Qing Shan slammed his staff down as hard as he could at the Panther, his Fifth Meridian loop spreading power throughout his whole body.
The Panther stumbled back under the force of the blow, and it looked as though it was disoriented. Taking advantage of the situation, Qing Shan transferred all of his Qi to his Seventh Meridian loop, sending a full power kick toward the Panther's head once more.
Apparently, the Flat Foot Panther was not nearly as disoriented as Qing Shan had thought, because it slightly shifted its body, taking Qing Shan's kick on one of its rock hard shoulders. The Panther then whipped its body, sending out a strong blow from one of its hind legs. The blow cuffed Qing Shan on the back of the knee, and the knee buckled.
Qing Shan quickly steadied himself, and used his falling motion to thrust his Staff at the Panther's stomach, one of the only spots on the damn thing that was not covered in rippling muscle.
Sure enough, the Panther cried out, and it stumbled to the side.
"Now you die!"
Qing Shan toppled the unsteady panther onto its side, and used all of his strength to thrust his Staff through the Panther's stomach and into the ground. The Panther immobilized, Qing Shan moved toward its flailing head and stomped on it until it fell unconscious. At that point, Qing Shan finally killed the pitiful beast.
After killing the Flat Foot Panther, Qing Shan decided to go hunt for a few more beasts at its level. Qing Shan began walking randomly, looking for an opponent.
Suddenly, Qing Shan felt a terrifying pressure fall over him. He could barely feel his body, and all of his senses were dulled. Before he knew it, his body was pressed down against the ground, totally unable to move. Qing Shan tried to sense for a beast around him, but all he could feel around him was that terrible pressure.
'Is this… the aura of an Origin Soul beast?'
A thought tore through Qing Shan's mind, and suddenly his only thought was to escape. Qing Shan tried to reach for his locket, before remembering that he could not move. Desperately trying everything that he could, Qing Shan opened his Third Eye, only to be blinded by the light of dense Qi.
Qing Shan was starting to feel useless.
'Am I really going to die here? I can't die! I haven't gotten my revenge yet…'
Dozens of thought ran through Qing Shan's mind, and he even lifted the restraint on his thoughts in a desperate attempt to find some way out of his predicament. His thoughts speeding up by ten times to his normal, unrealistic thought speed, nothing changed except for the amount of thoughts than ran through Qing Shan's mind every minute.
After an unknown amount of time went by, the aura had not stopped pressing down on Qing Shan. However, one thing had changed. After walling in multiple different emotions, Qing Shan had turned towards anger. Slowly, the anger consumed him until he could see a red color at the edges of his field of vision.
'Is it happening again?'
This was Qing Shan's last thought before he was consumed by rage.
The mystery beast watched from afar as Qing Shan's body started to glow with its own aura. The aura was a color that the beast had never seen before, and had the colors blue, purple, and gold radiating over it. However, the beast could not care less about this. Why would it take any interest in a being weaker than it. So weak, in fact, that it could not move inside of this paltry trap.
Qing Shan's aura started to grow stronger, suddenly rivaling some of the strongest peak Formation Soul cultivators. However, that was not enough to break through the force immobilizing him. Although the beast did not know how or why it felt like it did, seeing Qing Shan's unexplainable burst of strength caused it to become frightened. While it knew that there was no possible way for Qing Shan' to beat it with his current cultivation level, this boy had far too much potential to let him grow unhindered. The beast moved toward Qing Shan, and watched as he began to awaken. Not having expected him to awaken so soon, the beast kicked Qing Shan southwards, watching as his aura began to ebb and fade as he gained consciousness.
Its business done, the beast retreated back to its dwelling.
When Qing Shan started to regain consciousness, all he saw was a flash of two blood red orbs, before he was flying through the air, the bones in his body suddenly starting to disintegrate. Scared out of his mind, and in pain beyond anything he had ever experienced, Qing Shan touched his locket and disappeared into his pocket dimension. Qing Shan quickly stumbled into the Primal Water, wanting to stop whatever force was destroying his bones.
Once Qing Shan entered the Primal Water, the power on his bones immediately stopped, but he did not become fully healed. Qing Shan noticed that his bones did start to rebuild themselves, but it might take even longer than he expected.
Qing Shan fell asleep, temporarily forgetting about the fact that he was actually suspended over a hundred meters above the ground, and that his boy had been almost destroyed by some kind of terrifying being. Actually, the last thought Qing Shan had before falling asleep was that he could still feel that annoying itch from the Hyena's poison on his arm.
Once Qing Shan came to, he found that his body was fully healed. Even the itch in his arm was gone, which gave him a good idea of how long he had been asleep. While Qing Shan wanted to just stay in the pocket dimension and train, he could not focus with his mind stuck on the fact that he would be over a hundred meters above the ground when he exited the Primal Pocket dimension.
After calming himself down and coming up with a plan, Qing Shan exited the pocket dimension.
Surprisingly, Qing Shan hovered in the air for at least a half second before plummeting toward the ground.
As Qing Shan watched the ground plummet toward him, Qing Shan entered the pocket dimension once more before exiting, slowing his fall.
Qing Shan repeated this process dozens of times before finally reaching the ground, mentally exhausted. While the process was not harmful to him in any way, Qing Shan still felt that this had definitely been one of the most mentally scarring experiences of his life, right after finding the dead body of his Father. Granted, it was nowhere near close to first, but it was definitely his second most disturbing experience nonetheless.
Once on the ground, it was already night time, and Qing Shan had no way of telling where he was. Thus, Qing Shan entered a cave that he could not feel any aura coming from, and sat down, preparing to re-enter his Primal pocket dimension. However, before Qing Shan could touch his locket, the ground opened up beneath him, and he fell.
