Chapter 239: The Jig Is Up
Yuan Yaozu could practically smell the coming battle in the air. It would be today. Early.
While not possessing any technique for divination—if such a thing existed—he’d always been sensitive to tidings, and his every instinct told him that the Jade Chameleon cultivators would arrive soon.
Still, Yuan Yaozu strolled toward the Rising Tide Sect’s Contribution Points Shop in no hurry even though the sun was well past the horizon. Until mere days ago, he’d been preparing to enter secluded cultivation to expand his life in service of the sect. Now, he had a real chance of advancing his cultivation, and he had a lot to consider.
His previous evening had been instructive in many ways, not the least of which was his visit with Kang Ya-Ting’s precious granddaughter and her two friends, Chao Su’s core disciples.
They had all told him about their experiences with the Trial Pagoda, warning him of the strangeness of the blue box and telling him all he had to do was select the correct option and the pagoda would take care of everything else. The key for passing the test, they said, was persistence. As far as they knew, one couldn’t be truly hurt inside the pagoda, and it seemed to give infinite chances to pass its trials. So far at any rate, no one had been kicked out unless they chose not to proceed.
It all sounded easy to Yuan Yaozu. Too easy.
If the pagoda could indeed propel a Golden Core cultivator like him, one who had been stuck at the peak of the realm for centuries, into advancing to Nascent Soul, the value of the treasure was literally incalculable. He personally knew dozens of cultivators who would give anything they owned or could beg, borrow, or steal to use it.
Such a benefit should come at an enormous cost.
He’d hinted at that drawback with the juniors, and they had assured him that Chao Su had to pay a price for some of the benefits. A price. For some of the benefits.
What price? What did it cost him to pay it? Which benefits cost and which were free?
As well as potentially being the most valuable such structure Yuan Yaozu had ever heard tell of, the Rising Tide Sect’s Trial Pagoda was also the strangest and most powerful.
And therein laid the problem.