Ithilix stared at the hieroglyphs upon the door ahead of them as her antennae twitched. "This one senses a powerful formation on the door. This one does not believe we can force it," she said.
"Hmm..." Pan Tian said, "Jie, be alert for whatever's making that sound. It'll be on us soon. Ithilix, can you sense how we might open the door?"
Before Ithilix could respond, the statue of the red woman spoke.
"You've come a long way, my students," it said, "you've struck down elusive evil. You've overcome the impossible and gambled like a fox. You've blazed like a beacon when alone in the darkness. Even with my manipulations to give you a worthy challenge, you've never failed to make this academy proud. You're among the strongest and most talented students this academy has ever trained. With the courage to stand where others would bow and the wisdom to scurry like a mouse when needed...
"Now, I give you your final challenge. A test of strength, cunning, and battle sense. As is right for true cultivators. Succeed and the way shall be opened. Fail, and your bones will join others that they may serve in finding worthier cultivators."
The statue flared with red energy and the obelisks at the corners of the dais lit up. Their runes glowed a deep, rich red as bones rattled and clattered with metal beneath them.
Jie peered over the edge into the pit. Her electric blue eyes widened as the enormous mounds of bones swirled with pulsing red energy and assembled into countless skeletons of a variety of species wielding all manner of rusted, ancient weaponry. As they assembled, their auras flared to un-life, and red energy burned like fire around their bones. It was impossible to tell their numbers, packed on top of each other as they were. The majority of their auras ranged from the ninth star of the Adept rank to the third star of the Expert rank. With a few a star or two higher mixed in. Jie was confident that her friends could take on even the strongest of them as long as they didn't get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. And she wouldn't let that happen.
The skeletons leaped onto the walls of the pit and climbed up with the speed of cultivators.
For a final test, it was far from the most dangerous thing they'd faced, and Jie noticed herself smirking.
Then, another pulse of red energy washed over the room, and a chorus of echoing wails cried out. Creatures of boiling, almost-liquid red energy flew up through the ranks of skeletons, leaving ghostly trails in the air behind them as they hurtled toward Jie and her friends.
"Specters! They'll suck out our life force! Kill them!" Pan Tian cried as the first of the creatures rose above the lip of the pit.
The specters opened their ghostly mouths in impossibly wide yawns and sucked ribbons of green, vibrant energy out of Jie and her friends.
Waves of nausea and dizziness crashed over Jie as she felt her strength draining away.
"Kill them..." Pan Tian said, her voice sounding fainter by the second as streaks of gray spread through her hair.
A burning ache spread through Jie's bones as she formed a dragonfist and lashed out at the closest specter. Her fist passed through it as though it were made of slimy cobwebs that made her skin crawl.
The specter gripped her arm with slender, fluid fingers and pulled itself along Jie's arm. Jie tried to throw it off her arm and away from her, but her arm moved through the center of its chest like water. It brought its yawning mouth only an inch away from her face as it sucked out her life force.
Xue lit up with an ethereal white glow and pounced on a specter, ripping it to pieces and Jie reached for that very same power within her. The one she'd used against the ghosts in the tower. Her skin wrinkled and grew spotted with every passing second and she felt tired. So very tired as she desperately tried to activate the power...
Trying to activate the power felt as though she were fumbling blindly for a switch in a room she didn't know. She tried to think of how it felt when she'd activated it before and did her best to repeat the act.
Jie lit up with the ethereal white glow and the creature suddenly felt more solid to her. Her arm displaced its chest with a sickening crunch and its yawning wail turned into an agonized shriek.
It tried to pull itself off her, but Jie grabbed it by the head and squeezed. Its skull popped like a ripe fruit as its body broke into fragments of red energy. The vibrant green life energy it'd absorbed flowed into Jie in a thick green ribbon.
Jie's skin smoothed and the spots faded as did the weakness and she snarled. The specters screeched and tried to fly away, but Jie struck out with finger of light attacks and as her dragon lightning qi touched them, they exploded.
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Each time Jie killed a specter, streams of green energy returned to their owners. Pan Tian let out a shuddering gasp as she aged backward to her original, young, and bubbly self.
"Thanks," she said with panting breaths.
Ithilix shuddered. "This one did not like those," she said after Jie killed the final specter.
Jie's control over the ethereal ability slipped and the white glow of her skin faded. Xue looked at Jie and gave her an approving nod.
But, while they'd been busy with the specters, the skeletons had almost reached the top of the pit. An endless tide of them. Jie cycled finger of light and swept her finger over the edge of the stone island they stood upon.
The bright blue beam of dragon lightning qi burned through all the skeletons it touched, tearing through them and reaching those behind as well. The powerful lightning disrupted the red energy that held the skeletons together, sending their bones tumbling back down the pit. But countless more took their place and clambered up.
