After passing through the portal, we found ourselves not in the jungle where the second trial began, but in a dark, empty space.
Everything was clear. His Majesty had deigned to speak with us because we'd suddenly become very dangerous to their plans.
"Young man, congratulations on such a brilliant completion of the first stage. It has been a long time since I've seen such a tempered body. You resemble a dragon in some ways."
"Thank you, Dragon God."
"So, would you tell me why you need my inheritance?"
"My build is crooked. I originally dumped all my free stat points into agility and adaptability instead of strength and endurance. And my teammate, as you can see, is a glass cannon. We aren't getting a single tank on the team anytime soon. So I have to balance out the build and move toward an all-rounder. I can't stay a pure agility DPS. I need versatility, and that means dragon blood."
"What?"
"I'm saying it's so I can protect those dear to me."
"A worthy goal. I will even help you with that."
"Only if it doesn't lower my chances of receiving the complete inheritance."
"It will not. Since both of you passed the first trial so brilliantly, I will give you a Lesser Dragon Soul Pill. It will immediately raise your cultivation by one realm."
"So you'll give us two pills?"
"Yes."
A setup! A setup so blatant they hadn't even bothered hiding it properly. Why? Because this crooked quest scaled mob strength based on the character's level. If we got stronger, then the opponents in the next trial would get stronger too.
Originally, as far as I understood, there could only be beasts up to the Spirit Profound Realm there. After our power-up, there would be Earth Profound beasts.
You have to understand that the gap between realms gradually gets wider. Just because I could beat a Spirit Profound opponent while I was in the Nascent Profound Realm didn't mean I'd be able to beat an Earth Profound opponent once I reached the True Profound Realm. That's where he was screwing me.
The little dragon understood that the second trial would be too easy for me, so he was making his move.
Of course, we could refuse, because the trial really would become much harder. But... right now I was stuck at a bottleneck because my soul was still too weak. Once I entered the True Profound Realm, I could immediately start pumping my soul with profound energy.
A stronger soul would let me progress in the Frozen Cloud Art, which in turn would speed up cultivation of that same profound energy. The dragon had no idea how thoroughly he was breaking the vicious circle of my cultivation, and besides... he had a surprise coming.
"Thank you, Dragon God."
"Brother Lun, maybe..."
"It's fine, little Yue. I know."
Even this little girl understood it was an obvious setup. That's how crooked "Bluey's" programming was. Funny. Very funny.
Well, the local chemistry was pretty remarkable. It didn't store energy inside itself or act like a battery. It was more like a powerful pump that drew profound energy from outside and rebuilt it to my standard.
If it had been a battery, I wouldn't have broken through to the next realm, because I needed much more energy. But thanks to all my open profound entrances, the pill worked at maximum efficiency, so I barely managed to reach the True Profound Realm.
Did I feel any difference? Not really. As far as I understood, this realm was where profound energy started attaching itself to the soul. That was why control increased here. The soul began to grow, nourished by the practitioner's profound energy.
Thanks to my wide channels, I didn't even feel any discomfort. The girl beside me, on the other hand, was clearly suffering.
When I looked at her, she was red as a beet. Apparently there was too much energy, and the strain on her body was colossal.
Well, "Bluey" couldn't directly harm those taking the trial. At least, that would be logical. Why? Because he might accidentally swat the arrogant Trash who had some very serious people standing behind him.
This entire proving ground had obviously been made specifically for him. The planners knew how insolent their protégé was. And you couldn't forget a dragon's temper either. That was why the little dragon was trying to make us fail through the trials. His hands were tied.
There was no way I could help the girl, but I was still worried. Everything had been easy and quick for me, while her breakthroughs through the levels and realms took several hours longer.
And the moment she finished, the little dragon kicked us straight into the second trial without even giving us time to stabilize.
"Little Yue, climb onto my back now and hold on tight. No questions."
The girl simply nodded and obeyed.
"Esteemed Dragon God, aren't we supposed to be told the rules for passing the trial?"
"Ah, yes," the deep voice sounded from the sky. "You must kill half a million beasts within three years."
Well, holy fuck. So our trial was five times harder, even though they'd given us three times as much time. If I hadn't had my plans, I would've despaired. As it was, I simply ran forward, ignoring the Earth Profound predators trying to catch me.
The dragon was playing very dirty, but this time I had no intention of playing along. I quickly found the place I needed: a raised platform that only certain ape-like predators could climb, and there weren't any of those here.
This was supposedly where Yun Che had settled down in canon.
"Brother Lun, can you really force your way through such a difficult trial even now? Why did we agree to take the pills?"
"Absolutely not, little Yue. This time we'll do things properly and intelligently, not heroically and by brute force. Just follow my instructions and everything will be fine."
Once we were on the platform, I immediately pulled my tools out of the ring and started deploying a beast-concealment formation that I'd bought from the Black Moon Merchant Guild for a fairly low price.
Usually, this crap wasn't even used by practitioners but by ordinary merchants. How else were they supposed to cross enormous distances when this world had plenty of monsters in the Spirit, Earth, or even Sky Profound Realms?
I'm not even talking about stronger monsters.
Formations themselves were the sinful offspring of artifact crafting and feng shui. You toss painted plaques into different places and voilà. Magic happens.
I definitely needed to study this art, but information about it wasn't sold. The Supreme Ocean Palace had a monopoly on it.
"Well then, little Yue, now we can live here peacefully and train."
"Don't we need to start hunting immediately?"
"No. We need to stabilize our cultivation and train our ice lotuses. Don't worry about the monsters."
