After the dark tunnel, Seph found himself in a place that looked like a long pathway in the middle of a forest. The end wasn’t visible, and only one other Yin cultivator was in the area with him.
“Greetings challengers, In this room, your challenge is a chase. Brother Lao Wencheng arrived here first, so he will be the Hunted. Brother Seph will be the hunter. Both roles have advantages. The hunted will have the first chance to reach the door of the next room, after claiming the prize box on the podium in front of you. While the hunter will not have to watch their back from attacks. Be careful though, there are traps all around the place. May the best man win.”
Lao was a tall guy, with fair skin, and long black hair, wore a long green robe and white pants that was perfect for running.
As soon as Scorn’s voice disappeared, Lao ran towards the box, carried it, and started running. A force wall spawned after he ran and it disappeared five seconds later, allowing Seph to run after Lao.
30 seconds later, Sun was screaming and pointing at the ground. Seph noticed a wire, and he jumped over it. This must be one of the traps, he thought.
Lao was running, and avoiding traps too, like he had a special skill to find them out. Seph conjured a lump from his gourd -which made him run slower- and threw it towards Lao, but it never reached him.
Lao took out some throwing stars from a similar spatial sack to Seph’s and threw them back at him.
Seph moved the gourd to his front to block all the stars that were going to hit him. After all, the Gourd proved resilient after the fight with the King Moon Wolf.
Seph could hear Lao cursing under his panting breath from running. It seemed he lost his concentration for a second, and triggered a trap.
“Fuck!” Lao screamed, as six tree logs started swinging from side to side in front of him.
"At least I won’t be the only one who will suffer from this trap," he thought to himself, and started timing his movement to avoid the swinging tree logs.
Seph reached them after a few seconds and started doing the same. Sun just jumped off of his shoulder onto a log, and like a pro, jumped from one to another while they were swinging.
Right after Seph got out of the tree logs trap, Lao threw a white parcel at him, which turned out to be a smoke bomb.
Seph couldn’t see anything. He thought, should he stop or not? But ended up running anyway. “Sun, try to keep an ear out for any traps we trigger.”
Seph took out a phantom wolf bone and threw it. The phantom wolf knew what to do, and it ran after Lao, until it bit his leg.
The bite wasn’t too bad, but it hindered his progress, as he was now running while limping. Blood cascading from his bitten leg, making it sticky and uncomfortable while running.
After two seconds of running, Seph stepped on a patch of ground that turned out to be a trap hole.
It opened up, making him fall suddenly. Sun jumped off his shoulder to the ground. Seph sensed where Sun had jumped and tried to hold on to the ground on that side.
He barely managed to, and heard a crack from his shoulder. He started circulating his energy to that part, trying to heal it, all the while circulating the energy in his entire arm to pull himself up.
Seph got out of the hole panting, not sure what kind of horror was inside the trap hole, Sun patted his back again in consolation, he wasn’t sure it was helping but said “Thanks Sun, phew that was a close one, we need to be more careful.”
At this moment he got a smart idea. What if I used my palm strikes, with this power overbearing? They can probably push the smoke out of my way!
Seph took his stance and threw a palm strike in the path forward, and it removed the air from his way.
He started power walking forward, while using the palm strikes, till he got out of the smoke-screened area. He looked ahead and found Lao had gotten a little further ahead, but the end was still nowhere in sight, so the chase continued.
While running, Sun suddenly started screaming and pointing to the side of the road. It looked like it was a camouflaged opening in the road, but where does it lead?
Seph trusted his guts, and went through the side opening, still running among trees from both sides, but the way was clear in front of him, it suddenly took a sharp turn, and he found that a little ahead, the road was rising in a sharp upward incline; he continued running till he reached the incline and found that it was going to drop him into the original road of the chase again.
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He looked ahead and didn’t find Lao, Looked to the left, and found Lao running while limping. Sun waited for him, and once he was within reach, he jumped on top of him, luckily not missing him. They both fell entangled, Lao bewildered by what just happened.
Seph didn’t give him a chance to think, took the box out of his hand by force, and stood up, kicking him in the stomach once he was standing. And started running the rest of the way.
Lao composed himself 5 seconds later and started running after him. He pulled five daggers and threw them at Seph, but Seph had his back safe already with the Gourd.
