Chapter 830: Nothingness
The central floating platform was quiet. The twenty-eight remaining candidates in the Domain King bracket used the brief intermission to recover. Now they sat cross legged on the smooth white stone and worked to replenish their spiritual reserves. Daiki focused his breathing. The first test had drained his physical stamina heavily but he had survived.
The Organizer soon stepped back onto the high podium. His golden robes fluttered in the constant wind of the Astral Gale Realm. He raised his hands and the thousands of spectators in the Eye of the Storm slowly quieted down.
"The recovery period is over," the Organizer announced. His voice boomed across the massive stadium. "We will now begin the second test. This is the trial of the mind and the soul. You will be pulled into a specialized illusionary realm. What is in store for you, you will have to determine yourself. The seven candidates who perform the worst will be eliminated as before."
A massive array lit up beneath the central platform. The intricate runes glowed with a pale and ghostly light. A low hum vibrated through the air.
Daiki felt a sudden pull on his consciousness. The wind of the stadium abruptly vanished. The cheering of the crowd was cut off in an instant. He blinked and his surroundings changed completely.
He was no longer standing on the floating platform. He was standing in a completely blank space. Daiki looked around and frowned deeply. There were no walls and there was no sky. There was no ground beneath his feet.
It was just an endless expanse of dull and uniform gray. It was a canvas that had been wiped entirely clean. There were no shadows to give the space any depth or perspective. He looked down and saw his massive boots resting on absolute nothingness but he was indeed standing on something.
He took a cautious step forward. There was no sound. His footsteps did not produce a single echo. The absolute silence pressed heavily against his ears. He waited for a monster to appear. He expected a hidden door to materialize or a spectral voice to offer a riddle. He stood ready for an ambush.
Nothing happened.
The gray space remained completely static. Minutes passed by in total silence. Then an hour seemed to drag on. Or perhaps it was only a few seconds. The complete lack of sensory input made it impossible to tell how much time had actually elapsed. Daiki began to realize this was the true nature of the trial.
Sometimes the worst test of all is simply not knowing what you should be doing. The mind craves direction and purpose. When cultivators are deprived of a goal, their minds begin to search for threats that do not exist. They begin to overthink the environment and exhaust their own mental energy.
Back in the stadium, Li Yu sat among the Galeheart Academy supporters. He channeled his Qi into the crystal viewing orb. The orb projected three distinct images into the air before him.
He watched Daiki, Zephyra and Trak.
The projections did not show the candidates fighting epic battles. The images simply showed the three fighters standing completely alone in endless gray boxes. It looked incredibly mundane to a layman. However, the experienced cultivators in the stands began to understand the danger of this specific trial. They could see the tension in the fighters' postures. They were fighting an invisible war within their own minds.
Li Yu observed Zephyra. The elemental spirit seemed relatively calm. Her formless nature allowed her to detach from rigid physical expectations. She floated in the gray void and simply closed her eyes. She treated the empty space like a quiet meditation chamber for the time being.
Trak was having a completely different experience. The lizard kin was a warrior built for physical clashes and tangible enemies. The endless silence and the lack of direction were infuriating him. Li Yu watched as Trak paced back and forth aggressively.
Trak swung his spear at the emptiness. The weapon cut through the gray void without any resistance. There was nothing to hit and there was nothing to conquer. Trak’s metallic scales flared with agitated Qi as his frustration quickly grew into panic as to what he should be doing.
Across the stadium, the supporters of the other academies were reacting to their own fighters.
The Lunar Crest Academy section was incredibly relaxed. Their candidates were masters of illusions. They understood the fluid concept of formlessness. They easily adapted to the lack of sensory input.
The Primal Fang Academy section was highly tense. Brute force was entirely useless against empty space. The spectators watched as their powerful fighters roared and smashed their fists into the nothingness. Goro was visibly struggling. His massive chest heaved as he fought against the rising panic of sensory deprivation and more importantly what he was supposed to do.
Was the goal to find something? Was it to travel as far as you could? Was it to find some sort of secret within this place? No one knew and in a tournament setting where you were competing against others, that made many panic.
A new element was suddenly introduced to the illusion.
Daiki felt a strange sensation press against his mind. It was not a physical weight. It was a dense and suffocating soul pressure. It started as a mild discomfort behind his eyes. It slowly grew into a crushing sensation that pressed directly against his soul.
The gray void was no longer just empty. It was actively trying to crush him. It felt like being buried alive in a stone tomb that stretched on forever. As the pressure increased, the time distortion intensified dramatically. Daiki felt as though he had been standing in the void for several years. The crushing loneliness threatened to unravel his sanity and he too began to worry about what he should be doing..
This was a test of soul strength and mental fortitude. It was about keeping calm and thinking things through while the universe actively tried to erase your existence.
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Trak reached his absolute breaking point. Li Yu watched him through the orb. Trak could not handle the unknown of this test and the mounting soul pressure. He dropped his spear and clutched his scaled head. He screamed into the void as his spiritual aura destabilized completely.
A flash of bright white light illuminated Trak’s projection. The safety arrays of the illusion activated instantly. Trak vanished from the gray space and reappeared on the central platform in the real world. He fell onto his hands and knees while gasping desperately for air. He was completely soaked in cold sweat. His mind had broken and he was officially eliminated.
Daiki remained in the illusion. The pressure was growing agonizingly heavy but it was also strangely familiar.