"All right. I'll trust you, Brother Lun."
"For now, just rest. Or are you hungry?"
"Well... Why are you looking at me so closely?"
"By the laws of the genre, you were supposed to refuse, but then your stomach was supposed to growl loudly."
"Brother Lun, practitioners at our level can easily go several days without eating, and our stomachs don't growl."
"You can't argue with the laws of the genre. Just trust me. Anyway, let's eat something and then get a good rest."
"As you say, Brother Lun. Don't you want to light a fire? It won't give away the formation. My father had one like this for traveling."
"Why? The food's hot already."
"It's just nicer with a fire."
The girl hadn't yet embraced the Frozen Cloud Palace aesthetic. And she was so cute it was impossible to refuse her.
So I had to gather brushwood and light a fire.
"Brother Lun, are you afraid of fire?"
"What makes you think that, little Yue?"
"You moved too far away from it, and you don't look at the flames. And you were against making a fire in the first place."
And then it hit me. She was right. When was the last time I'd lit a fire or gone close to one?
Damn fried chicken, damn trial, damn pain. I'd promised myself I'd pay more attention to my mental health.
"So why are you afraid of fire, Brother Lun?"
I even had to think for a few seconds so I wouldn't sound too lofty and pompous. This world was clearly affecting me, and not in a good way.
"Every power has its price, little Yue. I had to pay mine, and apparently it left scars on my soul."
Even as I said that, I deliberately moved closer to the fire and started warming my hands. I needed to get rid of phobias before they took root. Good thing I'd noticed this one relatively quickly. If this had happened in battle...
"Every power?"
"Even yours. Especially yours."
The girl looked at me in surprise with those huge eyes of hers. Apparently she had absolutely no idea about her own body. And how would she?
"I don't have power like Brother Lun's. I'm just a little talented."
"You're wrong. Your power is great, but the price... It isn't worth it, if you ask me."
"I don't understand what you mean."
"You will when you're a little older."
She didn't like that answer. Nobody would've liked that answer. But I wasn't ready for this conversation yet.
"Can you tell me now?"
"Too soon. Better let your head rest. In the morning we'll start training ice lotuses. We need to reach the fifth stage of Frozen Cloud as quickly as possible."
"As you say, Brother Lun."
Ideally, of course, we needed to reach the sixth stage: the Realm of Heavenly Snow Summoning. An area attack would be much more useful to us right now. But that was only if we got very lucky. Break through to that level in a year? Doubtful. Very doubtful.
And so our days began to pass. We didn't even think about hunting. We just trained together. Well, no, there was a little hunting after all. Sometimes certain beasts came too close to our platform, and we used them as targets for ice-lotus practice. Then, when there were too many beasts, we simply hid under the formation.
But my relationship with this cutie stopped being formal when she asked me a very unexpected question.
"Brother Lun, why are you almost always sad?"
An unexpected question, all right. Nobody had seen me sad in a very long time.
"Me? Sad? Little Yue, are you all right? Me and sadness don't even belong in the same sentence."
The girl gave me a reproachful look, as if I were the child. It looked funny and cute.
"It's all an act. I can see it. In front of people you're always joking and saying your strange words, but inside you're gloomy and constantly thinking about something."
"Ah, right. That heart of yours with the fucking complicated name. It's impossible to lie to you, isn't it?"
Of course. She was a walking lie detector. How could I forget? Actually, people like that were the easiest to deceive. You could serve the truth with different sauces and emphasize different parts of it too.
"My heart?"
"Yeah. One of your inheritances. Let's call it the Glass Heart for simplicity."
"How do you know about my inheritances? Neither I nor my teacher knows anything about them."
"But I do. That's my curse—I know all sorts of things."
"Is that why you're so sad?"
I couldn't hold back a heavy sigh. How was I supposed to explain to a girl from THIS world that everything around us was wrong? That even for a cynic and villain like me, everything here went too far. That human life was the greatest value—or should be—not loose change, and killing people wasn't actually normal. That you couldn't kill and steal and justify it as a struggle for resources. That...
I'm no angel myself. I know that, and I'm not being a hypocrite. But that doesn't mean I don't know how things ought to be and what "good" is, at least roughly.
"No, little Yue. I'm gloomy because we live in a shitty world where good doesn't defeat evil. There isn't even a concept of 'good' here."
"I don't understand. There's a lot of good in our world."
"And almost every time someone does good, they end up regretting it badly. This world values only strength, without caring about the price paid for that strength, and that's horrible."
"Was your price too high?"
"Actually, no. That's the problem. Of course I didn't get everything for free. I suffered through pain for years while developing my body-tempering technique, and even then not everything turned out the way I wanted. But never mind that. The point is that I knew which prices could be paid and which couldn't. But the people here..."
"For example?"
"For example, our fairies. They endure all that pain for the sake of strength."
"But without strength, wouldn't they suffer a fate worse than death?"
The poor girl was so certain of her words at that moment. That was the problem. A lack of breadth and creativity.
"The problem is that people need heads for more than just putting food into them. I've already discussed this with my teacher, and we found a way around those problems in the Palace's technique. You always have to use your head instead of blindly chasing power."
"But I need power. I have a goal. A dream."
And there I'd hit her weak point. More precisely, she'd taken it personally all on her own. Blindly chasing power for dubious goals. That part wasn't so clear-cut. More precisely, there were plenty of gray areas.
"Yeah, I know what your dream is. But what if you stop and think about the price?"
"What price?"
"The fact that while trying to find your mother, you did exactly the same thing she did. You left your father and brother behind and forgot about them. Was it worth it?"