Chapter 243: No Survivors
Yuan Yaozu entered the Trial Pagoda full of confidence. After all, if the juniors he met could all pass their trials, how could he, a Golden Core cultivator who’d experienced nearly a millennium of life, possibly fail? He even knew what to expect. From the juniors’ stories, some form of apparently unblockable qi would be hurled at him, and he would experience death after death until he learned whatever lesson the trial was trying to teach him.
While challenging for a junior, someone possessing the knowledge wrung from his long years would have no trouble. Maybe he wouldn’t finish on the first try, but surely he’d figure out the trick to it by the second or, at the very latest, the third attempt.
With that attitude firmly in place, he calmly observed how it felt as the orb transported him. He ended up, as expected, in a gray space that was exactly as the juniors had described. There was enough light to see, but the source was unknown. The light simply existed, as if a powerful cultivator had declared it to be so and thus reality obeyed. And the gray seemed to stretch to eternity. There was nothing in the room. Not even air. Yet he could breathe if he wished.
Even his highly trained spiritual sense detected nothing. There was no qi in the space. Curious, he tried to pull in a mote and … was successful. Yet none appeared to his senses. Interesting.
Yuan Yaozu had to admit that Chao Su’s Trial Pagoda was unlike any of the ones he’d been in or even heard about.
“Face your fear and advance,” a man’s voice said.
Yuan Yaozu spun. There was a man, a being, behind him. The man or being or whatever it was had not been there an instant ago. Yuan Yaozu was sure he’d been alone. It concerned him that someone or something could appear at his back with him not detecting any movement.
Still, he wasn’t paranoid enough to find danger lurking around every corner. He was here for a specific purpose. It was best to focus on his goal.
“Face my fear and advance?” Yuan Yaozu said, confirming what the entity had stated.
“Face your fear and advance.”
Yuan Yaozu took exception to the implication that he was afraid of anything. He took greater exception to the implication that it was his fear that held him back from advancing to Nascent Soul. His many attempts at breaking through had led him to one inescapable conclusion—there was some issue with his cultivation or some trick he was missing. It was not possible that he’d struggled for multiple centuries and something as simple as fear was the problem.
Maybe, though, fear had nothing to do with it. Maybe the space was special in some way that would allow him to advance if he simply made the attempt.