath. He hadn’t expected the match to take so much out of him physically. To constantly be at the peak of his ntal state, and take note of every facet in a war was draining—especially when it changed from second to second.
It didn’t change as fast when going up against Whisker. In a way, the two of them had plateaued in terms of their experience in such battles because they were only fighting each other.
With the old man added in, things had changed for the better. They were able to see just how much more was possible.
"You are not normal either," the old man said. "I’ve said little Dai had talent in controlling battles, but the speed at which you are improving is absurd. Just how did you know where I was coming from at the end there?"
"Oh, I don’t know if it’s conscious or not, but I noticed that whenever you need to sneak an attack from the side, you tend to have your soldiers beco more fierce on the other side to draw my attention. When I saw the intensity increase, I guessed successfully that there was a sneak attack happening from the other side."
The old man raised an eyebrow in surprise. "That’s an unconscious bias on my end I didn’t know I had. I should change that," he said with so consideration. "So, shall we go again?"
Alex narrowed his eyes. "Aren’t you forgetting sothing?" he asked.
"What am I for— oh, right." He rembered that he had promised to explain about Sunhearts.
"When the Yang aura increased throughout Hell by an absurd amount suddenly and Qi began to degrade, the beasts couldn’t handle the changing environnt. As a result, they began developing Sunhearts by themselves. I’m still not certain how it happened, just that it did."
Alex frowned. "Yang aura increased? Qi degraded? Was this world not this way from the start?" he asked.
The old man grinned and gestured to his headband.
Alex got a little annoyed. "Fine, once I beat you, you’ll have to answer ."
The two began fighting again and continued for the rest of the night.
Alex didn’t win a single ti.
At sunrise, they left in search of Death again, following the trail that she had left behind. They made their way past two more villages, both of which confird that Death had passed through there, and arrived at another one where they decided to stay for the night again.
At night, after they were done cultivating and training, Alex and the old man fell back into battling each other again.
The old man was harder to beat now that he had fixed his shortcoming. Alex had to search for a new one or just get better than him, both of which were harder than one could imagine.
Throughout the night, Alex fought against the old man maybe 30 tis and managed to win just 2 tis. Each ti he won, he asked the old man to explain what he ant.
The first ti, the old man talked of the sudden change in Hell.
"Hell wasn’t always a desert. It was a lush world, full of forests and swamps and whatever else the other worlds have. I was far too young to rember much from back then, but I do rember the sky suddenly shattering, forming what you see above now."
"The Prison Wall, as everyone calls it, ca out of nowhere and covered the sky. After that, the Yang slowly increased throughout this world, and when we tried to escape, we realized that we couldn’t. We were trapped."
"After that, the Yang took over everything, slowly spreading from the central region of the desert, turning everything into desert. Only places where it still rains frequently, or rivers flow through constantly, have any sort of vegetation now."
"All else has beco what the outsiders nad it: Hell."
After the second loss, the old man talked about the degrading Qi.
"I do not know much about the degrading Qi. All I know is that by the ti I beca an Immortal, it was impossible to progress much further. And re years after I reached Immortal, the Qi degraded and beca even worse. The newcors were being stopped at Saints, and after that, the rest were all stuck at True realms."
"There were many that were the sa as too, but they all died one by one. Regardless of how strong their cultivation base was before, once the Qi degraded, they could only rely on Spirit stones. Those beca a commodity in the end, and people fought over them."
"Many died after becoming mortal with no Qi, but a lot died even before that, attacking each other in order to get their hands on one of those. Even those didn’t last too long since Spirit stones themselves broke down if there was no one around them. In the end, there was nothing keeping them alive."
"But... there were so many of them," Alex said in surprise. "How could they all die? How are you the only one that survived? Body cultivation should have kept them all alive for a long ti."
"Body Cultivation?" the old man asked with an amused look. "Do you think that was a thing back then?"
Alex paused. "...yes," he said. "Was Elixir not a thing back then?"
"Elixir was a commodity. What you make in a day now would be considered a grand sect’s treasure back in the day. They used to hand out Elixirs by the drop. Those aren’t enough to keep you around for that long."
"I was rely lucky at the ti. I went off in search of hidden treasures through existing tombs, all of which had stopped working once the Qi degraded. I then found dozens of barrels of Elixir and hid them away, consuming it all at that ti."
"That was what let survive since then. Had I not been lucky, it is likely that life in Hell would have beco a lot more different than it currently is."
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