In the northern part of Jianzhou, on a desolate mountain at the border between the Kingdom of Yue and the Kingdom of Yuanwu, stood several dozen yellow-robed figures of varying heights, their robes fluttering in the wind, their ages all different. The older ones had white hair, faces covered in wrinkles, well past the age of knowing heaven's will, while the younger ones had tender skin, red lips and white teeth, their youthful innocence not yet fully shed. Yet all of them stood in silence, arranged in orderly rows.
At the very front was an elderly man whose authority radiated even without anger. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing leisurely at the sky, motionless and lost in thought. Behind him stood four men and one woman, all wearing solemn expressions. Among them was Uncle-Master Wang, the very person who had brought Han Li into the sect, and at this moment his face bore a look of equal gravity.
Behind these five stood two rows of neatly lined-up Yellow Maple Valley disciples, their expressions varying widely. Some looked nervous and ill at ease, some appeared utterly nonchalant as they glanced around, and still others smiled faintly without a word, revealing nothing.
In the far corner of the last row, a dark-skinned, unremarkable-looking young man kept his eyes cast down, staring at the tips of his feet, not daring to let his gaze wander even slightly. He seemed extremely shy.
But no one knew that this fellow, who looked like nothing more than a greenhorn, was mentally grumbling away, seething with resentment inside.
This young man was none other than Han Li, and this group of yellow-robed figures were the Yellow Maple Valley disciples who would be participating in the "Blood-Colored Trial."
Han Li had ultimately joined this suicide mission, and he had done so even after obtaining two Foundation Establishment Pills—which was nothing if not absurd and exasperating.
More than a month ago, Han Li had learned from Wu Feng the method for taking the Foundation Establishment Pill, and it had dealt him a severe blow.
It turned out that after swallowing the pill, anyone attempting Foundation Establishment had to enter closed-door cultivation for three months to fully absorb the medicinal power before they could emerge. Otherwise, the medicinal essence would disperse, and its efficacy would be greatly diminished. Thus, whether Foundation Establishment could succeed would not be known for several months at the earliest.
But having to wait that long was extremely bad news for Han Li.
His original plan, upon obtaining these two Foundation Establishment Pills, had been to take them first and see whether he could achieve Foundation Establishment, then decide whether to still participate in the trial. If he happened to succeed, then he certainly wouldn't set foot in the Forbidden Area, given that the one-in-four survival rate was simply too terrifying.
If the pills failed to work, then the trip to the Forbidden Area would still be a necessity. One or two Foundation Establishment Pills might not be enough, but he could refine three or four, or even more. He believed that no matter how poor one's aptitude, consuming a sufficient number of Foundation Establishment Pills would eventually allow entry into the Foundation Establishment stage.
But the three-month seclusion requirement after taking the pill had thrown Han Li's plans into disarray, leaving him facing the awkward dilemma of not being able to have his cake and eat it too.
Now he could either take the Foundation Establishment Pills and give up the trip to the Forbidden Area entirely, or put the pills aside and take them after the Blood-Colored Trial. There was no longer any prospect of having both.
After nearly half a month of agonizing deliberation, Han Li concluded that with his terrible aptitude, even taking two Foundation Establishment Pills in succession would still make success extremely unlikely. The Blood-Colored Trial simply could not be abandoned.
In truth, Han Li had considered waiting for the next Blood-Colored Trial five years later. By then, even if he still hadn't achieved Foundation Establishment, his Spring-Autumn Technique would certainly have reached its highest level, greatly improving his ability to protect himself.
But barely had this thought surfaced when the higher-ups of Yellow Maple Valley announced a piece of news that shocked the entire cultivation world of the Kingdom of Yue, making this notion vanish like smoke.
The announcement was this: the Forbidden Area of the Blood-Colored Trial would be temporarily sealed for sixty years, beginning five years hence. During this period, the Seven Great Sects would jointly send supervisors, and no one would be permitted to enter and gather herbs.
Such temporary sealings of the Forbidden Area were nothing unusual—nearly every three or four hundred years, the Seven Great Sects would carry out such a measure.
