Chapter 3950: Ivory Flute

There were no external changes to Alex, though the robe itself seemed to glow with a bit more intensity than it had before. To most people, the change wasn’t strong enough to even be noticed.

The Fire God waited for a few seconds afterwards, but when he saw nothing, he frowned slightly.

"I don’t notice anything different about you at all," the man said. "Are you even doing anything right now?"

"Of course," Alex said, smiling widely. "It’s understandable you can’t notice it, since it’s not really something you can notice without looking for it directly. I would like to welcome everyone here to use your Divine sense to look at what is happening right outside of my robe."

Several Divine senses landed on Alex’s body, attempting to see what it was that they couldn’t notice from where they were.

The first one to figure out anything was the Sky God herself.

She let out a soft gasp in surprise. Then, one after another, the people began showing signs of surprise all around the audience. Some gasped, some raised their eyebrows. Some narrowed their gazes, while some were left looking at each other to try and understand if what they were sensing was even correct at all.

The Fire God himself couldn’t stop his face from showing a look of surprise.

"What... what is going on?" he asked. "Your robe... it’s generating Qi on its own?"

Alex shook his head. "I’m afraid it is not all on its own," he said before pointing toward the sky. "It is instead directly converting what is coming down upon me."

"What?!"

"How is that possible?"

"Isn’t that what the World Tree did?"

People made all sorts of sounds of surprise, many turning to the Artifact God, immediately asking for an explanation on how that was possible.

"It’s a property of the threads that appeared after I refined it with some Yang-based materials," Shen Yaojia answered calmly. "It turned out that the threads were capable of destroying sunlight and turning it into regular energy. I made use of that property of the threads and made it capable of turning that energy directly into Qi and Divine energy."

"Divine energy?" the Golden God asked, turning around. "So he’s not just replenishing his Qi?"

"No. He’s also replenishing his Divine— err, Spiritual energy. But with his current cultivation base, he can’t quite make use of the skill. It should..."

She looked toward Alex and smiled as the robe’s faint glow vanished.

"...stop working right about now."

Everyone returned their attention back to Alex, watching him once again. The robe had indeed stopped working, but the small amount of energy he had received in return had to be useful.

No one could truly understand how useful it really was. What Alex had gained had been Divine Qi from the surroundings instead of regular Immortal Qi. As a result, his body had regained more Divine Qi than what he had lost using the robe.

While it was more Divine Qi, it was unrefined Qi. It could not be used with any artifact, and could only be used directly, and even then, it wouldn’t be as strong. As such, it was quite good for cultivating, but beyond that, it wasn’t as useful.

His spiritual energy replenishment, however, was incredible. He had lost a bit of his mental energy thanks to compressing his Qi into Divine Qi three times in a row, and somehow he had already regained that and much more.

He could only imagine how much better the robe was going to become in the days to come when he broke through to a higher realm and had more Divine Qi to use.

"Well then," Alex said. "I’ve shown you what I’ve got, senior. How about you show me your artifacts too?"

Ashmaker let out a loud harrumph. "Don’t think you’re the only one who has an artifact of that caliber."

In a flash, an artifact appeared on his hand, and not the one Alex had imagined he would see. It was an ivory flute with a red string attached to the end of it.

He didn’t know about this artifact at all.

"This flute was carved from the hollow bones of a Celestial Vermilion Bird, refined with the beast core of the same beast," the man said. "It is simply called the Phoenix Flute."

Alex looked at the flute. "The Phoenix Flute?" he asked. "What can it do? Create Phoenix Fire?"

The man laughed. "That would be quite simple, wouldn’t it?" he asked. "No, this flute can do much more than that."

Ashmaker pulled the flute to his lips and blew upon it. A sharp, sonorous sound rang from the end of the flute, which suddenly burst out with bright colors of phoenix flames. Within seconds, the colors coalesced in the air, suddenly giving off heat and light as they turned into true phoenix flames.

Alex was about to ask how he had been wrong with his question when he saw what came out from the fire.

A Phoenix.

A Vermilion Bird made up of phoenix fire had formed in the sky, and it flew around for a while before slowly coming down toward the arena, landing on the right shoulder of the Fire God.

"A bird construct, huh?" Alex asked. "That’s not—"

"Do not belittle me, young human," the bird suddenly spoke. "I am Feng Gingmai, great-grandson of Feng Luoshao, the first Matriarch. Be honored to be in my presence."

Alex’s eyes immediately narrowed, momentarily moving to look toward Scarlet in the audience.

"Feng Gingmai? Do you know who that is?" Pearl asked.

"The name sounds familiar," Scarlet said. "Our second leader, the Patriarch, had two sons and a daughter. The daughter became the next Matriarch, mother to our current Matriarch. This one must’ve been a child of one of the two sons."

The information reached Alex through their bonds as well.

"Great-grandson of the progenitor, meaning you are the same generation as the current Matriarch," Alex said, quickly making the connection. "Senior Gingmai, are you not ashamed to be moving to the tune of a mere human?"