"Treasures?!" an Elder gasped, "are they real? Or just a few illusions created by the mighty Star Zheng?"

"But of course they are real" responded the Patriarch with an emphasized pride, "They are part of the arsenal of our sect, to be given as trophies to the youth who succeed in claiming them."

The assembly was speechless. Apart from Great Elder Chu, with whom Patriarch Sen consulted on most matters of importance pertaining to the sect, no one was privy to his bigger plan.

The Second Elder, next in command after Chu Xuanba, stood up, facing his seniors with a grave expression darkening his face.

"Real treasures? To these youth only half a step into real cultivation? Have you gone mad, Senior?!"

He was not hiding his discontent, which made a serious wrinkle appear Great Elder Chu’s brows.

"Watch your words, Mu Chuyin. Do not forget who you are speaking to. These treasures are a way to test the worth of the disciples. Only if they prove to be capable of obtaining them will they be left to them. Also" his deep eyes scanned the entire hall, locking with those of many Elders, "keep in mind the real goal of this Rising Star Tournament. War is upon us. What use is there to having a Myriad Sword Pavilion if nobody wields any weapon when it matters? This trial is about nurturing the future of our Dark Sky Starry Sect, making them into capable cultivators."

"Besides" added the Patriarch, more calm than his subordinate, "this matter was not decided by us alone. Our ancestors have agreed to it. The dots you see on the map correspond to twenty five percent of the weapons we have at our disposal. Of them, sixty percent are common treasures, the bronze dots. Thirty percent are good grade treasures, the silver ones. And the last ten percent, represented by golden dots, are from our Heavenly Collection, for Liquid Realm and below."

Upon hearing the explanation, the Second Elder Mu Chuyin made a backing motion, sitting back down with an averted gaze. If the reserve powers of the sect, the ancestors, had agreed to it, nothing he could say would be of much importance.

"Not all of them will be claimed, as only a few could succeed in finding and gaining them. According to their worth, these treasures have been hidden by the Star Zheng. Powerful illusions will spring up as someone draws close and give these kids a good run for their money, ha-ha-ha!!"

The Great Elder Chu Xuanba sighed. His Patriarch was... unpredictable to say the least. But he had proven time and time again to be the shoulders needed to carry an entire sect. So what if he was having a bit of fun sometimes?

***

Shin Sumi jumped down the giant tree, catching herself in a rolling motion with ease.

"So I have to go for that central mountain then. But these mountain ranges in the middle... I wonder what they are for. They seem to run all around, maybe they are the borders of different zones. This is a trial after all, it would make sense to have different stages to it."

Orientating herself in the direction of the yellow pillar of light, Shin Sumi started walking. The scenery around her was so heavenly that she couldn't help but feel herself relaxing, albeit just slightly. Even if her mind was always in constant alert, she could only imagine with difficulty trouble arising in this place.

After passing a few hills that were previously hidden by the canopy, Shin Sumi discovered a hole in the ground. It was like a mouth that spanned hundreds of meters and left a deep scar in the earth.

Instantly reminding her of the canyon from where she had met Tai Bu, her sense of alert tingled with the prospect of danger.

Shin Sumi followed the opening of the cave while carefully examining her surroundings. There was one thing she new about the Immortal world and it was that danger was always lurking around the corner, but also that danger often meant riches.

Just like the dark chasm back in the sect, which no cultivator had managed to successfully explore and come back besides herself, there was a possibility that she could find something of interest inside.

The first time she had climbed down the dark ravine, it was her own lack of any talent and cultivation that had saved her. The snakes had not taken any interest in her because she possessed no Shinsoo, and that had allowed her to find the Copper Bell.

After ensuring that there was a low probability of a surprise attack, Shin Sumi jumped down on a rock formation right below the entrance to the hole.

She had seen no traces at all around it, nothing showing the passage of another cultivator.

She couldn't rule out the possibility of a beast living inside the obscured cave, but with her Gold Tyrant Flying Sword in hand she was sure she could handle it.

"After all I've made minced meat of a Green core Stone Leaf Tortoise! It would be an unnecessary risk to put a stronger beast in this training dimension, considering we're all only Honorary Disciples."

The cave was deeper than she expected, and Shin Sumi soon found herself relying on the power of the Copper Bell to see clearly with the lack of outside light.

Grey and green moss covered most of the rock walls, slowing down her descent with slippery footing.

Holes looking like pitch black eyes followed her. There was something entrancing about them, as they had the diameter comparable to that of an arm. It was just sufficiently large for Shin Sumi to reach into the darkness inside the granite.

As these thoughts crept up in her mind, she distanced herself from the wall as much as she could with horror.

"Whatever these holes are, they are far from normal. Maybe some sort of creature is inside waiting for an arm to rip off and eat!"

