Ise headed toward the labyrinth without hesitation.
Now that he had obtained the fortuitous opportunity, he felt he wouldn’t be satisfied until he investigated it immediately.
He composed both body and mind, determined to overcome whatever trial awaited him, and then set off.
“Daoist, please cooperate with a brief inspection.”
Even on his way out, he encountered cultivators from the Heavenly Ice Palace who were conducting their search.
By this point, Ise realized something.
The Heavenly Ice Palace was sealing off Tiandao City while conducting its search.
He had already removed the Silver Spirit Ring and wasn’t disguised, so he was able to pass through the encirclement without incident.
Once the cultivators had moved far enough away, Ise took out his Dream-Saving Cloud and accelerated in earnest.
***
After traveling northeast for about nineteen days according to the map, Ise saw the snow-covered mountain indicated on the secret map.
He spread his Fire-Forming Technique over a wide area, melting the snow covering the mountain and creating a path.
It was a grueling task, having to search the entire snow mountain relying solely on the secret map, but Ise searched for the entrance without even feeling tired.
And what he finally found was a boulder about the size of a first-grade Thunder Boar demonic beast that he hunted before.
There was a rectangular hole in the center of the boulder.
It was precisely large enough for the jade slip to fit.
When Ise pushed the secret map into it, the rock trembled with a deep rumble, and the lower portion split apart, revealing a staircase.
The jade slip itself was the key to the labyrinth.
Ise illuminated his surroundings with flames and cautiously took one step at a time.
He had only descended a few steps when the entrance to the labyrinth closed behind him with another deep rumble and disappeared.
For a long while, he descended through pitch-black darkness, relying on nothing but a single flame.
The staircase seemed endless.
It felt as though it truly stretched all the way into the abyss, making him dizzy with vertigo.
At the same time, a strange aura gradually began to envelop him.
Soon, a massive stone gate appeared.
When Ise stood before it, the gate opened automatically.
Beyond it was an enclosed chamber approximately three zhang (10 m) wide in both directions.
Ise stepped inside.
The door behind him closed.
‘The real trial starts here.’
What kind of trial would it be?
He didn’t know how many secret maps the creator of the Five-Element Life-Promoting Art had left behind, but there probably weren’t many.
At the very least, the creator wouldn’t have designed the trial to kill someone who had managed to make it this far in some absurd manner.
It might be dangerous, but it would be a trial with a reasonable level of difficulty.
That was what Ise expected.
Not much time passed before Ise wiped away a bead of sweat caused by his tension.
Then he frowned slightly.
He almost never sweated simply because he was nervous.
‘The heat….’
The temperature of the chamber was rising.
If it was hot enough for a Foundation Establishment cultivator to sweat, it was probably hot enough to boil water.
His prediction proved correct.
Soon, heat haze began to obscure his vision, and flames subsequently erupted throughout the secret chamber.
Starting a fire inside an enclosed space.
What a nasty personality.
The temperature rose in an instant, becoming hot enough to burn everything away.
Ise immediately cast a Water-Forming Technique and began pushing back the flames with water.
Fire and water pushed against one another, filling the chamber with thick clouds of steam and smoke.
After suppressing the flames for quite some time, they gradually died down.
This time, water began flooding into the secret chamber.
It was impossible to tell where the holes were that allowed them to start a fire and then pour in all that water.
Ise erected a cubic earthen wall and sealed himself inside it.
After confirming with his divine sense that the water was filling the chamber completely, he slowly regulated his breathing.
The purpose of the trial was easy to discern.
‘It’s testing my mastery of the Five-Element spells.’
Apparently, the creator of this place didn’t want someone who had broken the seal on the secret map using someone else’s power to come here.
After the Fire Trial and Water Flood came man-eating vines.
The vines multiplied in an instant as though using Clone Technique, but Ise mercilessly cut them apart with a Metal-Element spell.
He melted away the metal closing in from all directions with fire, and then blocked the incoming earth and sand with the Wood-Element cultivation technique, Ten-Thousand Root Binding.
With that, the first trial ended.
