A powerful white light covered Shucao’s eyes, completely sealing off her senses.
When she came back to herself, she suddenly found herself standing on a small wilderness path.
“What is this place? Where the hell did it dump me all of a sudden?”
Shucao looked around in every direction.
The scenery around her looked no different from the outside world, yet she always felt that something was slightly off.
Suddenly, An Qianhua’s voice came from within the Heart Realm.
“This should be some kind of illusion realm.”
“An illusion realm?”
“Mm. The moment that large array activated, you should have been pulled into the illusion realm constructed by that array. And from the fact that I can still talk to you, this illusion realm seems to have pulled your entire person inside rather than simply clouding your consciousness.”
“Is that so? Then that so-called trial should be taking place inside this illusion realm.”
Shucao observed her surroundings once more and discovered that apart from the narrow path in front of her that was just wide enough for a single horse carriage to travel, there was nothing but endless wilderness.
“Is this testing our wilderness survival skills?”
“There’s nothing here at all. How are we supposed to survive? Are they going to make cultivators compete over who is better at fasting? We should just walk around and see.”
After thinking it over, Shucao decided to listen to An Qianhua and step onto the path to see whether anything else would appear along the way.
The instant her foot touched the path, white light flashed, and a fork in the road suddenly appeared on the previously narrow trail.
On each of the two branching paths, several people were lying on the ground.
“What are these people doing? Cosplaying as speed bumps?”
Just as An Qianhua’s complaint rang out, several small characters formed from spiritual light suddenly appeared in the air in front of Shucao.
“On the forked path before you, one ordinary person is lying on one side, and five ordinary people are lying on the other. Right now, a runaway spirit beast is charging toward this place. You have one and only one chance to change the spirit beast’s direction. What will you choose?”
After Shucao saw this string of small characters, a chaotic noise mixed with roaring came from the path behind her.
Turning her head to look, she saw a somewhat massive horse with a body of deep green charging straight toward them.
“And here I thought it was some special test. So it’s just the trolley problem.”
“Trolley problem? What’s that?”
“It’s a question that tests whether a person is willing to sacrifice the few to save the many, or sacrifice the many to save the few. Only, usually the test would specify the identities of those people—like one of them is someone extremely important while the other five are ordinary people. Here they’re all ordinary people, which is a bit different.”
“Although I’m quite curious why there’s such a difference, that spirit beast is getting closer and closer. We should make a decision quickly.”
There was no time to overthink what that difference truly meant.
The spirit beast was already drawing nearer and nearer to the fork where Shucao stood.
Thus, Shucao stood in front of the fork in the road, then summoned her magic wand.
The gleaming gem on the wand pointed straight at the spirit beast charging toward her.
“What kind of messy problem is this? If the goal is to save people, then just save every single one of them! If you can’t even save this few people, then you might as well have no ability at all!”
An untamed spirit beast was nothing more than a demonic beast.
Since it was a demonic beast that intended to harm people, it should be defeated!
Accompanied by this thought, several magic arrays appeared at the tip of her wand, continuously expanding and encircling the gem.
In the next moment, those magic arrays simultaneously released powerful magic power.
A composite magic power light cannon abruptly fired, shooting straight toward the deep-green horse.
Faced with this sudden attack, the horse-type spirit beast—perhaps because it was formed by the illusion realm—showed not the slightest hesitation or fear and directly smashed its sturdy body into the light cannon.
The instant before the two collided, a spiritual power shield suddenly appeared in front of the horse, forcibly withstanding the direct shot of the light cannon.
Because of this, however, the horse’s charge was also forced to a stop.
Seeing this, Shucao immediately increased her magic power output while also concentrating the power of the light cannon into a single point, forcibly shattering that layer of spiritual power shield.
The powerful light cannon instantly enveloped the horse’s body.
In the next moment, that body also dissipated under the bombardment of magic power.
“Haha, an extra solution to the trolley problem—just blow up the trolley. Only here there’s no trolley, and no people being pulled by it either, so blowing up the ‘trolley’ feels extremely justified.”
After seeing Shucao’s actions, An Qianhua immediately spoke with a laugh.
At the same time, the small characters in the air appeared once more.
“?”
“In the illusion array designed by this old man, spiritual power is not supposed to be usable, is it?”
“Interesting.”
“I’ll count this as a pass.”
After these few lines of small characters appeared, the surrounding scenery began to transform into strands of black light particles and then dissipated, leaving only a pure white space.
When she came back to herself, Shucao discovered that in an instant she had arrived inside a pavilion among the mountains.
Looking outside the pavilion, the scenery of the Taiqing Secret Realm entered Shucao’s eyes.
At this moment she knew she had already left the illusion realm.
“Those words just now… could it be that someone else is controlling this trial?”
After coming out, Shucao recalled the few lines of text she had just seen and spoke with some surprise.
The emotional expression in those small characters did not seem like something left behind by people of the past.
“Perhaps. After all, this place can be considered an important asset of that kind of sect. It’s not strange for one or two guardians to have been staying inside all this time. Only, the other party should be restricted by that large array or by this secret realm. Otherwise, with the Taiqing Sect having been destroyed for so long, why would that person still be willing to remain inside?”
“Judging from the reaction of those characters just now, the other party seems somewhat interested in us. Hopefully it won’t affect the trial because of this.”
“Right now we can only continue with the trials. If something else happens later, we can make decisions then.”
Shucao nodded, then wanted to walk out of the pavilion and first explore this Tianling Mountain a little.
Just as she was about to step onto the stairs leading out of the pavilion, she suddenly bumped into the air at the pavilion entrance.
“Ah?!”
The sudden impact on her forehead startled Shucao.
She rubbed her slightly reddened forehead and blankly stared at the empty air in front of the doorway, then stretched out her hand and touched toward that air.
Looking at the empty space, there was actually a solid sensation, as if a transparent wall was surrounding the small pavilion.
“There’s even an air wall!”
“Perhaps…”
Shucao thought for a moment and guessed.
“Outside this pavilion should be the location of the second trial. This also matches what Zhang Huaiyu said about being able to freely explore Tianling Mountain after the second trial. It seems this transparent barrier is meant to make us wait here for a while first. There should still be other people who haven’t finished the first trial yet.”
As she spoke, Shucao sat down on the spot.
While refining the magic power within her body through meditation, she waited for the beginning of the second trial.
After a short period of time, the small characters formed from spiritual light once again appeared before Shucao’s eyes.
“Second Trial”
“Within the region of Tianling Mountain, there are twenty special fruit trees. The essence they nurture is called Floating Gold Fruit.”
“Find the Floating Gold Fruit and use it to enter the grand hall at the mountain peak. The third trial awaits you there.”