Even though she had felt the danger radiating from whatever was hiding in the dark holes, the further Shin Sumi explored down, the more uneasy she felt.

"I... I must know! What is inside?!"

The more she tried to think about something else, the more the perfectly round black eyes were at the center of her thoughts.

Breathing heavily, she approached the wall, her hand slowly raising to meet whatever was calling to her.

The silence was overbearing, and a musky fragrance obscured her other senses. Her hand was now really close to the dark hole in front of her.

The tip of her finger crossed the threshold of the shadow inside the hole that even the Copper Bell didn't dissipate.

A low humming sound she hadn't discerned previously rumbled almost imperceptibly. Somehow she felt the perfectly right timing.

A golden ray pierced the darkness for a second, prompting a high pitched shriek the likes of which she had never heard before.

At the very last moment when 'something' was going to grab her arm, she had thrusted the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword forward, hard metal entering the hole as well as what was inside.

The shriek was volumes above what her ear could endure and Shin Sumi nearly fell to the floor, covering one ear with her hand. At the tip of her sword, a creature the size of a human head was screaming with all its might.

The Copper Bell rang automatically, drowning out the sound of the creature before it could do irreparable damage to Shin Sumi's hearing, allowing her to concentrate more on her catch.

The twisting and turning creature impaled on the golden metal tip looked like an infant with a comically small head and no arms. Its ferocious teeth that were much bigger than expected were clenched to the point of shattering due to the pain it felt.

A pair of dark wings with the span of a hand unfurled repetitively as if they could help it escape.

Black drops of viscous liquid were coming out of the gray skin where the blade disappeared, running along its edge.

In a moment of disgust, Shin Sumi shook her hand, projecting the small creature against one of the rocks coming out of the walls. Due to its frail frame, the Moss Vampire died instantly.

The moment the shrieks stopped, the entire cave started vibrating. It was like a primitive signal that one of them had died and the thousands of Moss Vampires that occupied the many holes started to leave their hiding place.

Shin Sumi braced and curled up in a ball of the floor upon realizing the size of the swarm that could attack her at a moment's notice.

Fortunately for her, the Moss Vampires were fearful creatures and the death of one of them was enough to scare them into leaving.

A black tornado rose up from the cave and obscured the red sky with a black cloud of wings for a few minutes. It was only then that Shin Sumi relaxed and left her defensive foetal position.

She understood later what a Moss Vampire was and why the entire swarm had not attacked her when she obtained the slain creature's core and fed it to the little nut.

"In the end they are weak creatures with little intelligence. They produce a kind of entrancing smell that pushes cultivators to reach into the holes they dig in the rocks. Their sharp teeth then tear off that arm immediately" she read from the magical book a few hours later, "it is only due to their big number that they hunt successfully, and simply scaring them is enough to best them."

As she had thought previously, it made sense that beasts the disciples could encounter during the trial were not too hard to beat or to escape from. But it still made Shin Sumi shiver at the relative danger they were still into.

"This is for real, someone can really die during this tournament and not even to the hands of others..."

In the end, Shin Sumi had suffered no damage and had just been grazed by danger, nothing more. More alert than ever though she continued to go deeper and deeper inside the earth.

"This cave system must definitely hold treasures!", she now was convinced of it.

What she didn't know though was that the cloud of fleeting Moss Vampires had been seen by some of the few yellow robed disciples that were on the same zone of the floating continent.

One of them had left the same platforms path she had taken before a few hours earlier and was currently sitting cross legged trying to acclimate to the ambient Shinsoo pressure.

The cloud of Moss Vampires didn't escape his sight, and it didn't take long for him to understand that it was no normal cloud. And to reach the same conclusion as Shin Sumi concerning the presence of a treasure.

Shin Sumi continued to walk for a long time. The cave had at some point stopped going down into the earth, instead it twisted on a horizontal plane.

The only sounds that ruptured the ominous silence were drops falling from stalactites into small puddles of water.

At this depth, vegetation was scarce, and living creatures seemed too. Part of it could be due to the rising in temperature that could not escape the cave.

Shin Sumi could feel it, even though its effect were almost completely negated by the Copper Bell.

"What is at the end of this cave?!" she asked herself repeatedly. The cave system was formed of only one path starting from the gaping mouth that was the opening.

Somehow it made her think of the oesophagus of a giant beast that laid dormant and waited for prey to walk right into its digestive tract.

"No, it is silly. There is no way a beast could be that huge" she breathed out, unconvincingly. It was more of a matter of reassuring herself.

"I'm glad it's only one path though. With all these turns I can't figure out the correct orientation to the central mountain."

As soon as the words escaped her mouth, Shin Sumi cursed interiorly. As if the Heavens had heard her and decided to make fun of her statement, she discovered a large cavity the size of a building right after the next turn.

