Chương 84: Isn’t The Pagoda Kinda Unnecessary?

After removing the aphrodisiac poison's effects, Bai Yuelan saw Su Ping's flushed face and asked, "Do you need some help?" At that moment, Su Ping suddenly lost control and leaped toward Bai Yuelan. When I thought I'd see some 18+ action, Bai Yuelan suddenly said, "I am sorry." Bai Yuelan activated a cultivation technique that froze Su Ping, leaving only a small hole for him to breathe. She looked at the frozen Su Ping and said, "Please don't resist. My treatment will be pretty uncomfortable."

Bai Yuelan infused her spirit qi into the ice block until Su Ping's complexion returned to normal. Seeing Su Ping's normal complexion, Bai Yuelan asked, "How is it? Do you still feel the poison's effects?"

"Achoo!" Su Ping sneezed once, then shook his head.

"Thank you. I think my energy has stabilized." Bai Yuelan chose to ignore Su Ping's attempt to jump on her, only nodding before frowning at the barrier that imprisoned them.

"Shattering this barrier will take me one or two hours."

"I am sorry. Because of me, you accidentally triggered the formation. This triggered formation is definitely much more difficult to break through." Bai Yuelan apologized again. Su Ping shook his head.

"No worries. I can get us out of here in about fifteen minutes." Bai Yuelan widened her beautiful eyes in shock.

"Fifteen minutes? Then I'll guard you in case another trap activates on its own." Su Ping nodded and prepared to break the formation under the guidance of the grandma in his necklace. While breaking the formation, I occasionally heard both of them chat using a voice transmission technique. The grandma in Su Ping's necklace was the first to speak while guiding Su Ping to break the formation.

"What a pity that aphrodisiac trap was solved so quickly. That girl is a pretty suitable companion for you."

"Yeah, what a pi … Wait a minute. No! That's called sexual assault, you know?" Su Ping replied without stopping his hand.

"What sexual assault? At that time, you were under the effect of a poison, and anything you do isn't your responsibility." The old granny spoke something outright ridiculous.

"Master, I think the moral values during your era and the current era are quite different. It seems you need to align your morality with the current era as soon as possible." Su Ping replied.

"What moral values? As long as the means don't go against the Heavenly Will, anything is acceptable." The granny in Su Ping's necklace said, "How about I help you look for other formations with an aphrodisiac trap? Find a way to bring that girl along and look for a Tier 4 formation containing an aphrodisiac trap. That level of aphrodisiac should be enough to bypass her immunity." Su Ping's mouth twitched.

"Master, can you stop trying to match me with her? Also, don't you think I'm too young to start doing that sort of thing?"

"What's wrong with a mature lady like me trying to matchmake children? You might not know, but it's pretty normal for cultivators to marry even in their teens. You should be grateful I was trying this hard for your sake. Back in the day, I was a pretty famous matchmaker. The number of couples I've matched is in the hundreds." The granny in Su Ping's necklace added, "Furthermore, both of you are simply too suitable for each other.

The children between both of you should have some chance of ascending to the Immortal Realm." Su Ping used a voice transmission technique and asked the granny in his necklace, "Then, with your matchmaking skill, have you found a partner? Why don't you let your partner guard the necklace with your soul, instead of giving it to my mother?"

"..." The granny in Su Ping's necklace fell silent before she said, "Kid, focus on breaking the formation. You almost made a serious mistake on the previous node." Su Ping and the granny in his necklace spent the remaining time focused on breaking the formation until slightly more than fifteen minutes passed. Seeing the broken formation, Bai Yueland clapped, "Incredible. You actually can break a Tier 3 formation in fifteen minutes!" Then she asked, "How about we team up?

Although you can destroy high-level formations quickly, your cultivation level is pretty low. It'll be dangerous if you meet a short-sighted cultivator who tries to rob others. With my Golden Core realm cultivation, I can protect you in combat and while you break the formation." Su Ping didn't think long before nodding.

"We'll split the gains in half." Bai Yuelan agreed.

"Alright, but if we find a precious item that can't be split equally, we'll take turns choosing it first." Su Ping also agreed, and both of them went to forage on the island. For an entire day, I watched everyone's adventures until I saw Ren Xuan reach an intricately decorated island with a nine-tiered pagoda at its center. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. The pagoda is one hundred meters wide and at least 300 meters tall, making it look a bit stout.

Upon seeing the pagoda, Ren Xuan instantly ran toward the entrance. The moment Ren Xuan reached the pagoda's entrance, the pagoda's several-meter-tall double doors automatically opened. Instead of revealing the interior, the space beyond the doors was filled with bright light. Ren Xuan narrowed his eyes against the light before confidently stepping through the gate. The moment he passed through the door, I felt a spatial fluctuation, indicating Ren Xuan had been transported elsewhere.

Honestly, this whole setting confuses the heck out of me. If entering the door teleports whoever passes through it somewhere else, then why bother creating the pagoda in the first place? Why doesn't whoever created this place just place a door smack dab in the middle of the island? Isn't creating the pagoda just a waste of materials? Considering the intricate, fengshui-aligned decoration surrounding the pagoda, my gut told me whoever created this secret realm simply liked decorating the island.

