Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Knowing that there was nothing more for him to find at the temple he had spent the last 18 hours travelling to, Xuan Hao felt a bit embarrassed about his current situation as it inevitably reminded him of the celestial trial involving a few mushrooms. Even with this, he didn’t think too much about it as he quickly made his way back the same way he had come from originally.

At the very least, given how he had already spent the last 18 hours sneaking around avoiding demon beasts, he had already become rather skilled at avoiding anything that might end up revealing his presence to the demon beasts wandering around the trial space. Allowing him to get back to the small temple he had first arrived at in less than 14 hours.

”Never imagined I would just be running off to increase the difficulty of the celestial trial…” Smiling a bit wryly to himself as he said this while gazing up towards the familiar temple now towering far above him, Xuan Hao could not help feeling regretful over how fast he had left the temple back then.

But then again, the main reason why he had ended up leaving the temple so quickly after he shrunk in size was because he had ended up fighting a Dao Seed Relam demon beast that had spotted him.

If he had really remained behind back then, it was highly likely that the other demon beasts residing inside the temple would have ended up discovering him and in turn caused a far larger commotion that would be difficult for him to suppress, thus drawing the attention of the demon beasts outside the temple.

After all, there was a major difference between dealing with a demon beast in the Dao Seed Realm and one in the Celestial Immortal Realm.

Even if the demon beast in question was only at the Early Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm and he had more than enough strength to easily deal with them, he wouldn’t be able to suppress the situation like he had done when dealing with the demon beast in the Dao Seed Realm.

For this reason, it was ultimately inevitable that he ended up fleeing from the temple back then… And together with the strange pull he had started feeling after shrinking in size, he just ended up putting two and two together and concluded that the strange pull was related to completing the celestial trial.

A mistake, but not one that was difficult to understand.

Only now, he was wiser and understood that he had not just wasted his own time but had also ended up making the celestial trial more difficult for himself.

”In the end, there is nothing I can do about it…” Muttering this to himself as he looked down at his current small size, he hoped that his lack of ability to make use of the Dao of Space wouldn’t end up weakening him too much.

However, before even taking a step inside the temple, he first found a quiet place next to the temple to recover his strength. Ensuring that he was in an optimal state before having to face the guardian of the trial. After all, he still had no real clue what kind of guardian he would end up facing inside the temple. All he really knew was that he had increased the difficulty of the trial twice, causing it to reach its most difficult state.

After all, outside of placing a restriction on himself, the increase in difficulty also meant that the strength of the guardian would be increased.

He had no idea how much, but he sincerely hoped that it would still be within the scope of the Sea Formation Realm, as he would stand no chance in his current state if the guardian ended up reaching the Land Creation Realm.

At the same time, if the guardian really did end up reaching the Land Creation Realm, he would seriously have to reconsider the strength of past geniuses of the Mirage Sect, as the trial would ultimately have been constructed so it was possible for someone in the Early Stage of the Sea Formation Realm to clear it.

As he thought about all of this and pondered over how he would approach dealing with the guardian of the trial without being able to use the Dao of Space, time slowly flew by and before long one hour had passed since he had arrived at the steps of the temple.

In the end, he spent double the time he had used on recovering his strength after reaching the temple where the second restriction was located. The reason being that he wanted to ensure that he was in an optimal state for the upcoming battle and didn’t want to go in even the slightest bit exhausted or lacking.

That and he had used a fair bit of time thinking about how to approach the battle now that he wouldn’t be able to make use of the Dao of Space. In the end, forcing him to rely on other Daos he had comprehended, though his most optimal choice was of course the Dao of Ice and the Dao of the Sword, as both of those Daos had similarly reached the Perfection Realm…

Swish~

With everything prepared and having nothing more he could do to prepare for the upcoming battle, Xuan Hao didn’t continue lingering outside the temple as he made his way up the steps before floating inside.

Of course, to ensure that nothing went wrong before he could reach the scroll that would take him to guardian of the trial, he made sure to keep himself hidden along the way. Avoiding any of the demon beasts that were still wandering around inside of the temple.

Although this was rather simple given that most of these demon beasts were in the Dao Seed Realm, it was still time consuming given how tight the space was and the fact that he would have to avoid moving through certain areas due to the presence of a demon beast in the Celestial Immortal Realm.

This even caused him to have to stand awkwardly in front of the entrance leading into the Hall of Knowledge for five minutes straight waiting for one such demon beast to move out of the way so he would be able to sneak inside without being discovered.

However, all things considered, he did manage to make it back to the original location where he had shrunk down without being discovered and without attracting any unwanted attention from the demon beasts roaming around inside the temple.

Everything was going smoothly so far, as he wasted no time in looking for the scroll that would help him reach the guardian of the trial… And luckily for him, it wasn’t difficult to find, as it was lying directly next to the scroll that had shrunk him to his current miniscule size.

Just looking at it, he couldn’t tell that there was anything special about the scroll, as it looked the same as the rest of the scroll present inside the Hall of Knowledge. The only thing that made it special in a way was that it had a small sigil attached to it that indicated that it was the scroll he was looking for… Or at least he hoped that was the case, as he didn’t have any other clue about finding the correct scroll outside of that.

If the demon beasts had somehow ended up moving the sigil to an unrelated scroll… He would still be fine, but he would have to waste some time looking through the rest of the scrolls inside the Hall of Knowledge and ultimately risk being discovered by the demon beasts wandering around inside the Hall of Knowledge in the process.

Either way, it would be for the best if the scroll was the correct one-

Rumble~

And as he officially floated over and touched the scroll in question, he was quickly relieved to discover that it was indeed the correct scroll, as the environment around him quickly began shifting.

Different from when he had been shrunk in size the last time around, this time he could clearly feel himself getting pulled into a relatively small spatial passage that took him to a different isolated space different from the trial space that he had been wandering through for the past two or so days.

Not just that, but when he recovered from being yanked into the spatial passage by the scroll, he discovered that the environment around him had also changed from the temple interior and had instead become a massive stone platform that stretched as far as he could see.

Along with that, he also quickly discovered the guardian of the trial he was meant to defeat to complete the celestial trial at the edge of his divine sense.

One positive he discovered was that the guardian wasn’t in the Land Creation Realm… While the negative was that it was giving off a similar presence to the strange demon beasts at the Peak of the Celestial Immortal Realm. Meaning that its strength had still exceeded the Sea Formation Realm to some extent…