Ten minutes felt like ten lifetimes. The pressure was a suffocating ocean, pressing copper-tasting blood up from Hanyuan's lungs and out past his lips. His white robes were now splattered with dark crimson. All around him, the stone plaza was littered with unconscious bodies. The noble youth with the fan had face-planted onto the flagstones, his silk robes dragging in the dirt as he fell unconscious.
Elder Su's eyes gleamed as he surveyed the wreckage. He chuckled, his voice echoing like rolling thunder. "Over half of you have collapsed already. Not bad. But try to survive the final twenty minutes!"
BOOM!
The atmospheric lead suddenly turned to solid iron as Elder Su doubled his spiritual weight.
Immediately, the blonde girl to Hanyuan's right collapsed without a sound, her consciousness stolen before her body even hit the ground. Two male youths behind Hanyuan hit the stone plaza hard, fainted in a breath.
I will pass, even if I have to die standing! Hanyuan swore to himself, his internal Qi sparking desperately to fortify his skeleton.
Across the square, even youths at the Peak of the Qi Refining stage were crumpling like wet parchment. Elder Su had intelligently graded the pressure; those with higher cultivation levels were forced to bear the weight of their own limits.
At the twenty-minute mark, Hanyuan's legs were shaking so violently it looked like he was standing in a windstorm. His vision swam with spots of grey and black. There were barely a hundred youths left standing now out of the thousands that had begun the trial. Inside his chest, his internal organs felt as if a cold hand was squeezing and twisting them, and a steady trail of blood ran down his chin.
When the final five minutes began, his sight was almost entirely gone. His legs began to buckle, his knees dropping within inches of the stone floor.
With his vision blurred by darkness and agony, Hanyuan did the only thing he knew how to do: he retreated into his memories.
He thought of the gentle steam rising from his mother's herbal soups, his father's booming laughter, and the crackling fires with Yanfeng. He pictured Minghan's bumbling attempts at swordplay. Finally, he remembered the cold mornings in his backyard, and the harsh, gravelly voice of Elder Wei barking orders over his shoulder.
"The spear is not wood or metal, Hanyuan. It is your spine. It is your soul."
"I... will not fall!" Hanyuan rasped through bloody teeth.
Moving by pure muscle memory and instinctive desperation, his shaking fingers reached back. He untied the cloth binding his blackened steel spear and drew it into his hands. Under the crushing gravity of a Nascent Soul realm master, Hanyuan raised the tip.
His muscles tore, his bones groaned, but he began to swing.
Slowly. Awkwardly. Violently.
He forced his body to trace the basic thrusts and arcs of his spear training. It was a mad act. In the middle of an ordeal meant to crush a person's movement, Hanyuan was practicing martial forms. But as soon as the steel shaft whistled through the leaden air, something miraculous happened. The pain in his mind seemed to halve. By throwing his spirit entirely into the weapon, his mind separated from his physical suffering.
Above on the jade pillar, Elder Su's bored posture evaporated. He leaned forward so far he nearly stepped off his perch, his blue eyes bulging as they locked onto the twelve-year-old boy practicing spear drills in the mud and blood.
To train the spear on the very verge of fainting? Under my direct suppression? Elder Su thought, his heart thumping in a way it hadn't in decades. What is this kid's drive? What remarkable willpower! Elder Su's eyes sparkled like he had just discovered an unpolished piece of immortal jade in a trash pile.
Then, the leaden weight vanished.
The air returned to its normal, cool density. Hanyuan collapsed, using his spear like a crutch to keep himself from slamming his face into the flagstones.
"The first trial is concluded!" Elder Su's booming voice snapped through the heavy silence. "Exactly thirty-five people remain standing. Out of thousands, you are the ones who passed."
Elder Su swept his hand out. Thirty-five glowing green streaks flew through the air, hovering precisely before the exhausted survivors. It was a Tier 2 Bone-Healing Marrow Pill.
Hanyuan plucked the pill from the air. His body was a map of shredded muscles and internal fractures, his head throbbing with a violent fever. He swallowed the pill dry.
The medicinal power dissolved instantly like cool spring water. He felt as light as a feather. In under ten minutes, his shredded meridians were knit back together, his fractured ribs were sealed, and the violent fatigue was washed clean from his bones.
He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, finding them completely restored.
As the warmth of the medicinal energy receded, Hanyuan marveled at his own body. Every ache had vanished, replaced by a crystalline clarity. He knew enough of the world to understand the weight of what he had just swallowed. Pills were categorized by tiers: Tier 1 for the Qi Refining Realm, Tier 2 for the Mortal Core, Tier 3 for the Nascent Soul, and Tier 4 for Soul Transformation.