If whoever created this island were reincarnated on Earth, they might be the kind of person with thousands of hours of gameplay on The Si ms and An mal Cr*ssing. While I complained about the secret realm creator's waste of materials, I saw Ren Xuan enter through the door safely and arrive in a wide indoor arena. The arena is circular, approximately 200 meters in diameter and twenty meters tall, with many doors along the walls. Currently, Ren Xuan has just walked out from one of the doors.

In the middle of the arena, there's a table with a sword, two sealed pill bottles, and an unknown plant root placed on top. Above the table, several illusory golden words floated in the air. {Congratulations on being the first one to arrive at the trial pagoda. Please select one of the four items as a reward.} Ren Xuan unhesitantly took the plant root and muttered, "Although the low-grade spirit treasure sword and the two pills are tempting, their worth is only a fraction of this plant root, especially if I succeed in replanting it and helping it recover its vitality." After Ren Xuan took the plant root, the table and everything above it instantly disappeared. The floating golden words also changed. {The trial will begin in ten breaths of time. You'll pass a round of challenge by surviving for one incense stick's worth of time, with a cup of tea's rest time in between. Upon receiving an attack deemed fatal, you'll be transported outside of the pagoda and may restart the challenge from the beginning. The longer you survive, the more points you may receive. The more enemies you defeat, the more points you'll receive. Points can be traded for resources during the rest times. You'll enter the next trial after surviving nine rounds of consecutive challenges. The next trial will begin when either 9 people have passed the first trial, or one week has passed since the first person passed the trial.} I am utterly flabbergasted after reading that. What kind of fucked up time measurement units are used during the secret realm creator's era? Even Ren Xuan's mouth slightly twitched as he muttered, "This trial should be about combat.

One incense stick is around half an hour; as long as there aren't too many enemies and as long as the enemies haven't reached the Nascent Soul realm, I should be able to hold on. Meanwhile, a cup of tea's rest time should be around 10 to 15 minutes, which is barely enough to recover my spirit by meditating as long as I don't consume more than half; otherwise, I'll need to take some Qi Gathering Pills." Not long after Ren Xuan muttered that, the trial began.

All of the doors surrounding the arenas opened, and two boar corpses rushed in. According to the energy contained in them, those corpses should be around the early Foundation Building Realm, between the first to third stage of the Foundation Building Realm. Ren Xuan saw the charging boars and jumped in time to evade their charge. This caused the two boars to charge against each other, killing them instantly. Without giving Ren Xuan any room to breathe, another two boars appeared from the door and charged in.

This time, both boars appeared from the same direction, making it impossible to make them charge against each other. Ren Xuan lightly jumped and took a dagger from his inner pocket. With butterfly-like grace, he gently leaped on top of a boar and pierced the boar's skull. Inside the boar's skull, there was a spirit stone and a slime-like creature.

According to my understanding, the spirit stone should be the corpse's power source, while the slime-like creature should be some sort of parasite that can control the boar corpse that has been processed using a corpse refining technique. Such an interesting combination left me in awe. Whoever created this secret realm should be a master in corpse refining.

At least, they're several times more knowledgeable about corpse refining than Ren Qingquan, whose whole reason to study the corpse refining technique is to cosplay a necromancer. While I thought so, more and more corpses had surrounded Ren Xuan. For the first few minutes, the arena only released boars, but the number slowly rose to 5 per batch. After boars, other land animal corpses also got released, making it even more difficult for Ren Xuan to survive.

Outside of the pagoda, Ren Qingquan opened the observation function and watched Ren Xuan's battle. I also explained Ren Xuan's situation to Ren Qingquan. From how Ren Xuan actually got teleported once he passed the door, to my guess about the refined corpses Ren Xuan is fighting. Seeing the endless waves of corpses attacking Ren Xuan, Ren Qingquan became excited.

'System, didn't you say Ren Xuan got teleported once he got inside? Furthermore, the arena he's in is twice as wide as the pagoda on the island, right?' Ren Qingquan asked. [Yes.]'Then, is it possible that everyone will be sent to a different space from each other once entered?' Ren Qingquan asked once again. I thought for a moment and kinda agreed with Ren Qingquan's conclusion. Because otherwise, there's simply no need to send people to teleport the trial taker to another space.

[But host, system still recommends that you test it first instead of directly going inside.]'How?' Ren Qingquan asked. [You can either send something inside and see whether it appears in Ren Xuan's arena, or wait until others arrive.]'Hmm? I'll try throwing a corpse inside. I think I have a Foundation Building realm boar corpse in my portable space. Even if our guess is wrong, Ren Xuan won't get suspicious of the corpse's appearance. After all, there are already too many boar corpses to count.'

With a plan in mind, Ren Qingquan flew to the island and soon arrived in front of the pagoda entrance. Ren Qingquan reopened the pagoda entrance that had closed on its own a few seconds after Ren Xuan entered. As planned, Ren Qingquan picked a boar corpse from his portable storage and threw it into the pagoda's entrance. Both of us immediately checked Ren Xuan's [Scan] and seriously observed every entrance for the boar corpse Ren Qingquan threw inside.

Only when we didn't see the boar corpse did Ren Qingquan finally step into the pagoda's entrance, because that means Ren Qingquan's guest of every person being brought to a different space is correct.