Immediately after Qing Shan beat his older copy, his talking copy ran back in to the room. It saw Qing Shan lying unconscious clutching what it recognized as the Master Key.
After taking stock of the situation, the talking healed Qing Shan, then walked over to shake him awake. Only after the talking copy walked a few meters, did something happen.
The talking copy felt a weird sensation in its head. That sensation quickly changed from a probing caress on its brain to a full on attack. The talking copy suddenly felt as if someone had stabbed a knife into its skull.
"AHHH!"
The talking copy screamed in pain, feeling like its body was exploding from the inside, one organ at a time. Little did it know, this was exactly what was happening. As any observer would easily see, the talking copy's torso was literally changing into miniscule balls of flame at the location of each organ. Soon, the explosion crossed the copy's heart and brain, utterly destroying it.
Once the talking copy was dead, it transformed into a large key, about the size of Qing Shan's arm. This key was almost identical to the Master Key. The key flew into Qing Shan's hands, coming into contact with the other key. Once this contact happened, the talking copy's key melded into the Master Key, making a small, circular mark on each of teeth of the Master Key. The change was so slight that Qing Shan would probably not notice the difference.
Suddenly, the Key began to glow an eerie green color, and a large circle around Qing Shan's body did the same. The ground began to warp inwards, and Qing Shan's body sank into the ground as if it were quicksand.
Qing Shan awoke in a situation he had really grown tired of.
He was falling.
Again.
However, before Qing Shan could scream, or even reach for his locket, he found himself standing unsteadily in a room that was quite familiar. It was the same room that Qing Shan had entered before the beginning of both the Trial of Strength, and the trial he was supposedly still in at the moment.
Before Qing Shan could even gain his bearings, he heard that strange gibberish noise, and words ran through his brain.
"Congratulations, trialgoer. Because you went above and beyond in the first section of the trial, and even managed to defeat an opponent you were not meant to defeat, you have been granted an opportunity. Think of this opportunity as a temporary reprieve from the difficulties of the trial. However, please note that this opportunity does not have to solely be about resting. If you so desire, you can forgo this chance to rest and undergo a different sort of trial, one that lies within the larger trial. While doing this is definitely perilous, you will find that the reward for this smaller trial is at least equivalent to the reward from the overall trial. You will also find that no matter whether or not you fail this smaller trial, you will still gain a large reward as long as you survive. What is your choice?"
Qing Shan did not even need to think, but his enhanced speed of thought still gave him a pretty substantial amount of time to do so. After one second, real-time, Qing Shan opened his mouth.
"I would like to undergo the smaller trial as well."
The way that Qing Shan saw it, he really did not need to rest, as his body had been healed once again after killing his older copy. Plus, he could not very well pass by a chance to grow, especially due to the fact that he would gain a reward as long as he survived.
"Very well. Good luck."
Qing Shan watched as the wall in front of him collapsed, revealing a sight that Qing Shan had read about in in Senior Teng's books. It was actually a very generic scene, one mentioned multiple times throughout many different legends.
In front of Qing Shan was two different arches, or gates as they would be called in this scenario. Both gates were dormant, and there was a grey Qi energy covering both gates. The Qi was somehow able to be seen by the naked eye. Just to be sure, Qing Shan switched to his Third Eye, and was flabbergasted to find out that the grey actually disappeared under his Third Eye, revealing two bare areas, little rips in space. Qing Shan then realized that the grey Qi was somehow hidden from Qing Shan's Third Eye.
There was a large signboard in the middle of the room, and even though Qing Shan was almost one hundred percent sure what was said upon it, he read it anyways, not surprised by the contents.
Sure enough, the sign stated that Qing Shan was standing in front of the Gates of Life and Death. The Gate of Life would lead to great rewards at no cost, and the Gate of Death boasted even greater rewards, with the price of torture. Normally, Qing Shan would not hesitate to try to enter the Gate of Death, as it gave greater rewards, but Death was in its name for a reason. The gate of death, while not impossible to pass, killed more than ninety percent of its challengers.
Because Qing Shan had not yet gotten revenge for his parents, his own safety was his own priority. Thus, Qing Shan gave up any thoughts of trying to figure out which gate was the Gate of Death and attempting it.
Unfortunately, the largest problem here was not which gate Qing Shan wanted to enter, but which gate was which. He could talk about wanting to enter the Gate of Life all he wanted, but unless he could figure out which gate was which, he had a fifty percent chance of entering the Gate of Death, and around a twenty-five percent chance of dying.
After spending a good hour, almost half a day for Qing Shan, thinking, Qing Shan was finally onto something. Since he had scoured every inch of the room, and was not able to find any clues, or even some sort of cryptic message, Qing Shan decided that he would wing it. As long as he managed to survive, then there would be absolutely no problem.
