After trekking for thirty minutes in the eerie silence of Malanike National Park, the once scenic, picturesque location now having danger lurking behind every footstep— Jack signaled a halt.

“According to the system, it should be up ahead,” Jack whispered under his breath, his forehead matted with glistening beads of sweat.

“I’m ready,” Sarah replied, her tone uncertain but determined.

He nodded, and slowed down his pace to a crawl. His nerves were stretched taut, ready to react at the slightest hint of movement. Another three stressful minutes passed by, before he was able to make out a structure in the distance— it was honestly impossible not to. The structure, a simple circular marble arena with golden scriptures carved around its boundary, was not a particularly impressive sight. The six foot tall silhouette guarding an ornate golden chest, inlaid with all manners of precious gems— diamonds, rubies, emeralds and then a few others he couldn’t identify, certainly left an impression.

As Jack and Sarah got closer under cover, they could clearly make out the guardian’s features. They could make out quite a lot from afar, but didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Sarah seemed relieved, and soon Jack understood why— there was two miniature horns jutting out from the entity’s forehead, and his skin was too pale by human standards to be considered healthy, bordering on transparency– but apart from that, his features were identical to that of a human.

The ‘entity’ was six feet tall, his pale white skin glinting under the sunlight with an otherworldly pallor, but that was not the most curious thing about him. His eyes were blindfolded with a gray cloth, hundreds of small symbols etched on top of it— completely obscuring his eyes and even the upper part of his nose. Both his hands were bound together with cufflinks that were twice his wrist size, completely preventing him from twitching his hands, let alone moving them. Two identical silver bells were tied to his feet with a red thread, and the man himself was dressed in light blue martial robes tied together at the waist with a silver colored sash. The robes were short-sleeved, allowing Jack to make out clear signs of atrophying muscles— the entity barely had any muscle on his bones, and that too seemed decaying from unuse.

“Enemy of the three realms,” Jack muttered under his breath, recalling that they were one of the foes that he might encounter in the tutorial.

“This is… wrong,” She looked at the entity with pity in her eyes, a feeling of revulsion bubbling up in her gut.

“So is throwing a bunch of civilians into a planet wide death game. So is uprooting thousands of years of civilization for some vague goal of ‘awakening talents’. The world has already gone crazy, Sarah. The question is, how far will you go to survive?” Jack asked, observing the man’s every movement from afar, like a hawk.

The first thing that Jack noticed was that the entity was perfectly stationary, as if he were a dead statue instead of a living human— even his chest did not move, which implied that the entity did not need air to survive any longer. That caused Jack to consider, could he remain standing perfectly stationary for a prolonged period of time? With his increased stats, perhaps doing so for days on end would not pain him. But not moving at all, not even the slightest twitch of a finger or the impulse to scratch his body? Impossible.

He considered the problem from two angles– either the system was so pissed off at this guy that it wanted to make it easy for fledgling cultivators to kill it, or… the man was so powerful that blindfolding and then tying him up was the only way to make it a fair fight.

“I… I’ll do it,” Sarah forced her to say those words out loud, biting her lip so hard blood started trickling out.

“It may not be as simple as you think, Sarah,” Jack sighed, and then began to explain his hypothesis.

Sarah seemed to be lost in thought, before asking him a few questions. They deliberated back and forth, before concluding that the only way to find out was to confront the entity. At the end of the day, they were the ones trying to carve out a path for survival in this new world without any information or guidance— nobody could blame them if they made a few wrong choices along the way. At least that was what Jack told Sarah to help her sleep at night.

Decision made, both of them approached the arena together—- Jack not underestimating the blindfolded man, not even for a second. The man took no notice of their presence, but a notification popped up in front of them.

Blessing Detected. Once you enter the dais the challenge will begin. Two Cultivators detected. Would you like to enter as a party with Level 3 Cultivator: Sarah Jackson?

“Yes,” he replied, followed by Sarah’s confirmation.

A Temporary Party has been created:

Level 3: Sarah Jackson

Level 3: Jack Fletcher

“You sure you’re ready for this?” Jack asked her as he mentally prepared himself, clearing his mind of any stray thoughts.

“I was born ready,” Sarah replied with a nervous smile on her face— if she were to die instantly, at least her last words were worth putting on a headstone.

Both of them stepped on the dias at the same time, and their senses went fuzzy for a second- before realizing that they had moved, or had been teleported a few steps forward, squarely within the territory of the arena. The golden scriptures around the periphery of the circle started glowing, and then spinning– merely gazing at them gave Jack a bout of vertigo, generating a light blue forcefield, a dome that effectively trapped them inside.

‘Not entirely unexpected,’ Jack thought to himself, but his expression was serious. The blindfolded entity had still not budged from his spot, but Jack was no longer in a mood to play games.

He signaled to Sarah, who withdrew the short spear she had received from the [Goblin Spearman], holding it tightly with her right arm, a burst of [Qi Spear] flickering to life. She took a deep breath,, pulling the spear back before lobbing it with the entirety of force she could muster as a [Level 3]. The [Qi Spear] winked out of existence a second after it left Sarah’s contact, but even that provided a speed boost as it tore through the air— headed for the blindfolded man’s chest.