"They're taking the fight slow and careful to avoid any soul damaging attacks," I said, "I doubt they're having trouble, it's probably just a low rate of attrition."
Sure enough, after another 5 minutes, the last set of red bars vanished, and Shokoya and Quan came back out. They hardly looked the worse for wear at all, but they agreed to go ahead and camp for the night once it was explained what had happened in my fight. "Nasty," Shokoya had said, "I'm glad I didn't go with you instead."
The moment all of us had moved a certain distance away from the stone tablet, it moved, the floor under it sliding away to reveal a stair leading down. "The real trial begins tomorrow," Jue Zhu said, "from the sounds of it, we'll have a lot of mapping to do."
It turned out mapping was the least of our problems. Almost the moment we reached the bottom of the stairs, we were beset by enemies—metallic looking ants the size of golden retrievers that took a lot of punishment. Jue Zhu was actually not more than decently better than I was at taking them down, in spite of his tripled stats, simply because he had no Treasure quality weapon to work with. "Dude," I said, once there were finally no more charging at us, "you know they have Spirit grade weapons in the Inner Court Vault, right?"
"There's one I have my eye on, but at last count I still need 175 points," said Jue Zhu with a shrug.
"The Peak Quality rated jian in the display case?" Shokoya gave Jue Zhu a look, "you're that close to actually getting it? I didn't think anyone could get 2,000 Academy Points in their entire 4 years!"
"Well, turning in rare materials from the previous Jade Trials has helped."
"Ahhh, right."
"Anyway," said Jong, "we'd better not split up at all. Who knows if any of us would ever be seen again, if we got separated. As you said a little while back, Zuhui, we have over a month of summer left. Surely the maze isn't so huge that it will take us an entire month to reach the end."
Nobody needed much convincing. We spent several days advancing before we decided to take a rest. The further we went, the deeper down we seemed to go, and it also became steadily hotter. We did find a few large, isolated chambers that usually had only one way in or out, though it meant a lot of fighting when we did, since they were where the ant eggs were kept. Luckily, we'd indeed been mapping the ant colony quite thoroughly, so we were able to backtrack to one when we needed to.
We had to keep a watch though, which was a little rough. Still, by now, we had all broken through to the 7th Realm, which was known as the Aura Formation Realm. This marked the point in cultivation where the Aura stat started increasing by more than 9 points per level. However, the Aura stat growth rate remained independent of the others, and was another thing affected by one's overall cultivation talent, though it would still increase by more as higher Realms were reached unless one's talent was extremely poor. The lesson that covered what to expect from one's Aura growth depending on talent was one of the more memorable ones the Head Instructor had given, so I had a good idea of my overall talent using that as a metric...and I was pretty pleased with the calculation.
My Aura stat had risen by an incredible 400 points in the breakthrough to the 7th Realm, and after absorbing cores, I was able to rise to the 2nd Stage and gained another 250 points. According to the lesson, an ordinary, but not useless level of talent would gain 90 points per stage, whether it was the breakthrough to the 7th Realm or a lesser breakthrough after. I hadn't planned on comparing to the others, but once Jong brought it up I couldn't really keep it hidden. As it turned out, my overall talent, at least going by Aura growth alone, was equal to Jong's. Shokoya and Quan were still a little short of the 2nd Stage, and Shokoya had gained 200 points on the initial breakthrough, while Quan had gained 120. He felt it was likely he'd gain 120 on a minor breakthrough as well, and I had to agree—he may not have had a multiplier like the rest of us, but it'd be strange if he was really a completely average talent overall, let alone a genuinely poor talent.
Midway through the second week of exploration, we suspected, or hoped, that with how hot it was, we had to be getting close. It was so hot that I wouldn't be surprised if the Queen Chamber had actual magma in it. Quan's Aura stat had indeed gone up by 120 at the 2nd Stage, and Shokoya's by 150. The going was still tough though, since the heat only seemed to make the ant magical beasts stronger. I was getting as annoyed as everyone else, though in my case it was because somehow, we hadn't gained a single core from the ants the whole time.
After we finished resting at the 2 week mark, we reached one final long tunnel leading down, and in spite of killing several thousand by this point, the ants tried en masse to stop us from gaining even another step. After hundreds more, they finally thinned out, and we saw a glow at the end of the tunnel. It ended at a plateau of sorts suspended over, indeed, a vast lake of magma. Beyond the mouth of the passage we'd come in from, the heat was so intense that it hurt, steadily damaging us. I was certain that someone without a cultivation base, or probably one not much weaker than ours, would have been dead from the heat alone by the time they'd gotten here.
"We should probably retreat for now," said Quan, "rest and get back to full fighting form so that we have as much time as possible to fight the queen."