Ise easily overcame the trial and proceeded through the opened door into the second chamber.
There was nothing inside the second chamber.
Unlike the first chamber, where he expected the trial to begin after some time had passed, nothing changed no matter how long he waited.
Ise released his divine sense and carefully examined the interior.
Then he discovered twisted characters and distorted drawings inscribed across the ceiling, forming the Five Directions.
It was a unique inscription carved into the ceiling, impossible to detect unless viewed with Divine Sense.
‘They really underestimate people.’
I had expected the trial not to be particularly difficult, but wasn’t this a little too easy?
Although the characters were twisted and distorted, judging by their patterns and strokes, they represented the eyes, tongue, mouth, nose, and ears.
In the cultivation world, the eyes, tongue, mouth, nose, and ears corresponded respectively to the Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water attributes.
It was little more than basic theory that one did not necessarily need to know, but surely people who sought to defy the heavens would at least know something this basic.
Ise simultaneously cast the Arts corresponding to each attribute represented by the characters and sent them flying.
The door opened, revealing the next chamber before him.
Ise proceeded carefully, but suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Inside was a wounded black fox spirit beast curled up in a ball.
The moment the fox spotted Ise, it hissed and its fur stood on end.
Looking closely, he saw that it had six tails.
It was a Six-Tailed Black Fox.
Among fox spirit beasts, it was second only to the Nine-Tailed Star Fox in rarity, and to the wandering cultivators of the Eastern Continent, encountering one was considered a great opportunity.
Judging by the aura of its demon core, had it been in perfect condition, the spirit beast would have possessed power comparable to a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
But right now, it was suffering from fairly serious injuries.
‘Don’t tell me I have to kill that?’
Other cultivators would probably have been delighted at such a stroke of luck, but to Ise, it was simply troublesome.
Not hunting spirit beasts was the last remaining conviction of the Great Exorcist Order.
At the very least, that was something he wanted to uphold alongside them.
‘…This is troublesome.’
Whether it understood his feelings or not, the Six-Tailed Black Fox merely continued growling at him with all its might.
After pondering for quite some time, Ise eventually lowered his hand.
Back when he had first entered the cultivation world, he had believed that simply doing good deeds was the proper path.
But after experiencing countless things, his thoughts on Dao Heart had changed.
What mattered was not the direction in which one walked, but how straight one walked.
A cultivator had to clearly establish the path they wished to follow and never stray from it.
That was the Dao Heart a cultivator ought to uphold.
Ise had made preserving the teachings of his mentors and the convictions of the sect he belonged to his own Dao Heart.
Although that resolve had occasionally wavered—once… no, perhaps twice—he would not lose his direction simply because it wavered.
‘I don’t know.
They’ll probably give me another chance.
If not… as painful as it would be to waste all the effort I put into this, I’ll just have to accept that this opportunity wasn’t meant for me.’
If someone had heard his decision, they would have pointed at him and called him insane.
Even when he handed the fox the Regeneration Pill, he had constantly questioned whether what he was doing was truly the right choice.
“I won’t hurt you.
I’ll give you this, so recover your injuries.”
Perhaps the spirit beast understood Ise’s words, because its hostility gradually faded.
Eventually, Ise extended his hand, and the Regeneration Pill was drawn into the mouth of the fox spirit beast.
The fox swallowed it easily and began emitting light.
Then it gently swayed its tails before suddenly spinning around and disappearing.
Immediately afterward, the door to the chamber opened.
‘…?’
For a moment, Ise could not understand what had just happened.
Then his expression changed as if he had been struck in the head by a hammer.
The Five Elements Life-Promoting Art.
‘Life-promoting.’
Was the meaning that anyone who wished to learn an art that promoted life had to choose to protect the life before their eyes rather than harm it?
Only then did Ise understand the intention of the labyrinth’s master, and he let out a hollow laugh at the master’s mischievous nature.
After all, whoever entered this place would probably choose to take the spirit beast without exception.
‘So I roughly understand what you want to teach.’
Relieved, Ise proceeded toward the next trial chamber.
What awaited him there were two flower beds.
