Alex walked back to his house to log out and go eat his dinner, happy that nobody cared enough about him to challenge him.
Unbeknownst to Alex however, his reputation in the sect was steadily growing. Pretty much everyone who went down to the fighting stages had heard about the match between the Inner sect disciple and the core disciple where the inner sect disciple won against the core disciple, going as far as to even make him unconscious.
The news spread like fire, and quickly 80% of the people were in the know. However, they only knew the name of the disciple and were unsure of how he looked like aside from the general description of a tall and lean body with long black hair.
Some people higher than him were scared that he might come for them next. Most people lower than him were waiting for him to beat the upper disciples. Core disciples were intrigued as to how he managed to beat Huo Tu, who they knew had a very tough defense that even they couldn't breakthrough.
However, Huo Tu was still unconscious and they couldn't ask him.
Alex returned back from his final dinner in the cafeteria and got back to his room. However, instead of going back into the game, he looked at the time.
"Hmm… it's 7:21 right now. I should pack my stuff right now. I can go play the game later when it's time for the daily training." He went to the closet and took out the small luggage he had brought from his home. He took out all of his clothing and started packing it.
His roommates had gone into the game before he had even thought of doing this, so he was left alone working on it. He didn't mind it though. He packed everything but a pair of clothes that he would be wearing tomorrow.
With that done, he finally went back to the game. He entered the game a little bit before his meeting with the master, so he decided to eat another one of the monster cores.
He took out two monster cores. One belonging to a monster with a cultivation base of Organ Tempering 4th realm, and another belonging to a monster with the cultivation base of Bone tempering 7th realm.
"Come out Pearl," he said as he sent his Qi to the tattoo on his left arm. Pearl came out in a flash and looked around confused, and he had rarely been called out in this room before.
"Meow," he looked at Alex, all confused. But just then, he smelled the brilliant scent of a monster core and started to climb on top of Alex to find the core. Alex showed him the core when he reached on his shoulder and let him eat it.
While he was eating that, Alex himself too decided to eat the core. With a single push to his mouth, the core vanished into this stomach and Alex to his spiritual sea.
He saw the monster the core belonged to, a massive rhino-like monster with no horns. Similar to last time, it only took him a few minutes to defeat the monster, but he could visibly see the strength of the monster in higher realms having a stronger form in the spiritual sea.
Once the monster was dead, a yellow aura once again came out from around a shadow at the surface of the sea, devouring both of them.
Alex opened his eyes and said, "It should be fine to break through now, right?"
So he opened his status page and hit [Breakthrough] without even looking at anything. He used up 2.5 million Qi at once and broke through to the 4th realm of Organ Tempering.
He looked at Pearl and saw that he was done consuming the core as well. "Come, let's go. Or we'll be late," he said and let Pearl get back to his arm. He disappeared and walked to the leader's building.
When he finally reached the building, he saw that there was more than just his master. There were also Luo Mei, Liu Xin, and Meng Yun. He let the illusion drop and showed himself.
"You're finally here. I heard you've made quite a bit of ruckus out there today," Wen Cheng said as soon as he came.
"Ruckus? Huh, Senior Brother, Senior Sister, what are you guys doing here?" Alex looked at them curiously.
"Of course, we came after hearing what you did, little brother," Liu Xin said.
"What I did? Did the information about my fight with Huo Tu spread to you guys somehow?" he asked.
"Not just us, little brother," said Luo Mei and continued, "The whole sect knows about your match now."
"Huh? Did the information spread that much?" he was shocked. "Oh no, no wonder even the First Elder came to recruit me. I didn't think it would be such a big event."
Wen Cheng's eyes perked up, as did Luo Mei's and Liu Xin's. Wen Cheng asked, "Did you say the First Elder came to recruit you?"
"Yes. He came by my house with a senior sister, his disciple I think, and tried to make me his disciple." He relayed what had taken place.
Wen Cheng's face got solemn, and asked, "And? What did you say? You didn't reveal our relationship yet right?" he asked.
"Oh, no. I only told him that I was not interested in being anyone's disciple right now. He left after I told him that," Alex replied.
"That should be enough, right master?" Liu Xin asked.
"I would say that's a crisis averted if you ask me," Luo Mei said so too. However,? Wen Cheng fell into deep contemplation, and he finally said,
"Qiu Ju is not a man that would give up so easily. He will come back to recruit you a few times more. However, that is not the problem now. The problem is that you have been recognized by everyone in the sect as a genius, so the Elders will come after you to make you their disciple."
"And not agreeing to a single one would make you the enemy of all of their disciples."