Like that, the two entered a rapid back and forth, their movements like shadows despite their mortal strengths.
"Awesome! This is the first floor and the dummy is already so strong!" One spectator said in wonder.
"I wonder what the upper floors are like?" Another replied.
"I've actually read a little bit about this in the past. According to the records, the difficulty doesn't actually increase for the next two floors, but you have to fight one more dummy each time."
"So by the third floor you'd have to fight 3 dummies at once? That's impossible!"
"Maybe for a normal person, but these aren't normal people."
"Then what about the fourth floor, what happens there?"
"At that point you have to fight a Third-Layer Mortal Renewal dummy, but the catch is your strength is still suppressed to the mortal level."
"No way! That really is impossible!"
"Not impossible, but your shock isn't completely wrong. The fourth and eighth floors aren't called the impossible floors for nothing. You'd have to pass both of them in order to access the ninth, which still has yet to happen."
"Hey, maybe that was true in the past, but we've got a miracle among us now!"
"You mean-"
"That's right." The man said, his eyes peering down onto Minos's tall figure, like a crane among chickens.
"Heh, you may be onto something… If the Nine-Tailed Emperor himself chose him, maybe he really can do the 'impossible?'"
…
"What do you think?" Asumi asked Minos as the two watched the battle.
"I'm not certain yet, but it seems to me that the puppet is matching his moves, as if its skill level is tied to his own."
"You aren't wrong, there's a reason this test is so hard. The Nine-Tailed Tower is like an all-seeing eye, constantly feeding your moves back to the puppet so it can match you."
"Then what if you destroyed it before it could learn?"
"Doesn't matter, the tower already has so much experience on hand which it can use to manufacture your equal. It's said even the Nine-Tailed Emperor recorded a few moves into it before he passed, though I'm not sure how true that is."
"In that case I hope it's true, after all it would be quite interesting to share a few moves with the legend himself."
"... You're crazy, do you want to lose early or something?"
"What's the problem with losing? If anything it's a blessing, just means there's so much more to learn." Minos laughed.
"Well you can learn all you want, but all I'm interested in is winning. Anyways, it looks like that guy is pretty exhausted, he won't last much longer."
Hearing that, Minos focused back on onto the holograph, and just like Asumi had said, the young man in question was sweating heavily, as if he was ready to drop.
Unlike normal people, that puppet seemed to have infinite stamina, which was a huge advantage under the heavy suppression of the tower's formations.
The young man also realized this, his teeth grit hard and his eyes a little out of focus, as if he was thinking hard about something.
As if making up his mind, the young man suddenly slammed his chest hard with his left palm, causing him to spit out a chunk of blood which he aimed at his right.
"Heart Blood Palm, interesting." Asumi couldn't help but say with some amusement.
"Heart Blood Palm?" Minos asked.
"This is a sort of pseudo-forbidden move. While the after-effects aren't comparable to actual forbidden moves, it's still quite damaging to the body."
"Though it has two unique properties that make it popular. The first is that anyone can use it, regardless of cultivation level, and the second is that its strength is directly tied to your own, or more specifically, the strength of your blood."
"Of course just like the name implies, the cost is your own heart blood, which unlike normal blood, isn't easy to recover."
"I've heard of techniques using heart blood before, but this seems somewhat… Primitive." Minos said after some thought.
"That's the point. The creator wanted to make a technique that anyone could use with very little training or experience, a kind of universal trump-card."
As Asumi said that, the young man's palm slammed hard onto the chest of the puppet, causing its 'skin' to ignite, like fire meeting wood.
With a deep sizzle, the palm melted a few centimeters into the body of the puppet, causing the white room to suddenly flash greed.
It seemed the green light was announcing his success, because soon after the puppet dissipated back into starlight, reabsorbed by the tower.
With a heavy sigh of relief, the young man collapsed over, his stamina completely drained by this point.
Luckily for him, the Nine-Tailed Tower was quick to relieve his exhaustion, funneling the same starlight from before into his body, causing his injuries and stamina to rapidly recover.
Though, even this healing had a limit, unable to recover the young man's lost heart blood, but still, it was more than enough to keep him fighting.
Jumping back up with his renewed energy, he quickly prepared himself for the next battle despite knowing there was little to no chance he could actually win.
This was made especially clear as two puppets manifested ahead of him, the two immediately circling him, blocking off all his escapes.
With his options limited, he finally decided to go all out attacking the puppet nearest to him, hoping he could at least cripple it somewhat before the other managed to attack.
However, while this idea sounded good in concept, even he knew it was near-impossible, after all he had already struggled with the puppet tremendously before, so how was he expected to suddenly overpower it now?
Though without any other choices, he still decided to implement this plan, his feet exploding against the floor as he rocketed towards the puppet ahead of him.
Using all his strength right from the start, he began barraging the puppet with a flurry of punches.
His method did actually seem to work at first, the puppet seemingly overwhelmed by the sudden attack, but unfortunately that didn't last long.
Soon enough it adapted, rapidly dodging or blocking the remaining punches while waiting for its partner to arrive.
'Dammit!' The young man thought, noticing the other puppet closing in from behind.
Knowing he had to make some room, he quickly stomped out onto the puppets chest in an attempt to blast it away, but it seemed to expect this, latching onto his foot.
With his body held in place, the other puppet quickly landed a heavy punch in his gut, causing him to fly back and skid across the floor.
Standing back up, he quickly suppressed the blood back down his throat, steadying his shaky body as he watched the two puppets inch closer.
With the Nine-Tailed Tower commanding them, the two puppets were more akin to a single person, the synergy between them perfect.
He had already nearly been overwhelmed by a single puppet before, and now that two of them were working together, it went without saying what his fate was.
With one distracting him, the other would attack, and as soon as he tried to defend that attack, the other would also move in.
As long as a single gap was exposed, it was almost guaranteed he'd be hit, so soon enough his entire body was bruised, having been bullied hard by these two puppets.
Soon enough he collapsed over, the room once again shining, but this time with a red light, signifying his failure.
However the battle wasn't over yet, and while he had failed to pass all the combat floors, there were still the strength floors left.
So after being healed by the tower, the young man was once again faced up with a puppet, though this time he noticed his Nux was no longer suppressed.
His power had fully recovered to his late stage Inner Heaven Cultivation, causing him to clench his fists with a strange joy.
Even experiencing just a moment of mortal strength was awful, and nothing could compare to the confidence he felt when he could use his full strength.
Based on the records he had read in the past, the four floors of the strength test started at the middle stages of Inner Heaven and ended in the middle stages of Aperture Opening, going up one layer each floor.
Confident he could crush a puppet a full layer below he, he immediately prepared his attack, summoning a dark cloud into his hand.
The dark cloud immediately split into dozens of smaller orbs, which immediately fired out towards the puppet.
"Dark Nux?" Minos asked somewhat curiously, not expecting he'd see such a rare element used here.
"That's right, though don't confuse its rarity to its strength, Dark Nux isn't actually that popular in these parts. The Cat-People aren't fond of that element, preferring the more aggressive elements instead, such as lightning and fire." Asumi explained.
Nodding, Minos looked back towards the battle, the dark orbs slamming towards the puppet which quickly responded with an attack of its own.
With a wave of its palm, a light shield quickly sprung up in front of it, perfectly countering the darkness, and managing to resolve it completely despite the puppets' weakness.