Trying to keep his thoughts optimistic, Qing Shan jumped into the arch closest to him, which just happened to be the one on the right.
Qing Shan felt himself being sucked through the gate, and saw myriad colors streaking past him. Unfortunately the sight did not last long enough for Qing Shan to completely enjoy the scenery, as the travel took less than a tenth of a second.
Qing Shan found himself amidst a vast expanse of rock, almost like the Silent Planes if there had been no grass or dirt. However, unlike the boring, flat, Silent Planes, this expanse of land had quite a few hills, and holes marked each and every single one of them.
Qing Shan was still unsure whether or not he was in the Gate of Life, or the Gate of Death. Although he was unsure, Qing Shan did have suspicions that he was inside of the Gate of Death. His reasoning was merely that the holes on the horizon have him goose-bumps.
Unfortunately, Qing Shan quickly found out why he had had a bad feeling about the holes. It turned out that multiple different species of Bug-like beasts were crouched right inside them.
There were thousands of them. To top it off, there were plenty of different species. There were poisonous insects, bugs with insanely long claws, spiders with hundreds of eyes. Not all of the beasts were bugs though. Unfortunately, there was definitely an abundance of snakes present.
"Damn my luck!"
'Why the hell did it have to be bugs...'
At the sound of Qing Shan's shout, all of the beasts exploded into motion. While some of the slower beasts were barely out of their holes, the winged insects had already reached Qing Shan. Qing Shan suddenly realized why this was supposed to be so hard, even pushing him toward the point of death.
All of the insects present had at least some amount of fighting ability, and most of them would be able to execute a fatal attack if they got lucky. Unfortunately, most of the insects were smaller than one of Qing Shan's fingertips!
'How am I supposed to kill so many of these tiny things?'
Qing Shan began swinging his Staff at the small insects. He knew that there was a large possibility that they were poisonous, and thus did not want to take the risk and fight bare-handed.
Fortunately, there was a bit of good news. Most of the bugs that were currently in front of Qing Shan were not very durable. All it took was one solid hit with his staff to kill one of them. This was somewhat confusing to Qing Shan, as he did not think that these 4th level Formation Soul beasts would actually be so delicate.
Just as Qing Shan was about to renew his attack on the insect beasts, he noticed the approach of some of the larger beasts. In this group were mostly the Hundred Eyes Spiders, and the Poison Fang Raddle Snake.
Each of these beasts was at least one meter long, and most of the Poison Fang Raddle Snakes stretched up to three meters. Qing Shan eagerly charged toward them, eager for an excuse to leave the tiny beasts that he could barely even combat.
Qing Shan appeared right in front of the leading beast, a Hundred Eyes Spider that was larger than the rest of its brethren, and struck down at it. With just this attack, Qing Shan burst over half of its eyes. As it was still a 4th level beast, and did not possess enough power to fight opponents in upper realms, Qing Shan killed this beast easily.
The same went for the difficulty of killing the rest of the beasts that were the same size. Actually, the only problem for Qing Shan during this time was that he had to keep avoiding the tiny insects that were chasing after him. Luckily, Qing Shan managed to kill all of the medium size beasts unscarred, even if he relied heavily on his wind movement to dodge the tiny insects.
With the tiny insects still chasing him, Qing Shan cleared the rest of the flat space of the larger beasts.
'Ooh! I think I have a good idea!'
Qing Shan ran into one of the holes along the small, rocky hill, and waited. Once the insect beast entered the hole, he collapsed the entrance, taking the small insects along with it. Even if a few of them survived by chance, the sand and rock would keep them from moving.
It was not until that moment that it dawned on Qing Shan what he had just done. Even with his brain at maximum speed, all he had been able to think about was killing the bugs. It had not even occurred to him that locking himself within a hill that had no exit was a bad idea. He realized that this was even worse than he thought after a few minutes, when he started to hear the telltale sound of an insect's wings flapping.
'Oh shit. This is the place where all of the beasts came from, right? Meaning that this is their nest…?'
That thought made Qing Shan shiver, and he sincerely hoped that he was wrong. He hoped, beyond hope, that what he heard was merely a straggler, and some sort of insect army.
Qing Shan crept forward, using all of his skill to stay as silent as humanly possible, and looked around the corner.
Contrary to his expectations, Qing Shan did not see just one insect, or the few dozen that he had considered worst case scenario. Instead, he saw a large whole, at least a kilometer in diameter. It was so deep that Qing Shan could not even see the bottom. However, there was one thing that made Qing Shan's heart fill with dread.
Buzzing; the telltale sound of insects and their flapping wings.