"Isn't that Buan Ling?"
"His face looks similar. Is it him?"
"Oh? He has already gotten so big."
"He is taking the trial this year too."
The people knew fatty quite well, after all, he had been participating in the trials for the last eight years.
Even the immortals must know him at this point.
Unsurprisingly, fatty went inside the archway, took a little more than four minutes, and reached the other side.
Just by looking at this performance, people would be hard-pressed trying to determine who was better – Fatty or Mo Chen.
While the fatty had taken longer to pass the archway, he did so without falling unconscious.
On the other hand, it was the very first time Mo Chen was giving the test and for a newcomer, he did extremely well.
Who was to say that the experience didn't help, only fatty himself could clarify if his experience had helped him progressively every year or not.
Still, since it was not prohibited and anyone under the age of thirty could do it any number of times they wanted. The people and the challengers were not in a position to question.
It had been an hour since the trial of the will started.
Till now, four people successfully passed. Other than fatty Ling and Mo Chen, two more acquaintances of fatty went in after fatty and managed to clear it.
The people spectating behind couldn't be anymore livid with joy. For them, the more the people passed, the better the chance to birth an immortal.
They took pride in being related to the Azure Order sect. This generation of mortals grew up looking up to the Azure mountain and the immortal air that surrounded it.
They grew up on its legends and lores, compared to the other mortals, they were blessed to live in a place so close to the immortals.
They wanted their kids and grandkids to one day pass through the trial and become exalted immortals, for them to move into the inner estate and contribute to the Azure sect they looked up to, they couldn't ask for more.
Silver heard and felt the elation of the people behind him and ruminated on it.
'I guess some people are the same no matter where you go…'
Thinking this, Silver moved his body towards the archway.
He had seen enough and finally decided to try it for himself.
What he was feeling was a combination of fear, excitement and curiosity.
The excitement and curiosity had been dominating the already minuscule amount of fear even more after he watched the fatty and his group pass through.
'I wonder how it feels in there.'
He knew that he could possibly lose his life in there, he knew that what he was currently feeling could very well be a fool's confidence.
But, it didn't terrify him. The archway as a challenge was nothing compared to what he felt when he imagined looking out of the window of the dilapidated house.
Just a single thought was enough to beat the archway in front of him, so it made sense that it didn't terrify him one bit.
The fear he felt was just the fear of dying, which again, was something that everybody felt.
Silver cleared his head which was full of these thoughts.
What he wanted to do now was experience the trial of the will in its full glory, he wanted to know what the mystic force felt like. Whether he could touch it or taste it. He was burning with curiosity even more.
But he needed to keep a cool head if he wanted to feel it clearly.
As he reached in front of the archway, he instantly became the next center of attention.
He could practically feel all the eyes on his back.
Not caring much about it, he placed his foot inside of the archway.
***
The inside of the archway was not completely lit. Only the light from both sides made the way visible.
Silver was currently standing at the very entrance of the archway. He couldn't feel anything yet.
He started moving forward, towards the other end of the archway.
The distance was roughly eighty meters. This was something he had calculated by noting the number of steps, the frequency of steps taken, and the time it required for them to pass the archway.
After knowing all of that, the rest was easy.
There were no particular smells inside the archway, only moldy and soil-like air permeating through the walls and the ground.
Silver was walking very slowly. This way he'd be able to catch the very minute changes that happened around him.
He had been inside for thirty seconds now and just after he took his n'th step, he started feeling a little weight on his shoulders.
'Hmm?'
He tried touching his shoulders and seeing if there was anything on it but there was nothing there.
Confirming this, Silver's eyes brightened up like candles in a dark room.
"Is this the mystical unknown force!?"
He wasn't able to see anything and there was no feeling of sense, he wondered if he could smell it or taste this mystical force but sticking out his tongue, trying to lick the air along with taking in slow deep breaths didn't work.
The other thing silver noticed was that it was not just him the unknown mystical force pushed down.
"Since it got a little harder to breathe, does that mean that the unknown force can push down air too?"
Oxygen was ever-present in the air around us, since the oxygen was thinning, Silver concluded that if he felt a downward push, the air must have felt it too.
And since air was formless and easily moved, under this little force, it must have settled down.
To conclude his findings, Silver went down to his knees and started breathing.
"Sure enough!"
The oxygen here was denser compared to before.
"The unknown force can actually physically attract the surroundings!"
This was nothing short of a wild discovery for Silver.
A force that didn't exist back on earth and can directly physically attract the matter.
"Is this a metaphysical force? It would have been back there but it doesn't look like it will be the case here."
Silver got back up and then started making his way towards the other end.
It looks like he had already wasted quite some time experimenting and playing with this unknown force.
He could very easily just crawl the way there as the oxygen became thinner the deeper he went but it was just as painful to crawl on all four to the end.
It was only some lack of oxygen and little weight on his shoulders, he could still cross it without much difficulty.
The weight on his back slowly increased, causing him to slouch a little.
This feeling was quite weird for silver. Normally, when you have something on your back or shoulders, you'd try to balance it and that wouldn't be much difficult considering that the weight was centralized and you can adjust it to not fall off.
But now, Silver was feeling a weight that was not centralized and ever-present at every surface per area of his body.
It was like the tiny pores that everybody had on their bodies suddenly weighed ten times more, it was so unnatural that you couldn't even tell it apart.
Just like an ever present weight that would not fall off no matter what you do.
"The best thing you could do to beat this force is to keep walking, maintaining low contact with the ground which is like one foot at a time and minimizing your surface area."
Silver was already coming up with all the solutions as the weight on his body piled up and the oxygen further thinned.
He had already passed the halfway mark long ago, less than forty meters were left.
In these last forty meters or so, the oxygen and air were pressed down against the ground, the weight was also around the same as his. He was carrying himself while not being able to breathe through the archway.
He was becoming a little breathless at this point but he'd still be able to cover the rest of the distance.
On average, a human could easily hold their breath for three to five minutes and a minute and a half in the worst cases.
Silver had already wasted his time while examining the force and playing around with his conjectures or else he could very easily complete the trial in less than two minutes.
He was a little disappointed, he had to say.
It was not the mystical force, but the trial itself. He felt like this mystical force was not being utilized to its full potential.
After all, one could easily clear the trial just by doing one thing.
He couldn't really believe that no one had ever done what he thought was the only best solution to complete this trial.
He looked at the three dead challengers, their expressions filled with indignation and then looked behind him, due to the contrast of light, he could only see the shadows of the people.
He suddenly had an idea, he really wanted to see whether his solution was the best one or was he wrong like any other delusional prick.
Less than ten meters were left, Silver stopped paying attention to what was happening in front of him, he turned around fully and started walking with his back facing the other end and his face facing the entrance from where he came.
He then crossed both of his hands over his mouth, as if imitating a megaphone.
He used whatever breath was left in him and–
"If you want to clear the trial, Hold your breath and run with all you've got."
"..."
"..."
He shouted loudly and clearly for all to hear.
His body phased through the dark and emerged out of the light among the stupefied faces of all.
Silver had cleared the trial of the will.