They spend more than three days in my Inner World, challenging the very extremes of their limits. Though it took them only seven minutes to kill one hundred opponents, it nearly takes them an entire hour to kill two hundred. Not only are there more Foundation Establishment opponents, but the complexity of managing such a large force with limited spiritual and physical resources also adds another layer of strategy to their execution.

Naturally, they do not manage to complete this challenge on their first try.

Wu Yulan’s first brush with death and the pain she experiences is identical to Lan Xiaohui’s reaction to some of the more brutal terminations my owner has experienced. Wu Yulan’s heart and mind are so deeply gouged that it takes her nearly three hours to recover.

During this time, Wu Yulan rests her head in my owner’s lap and follows the biddings of her emotional state to cry at first, then regret her decisions, then slowly come to terms with her mortality. My owner doesn’t say anything to her friend, merely pets her head and wipes away her tears. There is nothing she can say; Wu Yulan and Lan Xiaohui are not the same. Lan Xiaohui has accepted her death once and has accepted the fact that she likely will die before she achieves her objectives.

There is no fear of death in my owner’s heart; only the regret of failure.

Wu Yulan has a future beyond this place. Should she part ways with my owner, she will still be the princess of a powerful clan. Death has occurred to her only as a very distant possibility, hundreds of years from now when the time limits of her flesh fail her.

I consider this experience an additional feature of this formation that I value highly. No one else in the world can accept their mortality the way these two have an opportunity to embrace it. Fear and hesitation are deadly flaws to any cultivator in a situation where the stakes are high. Even in terms of simply producing sword Qi, such flaws can limit the output of a cultivator’s most prized tool.

In that regard, the Pagoda of Introspection performs a similar function, testing all who pass through its floors for weaknesses that could affect the output of their sword Qi, or even permanently hinder their cultivation.

Perhaps the Pagoda of Introspection does not test for the fear of death. Sword cultivators naturally reject the concept of death — like Li Feng who burned his lifespan in order to attempt to kill Lan Xiaohui. Sword cultivators would gladly give their life to kill an opponent, in this way.

But the death Wu Yulan experiences is different. Torn apart by beasts, it is her first brush with the idea that she can be powerless and small — both ideas that are very deadly to sword cultivators. A sword cultivator must be confident to the point of arrogance for those are the qualities of the supreme sword that they seek.

In this way, experiencing death in this challenge is not a setback, but a boon; it reveals the weaknesses in one’s heart better than any Pagoda of Introspection ever could, and allows one to mend them.

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But I should have known that Wu Yulan would go a step further than accepting her mortality and powerlessness. After all, Lady Yue said that the sword follows the sword, so it stands to reason that the people my owner would attract to her side are deviants in their own way. Like Yun Fei, who was not only willing to throw away her position in the sect but determined enough to also achieve an unprecedented result at the Martial Meeting.

Wu Yulan not only embraces her flaws but there is a dangerous seed of yearning for the experience — a fascination with mortality. Perhaps the repressed princess of the Wu clan has never experienced an emotion as deep as this one — the feeling of being alive after crossing the threshold of death.

Her heart throbs and pumps madly just at the thought of being close to death, her deviant brain chemicals overwhelming the kernel of guilt she feels about the situation.

I approve of this change in Wu Yulan’s heart.

After Wu Yulan recovers, her tactics and strategy change little by little. She takes more risks but transitions them into even greater successes as her teamwork with Lan Xiaohui improves, and after their first two days in the Inner World end, they finally manage to put down all two hundred of the demonic beasts.

For the rest of the third day, they repeat the same challenge several times, perfecting their strategy and tactics which reduces the time it takes to complete the challenge from one hour down to forty minutes.

Lan Xiaohui’s comprehension of her new martial art improves substantially and the changes to her fighting style do not merely extend to her attacks and defense, but also her internal system. Now, the way she moves and carries herself is becoming lighter, yet also heavier in a paradoxical way that I cannot comprehend yet. These changes are not from any of the martial arts she knows, but rather from her comprehension of the basic concepts these martial arts entail.

Wu Yulan is identical in this regard. Her attacks and movement become sudden and explosive — from perfect stillness to inevitable death in the blink of an eye — and I feel her heart and mind change in a similar manner.

As they change the sword they wield with their new knowledge of martial arts, it also changes them. This change is not physical, but all things that stem from the spiritual vessel will eventually affect their physical vessel as well.

After three days and when they reach the limit of their accomplishment against two hundred demonic beasts, they depart my Inner World only to find that some ten hours have passed in real time, a fact that dumbfounds Wu Yulan and, to a lesser degree, Lan Xiaohui.

I would expect an experience like this to bring with it some dangerous temporal dissonance that would affect their mind, but they show no signs of such. Perhaps, as cultivators, the strict definitions of time and causality are more flexible in their minds; after all, they expect to live for a thousand years and have already come to terms with the fact that they will, eventually, spend dozens of years cultivating in one spot, and experiencing it all as if it was merely a short, pleasant dream.

Naturally, with my single-digit lifespan, I do not share their opinions on how secondary time itself is; no, on the contrary, it is quite primary to me.

I am not worried, however. My best chance of completing my Dao is to remain with Lan Xiaohui. As long as I am not an existence greater than her, the chances of me remaining in her possession are the greatest. I still have several years of life remaining and I am certain that if she succeeds, my lifespan will extend greatly.

And even if she fails and dies, I still have several years to mend my immediate problems.

They spend the remaining hours of daylight praising my Inner World and the extreme amount of progress they’ve made.