“Congratulations cultivators, on making it this far. This is the first big prize room in the trials. The challenge here is tough. One of you may win, none of you may win. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t design these challenges to give the prize to one lucky winner, but to give it to one deserving winner. If none of you is deserving, then others will come after you and attempt the same trials. In the next room, you will find plenty of hanging gourds. Only one of them is the real prize for this challenge. May the best man win.”
After the dark tunnel, Seph heard another message from Scorn, before he appeared in a room that looked like a garden of sorts.
Greenery was all around, and the room was decorated by hanging beige, black, yellow, and green gourds.
He looked across the vast garden to see another Yin immortal on the far side.
Wherever he looked, various immortals stood at different starting points.
He started counting them, and they were nine, ten, including himself.
He couldn’t count the hanging gourds, not from his position. There were too many of them, and he didn’t have a line of sight towards all of them.
From the far side of the room, one of the Yin disciples moved forward and stood under a gourd, looking at it; only for the gourd to explode and shower him with fire. With his clothes caught on fire, the guy screamed and ran maniacally in no direction. He ran under another gourd, and it exploded, launching throwing stars, which a quarter of them stuck into his burning skin.
He fell in pain and started crawling further, only to have a third gourd explode on top of him, dousing him with acid. His body couldn’t take anymore.
Lying there, he convulsed on the ground for a few seconds before he remained still forever.
The remaining nine disciples gulped, looking wide-eyed at the entire scene, staring warily at the gourds that were close to them.
At that moment, another disciple who had a spear stepped forward and attacked the gourds with his spear. The first gourd doused the area under it with fire again. He retracted his spear quickly, so his weapon was safe. He smirked, thinking he'd got this.
He attacked another one and throwing stars exploded from within; he dodged a bunch of them at the last second.
Thinking there was a pattern, he thought the next one must be the acid gourd; he attacked the third gourd, and instead of acid, a snake fell down from the gourd, he attacked it with his spear.
It dodged him quickly; he attacked it again and again, several times in succession, but to no avail!
The snake edged closer to him after each dodge, and finally bit him in the leg. Spitting all its venom inside his flesh, the man shrieked in pain, and with a north-to-south stab. He killed the snake with his spear, but after all its venom had entered his body.
He could feel the venom searing his veins from inside his body. He looked around warily, deciding what to do next; he decided to attack the next gourd instead.
Trying to find something for the poison, which was making his flesh decompose at an alarming rate, it must be necrotic poison, he thought. Acid fell down from the first gourd, and he attacked the next one, which exploded with throwing stars again, that he couldn’t dodge because of his injured leg.
With five throwing stars embedded in his abdomen, chest, and forehead, he fell down into a pool of his own blood.
*****
image [https://imgur.com/XfBSXXC.jpg]
There was a kind of stalemate, after two disciples had died, and even those who had methods to get through the gourds were apprehensive to try them.
Still, one moved forward and got a piece of iron ore out of the spatial sack he had. He threw it with all the power he had at one gourd, but missed. The iron ingot eventually hit a gourd closer to another disciple and, out of it, dropped a goblin. A short, thin goblin, holding a dagger in its hand, went to attack the disciple closer to it, but a gourd exploded on top of it, dousing it with fire, and the disciple hit it with a head kick, sending it tumbling backward. When another gourd exploded, dousing it with acid, the goblin’s screams died down after that.
“Fucking Asshole!”
“Sorry!” said the disciple who threw the iron rock, before he took out another one, trying to hit the gourd closest to him again; this time he succeeded to his dismay, a fast-spreading cloud of acidic poison spread out from the exploding gourd, and reached him quickly; it started eating through his body, and he saw its effects, as a terrified look spread across his face.
Angrily, he took out chunk after chunk of iron, throwing them with all the power he had, trying to aim closer to the other disciples to put them in trouble too, realizing he was dying soon; it made him spiteful, he didn’t want to die now, and he decided he wouldn't die alone.
One stone hit far from any of the disciples, and another acidic poison cloud spread, reaching nobody.
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The second ore hit an acid gourd far from the other disciples as well.
The third hit a gourd that had a snake inside it. This snake moved fast with the purpose of attacking the closest disciple to it, which was Seph, who launched three palm attacks towards it. The ghastly hands overreaching hit the snake, and it exploded in a shower of gore.
The fourth rock hit another disciple in the face, and he'd fallen unconscious.
The fifth chunk hit closer to the ingot-throwing disciple, and a shower of throwing stars launched out, decorating his body with bloody spikes, and he fell dead from his wounds.