Qing Shan plunged into blackness, the contents of his stomach started moving to his throat. He tried to reach for his locket, but he was moving around to much to get a hand on it.
Qing Shan fell for a minute unable to grab his locket. For him, he felt as though he had been in free-fall for ten minutes. Soon, Qing Shan saw a light below him, and he braced for impact, still feeling around for his locket.
Right as Qing Shan was about to hit the ground, he felt a strong force flash over his body, and he faded into much-needed unconsciousness.
When Qing Shan came to, he immediately noticed that something was wrong. After only a few moments he remembered his situation. He remembered the strong mysterious force and being launched into the air. He then remembered using his pocket dimension to reach the ground safely. After that he remembered entering a cave, and then falling; his last thought that he remembered was thinking he was about to die.
However, looking around, Qing Shan was absolutely certain that he was not dead. For one thing, he could sense everything around him, and could tell that the place he was in was too good to be Hell, and too bad to Heaven.
Qing Shan was lying against a wall in the corner of a rather spacious room. Luminous crystals lined the walls, and the stench of blood filled the air. After making sure the smell of blood was not coming from him, Qing Shan found a recently killed corpse of an old woman lying the middle of the room.
"Okay…"
After walking around the room, Qing Shan found an exit behind one of the larger crystals. Because the crystals looked as though they were definitely valuable, Qing Shan tried to scrape them off of the wall, but they would not budge. Seeing that he would not be able to take the crystals, Qing Shan reluctantly walked toward the exit of the room.
After exiting the room, Qing Shan saw a large wall in front of him inscribed with words inscribed upon it in a language that Qing Shan knew he should not be able to understand. Miraculously, Qing Shan could understand what was written perfectly.
Welcome to the Burial Ground of a Cultivator.
Qing Shan tried to look around for more information, hoping for more information that just 'a Cultivator' but he was vaguely aware of the situation nonetheless. When he was still training with Master Liu, his master had told him about some of these so called 'Burial Grounds'.
"Sometimes, when cultivators are bored, they will go to lands filled with weak cultivators, and drop some of the belongings they consider trash. They then use a few techniques to change some of the natural laws of the area, making them suitable for their own use. They then make trials that are either impossible for the weak people, our trials that scale based on the weak person challenging the burial ground. However, there are rare cases when the Burial Ground is actually the real deal; the place housing the body of a powerful cultivator. If that is the case, then the area will be filled with much more treasures than one of those trash dumps. However, in the case of a true Burial Ground, the trials will be much harder, and focused on seeing if the challenger is 'worthy' of their belongings."
'So is that what this is? If so, then based on what I know, this would definitely be one of those inferior burial grounds, or as Master Liu called them, Trash Dumps. However, even if it is trash to whatever cultivator made this area, it is probably priceless in my hands.'
"Haha maybe this is a good omen for me!"
Suddenly, Qing Shan heard an intelligible string of sounds, their meaning being projected to Qing Shan's brain.
"Cultivation level established. 4th level Formation Soul Test of Strength created."
Right after Qing Shan heard the translation of the gibberish in his head, the wall in front of him welcoming him to the Trash Dump started to rise, revealing an arena-like space with the weakest 4th level Formation Soul beast in front of him.
Qing Shan laughed when he saw the Razor Beak Chicken in front of him, and instantly appeared next to it, ripping its head from the rest of its body. He then waited quietly, wondering what would happen next.
After about ten minutes passed, the corpse of the Razor Beak Chicken disappeared, and Qing Shan found himself looking at another beast that was on the weaker side of 4th level Formation Soul, the Steel Worker Bee. This one took Qing Shan the same amount of time to kill as its predecessor.
Qing Shan was surprised to notice that every ten minutes a new beast with progressive 4th level strength would appear, and his own body would be restored to prime condition.
Qing Shan started to fade into a certain rhythm, killing the beasts and waiting, zoned out.
After almost one hundred fights, Qing Shan finally killed the strongest 4th level beast, a Qi-Enhanced Tiger Cub, something that he had never heard of.
Thinking that the battles were over, Qing Shan sat down waiting for the ten minutes to pass. Even though he had gone through all sorts of beasts in the dozens of fights he had just had, even the hardest one had only taken him four minutes.
Although Qing Shan thought there was a really low possibility of another beast appearing, Qing Shan remained vigilant none the less. His vigilance paid off when he felt his body become renewed once more, and saw another figure appear.
It was human; at least, human shaped. The figure had no discernable gender, and no facial features at all.
Qing Shan found out that the weakest cultivator that could kill a Qi-Enhanced Tiger Cub was actually a Medical Expert. The figure, which was not distinctly male or female, used needles and daggers to fight Qing Shan. After a fight that took almost six minutes Qing Shan finally killed the figure.
While Qing Shan would most likely have qualms about killing humans in reality, this was most likely not even a real human, and just an copy of the humanoid figure. However, this was still the hardest kill after his first one.
During the fight, Qing Shan had been poisoned multiple times, which he did not even realize until the next fight started.
Qing Shan continued fighting countless different figures, each progressively stronger inside the confines of 4thlevel Formation Soul. Qing Shan noticed that none of the figures carried anything beyond a generic weapon the same quality as his own. Otherwise, he could just be quickly eliminated by some expert figure's 'flying sword' or some other equally legendary weapon.
Finally, Qing Shan felt as though he was facing one of the last of the figures. However, Qing Shan got a bad feeling in his gut when he saw what figure appeared in front of him. Until now, he had managed to keep every fight under ten minutes, but the one that he had done most recently came close to going over. Seeing his opponent, Qing Shan was certain that this next fight would not be limited to ten minutes.
'This… may be a bit difficult.'