Alex and Bladedance arrived at the top of the pavilion, the stairway leading to an open archway, through which they could see an open lounge with a man already seated on a couch.
The man was old, with a wrinkled face and gray hair and beard. His hair was tied in a bun, held in place by a dark pin. His beard was long and pointed at the end, ing down to below his chest.
A thick cloud of Death energy surrounded the man, reaching its tendrils all throughout the pavilion.
He sat in the room with his eyes closed, as though meditating, but Alex knew that could not be the case. So, he walked in through the archway, arriving inside with Bladedance in tow.
"Greetings, Death Sage," he bowed deeply. "I, Dawnblade, thank you for accepting my request. I am honored to meet you."
The man slowly turned, his eyes opening as he looked at Alex. His eyes were entirely black, both pupil and sclera, making it impossible to tell just what he was looking at.
"e in," the man said and waited.
Alex went inside and arrived close to the man, standing before a couch. Bladedance stood beside him, looking toward the man.
"Take a seat," the man told them, and finally, Alex sat down. The man looked at Alex for a long while, seemingly judging him all throughout before speaking once again.
"I must say, I never expected to meet you at all, young Dawnblade."
Alex's eyes narrowed, suspicions growing. "Are you aware of who I am?"
"Hard not to be," the man answered. "I hope you understand just how much your reputation precedes you. You are, after all, the most well-known cultivator of the younger generation."
Alex nodded slowly. He had expected as much, which was why he wasn't surprised that the man had accepted his request for an audience entirely based on just his name. By now, Alex had a decent understanding of his own reputation when it came to the Divine realm cultivators.
"I hope you've been updated on the newer mands from the Storm God too," Alex said. "He is no longer intent on capturing me as he was before."
"I'm aware," Somberskull said. "Although, I had no intention of following his orders in the first place."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Are you against the Storm God for some reason?"
"I am just too old to care about other people," Somberskull answered. "I have already more or less retired from everything. Right now, all I want to do is cultivate and hopefully break through to the Celestial realm before I die."
Alex could tell his cultivation base was strong, but he hadn't known it was that close to reaching the Celestial realm.
"So, why have you e to find me?" the old man asked. "Is it perchance to do with your Death Dao?"
Alex blinked in surprise the moment he brought it up. "You can tell?"
"Young man, I am a Death Sage. You do not bee a Death Sage if you can't even tell when someone else is privy to the same Dao as you," the man said in a playfully chiding tone.
Alex was speechless for a bit, but he quickly found his words. "My apologies, I would love to talk about it, but that is not why I have e here today. There is something else I wish to learn about from you."
The man waited for Alex to continue.
Alex looked at him, getting a strange feeling already that this was not the man he was searching for. There was something about the way he spoke, the way he made his gestures, and just the overall physical characteristics of the man that told Alex that it could not be him.
However, since he knew nothing about the person he was searching for, Alex could not rely on his instincts alone. He needed evidence to be certain that this wasn't the person.
"If you don't mind answering a few of my questions, Death Sage, I would like to ask you about your time during the war," Alex spoke up.
"The war? What is it that you want to learn about?"
"You were once considered the strongest user of the Death Dao of your time, were you not?" Alex asked.
The man laughed slightly, shaking his head. "I was never vain enough to claim to be the strongest in Death Dao. Her Majesty, the Death God, was always stronger than me even when my cultivation base was higher than hers. I could never be the strongest."
Alex nodded. "But you should have bee the strongest when she passed away, didn't you?"
The man shrugged. "It's arguable at best. I never had any intention to bee a Death God after Her Majesty passed away, so I never tested my knowledge against many others. There may have been some that could defeat me, and I would have never known."
"You didn't want to bee the Death God after the previous Death God passed?" Alex asked.
"Never. Deathgrim, Deadcall, and the rest were always intent on being one. I never did. I never wanted power in life, just peace. So the moment I was handed that opportunity, I took it," the man said, gesturing around him to the sect he had built.
Alex nodded. "Did you ever work with the Artifact God by any chance?"
"Which one?"
Alex shrugged. "Either, I suppose."
"I have. Here and there. What does that have to do with your questions?" the man asked.
"Have you had any artifacts made by the first Artifact God?" Alex asked.
"The first one? I think I have a few artifacts that I got from him. But that was before he even became a God and was only ever an Artifact Sage. Does that count?" the man asked.
That very much didn't count. The person Alex was looking for had been there with Steelmind on the day of his death, which was ages after he had bee the Artifact God. Listening to everything, Alex was beginning to be convinced that this most certainly was not the person he was looking for.
Still, he had to test him thoroughly.
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