(A/N: psst, read the author's notes <_<)
Now that I know quite a bit about this technique, I think I know why this senior didn't put a clone here.
As this technique would do soul splitting, first you would lose a tiny bit of your soul that as far as I know is impossible to repair and secondly, you would be sharing the experience of all these years of loneliness and that could create some mental issues down the line.
'Or it could be that he didn't care enough to do so.' I shrugged my shoulders. You can never be sure about what is going on in someone else's mind.
After storing this luxurious information jade inside my storage ring, I looked at the room for the last time so that I won't miss anything of importance.
Looking around myself, there is really nothing here that I could have missed so I walked toward the exit formation.
Just as I was passing the stone pillar, something caught my eyes and I stopped in my tracks.
No, there wasn't any well-hidden item there that one could easily miss if you were not looking for it. Nothing as cliché as that happened, I was just looking at the stone pillar itself.
A line on the stone pillar to be more specific.
_____________________
~~ I hope I can see the heights that you can achieve with this technique. ~~
_____________________
'What does this senior mean by seeing the heights that I can achieve?' This part of the writing slipped my mind the first time that I have read it because I was too excited for the reward.
But now that I'm reading it with ease of mind, I can say that this is indeed a flag if I have ever seen one.
But what does this mean? Is he looking at me from the afterlife or something? That can't be. But if he is not dead doesn't that mean he is here and he is looking at the trial? No this is also not possible because he said 'I hope I can see' so he is not here but he is somewhere? But the question is where?
And it is also open to debate whether it's a he or a she?
My mind worked in overclock mode to solve this question and I also used all my novel knowledge to see if this could be somehow the same as some other plots.
What I can be sure of is that this senior is somewhere out there but I don't know where.
The thing that boggles my mind is that anyone who was able to create this massive space with its own rules can't be someone ordinary because no one in the world can recreate even a fraction of this space so the origin of this expert and his reasons for creating this trial here are the real questions.
If this kind of powerhouse is walking around the world, I have to say that this really redefines the meaning of hidden expert.
Shuddering a little I vowed to myself to be courteous to every old beggar or old person in tattered and ragged robes.
'The world is really a scary place now that I think about it…' I thought.
With this new revelation, I stepped on the exit formation and appeared outside of the test space on the same hill that I entered the test from.
The location of this formation was on the outskirts of the desert so I was at the edge of this region so I didn't have to walk far to get out of the never-ending desert.
Moving toward where my [Bird eye] had mapped a location that wasn't a desert, I soon came to a woodlands biome.
I was impressed once again by this trial space. The fact that they have recreated this place like the real world and the biomes are not random and change with logic just goes to show the level of expertise of the trial creator or creators.
At the same time that I was marveling at the details of this place, I heard a sound that I forgot about In these past two weeks.
It was the alarm sound of the tool that we would use to locate other disciples from our sect. After two weeks of silence as there was no one in my vicinity, now it was alarming like crazy.
It could only mean one thing, there is a big group of our heavenly sect disciples near this region.
'Well, it makes sense to meet up to see what Hu Anjing and others were going through.' I was interested in what they were up to when I was killing giant worms…
——(POV Hu Anjing)——
The moment I entered the trial I was in a mountain region. There were many beasts there that had tough skins and high defensive capabilities but none of them made me unsheathe my sword and a punch or a kick would solve them so there was really no need to take them seriously.
If Huang was here he would probably scold me for not taking an unknown enemy seriously or something but honestly, I could say with a glance that these beasts can pose no threat to me so it was fine.
As I was accumulating points and occasionally found some formations and entered them, I was also mapping these locations with the tool that Huang gave me in those sorted storage rings that he readied for me.
Honestly, it was a great help when moving in these terrains that you can easily get lost in. You can use your mind to keep track of your surroundings but it would occupy a part of the brain and you would have to always be consciously thinking about it so this would ultimately result in worse decision making because you are not using your brain in its full capacity.
While I was running around and killing beasts I located some of our disciples so as the leader I decided to gather everyone slowly so that we can sweep regions faster and safer because you would always have allies nearby.
In just five days we have found three other disciples and now we were a group of four.
To find other disciples easier I devised a plan, we would put enough distance between each other that we were almost on the edge of this tool's detection range. With this, we know about each other's whereabouts and also covered a bigger distance so that we can find others who also entered the trial with us.
This proved to be effective and in the next days, we found many disciples from different sects but didn't care that much about them so no friction happened there.
After a week we had found almost all of our 10 participants as luckily we were able to traverse a large distance and cover a bigger land as we had larger numbers.
Now 9 of 10 disciples were found and the only one who wasn't here was Li Huang.
Two days passed after this and there was still no clue about him and at some point, even I started to get worried but I soon calmed down.
Why? Because Li Huang is the most over-suspicious person that I have ever known, so even if he is in a tough spot, he would have something ready for the unlikely event that he was put in that situation and can counter it. So in reality, there was nothing to worry about.
We have been looking around for him until one of the disciples who was near the desert biome said that he located someone.
'So he was there…'
I told everyone to move toward the signal, with this we would have every disciple gathered.