As Alex watched, the flame quickly took the shape of a bird. Here, the bird had a bit more features than just a vague yellow shape with a body and wings. There were some outlines to the feathers and head now, which made Alex think he was looking at a phoenix.

Not a Vermilion Bird, but rather an actual phoenix. Was it really something resembling the Phoenix Mother then?

The bird let out a resounding caw that caught Alex off guard. He hadn't been expecting to hear anything at all in the first place, which surprised him. That was all that it did.

"You have enough power to destroy even a Divinity, do you?" Alex asked as he raised his hand, gesturing with his fingers. "Well, so do I."

Yellow Fog blew out of the water at explosive speed, covering the bird in its entirety. Within seconds, Alex could feel the bird's body dissolve under the Yellow Fog, its spirit broken down and added to his spiritual energy.

He could feel his spiritual energy become a hint stronger than it was the last time around. It had been a while since Alex consumed any spirits that helped empower his Spiritual Sea.

It was fun.

"One down. Fourteen to go."

He flew out of his Spiritual Sea and stood up from where he sat. The tongue of flame no longer burned before him. He turned around, giving Pearl and Scarlet a beaming smile.

"I can do this," he said cheerfully before turning to find the closest tongue of flame. Once he found it, he headed toward it.

After sitting before it for half a minute, he stood up once again, completing the task.

Pearl and Scarlet watched with wide eyes.

"What… what is he doing?" Scarlet asked, unable to come up with any explanation.

"I… I think he calls it the 'Yellow Fog'," Pearl explained.

"Yellow Fog? What's that?" Scarlet asked. She had only been around Alex for no more than half a century in the lower realm, and Alex hadn't divulged all of his secrets to her.

Even now, there were a few secrets he kept hidden from her, not because he wanted to, but because there just was no situation to bring it up.

Pearl explained the Yellow Fog as well as he could, but explaining something that he himself had only heard about was not an easy task.

"Is this like the fog that surrounded the Soul Space?" Scarlet asked. "Whisker told me you guys were in a lot of danger when that happened."

"That's exactly it," Pearl said quickly. "I don't know if the one in his Spiritual Sea is different or not, but they work under the same principle. They devour anything that is foreign to his body."

"I see," Scarlet said, slightly awed as she watched Alex move on to another tongue of flame. "No wonder he finds this task so easy. We would've likely died already had it been either one of us."

Pearl nodded. He was no fool to suddenly lose all notions of danger within the trial and go try it out just because Alex was completing it so easily. He knew very well that the only choice either of them had in that situation was to give up.

'We should have lost a long time ago,' Pearl thought. 'The only reason we made it this far is because of him. And now, we can't burden him anymore.'

He just sat down and watched.

Alex went through the tongues of flame one after another, accepting them into his Spiritual Sea, where they formed into fire birds and were then completely devoured by his Yellow Fog.

The amount of improvement his Spiritual Sea got from those fifteen birds was minor in reality. But any improvement was welcome at this stage, since they would only become harder and harder to gain.

After Alex was done with the fifteen tongues of flame, which took no more than half an hour, he walked up to the platform at the center. He saw the two human figures on the dais and stepped onto it.

Once he registered, the master of the trial reappeared.

"You have successfully passed the trial. You alone shall move on to the next trial."

The bird vanished, leaving no information on how far away the next trial was. Alex walked back to where Pearl and Scarlet were and sat next to them.

"It appears you have officially failed the 9th Trial," he said. "That's honestly not bad."

Scarlet nodded. "It's more than we deserve anyway."

"Congratulations, brother. You're going to the 10th Trial. I wonder how many more of these there are?"

"Same," Alex said. "I wonder how many more of these I will have to go through too."

From what Wu Tanglan had said, no one had gone past the 8th Trial. So there was little information on how many more remained. For all he knew, there could be twenty total trials, and he had only made it halfway through.

But he didn't believe that. 'I'm getting close. I'm sure of that.'

There could only be so much more distance before he got to the center of the Talon.

He turned toward Pearl and Scarlet. "What do you two want to do next?"

"What do you mean?" Scarlet asked.

"Well, you failed," Alex said. "So you have two choices. Either you head back out of the Talon and meet up with Bai Jingshen again. Or…"

"Or we can come with you and see what's at the center?" Scarlet asked. "Hell yeah. There's no way we're going back out now that we're so close."

Alex chuckled. "You can't ever come out once you're inside, though," he explained.

"That's fine, brother. We'll rely on your descriptions alone," Pearl said. He too was excited about learning what was at the center.

"Alright. There's no point in you two staying out here then. Go in and wait for me to explain."

Pearl and Scarlet nodded, moving into his Soul Space.

Alex alone remained on the island, wondering how much longer he had to wait. He saw the tongues of flame that still surrounded the island and smiled.

Could he still use these?

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