Once I was done absorbing all of the essence in the cavern, I turned my attention to the glowing formation that had appeared when I had finished off the golem.
I tried to study it and work out its secrets, but even with energy vision, it was like I could only half see it. The lines that formed it were disconnected, and so much was missing that what remained didn’t make any sense.
Giving up on the idea of stealing this knowledge for myself, I walked forward and stepped onto the formation. The room around me disappeared and was replaced with a nearly identical cavern.
I was standing near the passageway that served as an exit from the trial once again. This time, instead of just a single golem, there were two that I would need to defeat.
With the way I had claimed victory in the first room, the increased number of opponents posed no additional challenge. I repeated the exact same process, siphoning away all the qi and then engaging them carefully to drain their remaining energy reserves. They both fell to the ground without fanfare, and I brought an end to their existence.
Once they were both destroyed, essence flooded the room once more, and I cultivated to draw it all into my acupoints.
This pattern repeated in the next three caverns with the number of golems increasing each time. However, defeating five was no more difficult than defeating one. I just needed to create the formations and drain the room. The stone constructs posed no danger.
This made me wonder how my classmates were faring without the ability to build Qi Gathering Formations. They would likely end up having to fight these things in actual combat. I could only imagine the difficulty of trying to put down such creatures with only the strength of a Martial Master 1. I hoped they were doing well.
As I cultivated the essence that was my reward from defeating the fifth stage, I tried to understand what was happening with it. After the essence passed through my acupoints, it seemingly disappeared. The more I stared at my acupoints, trying to understand what was happening, the more I felt a twinge inside, like there was an itch I couldn’t scratch. Was that real, or had I just convinced myself I was feeling something? I didn’t know.
In the sixth room, I met my first true challenge. Once more, there was only a single golem in the cavern. It was smaller and looked more fragile than the ones I had ‘fought’ previously, but this time it didn’t wait around for me to drain away its energy.
Thirty seconds after I appeared in the cavern, it began lumbering toward me. It wasn’t overly fast, but if it struck me, I knew I would be in trouble.
I could have tried to use formations to siphon away the construct's power again, but needing to constantly move while continuously switching between constructing different formations felt like it would be too troublesome. I had a few other options I could use to fight these things, but I decided to demonstrate the combat techniques I had been learning over recent years.
Within an environment perfectly suited to earth qi cultivators, I used a movement technique to propel myself forward and into range of the hulking rock monster.
It swung its arm at me, but it was easy to dodge. I powered up my Mountain Destroying Fist and struck it in the chest with everything I could muster.
The stone of its torso cracked, and it was knocked slightly backwards. I took that moment to reset my balance and prepare for another assault.
This process continued for five more attacks. With each one, I would rush forward, strike with all my strength, and then retreat out of harm’s way.
On the sixth strike, the golem’s chest crumbled, and it fell to the ground limply. Even though these golems were slightly more fragile, needing to move and attack forced me to consume more qi than I had on my previous opponents.
Essence flooded into the room, and I created a quick Qi Gathering Formation to collect it so that I could easily cultivate to regain my energy more quickly.
As I rested, I thought about the trials to come. If I proceeded in the same manner, I would soon be facing up to five rock monsters at once. While taking one down was simple enough, it’d be much more difficult if five were attacking me at the same time.
I thought through the last fight and came to the conclusion that I was simply lacking power. I couldn’t put enough force behind my fist to swiftly end the creatures. If I could destroy a golem in a single hit, this trial would be much easier.
I only had about 20 more hours before I would be forced to leave. If I was going to do anything, I needed to be quick about it.
Using the abundant earth qi in the cavern, I began cultivating for advancement as fast as possible. This was surprisingly easy since the only energy in the cavern was earth qi and earth essence. This meant that I didn’t have to worry about any impurities. I just had to pull in energy as quickly as possible and then form it into meridians.
I didn’t have time to do anything fancy, but I was able to create a basic Low-Yellow meridian extending from my torso and into my right fist. It wouldn’t do much, but it would allow me to impart a bit more qi into my attacks.
The other thing I did was open my storage space, surreptitiously take out the Profound-Rank wood-element spirit fire that I bought in South Gate City, and absorb it into my body. If anyone were watching, there wouldn’t have been much to see in normal vision. If they were staring at me in qi vision, however, they would’ve seen something very unusual take place as I expelled the Cold Mountain Fire and absorbed the new flame. I could only hope that I wouldn’t be penalized for it.
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With preparations in place and only 10 hours left on the clock, I moved on to the seventh chamber. I was faced with two golems that only waited a few seconds before moving to attack me. With new strength in my right arm, I punched out and slammed my fist into the first golem’s chest. The first strike wasn’t enough to put it down completely, but two more hits did the trick.
I hadn’t gained as much strength as I’d been hoping for, but it would have to do.
In the eighth chamber, I was faced with four golems at once. This was far more difficult to deal with, and I only barely managed to put them down using my fighting techniques.
After recovering, I entered the ninth chamber where I had to face eight of the stone monstrosities. There was no chance that I would be able to defeat them with only my martial prowess.
