A cold wind whistled along Alex's eyelashes.

The sound of moving water woke him up, and he sluggishly stood up and looked around.

​​

He instantly recalled his situation and frantically stood up.

'A strong man came by and launched us into the sky...'

He looked around and observed his surroundings.

This wasn't any place he recognized.

It was a small, straw hut, and the foundations underneath seemed to be...

'Mangroves?' This was a strange architectural choice in his opinion.

"Binh, the visit to the doctor has made our financial situation even harder, I'm not sure it was worth it..." Alex heard an unfamiliar female voice from outside the small doors of the hut.

A man replied, "Chau-em, one day, the goddess of fortune shall pay out her karmic debts to us, what if the man drowned in the river and died?"

"You're right...."

Alex slowly approached the door, and unexpectedly, the two beyond it opened the door.

The two seemed to be spouses, and they had an average appearance.

They held a heavy bucket, and inside of it, plenty of big and small fish bounced around, searching hopelessly for the nearest source of water.

The man was stunned to see him and fervently exclaimed, "Are you okay?"

"I'm very well okay, but, where is this?" Alex was confused.

This time, the shorter woman replied, "We're on the outskirts of Mekong."

"Chau-em, he drifted off along the delta, he might not know of this place."

Surprisingly, Alex vaguely knew of the name.

The Mekong was the name of a large delta in Southeast Asia.

It hosted impressing fishing and trading ports back in the modern world.

However, that was the least of his concerns now, and one problem arose.

If this was the Mekong Delta he knew of, then he was in...

"Vietnam?!" Alex exclaimed, and his eyes widened.

He frantically left the hut and looked at their surroundings.

Unexpectedly, the entire structure was built on a raging river.

'That explains the sounds...'

There were many such structures around, and they were connected by small canals.

However, beyond the unusual architecture, the biggest indicator of his different location was the climate.

Lush and dense forestry expanded inland, and strange and diverse animal species roamed around.

This was not all close to the mild climate of Qiantang and the coast of the East Sea, but a full-on rainforest tropical climate.

As he breathed heavily and repeatedly looked at this landscape, he felt a hand on his shoulders.

"It seems you are still feeling agitated, come in." This was the man from earlier.

"What happened? I don't remember coming here..." Alex confusingly asked the man.

In the depths of his mind, terror crept up.

The yellow-robed man that suddenly appeared during their celebration...

He was so strong that a single palm of his sent Alex flying thousands of kilometers away.

'I wonder where Hermes is,' Since they were thrown off in opposite directions, Hermes was probably thousands of kilometers in the north.

The man's words brought him out of his contemplative state.

"While fishing, we found your body drifting along strong currents, and brought you here, fortunately, the doctor informed us that you were in a perfectly healthy state."

At the mention of 'doctor', Alex remembered the conversation he eavesdropped on earlier.

Looking around, their living amenities were very rough and minimal.

It seemed that they were a poor couple that relied on fishing along the rivers to make a living.

'Yet, they still took me to a doctor,' Alex was surprised that someone could be so selfless for a stranger.

While the man turned around and led him into the hut, Alex sneakily blessed him.

Following that, he also blessed his wife.

Since he didn't inform them of it, they wouldn't notice the effects immediately, but over time, they would reap its benefits.

'I wonder what happened to Hou Yi and Zhong Kui..?' Alex was sent flying into the air before those two.

They were very kind and exciting companions, hence he couldn't bear it if he brought them trouble.

As he pretended that he was still fatigued and laid down on the straw bed, he realized what he needed to do most urgently.

He had to reunite with Hermes and his companions, and find the rest of the tablets before the end of the one-month protection Longwang kindly gave them.

Fortunately, he still held tightly to his most important possessions.

'Prometheus, the two tablets, Essence, the Spear of Victory and the letter.'

___________

-Far away from Qin-

North of Shiwei, only a desolate wasteland met the unfortunate travelers who lost their sense of direction.

This was a place of eternal snow and cold, a place where only a few tribes dared to consider permanent settlement, and even animals suffered during its harsh winters.

Even though it was only the middle of autumn, an icy storm took the land by surprise, and the sharp ice shards covered the sky and the earth so densely no one could see their hands in front of them.

In such a hostile land, a man's body was submerged upside down into the snow.

Thick-furred wolves surrounded the body and began biting it, thinking it was free food when suddenly, the exposed legs shook profusely and cleared off the snow.

Then, two arms rose up from the thick layer of snow, and these arms pushed on the land, uprooting the rest of the man's body.

"Where am I?" The man had wings on his back, and his skimpy clothing clearly wasn't adapted to the cold.

This was Hermes.

Unlike Alex, who was thrown off thousands of kilometers in the southwest, Hermes' body flew in the northeast direction, and he was in the deepest corners of Siberia.

Near his position, an icy sea separated Asia and the unknown continent of America.

"It's quite chilly, isn't it?" Hermes smiled at the terrified wolves.

"I guess we met a powerhouse."

"The only time I witnessed strength of that level was when I returned from Hecate's place after three years and found Father wrathful..." Hermes reminisced about the past and chuckled.

"I need to find Alexei-boy now...where do I start?" He observed the snowy landscape, and with his divinely perceptive vision, even he could see that there wasn't even a tree in a long perimeter around him.