Early in the morning, Alex said bade farewell to the royal family and flew off to the southern forest.
The location, the formation platform was about 4 hours away from where he was, so once he was sufficiently far enough, he took out his boat and sped up.
Along the way, as the journey started getting monotonous, Alex fell into a lull and soon started thinking of what he was going to do inside.
As soon as he entered, he would fly in the direction of the palace. With the guards there, he would have to use his skills situationally to hide from them and get into the underground palace.
After that, it was just a matter of time before he found Pearl. After he found Pearl he would…
"What will I do?" he asked himself. He started doubting himself. 'Will Pearl even come with me? I… am not the person he bonded with, right?'
'I'm just a clone of a real person that's no longer here. Do I have the right to take away Pearl?' he thought.
These thoughts had been playing in his head for a while now, but he had never let it surface. He had been keeping them hidden deep below.
However, now that he was getting close to Pearl, the doubts and feeling of impostor only got louder, and even when he didn't want to hear it, he could hear it clearly.
'No,' Alex told himself. 'I still have the scar. If Pearl wasn't bonded with me, the scar would've never been there.'
"Yes, he's still bonded to me. I will teleport into the forest and make myself to the palace. Hopefully, I can see it if I go above the tree-line," Alex thought.
He still had doubts in the back of his mind, but he stored them away as he needed to focus on this mission.
Any wrong move and he would be caught by the beast, and likely killed by them for trying to steal their future king.
'I can't afford to make any mistakes,' Alex thought.
He reached the location and landed near the platform. He slowly stepped on it and took a deep breath before remembering what Fu Tao had done.
"They will know when I enter. I will have to immediately hide in the forest," he thought and opened his eyes.
He looked at the nodes where he was supposed to put in the energy and counted the strokes per node. Then, he released his energy.
He didn't immediately pour his Qi into the nodes, however, and instead kept it hovering in front of him.
As far as he remembered, he was supposed to put his energy at all nodes at once, so he decided to do it the best way he could.
In just a couple of seconds, a massive amount of Qi was released from his hands and it floated in front of him.
Since it was all Yang Qi, he could freely manipulate them in mid-air. He then separated the gathered energy into multiple, equal amounts and hovered them over the nodes as they would require.
He added more energy where he thought was needed and took away where he thought was too much.
If there was excess energy, he simply threw it away. Finally, once he believed he was ready, he let the energy fall onto the nodes.
The moment the yellow blobs of light touched the node, they immediately started filling the nodes at an incredible speed that shocked Alex himself.
'Isn't this too fast? Is something wrong?' he thought. Blue light shined in between the yellow light that slowly turned brighter and lighter until it turned white.
Once the white light encapsulated him completely, he felt the lurching feeling in the pits of his stomach that told him, he had teleported.
When he reappeared, the bright light lingered in his eyes for a while. While it did, he thought of what he needed to do next.
As the light around him died down, he made the decision that he was going to have to hide in some trees in the forest before making his way to the palace.
He needed to be extra careful so that he wasn't seen by an—
Alex looked around him. He wasn't in a forest at all.
He was now inside a massive cave with white walls made up of marble. The area shined from the light of the glowing crystal-like stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
He stood on top of a white formation platform, and in front of him were two beasts in True realms that were curiously looking at him to understand who had just teleported in.
"Fuck!" Alex thought. He had somehow teleported into the palace.
The two guards noticed something was wrong. Alex noticed them notice it as well.
Without even thinking, he shot out two back-to-back Heaven's Impact on the two beasts. Both of their eyes turned white and they slumped onto the ground.
Alex breathed heavily as he realized that was too close. He, fortunately, had enough reflex in him to attack the Lion and Leopard beasts as soon as he saw them.
Had he waited even a little more, they might have somehow notified the saint beasts.
Alex shook his head. 'Who knows, they might've done it already,' he thought.
Light gathered around him and soon he couldn't be seen at all. After going invisible, he reigned in his aura, and soon it couldn't be felt as well.
"Just how the hell did I come in here? Don't I need a sort of medallion or badge of the beasts to use this line of teleportation?" he thought to himself.
Using the concealment technique, Alex was sure that he could easily go past the other True beasts that would be roaming around in the palace, but what about the Saint realm beasts?
Even with this, their Spiritual senses could easily find him if they even just sent it in his way.
He couldn't worry about that for now. 'I need to go find pearl and leave as soon as I can,' he thought.
Alex ran through the hallway, as silent as he could be towards the room that was previously his room. When he reached it, he pushed it open, only to find nobody in there.
'Of course,' he thought. 'They won't let their future king live in such a place now that the prisoner is gone.'
He needed to start looking some place else, but he wasn't allowed to go to very many places as he had been a prisoner that was simply treated like a guest.
'Where can he be?' he thought. The place was way too big to randomly go around looking for Pearl, and thinking alone wasn't going to cut it.
He needed something more, something else. Whatever he was thinking of doing wasn't going to help him at all.
So, Alex stopped thinking. He suddenly stopped all thoughts and closed his eyes.
If his brain wasn't going to help, he needed to listen to his heart. If he couldn't think it, he needed to feel it.
As his thoughts slowly disappeared, a feeling appeared deep within him. It was a very mild feeling, but it was there. He could feel it, the connection.
The connection between him and Pearl.
He opened his eyes, and— "that way"— knew where to go.