Tacking to a new course, I approached the nearest golem, quickly created a spear of wood spirit fire, and stabbed it directly into the thing’s core. The creature fell to the ground immediately. As the golem fell, I pulled back on the fire, reabsorbing it before it could dissipate.
Then, I turned around and stabbed a second spear into the next golem which had already closed in enough to ready an attack. Like the first, it fell to the ground motionless.
I backed off, giving myself room before I had to face the next six opponents. Spirit fire was incredibly powerful in this situation, but using it to stab my enemies with fiery spears was extremely draining.
Refocusing, I used my wood affinity to clamp down on the spirit fire. The spears were wasting a lot of energy because they were too large. I concentrated on creating the thinnest needle-like spear that I could. Using these long needles, I was able to down the remaining six golems, but I was entirely spent at the end of it. If I had to face sixteen of them in the next room, I didn’t believe that I would be able to emerge victorious.
I set up another Qi Gathering Formation and quickly absorbed energy to refill myself as quickly as possible. Because of the sheer abundance of earth qi, and the fact that there were no impurities in it, my reserves filled up at a remarkable pace. I was completely restored in only two hours.
As I was about to step onto the formation to enter the next cavern, an idea popped into my head, and I knew what I would have to do to defeat the next stage of this Trial.
Instead of entering the formation, I looked around the room for a rock large enough to hold a formation but small enough that I could easily carry it in one hand. After picking the perfect stone, I inscribed the best Qi Gathering Formation I could into it.
Stone in hand, I stepped onto the glowing teleport formation.
In the tenth cavern, I was indeed confronted with sixteen of the stone creatures. Quickly moving to the first two, I stabbed with small needles of wood spirit fire and destroyed them.
Then, I backed away, moving around the room to keep out of the range of my other opponents.
As I did, I cultivated, restoring the energy I had expended. This was something I had practiced during my first life in South Gate City, cultivating while actively engaged in another task. It wasn’t a great idea to do this since it usually led to pulling in a large amount of impurities, hurting one’s foundation. But in this cavern, there were no impurities. There was only perfect earth qi, so I was free to cultivate without worry.
It took me several minutes to restore a good portion of the energy I had used in that first attack. When I felt that I had recovered sufficiently, I moved and struck out at two more golems, all the while moving around to stay out of range of the others.
This hit and run tactic worked well, but it took up a lot of time. It was over four hours after I had entered the room when the final golem fell.
At that point, my energy was completely exhausted, so I sat down to cultivate. As I did, I examined the essence as it entered my acupoints once more. This time, I was sure I was feeling something. Was it the feeling of my earth affinity slowly growing? I couldn’t be sure. While I had increased my affinities in the past, I had never done it slowly like this before.
Recovering my energy took two hours. When I was done, I estimated that I had less than thirty minutes left before I would be forced to leave.
Even if I couldn’t defeat the eleventh cavern, I still wanted to at least see what was waiting for me.
I stepped onto the formation that should have teleported me to the next stage, but the room around me only seemed to flicker. I began to think that something might’ve gone wrong. That was when a large stone boulder flew through the air, barely missing my head and crashing into the ground beside me.
Pelted with shrapnel, I looked around in a panic, but I didn’t see anything. Then, I looked up and saw that the ceiling had risen several meters. There was now a ledge encircling the entire combat arena. Standing on top of that ledge was a new variant of stone golem, and it was lifting up another boulder, preparing to hurl it at me.
I began running, not wanting to be standing still when that stone was sent flying.
Ideas flashed through my head about how to handle this situation. Trying to climb a sheer rock wall to confront the thing openly would be difficult while it was throwing stones at me.
Deciding on my course of action, I reached into the ground and pulled. Earth walls sprang up one after another at increasing heights, forming a crude stairway. I stepped onto the wall closest to the ground and began leaping from one to another, quickly climbing up to the ledge.
Once I was there, the fight was easy, and I was able to quickly spear the golem through the chest with my spirit fire.
I sighed in relief and regret. While I wanted to continue to the twelfth cavern, I knew that it would be a bad idea. Trying to survive while two of those things were throwing stones at me would be incredibly difficult at my current level.
Besides, there wasn’t much time left to do that anyway.
I cultivated all the essence remaining in the room, stood, and then headed for the exit.
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When I appeared outside of the Trial, I saw YuLong and LiTing already waiting for me.
“Have a good vacation?” asked YuLong with his customary grin. “We’ve been waiting for you for hours. What took you so long?”
I was about to respond when I registered what I was looking at. YuLong had a massive war hammer propped up against his right shoulder.
“What is that?”
He patted the hammer contentedly. “You guys might’ve gotten essence, but I got this, a Rank 2 refined war hammer. Got a simpler one for defeating the fifth stage, and it let me easily handle everything up through the tenth, where I got this baby. Putting down those rock monsters would have been impossible without it. No shame if you couldn’t get that far.”
He looked a bit smug, but I wasn’t going to burst his bubble by telling him I had managed to get further than he had.
“Everyone’s returned. Good.” Our guide appeared and gestured for us to follow. “With the Trial over, it is time for you to leave the sect.”