Seph had seen enough. He wanted to wait and see if more surprises were waiting in the gourds, but with the disciples going mad with spite and attacking each other, he won’t play the waiting game anymore.
He launched a palm attack at the closest gourd, a ghastly hand reaching out to hit it. The gourd exploded, triggering the next gourd as well, which doused the area beneath it with fire.
Seph used his eye on the third gourd over, waiting for the fire to die down.
Appraising... Name: Hollowed Gourd. Type: Miscellaneous item. Usage: Carries water or wine.
He checked the Eye of the Appraiser skill requirement and found that the gourd didn’t count towards the goal, and he figured that mundane items wouldn’t count towards the goal.
Quest Eye of the Appraise level 2: Identify 25 unique items. Progress: 10/25
The fire settled down a little, the other disciples keeping a close eye on him, impressed by his weird skill. They hadn’t started clearing a path for themselves yet.
Seph launched another palm attack, and another goblin dropped from the gourd, running at him, jumping over the fire, and trying to reach him. He calmly breathed and launched another palm attack. The ghastly palm reached out, and for the first time, he noticed a shock wave of sorts reverberated from the attack, flattening the face of the goblin, killing it instantly.
“Shattered into a thousand pieces. His arms are overbearing."
Now he understood what the last training session had done for his palm strike.
Was this martial art overpowered? He's super early and already had advantages over the other disciples.
Putting the thought aside for later, he headed forward and launched a fourth palm attack on the next gourd.
Seeing the explosion of throwing stars, he dropped to the ground, covering his head with his hands; luckily, two throwing stars only got impeded in his leather chest armor from the back, he asked Sun to take them out for him, which the monkey did gladly, and he moved back to try launching the stars himself.
After throwing the first star, the gourd didn’t explode as usual; he attacked with the last throwing star, and the gourd cracked. A stream of little blue stones fell steadily from it to the ground. He headed over and used the eye on them.
Appraising... Name: Spirit Stone (S) Type: Currency The used currency between immortals can be used to gain Yin Energy and also in various alchemical processes.
Seph became wide-eyed; these stones are so expensive. He heard tales but never saw one before. He moved under the falling stream of Spirit stones and collected them in his spatial sack. The total number was one hundred.
After the other participants saw what he had found, they became brave again and tried to find such a treasure for themselves.
Except for one bow user who wanted to take what was Seph’s for himself, he unleashed an arrow at a gourd in Seph’s direction, one after another, fire, acid, throwing stars, and a goblin, which found himself dead immediately with an arrow to the head.
The final gourd dropped another 100 spirit stones to the ground, but getting this sum alone wouldn't please him. He wanted to cull the competition; he wanted Seph dead.
He aimed the next arrow to hit Seph in the heart. Seph countered with a ghostly palm strike that was timed just right to smash the arrow before it could reach him.
I can’t ignore this guy who is hunting for my head. I have to stop him before going for the grand prize.
Seph thought and ran towards the bow user, he stopped two arrows in their tracks and was close to the bow user now, but the bow user knew his specialty well, so he ran away, aiming his arrows at gourds to make way, but in the third gourd there were throwing stars. He jumped back to avoid them, only to find his back hitting Seph’s chest; looking behind him in panic, he held Seph’s hands fast to prevent him from using palm strikes, to which Seph gave him a diabolic smile then lunged for his neck, blood came trickling down all over Seph’s mouth and neck, while the bow user was screaming. He let go of Seph’s hands, and took out an arrow, and stabbed Seph three times in the back to no avail. His body slumped down in a pool of his blood. Seph removed his opponent’s heart and ate it to heal himself immediately.
Seph went back after putting the bow and arrows inside his spatial sack, took the spirit stones, and started clearing the rest of the path to the center. He didn’t trigger any new gourd traps. Seph had discouraged the other cultivators after killing the bow user, and after another one of them died because of the traps.
At the center of the room, standing on a platform, was a different gourd, bigger with a pointy top, completely black. With some foreign letters painted vertically on its front side. Seph used the eye on the gourd.
Appraising... Name: The Gourd of Phantom Death. Type: Gourd Weapon. Quality: Rare (Growth) Magical Ability: Stores Death to Unleash Mayhem and Misery.
A little confused by the description of the magical ability. Seph infused the gourd with his energy, and the gourd floated to his back, thus ending the challenge. A trapdoor was under the gourd, leading underground. A little hesitant but adamant to move forward nonetheless, Seph gave one last look around the room, seeing the other challengers leaving through their doors. He descended through the trapdoor.