Qing Shan grabbed his locket, exiting the primal pocket dimension. Immediately, he let out a sigh of relief. He was consumed in darkness once more.
At first, Qing Shan wondered where the light had gone, but he then realized that the light was never supposed to be part of this trial in the first place. It all came from a crack into that hellish world.
Qing Shan continued forward, and entered the door at the end of the black hallway that he found himself inside.
He opened the door, and was nearly blinded by light. This room was in complete contrast of the other, and it was filled with treasures. Unfortunately, there was a sign that distinctly told Qing Shan about the strict rules of this place.
"Those who have made it through this trial have earned one treasure. Greed in abundance leads to death."
Qing Shan had had enough run-ins with death up to this point, so he decided to listen to the sign. One treasure could be more than enough.
Looking around, Qing Shan's first instinct was to take money. There was tons of Crystalized Qi lying throughout the room. Unfortunately, Qing Shan was unsure if one piece of Crystal Qi equaled one treasure, or if that was not the case. There were also many different objects that looked very ornate and expensive, but Qing Shan was unsure of what they were worth. He would not want to take something that looked very expensive, only to find that no one could tell its worth, or pay for it, for that matter. Thus, those treasures were out.
Looking at the weapons, Qing Shan was dismayed to find that there were only beautiful swords, shields, and spears on display. There were no unorthodox weapons. It seemed that whomever dumped their trash here only cared for 'real' weapons. This hit hard for Qing Shan, because he could tell that his Bamboo Staff would most certainly break soon. He had made cracks in it when he grabbed it while he was enhanced by his Qi. If he used it in a battle now, it would probably break.
Qing Shan then turned to look for medicinal herbs, or runic manuals. Unfortunately, it seemed that the cultivator valued those items still, and had not dumped them into their 'trash hole'.
Finally Qing Shan turned towards the final items in the hall, the Technique Scrolls. To him, they were scrolls unrolled and displayed, with unintelligible words written on them. However, he had read about these before. They would not show any useful information until a cultivator binded with them by dripping blood upon them. The scrolls each held secrets that allowed one to advanced Martial Techniques.
Qing Shan had no idea where to start evaluating the scrolls, so he opened his Third Eye. Once he did this, he had an entirely different opinion of the Technique scrolls. They each had different amounts of Qi coming off of them, and most of them had Qi so dense that Qing Shan could not even approach them. However, there were also scrolls that Qing Shan could feel no Qi radiating off of. Those scrolls could not be moved by Qing Shan no matter how close he got. Once he eliminated these scrolls, there were five different scrolls left. Based off of the density of Qi around them, each scroll was a Mortal Origin Scroll, meant for cultivators in the origin realm. However, because there was no Martial Technique for those of the Formation Soul realm, Martial Origin Scrolls were able to be obtained by Formation realm Cultivators.
Each of the five scrolls glowed a different color. There was one that glowed each of the colors of the main elements, and one that glowed white. Since the two elements that Qing Shan had some sort of connection with were fire and wind, he eliminated the others. Finally, since he already was cultivating a movement skill that was geared toward the wind attribute, and because fire had stronger offensive power than wind, Qing Shan chose the scroll that glowed red.
His treasure chosen, a glimmering gate that looked like the one that he used to enter the Gate of Death appeared.
'This must be the end of the trial.'
Qing Shan walked through the gate, and was unsurprised at his location. He had appeared in the same room that had started his trial once more.
Qing Shan then heard the same gibberish sound fill the room before.
"Congratulations on passing through the Gate of Death successfully. You have one minute to store any rewards in a pocket dimension. After that one minute, you will be transported to the starting point of the second part of the Trial, which was unlocked by obtaining both the Essential Key and the Master Key."
As soon as Qing Shan heard that he could store his reward, he entered the Primal pocket dimension, still somewhat surprised to find that he was able to enter. He quickly set down his Technique scroll on the left side of the Primal water after noticing that it was relatively unaffected by the heat. He then exited the pocket dimension.
Qing Shan found himself in a room that had walls the exact same as the walls in the maze for the first trial. His Key was around his neck, and there was a large door in front of him, with a door large enough for the big key.
Not seeing any other choice but to open the door, Qing Shan complied. While sticking the key in the hole, Qing Shan had a thought.
'Wait, did that wall say that I had both the Master Key and the Essential Key? But the talking copy did not die…'
"Whatever."
Qing Shan turned the Key and opened the door, forgetting about that thought.
Once Qing Shan opened the door, he only saw stairs going downwards.
'That was misleading. Such a huge door leads to stairs…?'
