Jie spiraled down into darkness as light faded and she lost sight of her friends while water rushed in a chaotic swirl all around her.

A moment later, the spiraling vortex spat Jie out into a dark room.

The room looked much like the one she was just in... only there was no sign of her friends and the orange-red glow of the magma tubes below her was muted somehow... giving only the faintest light to see by as long, impenetrable shadows danced around her... even though nothing was moving.

Even the color of the magma itself was muted. The bright orange glow seemed distant, closer to a light gray as darkness hung like a swirling fog in the water around Jie.

She cycled her qi and scanned the area with her spirit sense. Even that felt oddly muted too. Like she could sense only a fraction as far as she normally could. And, what little she could sense felt cold and dead.

The water itself felt colder against her skin even though the magma tubes were right below her, their vents still shimmering slightly with heat. It should be hot. Oppressively so. The only reason it hadn't killed her in the previous room was because she was a cultivator. But, the vents were like candles now compared to the incinerators they'd been only moments ago and the water was icy cold.

Jie heard a whisper right next to her ear. She spun around to face it, but there was nothing there. Then, another whisper. Again, she whirled to confront the source but saw nothing. And still no sign of her friends.

She thought of using her qi armor just in case. But she worried that the bright blue, electric glow would make her stand out in this dark place. There was no sign of anything around her just yet... despite the odd whispering noise. It sounded like words, but she couldn't understand them.

Maybe it's just a trick of this trial. To freak me out... Jie thought. Though she didn't quite believe that.

There was a circular door on the far side of the chamber. The plaque had hinted that this would test them each individually, so rather than wait around for her friends that may never come, she swam over to the door. Whatever this challenge was, she would crush it and find her friends.

The door was sealed in a way none of the others had been. With a metal version of the monstrous face on the mosaics and mouth of the temple. Its eyes were soulless and hungry with the tentacles extending from its mouth across the stone and into sockets in the doorway like the world's creepiest deadbolts. Only, Jie saw no way to move them back and open the door.

Then, as though sensing her desire to enter, the metal tentacles that locked it in place slid back with a series of soft clicks and a stream of bubbles. There were other clicks coming from behind or perhaps inside the stone. Though all the sounds were... wrong. Things that should be loud sounded impossibly far away while whispers and soft noises seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

She heard something behind her and spun around, but once again there was nothing there. Or nothing she could see anyway. She reached out with her spirit sense, but it felt like only water, and Essence... at least in her very limited range.

Still, she couldn't quite shake the unpleasant feeling that something was watching her.

The door rolled out of the way, revealing another large room with rows of things that looked almost like benches. A massive mosaic of the same creature's head decorated the enormous far wall along with a raised platform with what looked like a stone altar on it.

Magma tubes lined the floor as they did in most rooms, but the light was still muted and penetrated only a few meters above the tubes, leaving the ceiling lost somewhere above in utter blackness. A blackness that she could swear was moving.

Jie swam near the floor, close to the light. It would make her more visible, but she wanted as much time as possible to react to anything that might come out of the darkness above.

There was an inscription at the base of the mosaic on the wall, but it was in a language she didn't recognize. The altar was free of any kind of barnacle or other muck... except for green stains upon its surface along with shallow scratches.

She paused and looked around her. This was supposed to be a challenge about survival...

Alone in the dark? What am I missing? Do I need to solve a riddle to get rid of this darkness? Is it some kind of affliction? Do I need to find my way back out maybe? Jie wondered.

Something shot out of the darkness above her, and Jie reacted with a dragonfist on instinct. She slammed her fist into it and it exploded in a brightly glowing colorful flare like liquid fire surrounded by steaming, boiling water that surged outward in a swelling bubble of destruction in front of her, many times more powerful than her usual dragonfist attacks.

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The sheer recoil of her attack slammed her feet first into the stone floor beneath her as whatever it was that had attacked her sprayed away in meaty chunks of white flesh and swirling green goo that splattered across the chamber and swirled in the water around her.

Some of the green liquid touched her water suit and the fabric hissed and burned as the acidic substance ate into it.

Jie immediately swam back and away from the cloud of green fluid.

Another of the creatures launched at her out of the darkness. She saw more of it this time. Saw its worm-like circular jaws open in a whispering, hungry hiss as it propelled itself toward her with long, thin tentacles. Six clawed hands extended toward her, each creating ten images that her spirit sense told her were illusions.

