Chapter 246a: Book 3 Epilogue
Yuan Yaozu filled his core again and again, but it never felt full enough. Just like always. But with the juniors’ words ringing in his ears, he stopped and tried anew. Persistence was the key. He would not give up.
After a while, though, he felt like he was pointlessly banging his head against a wall, not doing anything different than he’d done hundreds of times before. There had to be an advantage the Trial Pagoda gave him that his cultivation cave didn’t.
“Being?” he said.
The entity appeared once more. “Face your fear and advance.”
Yes. Yuan Yaozu knew that. The entity had conveyed that message already more than once.
“Being, what happens to me if I explode my core and can’t advance?”
“If the trial taker fails, the trial taker will be reset and offered the chance to either leave the trial or try again.”
Yuan Yaozu grimaced. Exploding his core without enough qi to propel him to the next step felt stupid. A risk. But failure should result in being reset to his prior state. The juniors had said the same thing. Most of them had died many times during their trials.
Time to take a leap of faith.
He filled his core again, but instead of expelling it even though the quantity felt inadequate, he pressed on.
As a peak Golden Core, Yuan Yaozu was well acquainted with his exact qi aspect—venom that decays the flesh and spirit. His biggest choice had been to center his Concept around Venom or Decay. He’d chosen the latter, concentrating on his opponents’ bodies rotting and their very cultivation crumbling into chaos.
That focus had served him well. Bodies could be healed, but nothing scared an opponent more than having their cultivation disrupted. As his reputation had grown, his mere presence had served as a deterrent these last several centuries.