Jin Xian stood in front of Hui. Green light flickered over her eyes. The green threads coiled in her palms, almost invisible from the outside. Only a faint green glow against her robes stood out in the darkness.

Ghouls circled around them, lurching closer step by step. Fluctuations at the third realm boiled off them, surging on the air. Closer and closer, one step at a time. A hundred meters. Fifty. Ten.

Still Jin Xian stood, eyes darting. Her fingers twitched, clenching with barely-restrained bloodlust. The green glow flickered against her robes.

Five meters. Four. Three.

Jin Xian burst into motion. She darted through the crowd of ghouls. Green threads lashed out from her hands, scything through the ghouls’ rotten flesh like a hot knife through butter. Glowing brilliantly, they sent beams of green light flickering across the battlefield. Where they passed, the battle lit with neon green. Where no thread stood, the battle remained in pure black shadow. Green light and shadow strobed around Jin Xian, darting through the field.

She pointed with her index finger. The first thread connected to a particularly vicious ghoul. It twitched, fighting her, then trembled. A second later, its eyes glowed green, and it leaped at the ghoul beside it.

Jin Xian pointed her thumb, her middle finger, then her fourth finger. One by one, she selected the most powerful ghouls from the battlefield.

As her pinky finger connected, green light strobed in her own eyes. She squinted. Veins stood out on her forehead. Jin Xian snarled.

The fifth ghoul snarled back, fighting her puppeteering power. Its eyes flickered with green. It let out a roar, and the green light began to fade. The green thread thinned.

Hui’s eyes snapped open. He threw out his hand with the shadow snake in it and sent a handful of death qi to Jin Xian. The death qi merged into her back. She arced her back and gasped, then let out a roar of her own. Her eyes beamed with green light.

The ghoul’s eyes, too, glowed completely green. It struggled one last time, then went still. Its head slumped. It burst out and struck at the ghouls around it, smashing their heads to pulp.

Hui climbed to his feet, brushing off his robes. He stretched, feeling his new cultivation base rotate inside him. Mostly consolidated, it rotated smoothly, churning along on its own. Fourth realm. Fourth realm! To think, I’m only one realm behind where Master was when he picked me up, all those years ago.

Hui shivered. …Fourth realm. Fourth realm, fourth realm, dammit! One realm away from fifth realm, and that deadly Heavenly Tribulation! Bai Xue, Xixing, please save this small cultivator, I’m begging you! Don’t let grandpa Heavenly Tribulation kill this pitiful small cultivator!

Jin Xian darted around him. The green threads in her left hand controlled the ghouls, while green threads from the right slashed into ghouls all around them. When her threads couldn’t cut through a ghoul, she twitched her left hand, and the five fierce ghouls slammed into whichever ghoul gave her trouble. In no time, the third-realm ghouls laid crushed underfoot, and Jin Xian stood over them, eyes glowing a fierce green.

Hui yawned, glancing around. “I guess it’s my turn to start fighting.”

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If the other cultivators in the trial realm could see him, their red faces would turn purple from jealousy, and veins would throb on their foreheads. Many of the other cultivators dropped out, or gave in, crumpled and injured under the weight of the ghouls. Others pressed on, their snakes barely able to hold their shadowy bodies together, their items spent and qi almost dried up. Of all those who had entered the trial realm, only Hui and the three powerful cultivators still lacked injuries and possessed most of their resources.

Bai Xue flew through the dark wasteland, faintly annoyed, fanning himself with one of his fans. Fire burst along the crown of his head, though he didn’t seem aware. His snake had diminished somewhat, but still stretched forty meters. “Luckily, I was in male form, and could use my fire attacks against those ghouls. I think it would use up the whole damn snake if I had to transform!”

Liu Baozhai walked alongside her snake, looking around the realm. Startlingly, her eyes beamed with silver light, streaming over the passing ground like flashlights. She looked at her snake. Her snake had diminished to seventy-five meters, yet still remained as real as before. A small, satisfied smile played across her small, porcelain-doll-like face before the usual emotionless mask returned.

Laughing aloud, Xi Guanxi strode through the realm. He directly kicked a fourth-stage ghoul into bits of gore and shook his head, flicking his robes to clean them of blood. “I wonder if anyone else will even make it to the fourth realm? If it’s just me and my precious puppets, it’ll be too boring.”

In his eyes, Bai Xue and Liu Baozhai already belonged to him. Once he laid his eyes on something, no one dared to keep it from him. A consummate chosen in his sect, his mastery of his clan’s puppet arts had propelled him to further greatness. Within Black Asp Sect, he could call the winds and summon the rain. He compelled great influence within the sect. Even if he laid his hands directly on a fifth-stage master’s inheriting disciple, unless that disciple was an even greater chosen than him, the master would be powerless to do anything but stare with bloodshot eyes. In Black Asp Sect, there was no greater chosen than him, not at his stage, nor at any other! In his own estimate, he was only comparable to a true genius such as Weiheng Wu. And even then, in Xi Guanxi’s eyes, Weiheng Wu paled before him!

His eyes flickered again. He peered into the other realms, taking a look at all the other participants. As their suffering forms passed before his eyes, the dismissive look in his eyes only grew stronger. He shook his head. “As expected, no one can stand up to me… wait?”

Xi Guanxi frowned, furrowing his brows. “That… isn’t that the cultivator who killed himself, when he ran into me on the vertebra? Ah, it is! I’d recognize that Fang clan bitch anywhere. To think, she ended up as a…”

His eyes widened. Green light flashed in his vision. “That—our puppeteering arts? How…?”

“The Fang clan bitch entered the secret realm at the same time my little brother did. Now she emerges as that cultivator’s corpse-soldier, using my brother’s puppeteering arts? And that cultivator…” Xi Guanxi’s eyes narrowed, fierce and sharp. “He killed himself before me. That… was obviously an escape technique, but—! What if it wasn’t because of the Fang clan bitch? What if instead…”

Xi Guanxi panted, his emotions whirling. He pressed a hand against his forehead, his hair flying around on the air as his qi roiled. “He! He, he must have, my brother! He must have killed my brother!”

Turning his head to the sky, Xi Guanxi roared. Full of the whole power of his cultivation base and all his rage and bloodlust, it vibrated the very walls of the realm. The roar echoed through everyone’s realm. All through the trial realm, all the cultivators looked up, startled.

Hui, too, turned his head. He furrowed his brows. Eh, huh? Why do I feel like that voice is familiar?

Oh well. Probably someone else getting frustrated by the realm. Ah… it feels nice to glide along while other people struggle. I wonder if this is how the loan sharks felt? It’s my first time to experience this bliss!

Hui sighed out, then shook his head. Fourth realm ghouls punched through the earth. Some climbed up from under the rock formations, shattering the stone as they emerged. Hui’s eyes narrowed. Focus, Hui. Make it out of this trial realm alive first! Don’t become complacent. You’re still a small cultivator! There’s still a million things that can kill you!