What daggers reached him hit the gourd and fell. The gourd’s tougher material allowed it to resist the daggers. Seph wasn’t even sure what kind of material it was.
Seph found another trap in the way, another wire. He triggered it, then jumped back, thinking maybe it was another trap that could prove a tougher challenge for Lao than him.
It turned out to be another swinging trap, this time made of 7 axes that were lit on fire, that started swinging back and forth. Seph smiled and started avoiding the traps one by one till he was out of harm’s way.
Sun wasn’t happy about this last trap though, as he almost caught on fire twice, while Seph was dodging, because he wasn’t super careful of the mass of Sun above his shoulder, like he did his own body.
Lao followed them and also dodged the trap, but it took him ten more seconds because he had to do it more carefully.
Both Seph and Lao didn’t even know what was in the box, but they wanted to win it badly. Neither of them pulled any punches, and they pulled all the stops to win.
Lao took out a magic sword from his spatial sack. It was the most valuable weapon that he could use in a situation like this, and he unleashed it on Seph.
Sun started screaming, pointing to their back, and Seph saw the sword coming at him fast. He tried to dodge to the side, but to no avail. It was homing in on him.
He launched a palm strike towards it, and it hit home, but the sword was still fast. It slashed him on the side when he dodged at the last second. Black blood started dribbling out of his side.
He winced in pain and launched another palm strike towards it, and noticed cracks appearing on the sword. At this point he thought it would be safe to block the sword with his Gourd, and the sword did indeed run out of energy after slamming into the Gourd.
Lao was so close to him now that Seph just let out a war cry that exuded pain, hate, and anger. He summoned a lump from his gourd and launched it at Lao. It hit Lao’s uninjured leg, and the creeping decomposing started already, albeit at a slower rate, perhaps because he was undead already, Seph thought to himself.
Seph continued running, but Lao didn’t follow. He sat down on the ground and started using different herbs to heal his decomposing leg, which began causing him so much pain. The end was still not in sight, but something else was! An obstacle course appeared on the road in front of Seph.
Obstacles that would require him to jump over them, and ones that require him to slide under them, there were ones further away that looked way too high. He was wondering how they were supporting them to have them at that height.
The first one required him to slide. Seph tried to do as he saw the fair acrobats that came to his village to perform small shows, but his head hit the obstacle hard after his entire body was under the obstacle.
Seph lay there thinking How did my life ever come to be like this, the most physical thing I ever did was carry water and walk under it like an elder tortoise, and now I am fighting monsters and running and sliding, and avoiding traps, my life used to be so much simpler, maybe rich people in my village had it this hard too to become rich?
He pondered that last thought a second and then said out loud, “Naah!”
He crawled on his back, using his arms and feet, till he got out from under the obstacle, and continued running. Next was one that required jumping, and he attempted to jump on top of it, but he stumbled and almost fell, hitting his knee.
It was like an enormous cube of stone that reached the ground, so it wasn’t an immediate danger to his life. Once he was on top of it, he saw what he didn’t expect. The rest of the road wasn’t even there!
The rest of the obstacles were stones floating in the air by some uncanny force, and the rest of the road was just not there, a deep black pit in its stead!
He let out a loud sigh and started jumping from one obstacle to the other, ascending three cubes, and then it looked like an easier descent down if he didn’t make any mistakes, four cubes down later, he saw the rest of the road, but no obstacles to reach it.
Instead, there was a wire attached to a pylon on his cube that reached another pylon on the ground.
He thought for a few seconds, made his mind, and grabbed his spatial sack, holding it over the wire from both sides and sliding down to the rest of the road.
“Woohooo!” screamed Seph while on the way, till he dropped to the ground, not the most graceful landing, but a successful one regardless.
Seph stood up, dusting himself off, and then he noticed what was in front of him. There was another pit, but this one required him to cross a long, thin log instead.
The ultimate dexterity challenge it seems, I will still win this. I didn’t go against Lao all this time, just to lose to inanimate objects.
Seph headed towards the log and started crossing it. It scared him at the beginning before he realized that he just needed to be braver, and his legs would stop shaking like a leaf in the wind.
Twenty steps later, he was over that chasm too, and he could finally see the finish line. He ran the rest of the way, thinking, you never know, maybe Lao is still after me.
He eventually reached the end. He high-fived Sun, who was screaming most of this obstacle course challenge, and they both crossed the door to the next room.