And a spiritual herb that was half-withered and on the verge of dying.
Thinking back to the previous trial, this must also mean that he was supposed to save the spiritual herb.
However, unlike the spirit beast, which could be healed simply by feeding it a Regeneration Pill, reviving a spiritual herb was impossible without relevant knowledge.
‘This is a Sun-Center Radiant Grass.’
The spiritual herb was one of the ingredients used to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill, and it was classified as a fairly precious spiritual herb on the Eastern Continent.
Fortunately, Ise had studied immortal cuisine and had also acquired considerable knowledge concerning spiritual herbs.
Thus, the moment he saw it, he could immediately tell what it needed.
‘The soil is contaminated.
The rotten portions need to be cut away.
The temperature is wrong, and it lacks moisture.
The spiritual herb’s own vitality has also been severely depleted.’
However, the order in which he treated these problems was important.
The first page of an introductory book on cultivating spiritual herbs stated that even the process of transplanting a spiritual herb required every step to be performed in the proper order if one wished to maintain it in optimal condition.
First, he needed to create the spiritual soil that would serve as its foundation.
The problem was the ingredients.
Where was he supposed to find something like spirit beast excrement right now…?
Ise considered the materials needed to create spiritual soil, then snapped his fingers.
The most important ingredient was spirit beast excrement.
Couldn’t he simply make some on the spot?
Ise immediately took Bisan out of the Spirit Beast Pouch.
“Grru?”
“Don’t you dare eat that.
The moment you do, I’ll really turn you into stir-fried chicken stew.”
“Grrruk!”
At the vicious warning, Bisan, who had been licking its beak, flapped its wings.
Ise immediately got to the point.
“You.
Do your business here.”
“Grrur?”
“Make it a big one.”
“…Grru?”
“As much as possible.”
Bisan stared at Ise with an expression that seemed to say it would have cursed him if only it knew how.
But Ise merely jerked his chin, urging it to hurry.
What could it do?
If its master told it to poop, it had to poop.
Besides, Ise didn’t know how to curse either.
Ise mixed Bisan’s excrement, finely crushed spirit stones, and Redwood Grass, which would supply nutrients to the soil, then kneaded the mixture with his hands.
Handling spirit beast feces was hardly pleasant, but he had no choice because the instructions for creating spiritual soil stated that one had to offer sincerity during the process.
It was also something Buchun did every single day.
Ise once again came to understand the hardships his fellow disciple endured as he finished the spiritual soil for the flower bed into which he would transplant the herb.
Next, he used a Metal-type Art to cut away the rotten portions of the spiritual herb.
Even if the herb was transplanted, leaving the rotten portions behind would cause them to contaminate the spiritual qi within the soil, so they absolutely had to be removed before planting.
Next, he washed the spiritual herb thoroughly and transplanted it.
He immediately cast a weak Water Release Art to supply it with moisture, then used a Fire Release Art to raise the internal temperature to an appropriate level.
Finally, when he used a Wood Vitality Art to infuse the spiritual herb with vitality, it soon began recovering its lush green appearance.
At last, the spiritual herb began emanating spiritual essence, filling the entire chamber with spiritual qi.
The door opened.
‘Then is the spiritual herb mine?’
Ise glanced at the herb, his mouth watering slightly, but unfortunately, the spiritual herb simply disappeared.
‘How about you show yourself already?’
Hadn’t he passed quite a lot of trials by this point?
At this level of difficulty, if a hundred people entered, ninety-nine of them would probably fail.
With that thought, he entered the next chamber.
At the far end stood the bust of an elderly man who appeared to be quite advanced in age.
Before it was an altar, upon which lay a cultivation manual and a Dharma Artifact shaped like a doorknob.
It seemed that all the trials had finally come to an end.
With a smile on his face, Ise stepped forward and stood before the bust.
He was just about to reach for the cultivation manual when he withdrew his hand.
He could feel a gaze, as though the bust were watching him.
Moreover, the pure spiritual qi flowing throughout the entire chamber in a fixed direction was stirring his spiritual mind.
His instincts cried out.
The trial was not over yet.