There were five passages leading deeper into the ground from there. She could see the openings on the wall to the left side, where sharp protrusions of rock looked like a random assembly of grey teeth. The right side, which was a continuation of the big room was empty, except from a platform which rose about a meter from the ground.

With the sheer size of the room, the far end was obscured, although from the reverberation of her footsteps, Shin Sumi knew was closed. Still intrigued by the lone platform sticking out like a tree stump, she decided to explore it a bit before having to choose which path to take.

"Well that was a waste of time!" she said angrily when she discovered that the area was completely empty. In fact the place where the walls made contact with the ground was so empty it was almost perfectly a ninety degree corner.

"Now that I think about it, this whole place is strangely squared. It looks man made to me at least. That's a relief, it rules out the possibility of being into the belly of a giant creature, right little nut? Ah-ah-ah!

I should probably rest a bit before going deeper. The Shinsoo quality here is not bad, and the pressure has even gone up quite a bit. In case of a fight or if I need to flee it would be safer to adjust a little bit beforehand. Let's sit on that platform."

Shin Sumi was now behind it, facing the wall with the five possible paths from here on deeper. The strange room was almost perfectly carved out like a hall, except that particular wall.

Or maybe it was that particular wall that was strange in this room. Somehow the rocky teeth that came out made shapes that looked highly unnatural.

Shin Sumi kept staring at the wall as she approached the platform. She could barely see it even with the Copper Bell tempering her senses. She was squinting so hard it was about to give her a headache when she finally reached the circular stone stump.

She sat down on it, only to jump up the very next instant.

"Something is there!" she gaped.

Sitting down once more she understood.

"From this point, the wall... it's a statue! Wherever I am it looks like a rock wall, but only from this platform it makes sense!"

The shapes formed by the rock spurs drew on the vertical plane a figure sitting cross-legged. It was facing Shin Sumi, staring down at her from its towering posture. A hand extended from the side of what appeared to be an old male cultivator, pointing at one of the five entrances.

"He is showing me the way!" exclaimed Shin Sumi.

Any normal cultivator entering into this room with no source of light would be lost by its immensity. Even with torches there was no way to penetrate the dense shadows that obscured it in its entirety. Even the Copper Bell could barely allow Shin Sumi to see one side from the other!

As such, a disciple in training would not be able to see the statue and to choose the right entrance.

Shin Sumi meditated until her Shinsoo levels were fully replenished and the suffocating atmosphere felt a bit easier to move in before rushing off the platform.

The old man statue was unnerving, even more so coupled with the darkness and the silence. She was glad to escape its unphased rocky gaze.

She walked in the small tunnel with confidence. Whoever carved this place and this statue that could only be discerned from a single location in the room would not have done so if there was no purpose.

If a treasure was hidden under the ground, then it had to be there!

"I wonder what it is. Maybe a special technique? Or a scroll with a cultivation spell? Or a weapon! Although my Gold Tyrant Flying Sword is pretty good."

As Shin Sumi advanced further down, she realized she no longer had any sense of orientation or depth. It had been almost a day since she entered the cave system, but even that would not have been enough to normally disorient her in the way it did.

The slight slope was descending straight, and with each step she felt a significant raise in temperature. Or in fact it wasn't temperature, but a sudden rise in Shinsoo.

It was similar to what she had felt upon climbing the side of the floating continent, but her body didn't react in the same way. The climbing had felt like passing through a series of curtains, with a rising pressure of Shinsoo quantity.

Whereas there it wasn't pressuring her so much as make her skin and her entire being burn with the change in Shinsoo quality.

There wasn't more Shinsoo in this area, it was simply much higher grade.

***

It was around this point that the magic jade screen in the Grand Hall of the sect trembled and almost produce a cultivation backlash to every Elder that was currently focusing on the green dot.

A few lower level Elders had to keep themselves from staining the Hall floor with blood erupting from their mouths. Somehow their Divine Sense was violently expulsed from the projection and returned to them going berserk.

"Cough... Cough!! What is happening?! First the boy went almost dark but now my Divine Sense can't even get a hold of him!"

"Same for me Brother Mowu, urgh. Where was his last location?!"

It was at this strange reaction that Patriarch Sen decided to speak out loud and explain to the best of his knowledge what had happened.

"All of you should refrain from trying to probe the disciple with the green talent from now. The Star Zheng's screen projection will normally inform us where the disciple is back on the radar again. It is most likely that they went somewhere unexpected..."

"What do you mean, Patriarch? Do you know where the boy went?"

"It has to be one of these five places" he answered, with a big emphasis on the word 'these'. Not willing to say anything else, he closed his eyes in meditation in order to not be bothered anymore.

***

In the depth of the trial by fire space, Shin Sumi was advancing with a little bit of difficulty. In front of her, a deep red halo was pulsating.

A humming sound started resonating from her own bag of holding, and before she could even notice it, a golden ray had escaped it.

"What the...?"