Alex opened his eyes, having learned the Dao of Ductility.
It took him just a moment to quickly figure out the applications of the dao. Aside from making it vastly easier to create strings out of metals during artifact creations, he could also now make his Metal attacks thin without losing much damage.
It was the same with Dao of Malleability that he had learned so long ago.
As soon as he opened and stopped thinking about his Dao, Alex realized that the coldness he felt in his body had deepened. He felt the coldness for a while.
"6 days?" he thought. That was the amount of time that would have passed for his body to gather this much, Yin. It was hard to judge exactly as he didn't remember how much Yin his dantian had when he started learning about the Dao.
He had been so focused on it that he didn't took the effort to remember anything else.
"Surely 2 weeks haven't passed," he thought. He closed his eyes and started cultivating to get rid of the Yin Qi in his body.
Getting rid of the stronger Yin Qi took some time, and by the time he was done with it he remembered that he had missed his appointment with Lady Zhan.
"I told her we could meet just a week later," he thought and sighed. There wasn't anything else he could do. He would miss that meeting every single time if it meant learning a new dao.
He walked out and decided asked one of the attendants there the time. It was close enough to the time of one of the teleportation, so he left.
He walked out of the formation platform outside the secret realm some time later and quietly made his way back toward the palace.
There was someone that wanted to take him back, but Alex didn't let him. He wanted to go back alone.
It had been a while since he had found some time to himself, where he could just walk around the city without anyone else to follow him.
"How long has it been since I've been to a city?" he thought. He couldn't remember. "Has it been a year?"
The last time he could remember was the city before Brightfalls City in the Emerald Kingdom. And even those visits were with other people, guided by tour guides all the way through.
That was no fun at all. Not like this one.
He took a deep breath and walked on his own. At some point, he saw the sun slowly go down toward the west, shining what he realized was the water of the Azure Lake.
'Azure Lake,' he thought and decided to visit there too. It wouldn't take him that long to go there anyway.
He arrived at the city and walked through the sidepaths. Walking down the streets gave me a much better understanding of the city than a carriage ride could ever.
He walked around, looking at the various shops and stores he wasn't going to buy from. He sighed and continued walking.
He roamed the city all the way until night fell and finally decided to go to Azure Lake.
The Azure Lake would have been fit more to be called the Azure Sea. It was multiple kilometers wide, with the other shore of the lake barely visible because of how small it was.
Lanterns glowed all around the side of the lake, lighting up the shore for the people that visited at night.
Alex took a deep breath and immediately realized that there was something mixed into the air. He could tell from the distinct smell that it wasn't a normal smell at all.
He couldn't figure out just what the smell was, but he did figure out that it was of no harm. Instead, it gave a peaceful mind to anyone who breathed in this substance, giving them a serene calm that everyone boasted the lake had.
'I wasn't aware it was because of this air,' Alex thought. It was probably something that many of the higher-status people were aware of but were simply not talking about it.
Alex walked along the edge of the shore to try and find a source of the smell, but he couldn't. He could only imagine that it was something that the first Dragon Emperor and the Azure Dragon had used when making this artificial lake.
He walked around the lake thinking about various things, one of which was about the Daos that he wanted to learn.
He judged his own recent experience and came to a conclusion that he would have come to had he given it any more thought.
"I can't just learn Dao," he thought. "I cannot just force myself into learning the mysteries of the world."
That was what he had tried to do from the various paintings and objects he had seen in the secret realm.
"I will need to at least have some understanding of the subject before going in. That way, I can learn it easily," he thought. "Just like I did today."
After thinking for a bit, he nodded to himself and made sure to not try and look through everything that interested him more than just find out what they were.
The ones he truly had to spend his time on were the ones that he was already familiar with.
After coming up with the thought, he stopped giving much of his attention to the Dao and instead enjoyed his time at the Azure Lake.
It was a while before the Azure King came and found him.
"Your majesty! What are you doing here all alone?" he asked.
"Just checking the lake," Alex said. "Are you here to take me back?"
The King nodded. "I heard you left the secret realm all alone today. Did you succeed in learning the Dao?" he asked.
"Yes," Alex said. "It was easy as I had learned about it for a long time now. All I needed to do was gain that dao."
"Ah! Congratulations," the king said. "It isn't easy for many to learn dao that easily. Your Majesty learning it in just 15 days of entering."
'15 days,' Alex thought.
"Did my Elders leave the secret realm?" he asked.
"Once, after 9 days," the king said. "They returned the very next day, so they should still be inside."
"I see," Alex said. "That's good to hear. Let them spend their time learning. We should be returning now."
The king nodded. "Let us returned then," he said and quickly took Alex back to the palace.
"Do you wish to stay and talk about your Dao, your Majesty?" the Kign asked after they entered the palace.
Alex smiled. "I would like to take my rest for now," he said, rejecting the king's offer. He was bout to leave when he remembered something.
"Ah! Can you let Lady Zhan know that I am free to talk with her tomorrow? I promised her a meeting a week ago, but I couldn't keep it at all."
"Oh!" the Azure King said with a startled voice. "Lady Zhan is no longer here, your majesty. She returned to her home in the Ebony Kingdom a week ago."
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