Jie sent out several chain finger of light attacks, blasting huge numbers of the skeleton horde away while her friends executed their own attacks, whittling them down. Even so, more skeletons reached the island, crawling out of the darkness below.
Jie sensed one behind her and spun. She swatted aside the rusty, broken blade it'd been trying to thrust into her back with the back of her hand and drove a dragonfist into its face.
Its skull shattered like an eggshell and it collapsed in a heap at her feet as three more leaped up out of the pit at her.
Jie sent out a chain finger of light attack, the dragon lightning qi arcing from one to the next. They exploded in a flash of red and blue energy as their bones scattered across the stone. Jie cycled another chain finger of light attack and blasted another half dozen away. She and her friends fought back the relentless tide of undead, watching each other's backs and keeping the skeleton's numbers from overwhelming them.
The metal scraping sound grew louder, and Jie felt new auras enter her awareness. She looked down the hallway as soon as she felt them. The same red glow that animated the other undead burned between gaps in heavy golden armor as fifty or so more undead marched down the hallway toward Jie and her friends. They dragged their discolored golden blades and heavy metal shields along the stone floor as they lumbered forward.
Each of them belonged to the same humanoid cat species as the four mummies Jie had fought in the pyramid. And, unlike the skeletons in the pit, these creatures still had stubborn flesh clinging to their bones. Though it was dried out and rotten with sinew dangling from joints that no longer needed it. Powered by the statues' unnatural power.
But, more than their horrifying visage, what worried Jie was the fact the entire pack of fifty undead was between the fourth and fifth star of the Expert rank. The golden armor that hung upon the zombies by rotten straps looked vastly superior to anything the skeletons from the pit carried. Each item radiated a dangerous aura.
Jie also sensed a ninth star Expert hidden somewhere in the middle of their formation. Though there was something strange about his aura. He felt vastly stronger than the ninth star Expert mummies she'd fought in the pyramid... almost as though he were being empowered somehow.
Pan Tian and Xue were only at the fifth star of the Expert rank with Ithilix at the sixth star. If the armored undead reached her friends, Jie wasn't sure she could protect them.
Jie cycled finger of light and lashed out at the zombies lumbering down the hallway. The bright blue energy lit up the darkness like a flare and traveled the distance in the blink of an eye.
Before it could connect with the armored undead, a bubble of dark red energy expanded over the group of zombies like a protective dome. Jie's dragon lightning qi slammed against the barrier. Snarling, ferocious lightning qi snapped, crackled, and burned over the surface like a hungry tidal wave of power that spread out, searching for any opening to get at its undead targets.
The energy barrier screamed a high-pitched hum as it strained against Jie's attack and started to buckle and warp.
A desiccated hand reached up from the center of the formation and dark red energy surged out of ruined fingers and into the energy barrier. The barrier snapped back into place, recovering entirely as Jie's attack sputtered out into nothingness and something let out a cackling, raspy laugh.
Jie cycled a twin finger of light attack at full power and unleashed it. Dragon lightning qi crackled through the air from both of Jie's hands, flowing out a pair of two fingers on each side. Each with more than double the strength of her first attack.
Her earlier restraint had allowed the creature to block it with relative ease. But now, dragon lightning qi slammed into the barrier like the wrath of the heavens. Ripples reverberated through the barrier as it burst apart in an explosion of qi that stirred up a cloud of dust from the ancient stone that swirled around the zombies like smoke. Fragments of dragon lightning qi danced and flickered through the swirling cloud of dust and red energy.
The creature's laughter died out, replaced with a frustrated growl.
Jie cycled twin chain finger of light attacks and released them. But, as the lightning left her fingers, the same dark red energy as that which had fueled the barrier surrounded two of the zombies and hurtled them through the air straight into her streams of lightning. Dragon lightning qi tore into them. But when she tried to make her qi chain to the next targets, it refused to obey. It was like wrestling against some unseen force as her qi was pulled against her will, sticking to the pair of zombies like magnets.
With sheer will, Jie forced her qi to arc from them. But it moved sluggishly through the air, creeping toward the rest of the zombies, which continued to march forward. Closer to Jie and her friends...
The weakened chain she struggled and strained to form sparked and crackled in the air, constantly trying to double back to the zombies which acted like lightning rods. Jie gritted her teeth and pushed it with all she had, forcing it to wind closer to the zombie ranks...
Her attacks almost reached their next targets but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't close the last few inches of distance.
The two zombies the ninth star Expert had used burst into flames and hovered in the air, each the center of a maelstrom of lightning.
Finally, Jie's attacks sputtered out. She glared at the pair of smoking corpses that hovered in the air, their golden armor glowing orange with heat.
The zombies drew closer.