The pill Elder Su had just handed out like candy was a Tier 2 healing Pill. Back in Spirit Springs City, his father had spent half the Bai Clan's fortune just to secure a Tier 2 Qi Paving Pill for Hanyuan's journey. Here, the Mystic Sky Sect used them as a standard recovery tool for trials. The gap in resources was staggering.
Elder Su waited for the thirty-five survivors to regain their feet. His gaze was no longer just stern; it held a flickering ember of expectation.
"You have passed the first test," he announced. "Now begins the last Test. You will be teleported into the Myriad Herb Wilderness. Your goal is to gather Spirit Ingredients. Every herb, root, and flower has a assigned point value. At the end of the duration, we will rank your spoils. The top fifteen will become Outer Disciples of the Mystic Sky Sect. The remaining twenty... you will be offered the path of a Work Disciple."
Work Disciple, Hanyuan thought, his jaw tightening. In a sect like this, a Work Disciple was little more than a servant—cleaning spirit beast pens or tilling herb gardens for decades. He hadn't left his home to become a janitor, but still it was way better than spirit springs city.
"Go!" Elder Su waved his sleeve.
The world blurred into a swirl of light. Hanyuan felt his stomach lurch as space twisted around him.
SPLASH!
"Tsk. My luck is truly rotten," Hanyuan muttered, his voice echoing through a dim, damp clearing. He found himself standing waist-deep in a stagnant pond. Algae clung to his pristine white robes, and the cold water seeped into his boots.
He walked to the shore, shaking himself like a wet dog. Above him, the trees were colossal, their gnarled trunks thicker than clan towers, their canopy so dense that not a single ray of direct sunlight reached the forest floor. In the distance, the mournful howl of a wolf reverberated through the mist, followed by the snapping of branches.
He didn't dally. He squeezed the water from his hair and began to move. Every plant here felt vibrant with Qi, but most were common weeds. After ten minutes of cautious trekking, a flash of deep, pulsating crimson caught his eye.
Tucked between the roots of an ancient tree was a flower with five jagged petals, glowing like an ember.
"A Blood-Soul Lily," Hanyuan whispered, his eyes widening. According to his father's scrolls, this was a high-value Tier 1 herb used to refine blood-circulating pills.
But he wasn't alone.
A low, wet hiss rose from the shadows behind the Tree. A three-meter-long snake, its scales the color of tarnished brass and its eyes two pits of molten gold, was coiled protectively around the lily's stem.
The serpent didn't wait for him to posture. It uncoiled with the speed of a released bowstring.
"Shit!"
Hanyuan thrust his spear out in a frantic Icy Current Thrust, but the snake tilted its head mid-air, the frost-beam missing by a hair. Before Hanyuan could retract his weapon, the snake's thick tail whipped around in a blurring arc.
CRUNCH.
The impact against Hanyuan's ribs was like being hit by a swinging battering ram. He felt the air explode from his lungs and heard the distinct snap of bone as he was launched backward. He slammed into a massive tree five meters away, the bark cracking behind him.
"Cough!"
A spray of blood hit the moss as Hanyuan slumped to the ground. His vision pulsed red. The snake lunged, its fangs dripping with a clear, viscous venom, aiming straight for his throat.
Hanyuan's senses screamed over the pain. He rolled to the left, the serpent's fangs sinking into the tree bark where his head had been a second ago.
Ignoring the agony in his side, he pushed off the ground, rotating his blackened steel spear into a killing stance.
"DIE!"
"Returning Ice Arc!"
He put every ounce of his 5th Layer Qi into the swing. The spear whistled as it swept out, the first strike of the 'X' catching the snake mid-lunge and carving a deep, frozen gash into its side. The beast shrieked, a high-pitched rasping sound, but the technique wasn't done.
The spear-tip snapped back instantly in the reverse arc. The sharpened edge, reinforced by Qi, caught the snake perfectly beneath the jaw.
Squelch.
The serpent's head was severed in one clean motion, spinning through the air before landing with a dull thud in the undergrowth. The massive body convulsed, tail whipping wildly against the ground for several seconds, before finally going limp.
Hanyuan collapsed onto one knee, clutching his side. His breath came in ragged, bloody spurts, but he looked at the glowing Blood-Soul Lily.
He reached out with trembling fingers and plucked the flower.