Currently, Maria was just walking around this barren world towards another rock in the distance when she heard the mechanical voice, ready to send her to some other hell-like world.

“Congratulations on passing Stage 5 of the Trial. Please proceed to start Stage 6.”

Maria was then forcefully sent to the next world, which she immediately noticed was a frozen hell before she heard that wonderful mechanical voice again.

“Welcome to Stage 6. Stage 6 is the World of Ice. Use this place to temper yourself as well as understand the element and learn how to deal with beasts that use ice. Survive this place for 30 days to reach the next stage. Begin!”

Maria could already guess that this was the World of Ice from the bone-chilling cold that she felt. It seemed that each stage really did get harder than the last as even the environment is much harsher in this stage than in the World of Fire.

She looked around and only saw ice, everything was made of ice. Even the beasts that she saw looked like they were made entirely up of ice. As she looked at the beasts though, there seemed to be a lot of bears and wolves and instead of pelts, they had ice hairs. She also saw snakes that had ice for scales. There were also ice golems like the previous stage, but instead of being slow like the rock golems, these were skating on the ice. There were also creatures that looked like humans but had ice hairs covering their entire body. Then of course there were these ice bird creatures as well. Maria thought that everything here was much more terrifying than in the previous stages. Everything was Mid-Stage Rank 2 and the human-like creatures were Late-Stage Rank 2. There might even be Peak-Stage Rank 2.

Maria started thinking about the possibility of a Peak-Stage magical beast and got a little disheartened.

‘Wait! Shouldn’t I be currently getting close to being able to fight Peak-Stage Rank 2 Magical Beasts? I’m a Stage 3 Qi Condensation and Peak-Stage Rank 2 is around Qi Condensation Stage 5 in strength! With all of the tempering done to my body recently and my sword skills improving, I should be able to fight a Late-Stage Rank 2 beast! The only thing I’m worried about is that a Late-Stage beast still has more energy than me and is probably at least 50% stronger than me depending on its species. I feel like that gap has even further increased with these beasts that are made of ice. I guess I will just hunt down all of the Mid-Stage and attempt to fight a Late-Stage after that.’ Maria thought to herself as she came to a realization of how strong she was now.

Maria looked around and charged towards a Mid-Stage wolf. Most of the beasts here seemed to prefer being isolated away from the other beasts rather than form packs.

The wolf noticed Maria and retreated back a bit as it tried to understand her attack. Maria saw this and stopped running. The wolf seemed to know that this would be a tough fight for it, but running away wasn’t a possibility. It started to growl at her then took a battle-ready stance. Maria was surprised by the intelligence of this beast, but regardless she took a stance as well and activated her Light Sword. The size and sharpness of her sword increased with the Dao of Light.

Maria was the first to charge at the wolf. She slashed her sword, but the wolf dodged the attack and immediately retaliated. Maria swung her sword again and the wolf deflected part of it with its claws, but most of its claws were shattered after that. Maria then stabbed the sword towards the wolf’s head and immediately pierced it.

“Did I really just beat a Mid-Stage Rank 2 magical beast in 3 moves? I have really underestimated my strength, but I think that this was mostly due to the previous stage. My bones were tempered a lot which should have increased my physical strength up a notch. A Mid-Stage Rank 2 is already comparable to a Stage 3 Qi Condensation cultivator, but I’m already much stronger than your average Stage 3 and this was before all of the body temperings in the trials so far. Not to mention the amount of Qi I can hold right now is probably more than the average Stage 3. I guess fighting a Late-Stage will probably be a good fight, but I will stick with my plan of getting rid of all of the Mid-Stages first.” Maria said as she was surprised by her current strength. She would’ve never thought that she would be this strong so fast. She was a little sad that she couldn’t spend time cultivating in here, but the benefits that came with killing beasts in these stages were more than enough to make up for that. Her current tempered body will only get stronger as she increases her stage.

Maria was lost in thought as the wolf disappeared and turned into ice-cold energy. It rushed towards Maria’s body and wrapped around her muscles. The freezing temperature of the energy started to freeze her muscles. At first, her muscles started to compress together due to the cold, but then they started to freeze over and crack. As soon as the muscles would crack and become brittle, the energy would rush into the crack as it began to restore it back to its compressed state. This was an incredible process, but the compressed state that came after the restoration was incomparably stronger than how the muscle was before it was compressed. Maria was definitely in pain, but this freezing pain was something she was used to when Mira shoved her in that frozen pool.

The energy continued to freeze, compress, crack, restore, and compress until it was all used up. Maria definitely felt a bit stronger, but she would have to repeat this many times to gain any benefit. Maria made sure she was in peak condition then ran off to kill all of the wolves, as they seemed to be the weakest then start killing all of the beasts until she got to the Late-Stage Beasts.

***

Mira was currently on top of a huge tortoise beast. This one was a lot bigger than the first one she fought and it had a giant spiked rock on top of its shell. Mira looked like a tiny bug on this thing as she was digging into the rock with her scythe and Ice Dao. Mira was covered in blood and had scratches and gashes all over her body. The reason for this is that this was a Late-Stage beast. It was also the last beast in this area.

She got all bloody because of everything that this thing threw at her. It would shoot rock spikes, large boulders, shoot things out of this giant rock on its back, and would cause earthquakes whenever it stomped on the ground. Right now she was trying to make it in the giant rock because once she digs a hole it then she is pretty much able to kill this thing without any trouble and finally after hitting and digging for so long she was able to enter it.

