"Ghost generals are often hard to vanquish, I'll go help out the group," The delegate told Hermes and the piggy.

"Go on," Hermes stared at the delegate.

​​

Meanwhile, the piggy was still glaring at Hermes.

________________

-The floating sandstone temple-

Alex gulped as his mind spun with thoughts about this fight's prospects.

It seemed like the whole temple was alive, and out to harm him under the command of the ghost king.

However, he didn't have time to think, as a kick made its way for his abdomen.

Alex dodged the kick and looked at his opponent.

She was a stone woman, yet her movements were flexible, swift, and light.

He didn't have any difficulty dodging, but every time he tried to land an attack on her....

'Her stone components simply return to the ground...!'

This battle continued on, and none of them landed an attack on the other.

After a few minutes of this meaningless fight, the ghost king burst into laughter.

"Baby, how high are we?"

"High enough to kill an immortal, ghost king," As usual, the stone woman replied monotonously.

Alex frowned at this sudden inquiry.

Though, he abruptly lost his footing and felt his body falling.

A hole formed itself in the spot where he was standing.

"Sly!" Alex exclaimed frustratingly.

He had to be careful since the whole temple was alive.

Nonetheless, he wasn't going to die, as the ghost king had thought, and his wings firmly stabilized him in the sky.

Since the ghost king wasn't aware of this, he recalled the spot where the latter was standing and flew right at it.

Prometheus had turned into a dagger, and while it wasn't his weapon of choice, he wielded it well.

*Clank*

As his dagger dug through the floor of the temple, he expected to find himself in the interior.

...

'Is this floor thicker than I remember?' Alex was digging through for a while but did not enter the temple.

Suddenly, the stone cracked, and Alex saw a flash coming towards him.

The dagger parried the attack, and the resounding sound of stone against metal reverberated in his eardrums.

"This whole temple is alive, remember that~~~," The playful voice of the ghost king remarked.

Alex established some distance from the stone silhouette and looked at the ghost king.

This battleground was really troublesome and unpredictable, hence he had to find a way to render it useless.

Athena's Incarnation was the best for parallel thinking, so he therefore immediately activated it.

'Aphrodite's control over fertility won't work on stone and sand...'

'Ares' powers won't help against the entire temple...'

While dodging any incoming attacks, he calculated all of the possibilities.

'There's still that!'

Alex's body turned from slender and lean, to short and stout.

His eyes shined a fiery orange, and Prometheus turned into a heavy hammer.

"You have some interesting powers, young boy," The ghost king yawned as he watched the fight.

"You haven't seen anything yet!" His two hands were placed firmly on the ground.

'This power burns through Faith Energy, I have to be quick about it!'

Unexpectedly, the sandstone in the perimeter around Alex gradually turned red color.

The sand became liquid glass, and the stone became heavy magma.

Because of the change from solid to liquid, the searing hot materials spilled out of the temple and into the ground far below them.

There was now a wide hole in the temple, and it was continuously expanding.

"Smart move, but aren't you afraid of hitting your friends down below with searing magma?" The ghost king sneered.

"Don't try to fool me, this temple has not been flying straight up, but distancing itself from its previous spot."

The ghost king's expression turned sour, and his slime-like body transformed into a gray mist.

Alex also left the melting temple through the hole he created and dived through the sky.

When the dune desert was visible below him, wings sprouted from his sky, and he gently landed on the sand.

The damage to this area from the hot glass and lava was cataclysmic, and smoke rose from everywhere, turning the area of the sky above them an ashy gray color.

Unfortunately, this smoke also concealed the misty body of the ghost king.

Just as he felt helpless, he heard a familiar voice.

"Sir Alex, do you need some help in vanquishing the ghost king?" It was the voice of the delegate.

Alex smiled brightly.

The delegate was a Silver Immortal, and his dragon mount was a divine beast.

From the ash-like smoke, the figure of the delegate entered.

Alex sighed in relief and exclaimed, "The ghost king is hiding inside the dense smoke, help me find him!"

"Will do!" The delegate was behind him.

"Grea-

Alex stopped in his tracks.

Numbness was spreading around his upper back, and when he turned around, he understood.

An arm, coated in a strange glowing coating pierced through his body.

Looking up, the owner of the arm was none other than...the heavenly delegate.

A smile spread across the delegate's face.

Amidst that, Alex felt a burning feeling in his organs.

The hand had pierced through his heart, and the burning feeling spread through his vitals very quickly.

"Oh, how easy you foreign gods were to fool."

"Why did you lie to us?" Alex didn't understand.

"I never lied, I am truly a member of the imperial court, this decree is real."

"I never said I wasn't a ghost king myself."

The delegate chuckled and observed Alex's reaction.

"There was a monk with us, how did you escape his notice?" Alex began coughing aggressively.

"I lost my ghostly form decades ago, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm speaking about from your previous fight with another ghost king."

Alex tried to struggle out of the man's grasp, but he lost feeling in most of his upper body.

He could see the delegate's bloody arm in front of him, and it was a scary sight.

He tried to recall what the delegate spoke about.

"Be quick about it, he has strong allies," A gray mist formed into the life-giving ghost king Alex was fighting earlier.

In his fight with the gravity-controlling ghost king, the latter chose to abandon his body and powers when he realized he was going to lose.

"I see you understand what I'm speaking about."

"Decades ago, I fought with Lao Zi, and had to do the same."

"Somehow, I escaped and right after that, Lao Zi disappeared from the world."

"I went to the sacred kingdom and forged a narrative, that some great demon attacked me and almost killed me."

"The Jade Emperor took me into his court and allowed me to cultivate with my new human form to 'get revenge'."

"Because I wasn't producing any yin qi anymore, I seemed like an ordinary immortal."

Alex's consciousness was flickering away, and he listlessly listened to the words of the 'delegate'.

The ghost king took out a golden talisman from his pockets and said, "This is a long-distance transmission talisman."

"Try escaping Qin with the crime of attacking a heavenly court member upon your head." The delegate was planning to fabricate a story once again.

There was only one hope left for Alex.

His right arm, which still had some slight sense of touch, slowly moved towards his pockets.

"Hermes...told...me...to...use...this...only...during...emergencies..."

He tightly held a flask in his hand.