After explaining in detail how it all worked with sending the players back to their home, Alex and his mother were requested to stay in the palace for the night.
Since it was already dark, the two decided to take the emperor up on his offer.
The princess took away Helen while Alex remained to answer a few of the Emperor's questions while the emperor himself answered a few more questions of his own.
Alex was simply curious about what was going on with the Luminance empire to see if there were any big changes that he would be interested to hear about.
From what he heard, almost everything was the same in essence. Of course, things had changed underneath the veil, but overall the empire functioned the same.
The only thing of interest Alex even heard about was something mysterious going on in the Broken Ravine sect. Apparently, people there had been dying a little too often these days. However, when sent to check what was going on, the Lightsworns couldn't find anything, so the Emperor was just as puzzled as anyone.
"Hmm, I'll check it out," Alex half-promised and left after that. He followed the princess who had come to take him again and went toward the guest room that was prepared for him.
The princess was curious herself and started asking questions too. Unlike her father, however, there were no reservations about the questions that she asked.
Alex wasn't offended by the questions at all. In fact, he found it relieving that someone was overlooking his status as a king in a non-disrespectful way and asking him stuff that people would otherwise be afraid to ask.
Her very first question was regarding how Alex became a King, which even the Emperor hadn't questioned.
Alex gave a short answer, satiating her curiosity. Or so he thought. Answering her question only made the princess more curious, which caused her to ask even more questions than she had planned to ask.
Alex was answering her questions when he paused for a second and look in front of him.
In the hallway they were walking in was a man standing in front of them. He wore a purple robe that belonged to the Wei royal family, but Alex knew this man was not from the Wei family at all.
Which was why he was so confused to see the man here in the first place.
"Is that you, brother Zhou?" Alex asked.
Zhou Ren stared in absolute awe as he could not believe that he was looking at the man he had once assumed dead.
"Alchemist Zhou, what are you doing here?" the princess asked.
"I…" The man couldn't find it in himself to answer the question as most of the logical side of his brain was busy searching for an answer as to why Alex was alive at all.
"Did you come to greet him?" the princess asked.
"Huh? Ah, yes," Zhou Ren quickly said. He cupped his fist and gave a deep bow toward Alex. "Greetings, brother Yu. I'm happy to see that the news I received wasn't a lie. You truly are alive."
"I am," Alex said mysteriously, not giving away almost any emotion on his face.
Zhou Ren went from a formal bow to an informal one quickly, only this time instead of a greeting, he apologized.
"I will like to apologize for what my family did to you on my father's behalf," the man who seemed to have aged quite a lot despite reaching the Saint realm said.
"Your father is dead, isn't he?" Alex asked.
"He is," Zhou Ren said without hiding. "But that does not clear the wrongdoings he did against you."
Zhou Tianqiu, along with a few more saints from the Zhou family had been part of the people that had attacked Alex back in the Demon Realm all those years ago. Despite his father's part in it, however, Zhou Ren had nothing to do with the attack.
The entire time, he was busy trying to further himself inside the Demon realm and had only later learned about what had transpired without him realizing.
By the time he had realized, the beasts had launched their attacks on the families and sects involved, and his father had left the clan to run away as far as he could.
Even then, the beasts had found him and delivered his torn-apart corpse back to them.
"You sound sincere enough, brother Zhou," Alex said. "I shall accept your apology. I did not expect to get an apology, so this is quite refreshing. Don't worry, I wasn't planning on attacking your clan or anything in the first place."
"I don't care," Zhou Ren said. "I've left the family already. I only wished to apologize for what was clearly wrong."
Alex was a little surprised to hear Zhou Ren speaking like this. Had he always been like this, or had time changed him to be a better person?
"Why did you leave your clan?" Alex asked. "I would've assumed you would be the clan head after your father's death."
"My uncle, the Saint Alchemist, is the new clan head," Zhou Ren said. "Besides, I couldn't live there with all those hypocrites."
"Hypocrites?" Alex asked.
Zhou Ren nodded. "My father couldn't attack you without the other ancestors and family elders' approval. The fact that so many elders had gone to the Demon realm in the first place was because the family as a whole had come to the conclusion that attacking you to extract your knowledge was the right choice."
"However, when the tables turned, those very same ancestors turned on my father to ask him to die for their sake. Because they did not want to face the wrath of the beasts, they made my father out to be a scapegoat while they remained there happily as if they had no part in it at all."
"After I found out the truth a few years after my father's death, I couldn't live there at all," Zhou Ren said. "So, I left the family and went out to do my own thing. One thing led to another, and I'm not one of the Royal alchemists for the royal family."
"I see," Alex said. He was surprised to hear Zhou Ren's story and perhaps even a little sad for him. He hadn't been part of everything as he had explained, and yet he had suffered from it as well.
He was a victim in all of it as well, even if not as big as Alex himself.
"You must have perfected your alchemy, even more, to be accepted as the Royal Alchemist," Alex said.
Zhou Ren gave a small smile. "Aside from you, I was already one of the best alchemists in our generation. There was not much for me to improve," he said.
Alex smiled back as well. "That's good to hear," he said. "Anyway, I'm glad to have met you again, Brother Zhou. This might be our very last meeting, but I'm happy to see you are doing well."
"Thank you," Zhou Ren said. "I'm happy to see you are doing well as well."
"Farewell."
Alex left Zhou Ren and walked away with the princess to go to his room. Come the next morning, he would leave, and it would be a very long time before he saw this man again.
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