Mira took a send to rest and recover her energy and popped in a Rank 2 Rejuvenation Pill along with a Rank 1 Blood Restoration Pill. The tortoise kept shooting things to attack her, but they weren’t able to make it in some small hole inside the large spiked rock she was in.

Once she recovered to her peak, she returned to digging up the rock. After spending an unknown amount of time digging, she finally reached the shell. She knew how to deal with these shells by now. She started to freeze the shell below her. After she felt like she froze a good amount of the shell, she would slam her scythe down into the shell, breaking layers of it. Mira had to do this 3 times before she was actually able the pierce the neck of the tortoise, severing its spinal cord killing it.

The tortoise started to disappear and Mira dropped to the ground. Once it was gone, the massive amount of dense energy entered her body. Mira gritted her teeth as she withstood the pain. It felt like the tortoise she just killed had decided to sit on her, but would be sure to heal her bones before they shattered and turned into dust. It took 30 minutes for this energy to finish cracking her bones, transforming them with the energy, then healing them. Not long after that, she heard the mechanical voice again.

“Congratulations on passing Stage 5 of the Trial. Please proceed to start Stage 6.”

After she heard that, Mira was forced into another elemental world. Except with this world, she felt a bit of a connection with it. This was her territory. She then heard the mechanical voice again before she could look around.

“Welcome to Stage 6. Stage 6 is the World of Ice. Use this place to temper yourself as well as understand the element and learn how to deal with beasts that use ice. Survive this place for 30 days to reach the next stage. Begin!”

Mira looked around for a moment before thinking to herself.

“Maybe this stage will be able to help me gain some insights into what Ice Dao will fit me best.”

Mira looked around and saw a similar sight to Maria. She saw wolves, bears, birds, golems, snakes, and yetis. They were all either made up of ice or ice made up their pelt or feathers. She was especially surprised to see yetis, well they may not be exactly like a yeti because they looked more like a bear that wanted to be a human but failed. She also noticed that everything was Mid-Stage or above with the Yetis and Golems being in the Late-Stage. Mira felt like she didn’t really need to fear the Late-Stage beasts here. She was able to kill Late-Stages in the previous world and was able to kill them. She didn’t fear them, so why does she need to fear beasts of her own element?

Mira gripped her scythe and charged towards a Yeti. Mira decided that she would kill all of the Late-Stage beasts here before slaughtering all of the Mid-Stage beasts. Her strength is also incomparable to a normal Stage 2 Qi Condensation. She definitely doesn’t have the energy reserves that a Late-Stage beast has, but the amount of raw strength she has shouldn’t be too far off.

The yeti saw her charging towards it and roared at her. It formed something that looked like an ice sickle. It seemed pissed that Mira felt that she could fight him. He charged at her while roaring and started to swing its sickle. Mira decided to use her Ice Blades to face the sickle so she threw 2 Ice Blades towards the Yeti. The Yeti smashed the Ice Blades with his fists, but the ice blades were able to cut through his fur and pierce part of its skin.

Mira felt that if her understanding and individuality in the Dao of Ice was deeper then that would’ve cut his hand off.

Since the Yeti used his fist instead of the sickle, Mira had to face the sickle head-on. Mira deflected the sickle as the momentum of her scythe carried on as she spun her scythe to slash at the yetis stomach. The Yeti just grabbed the pole of the scythe and punched Mira. It hit her straight in the chest, but Mira stood her ground as she released one hand from her scythe and formed an Ice Needle in it. She then stabbed that needle into the yeti’s hand and had it explode. The empty hand was now a mangled mess as it dangled from the yeti’s wrist.

The yeti roared in pain as it shot an ice breath towards Mira, but Mira just ignored it. What good was her Extreme Yin Physique and Ice Dao if ice attacks like this still affect her? The yeti removed its hand from her scythe and went to swing its sickle, but Mira had already formed her double-bladed scythe and slashed at the yeti’s gut. Then as the momentum continued, she spun the scythe around a made a diagonal cut from the yeti’s should down to its waist, and cut it in half.

Mira felt some blood come up to her mouth, but she just swallowed it. The punch from the yeti was incredibly strong.

The Yeti then disappeared as it turned into a large glob of energy. It was incredibly chilling and it rushed towards her muscles as it wrapped itself around them. It then began to compress her muscles. Even though she had already compressed them a few months ago, that was just a makeshift way to train. This energy was made for tempering muscles. The more her muscles compressed was when they began to freeze over and start cracking. When her muscles started cracking, the energy that made it crack forced its way into the muscles as it worked to return them to that compressed state in a healed and tempered state. Mira also noticed that her physique was resonating with the energy and making it more efficient. The tempering lasted longer and used less to create this effect.

This continued for around 30 minutes before all of the energy was used in tempering her muscles. She then spent some time recovering her chest a bit from that yeti punch.

After she was fully recovered, she ran off to kill the rest of the yetis here. They seemed to be the strongest, at least in the area. Then she would charge off and kill the weaker Late-Stages, then slaughter the Mid-Stage beasts here.

***

Maria was enjoying her new strength as she ran from one beast to another and Mira tried to gain insights from the beasts to help her try to gain a deeper understanding of her Dao. Both of them continued their slaughter in this Ice World until the 30 days were up.