Frequent openings of the Forbidden Area caused massive losses of spiritual energy within, slowing both the production and growth of spirit herbs. This temporary closure would alter the density of the spiritual energy, allowing it to return to normal levels.
Yet even with this measure, the spirit herbs within the Forbidden Area grew scarcer year by year, increasingly difficult to find, especially mature spirit herbs suitable for pill refinement—they were the rarest of all.
According to certain knowledgeable individuals among the Seven Great Sects, truly restoring the spirit herbs of the Forbidden Area to their normal quantity would require the seal to last a full thousand years. Anything less would merely delay the eventual exhaustion, since spirit herbs did not grow overnight.
Although this reasoning, combined with the actual conditions within the Forbidden Area, left no room for anyone to deny its correctness, the leaders of the Seven Great Sects still could not bring themselves to make such a decision.
The quantity of Foundation Establishment Pills was intimately tied to the rise and fall of the Seven Great Sects.
A shortage of fifty or sixty years' worth of these pills would be merely a superficial loss, not threatening their foundations. But if there were truly no Foundation Establishment Pills for hundreds or even a thousand years, then not just the Seven Great Sects—the entire cultivation world of the Kingdom of Yue would face extinction.
After all, a place where cultivators could no longer achieve Foundation Establishment—could it still be called a cultivation world? By then, all cultivation families and rogue cultivators would surely leave the Kingdom of Yue to seek survival elsewhere. The Seven Great Sects would be no exception.
Thus, even knowing that this practice of frequently opening the Forbidden Area was the foolish act of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, the Seven Great Sects had no choice but to grit their teeth and continue.
They could only hope that before the spirit herbs of the Forbidden Area were truly exhausted, they would find some alternative source of supply.
This had also prompted the Core Formation stage, and even the Nascent Soul stage old monsters of each sect, to break from their usual habits and venture out frequently over the past several centuries—all in the search for other sources of spirit herbs, or to find new paths for their sects, determined not to let their traditions decline.
Han Li, of course, did not know the details of these matters. But once this news reached him, he would not have dared consider the Blood-Colored Trial five years later even on pain of death.
Even the most obtuse person would understand that the opening of the Forbidden Area in five years would be unimaginably brutal, with every major sect sending all its elite disciples, hoping to harvest as many spirit herbs as possible before the sealing. Asking Han Li to join such a trial would be seeking his own doom!
Although this announcement meant that the present trip to the Forbidden Area would likewise be far more difficult, with even fiercer killing, it was still undoubtedly far better than the next one would be.
As for the foolish notion of waiting fifty years to participate in the Blood-Colored Trial, Han Li never even considered it.
Missing the optimal age for Foundation Establishment meant that even if one eventually forced one's way into the Foundation Establishment stage, one's path in immortal cultivation would never extend far. That was not the outcome Han Li wanted.
With this mindset, Han Li had signed up for the herb-gathering expedition to the Forbidden Area. And the person responsible for registration was none other than Uncle-Master Wang—which came as quite a surprise to Han Li, and one that left him somewhat regretful.
Uncle-Master Wang, upon seeing Han Li, was equally stunned.
On one hand, he was greatly surprised that a newcomer like Han Li would join the Blood-Colored Trial. On the other, he could hardly believe the remarkable advance in Han Li's cultivation. For someone with Han Li's aptitude to progress so rapidly in such a short time—from the ninth layer straight to the eleventh—was simply astonishing.
If Han Li had been some exceptionally talented disciple, it would not have been so remarkable; there were others whose cultivation advanced even faster than his. But Han Li's pseudo-spiritual root status had been personally verified by Uncle-Master Wang. How could he possibly cultivate so quickly?
For a pseudo-spiritual root holder, reaching the ninth layer upon first entering the sect had already been extraordinarily high.
Normally, such an achievement required infusion of spiritual power by elders, frequent consumption of spirit herbs, plus relentless bitter cultivation. And yet Han Li, at the eleventh layer, stood right before him—this left Uncle-Master Wang utterly astonished!
Uncle-Master Wang, harboring his doubts, wasted no time in pulling Han Li aside to test his aptitude once more. The result was the same as before—no spirit root mutation of the kind he had speculated about.
This left Uncle-Master Wang even more perplexed.