Qing Shan shrugged, and started walking down the stairs. He found that he appreciated the torches along the stairs much more than he did before entering the Gate of Death.
Qing Shan followed the stairs downward for about ten minutes, before he came to a new room. For a second, Qing Shan thought that he was once again on the surface, because he could clearly see a blue sky and the sun. While Qing Shan could feel the heat of the sun on his body, the fact that he was still underground was revealed by the smell. Qing Shan knew the smell of the outdoors, and this just smelled like a dusty cave.
Despite knowing that he was still underground, Qing Shan was amazed by this place. After exiting the stairwell, he had appeared in a place that looked exactly like a forest. He could tell that the trees were real too. However, he had no clue how trees were growing in a cave underground. Maybe that was only possible because this was a section of space controlled by a cultivator? Was it possible that the cultivator had such control of this space that they could alter some of the laws of nature?
Looking around, Qing Shan soon found out that something was amiss. Unlike the previous section of the trial, Qing Shan had no instructions telling him how to complete this section. Before, he was given a distinct outline of what he was to do, and was also given an idea by the environment. Now, however, he was just in a forest? What did that imply that he had to do?
Completely unsure of what was expected of him, Qing Shan decided to search for something that would give him a hint. He needed to be absolutely sure that there were no clues before he could assume that there was really nothing he was supposed to do.
Qing Shan soon found out about something that made him feel a little put down. Apparently, he was not supposed to be able to break through during the trial, as all of the beasts stayed the same level as he was when he entered the trial initially. As Qing Shan was someone who liked a challenge, he found it hard to appreciate the unfair advantage that he now had over the trial.
Qing Shan spent his time the next few days by looking for some sort of clue within the forest. During his search, he found that the forest was only one kilometer, and that there were invisible walls blocking him from continuing on. That in visible wall felt a hell of a lot like a cave wall… Qing Shan searched and searched, to no apparent avail. The most interesting thing that Qing Shan managed to find was a luminescent mushroom. And he only found that interesting because he recognized its rarity from the large book he read about runic forging.
After searching through the entire forest, Qing Shan found himself back at the space near the bottom of the stairs, where he first began his search. However, something was different. Qing Shan could see a faint illusion of himself walking off from the starting point, in the same path that Qing Shan originally took.
Finally feeling like he had found something, Qing Shan happily gave chase to the illusion. He noticed that as the illusion walked through the forest just like he had, it sometimes made stops where he had not, and pointed at plants and ingredients that he had never seen before.
Qing Shan made it a point to pick up these ingredients. He was surprised to realize that he actually did not know any of these plants, and definitely was unfamiliar with their uses. After making a complete cycle through the forest, Qing Shan had collected about ten different herbs. At his starting point, he now saw something new; a medicine cauldron had appeared.
As Qing Shan did not really have the first clue about medicine other than the functions of some herbs that were used in Runic Forging, he just decided to dump all of the herbs into the cauldron. Just as he was about to go searching for some water, and maybe a source of fire Qi to heat up the cauldron, the different herbs began to interact with each other.
One herb cam into contact with a different one, and they both dissolved into a fine powder. One of the herbs that came into contact with this powder liquified. The different herbs kept causing each other to change, until Qing Shan was left with a red liquid in the bottom of the cauldron. Qing Shan thought that he was done until he saw a bubble pop on the surface of the liquid. Something was happening.
Just as Qing Shan wanted to keep watching, he saw the illusion of himself appear once more. This time, this illusion walked in an entirely different direction than before. Qing Shan followed, feeling that this was more important than watching the herbs mix.
As Qing Shan followed the illusion once again, he began picking up the herbs that it indicated. Coincidentally, all of the herbs were unrecognizable to Qing Shan, although he did see some that were the same as the ones that he had formerly gathered. This time, Qing Shan had collected over twenty different herbs before he returned to the starting point. Walking over to the cauldron, all Qing Shan saw was a small, scarlet, and spherical pellet that was lying at the bottom.
Now Qing Shan was in a dilemma. He did not know if he should take the pellet out, or if he should leave it in.
Deciding to take a chance, Qing Shan did not touch the pellet, and added all of his newly-gathered ingredients to the cauldron.
The ingredients began to react to one another, just like they had done beforehand. Soon, Qing Shan had a blue liquid in front of him. However, there was still a small red pellet floating on the surface of the azure substance.
Qing Shan watched the cauldron until his eyes grew heavy. He watched and watched, and the last thing he saw before he fell asleep was a bubble popping on the surface of the blue liquid.