He had endured such pressure within the Trial Grounds of The Veil. He had faced the historical illusions of ancient wars and he had died countless times in those simulations. He knew what mental exhaustion felt like. This empty space was deeply unsettling but it could not break him so easily.
He did not know what the test wanted him to do. There were no instructions and there were no clues.
Daiki decided in the end not to overthink it. He did not waste his mental energy searching for invisible mechanisms. He did not try to attack the void like Trak had done. He kept his thoughts incredibly simple. He had a destination he needed to reach. He needed to win the medicine and save Sora. He could not do that by standing still.
He picked a random direction in the endless gray. He took a step forward. Then he took another. He simply started walking.
The soul pressure increased as he moved or as time went on, he wasn’t sure. It felt like trying to walk through a deep ocean of liquid iron. His massive crimson body trembled slightly under the spiritual weight but his will was completely rock solid. He put one foot in front of the other.
His mind began to whisper insidious doubts to him. The illusion tried to weaponize his own thoughts against him. It told him he was walking in endless circles. It told him his father had set him up to fail. It whispered that Sora was already dead and his efforts were entirely meaningless.
Daiki ignored the whispers completely. He locked his Dao Heart away behind an impenetrable fortress of resolve. He focused entirely on the physical rhythm of his footsteps. He walked through the gray nothingness with the relentless momentum of a glacier.
The time distortion reached a terrifying peak. It felt like he had been walking for a decade. Then it felt like a century. He was the only moving thing in an empty universe. The isolation was absolute and the pressure was designed to crush the strongest minds into dust.
Many other candidates began to break under the strain.
Two hot headed fighters from Solar Flare Academy lost their tempers completely. Their fiery and aggressive natures could not endure the cold and suffocating emptiness. Their auras flared out of control and they were forcibly ejected from the illusion. They collapsed onto the platform in the real world while screaming in frustration.
Two brute force brawlers from Primal Fang Academy suffered complete mental collapses. They could not punch their way out of the gray box and their minds shattered under the soul pressure. They were expelled and left stunned on the white stone. Still not understanding what they were supposed to be doing.
One defender from Iron Root Academy realized his defensive techniques were useless against psychological pressure. He eventually couldn’t take it anymore and surrendered his will. He was soon after ejected. One physical fighter from Consuming Tide Academy drowned in the simulated depth of the isolation and was removed.
Goro, from Primal Fang, was struggling massively. He was on his knees in the void. He was bleeding from his nose and his eyes were bloodshot. He refused to give up but he was completely paralyzed by the spiritual weight. He could only endure the pain and hope others had failed before he did. He still didn’t even know what he was supposed to do and just hoped that whatever it is, others did even less of it than himself.
Daiki kept walking.
He pushed his soul to the limit. He was using every defensive soul techniques that he had gotten from the trials. He endured the pressure through that and through sheer stubbornness. He walked until his soul physically could not take another step. His vision began to blur and the gray space flickered violently around him.
He took one final and defiant step forward into the void. His spiritual energy finally hit empty. His vision faded completely to black.
Daiki opened his eyes a moment later. He was back on the central floating platform in the Eye of the Storm. The cool and refreshing wind of the Astral Gale Realm rushed over his face. The deafening roar of the thousands of spectators instantly filled his ears.
He fell heavily to one knee and took a deep, ragged breath. His mind felt severely bruised but it was fully intact. He had survived the gray space. The massive array beneath the platform powered down after some time. The second test was officially over. The remaining candidates who had not been eliminated early were released from the illusion simultaneously. They all looked exhausted and deeply shaken by the psychological torture.
The Organizer stepped up to the high podium. He projected the new rankings onto the massive screen of light floating above the stadium.
"The second test is concluded," the Organizer announced. "The placements for this trial are arranged strictly by how long each candidate was able to endure the illusion before their mind gave out or they surrendered."
Daiki looked up at the glowing board. He scanned the names quickly. His name was at the very top of the list in his bracket. He had finished in first place.
His rock solid will and his powerful soul had outlasted every single other person in the Domain King bracket. While some of the other candidates had panicked, overthought the problem or tried to fight the emptiness, Daiki had simply picked a direction and walked until he died. It was a display of unyielding determination.
The Galeheart supporters in the stands erupted into massive cheers. Li Yu smiled broadly. Daiki had perfectly leveraged his unique foundation. The Organizer's voice boomed again to deliver the final judgments. "The bottom seven candidates are eliminated."
The bottom section of the massive list flashed a brilliant red. Seven names were aggressively crossed out.
Li Yu checked the list. Trak was gone. His inability to adapt to the formless test had cost him his spot. Zephyra was still on the board. She had used her elemental nature to endure the pressure long enough to secure a safe middle rank.
Daiki and Zephyra were now the only two fighters left representing Galeheart Academy in the Domain King bracket.
The other six eliminated candidates were from the other academies. Primal Fang lost two of their brute fighters. Solar Flare lost two of their aggressive fire users. Iron Root and Consuming Tide each lost one candidate who failed to handle the mental strain.
The Domain King bracket was reduced down to twenty one remaining fighters. The weak minds or simply the unlucky were successfully purged from the ranks. Daiki slowly stood up and wiped the sweat from his brow.
The physical brawls were straightforward but the psychological tests were indeed draining. He needed to recover his focus. There was wide spread talking going on about how cruel and tricky this test had been.
By not telling the cultivators what they had to do, it threw everyone off. Some failed because they were too busy trying to figure out what they had to do.