They might've fooled her if she was much weaker, but as it was, the creature was barely at the second star of the Expert rank and it had no hope.

Jie punched its head right between its eye stalks. Its head vanished in a dazzling explosion that sent shockwaves rippling through the water as a bright, explosive flash claimed it much like the first. What remained of its limbs spiraled away in the water, still twitching and gushing acidic green blood, which she avoided this time.

Like the other one, its flesh was pale white, desiccated, and all too familiar.

The whispering grew, filling the water with countless voices all speaking a language she didn't understand. Jie cycled her lightning step and qi armor techniques and the world around her slowed as the blue glow of dragon lightning qi covered her.

Jie directed two fingers on each hand upward and fired two finger of light attacks up into the darkness. The flashes of lightning were unnaturally dimmed, but still much brighter than the magma. They pushed enough of the darkness away to reveal a vast space above her and hundreds, if not thousands, of the creatures hovering in the darkness and staring at her with unblinking alien eyes.

Each of her bolts were thicker than usual and the water around them burned like the sun, muted though they were. Each bolt raced through the water faster than it ever moved through the air. It obliterated the creatures it hit with an enormous explosion that ripped through the water and annihilated everything around her target as it sent shockwaves pulsing through the water, scattering the teeming horde in every direction.

Are my attacks turning water into plasma? I love fighting in water! Now who's scary freakazoids? Jie thought as she grinned wolfishly and fired off one finger of light after another.

She didn't remember the grove water having such a profound effect on her attacks, but something about this particular water massively boosted the power of any attack she used. It was hard not to love the sudden increase in power, even if it was some strange property of the environment rather than her own strength.

Jie staggered her attacks so the flashes lit up the chamber more consistently. The bright bursts of light lit the teeming horde as though revealing one picture at a time in a slideshow of ever-approaching horror. The resulting explosions from her attacks sent creatures anywhere near her targets slamming lifelessly into the floor and pillars. Along with chunks of pale flesh and green blood that swirled in the water in a thickening cloud of acidic gore.

Jie was careful to avoid that acidic blood, but she couldn't help feeling almost euphoric with the feeling of power.

Jie then pulled on the insight she'd gained in her fight against the grove lord. And, rather than firing off single target finger of light attacks as she had been, she continued controlling her qi, unleashing devastating chain finger of light attacks.

Bright, burning plasma arced from one target to the next, spreading with more branches than she'd had the last time she used it. And each time an arc connected with a target, it exploded. Explosions rolled one after the other so close together that they seemed like one constant attack.

The water around Jie hummed with charge as countless shockwaves pulsed through the water, shaking the room. The sheer destruction of her attacks dwarfed any she'd ever used before and devoured huge chunks of the numberless horde in bright, burning flashes.

But, even her boosted attacks were not enough for the sheer number of the creatures and they streamed toward her like a river of alien nightmares. They hissed, roared, and screeched, moving in a coordinated swarm that her attacks slowed but could not stop.

A few of the smarter ones broke away from the main mass trying to rush her and flanked her along the sides of the room. They charged toward her from either side, their many tentacles turning into an illusory blur of razor-sharp glowing attacks as they used the same martial skill she'd seen before.

Jie lashed out with a finger of light to either side of her an instant before they reached her. Bright, burning plasma engulfed them. A dazzling reward for their cunning. Then, as the main swarm surged forward from the brief respite granted them, lightning arced from her flanking targets and chained into the main group.

Bodies flew away from Jie, caught in a bright, burning hurricane of force with her at its center as acidic blood rained all around the room. Stone hissed and spat wherever it touched that cursed blood.

The vast majority of them were far too weak to be her match with only a handful at the eighth and ninth star of the Expert rank. But, there were so many of them that Jie found herself giving ground despite the difference in strength.

Some were weak enough that they spasmed and died simply from approaching her as the charge in the water around her had grown to such an extreme that even her skin prickled from it.

Jie was vaguely aware of the doorway behind her and it had become her goal as she fell back. It would make a good choke point, and she was confident that the bottleneck would rob the swarm of its only advantage. And, keeping moving was the only way to avoid getting surrounded or caught in a cloud of that acidic blood.

There were so many of them that she didn't even have to aim and only seeing in brief flashes made it hard to count how many she killed with each strike. But she guessed it was upwards of forty of the monstrous creatures with every attack.