From what I have gathered so far, this is like some of the games back in my last life. You farm for XP to lift the level restrictions from the items, but this is not all of it.

You don’t know what is in each formation so this trial not only tests your talent and qualifications but also checks your luck. According to what everybody thinks, although talent is one of the key things in your success, having what everyone calls ‘heaven-defying luck’ would be appreciated.

So to sum it up, you can say that the beasts would test your natural talent and the formations would test your supernatural luck or strings of fate or whatever the fuck you want to call it…

‘Call it what you want but this is the classic move of online games to make you spend more money…’ I shrugged.

What’s more, there are hundreds of these formations scattered around the inner space of the trial so you can easily choose whichever formation that catches your eyes so I think the game is not rigged and you do have a good chance of winning if lady luck decides to smile upon you.

At this point of the conversation, I was convinced that this trial is a fair game and would be fun to be a part of. Who wouldn’t like this kind of game, right?

Well, I thought so until outer elder Zhong told me that some of these formations may not lead you to a treasure and instead you would face a horde of beasts that would be hard to compete against. A very small number of disciples who were in these kinds of situations lived long enough to tell its tale, this in itself shows how frightening these formations could be.

Yeah! There are trap formations in this trial…

So you mean to tell me that they put ‘mimic chest’ in there?

What is this? Dark soul or some shit? Who is the fucker who created this trial? Just tell me that you don’t want to give out your treasures, why do it like this?

After a few seconds of meditating while thinking about feeding the expert behind this trial to a mimic chest, I calmed down.

At the end of the day, if I was in a situation like that I just had to spam-attack them with some scrolls and I could easily get a shit-ton of points on the side.

Nodding to myself I asked elder Zhong.

“Is there anything else that could be important to me in there?” it was like a fact to me that I could easily be on the 10 disciple list of the sect so there was no point in speaking with ifs…

Outer elder Zhong nodded to my words and fell into contemplation.

After a couple of seconds, he opened his mouth and spoke.

“There is that big massacre that happened 300 years ago…” he started explaining.

Apparently, 300 years ago there was a massive beast horde inside the trial’s space and many disciples died because of the size and sheer power of those beasts.

From the 100 participants, only 4 got out from the trials. Because of these constant fights there, they got very strong but at the same time they carried mental traumas from their experience…

The point of elder Zhong was to warn me about the slim possibility of this massive horde forming again but my thoughts were on another issue.

‘These beasts are not real beasts, meaning they have no individuality and work according to the will of its creator, so they won’t form hordes for the heck of it…’ I thought.

So there has to be something or someone that triggered this event and made this horde form and attack all of the disciples. I’m not suggesting they did it consciously, but still, there is that possibility.

But what would make the whole trial participants the enemy of the trial itself? What was the trigger for it?

If you look at this trial throughout history, you can easily conclude that this is the will of its creator to find a successor, so why would he kill them all?

Did they try something that they shouldn’t? But if they did why there are disciples who survived? I mean with what I heard from the scale of this trial wouldn’t it be easy as breathing to kill all of them there?

Why them? Could it be something that nobody thought about these past 300 years? Well, if those four did something shady it is believable that they kept quiet about it…

I would do some research about it after our selection is over and I have time to think with ease.

“Thank you, elder.” I thanked him for his information and also cursed him in my mind.

You might be like ‘why? He is a chill dude’. True, but you forgot something, he raised a flag about this massacre, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

I just hope that I would be ready for whatever the fuck this trial has in store for us.

Getting back to my chair I sat down and watched the rest of the fights, waiting for Hu Anjing to come back.

The fight was between two dudes. One of them was using broadsword and the other one was using twin blades. They were fighting pretty evenly and the crowd was also divided on who going to win.

I really tried to give a fuck about this fight but as soon as I saw Hu Anjing coming this way, that thought was out of the window.

“How was your talk?” I asked her as soon as she was close to me.

“Actually, I think I now know enough about the trial.” She said proudly.

After half an hour of trading information with each other, we both got to know new things about the trial and its environment.

I got to know that each climate is replicating the real world, meaning that you face the same situations as you would in the real world and also the beasts are different in each part. So fighting one of them and getting to know its strong and weak points wouldn’t help you in fighting other types of beasts because they have fundamental differences.

This means that if you change your spot into a new one, you would have to study it first, Or you can work as a functioning sect and share basic information that you have gathered each.

You might ask why doesn’t the sect give the disciples the information on the beasts that they have classified in all these years?

Good question.

The sect wouldn’t give out the information on the beasts for two main reasons; first, there are way too many beast types in there so it would only serve to make you confused with a lot of information that you won’t need again in your life as these beasts only exist in this trial ground. Second, they want the disciples to be tempered in the trial, and giving them a handicap like this would be counterproductive.

Another thing that i didn’t know about the trials is that disciples can kill each other to gain the other one’s points.

‘Yeah, PK is enabled…’ (A/N: for you non-gamers; it means player kill)

I don’t know why elder Zhong didn’t think it was necessary to tell me that other than beasts, my fellow human could also kill me for some points.

Well, no matter. Now that I know I can plan accordingly. Most importantly, I have to think of a way to keep everyone from our heavenly sword sect alive, maybe except Jin Fen.