"A... fish? It's a swordfish!"

Shin Sumi having spent her youth close to the sea knew about this type of menacing looking fish that always promised a good fight with fishermen but provided good food for days.

Obviously it was her first time seeing one this long, and nowhere near close water. Nothing seemed to surprise her anymore.

The sand had washed all over the place, covering the beautiful twenty meter long iridescent silver beast. With the sand coming back to fill the crater, the Shinsoo pressure had diminished significantly.

Cracks spread rapidly across a few of the stone pillars, turning to dust the spirit formation and dissipating the last bit of pressure that remained.

"I... have done it" Shin Sumi slumped down on her knees, finally giving in to the shaking of her legs. The unexpected use of a new powerful technique, the rush of risking her life, it all reached its apex now that it was over.

With the now normal ambient pressure, Shin Sumi recovered much faster. She used the last few golem cores she had picked up what seemed like an eternity ago. Breathing slowly through her nose, she inhaled directly the refined energy.

She was so drained she had to wait for a while before thinking about summoning her sword back to her.

In fact, true to its nature, the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword refused to be summoned by her. But Shin Sumi didn't mind, she was ecstatic. For a second she had been afraid that the detonation of Yin Shinsoo had killed the spirit bond between the two but as it turned out she could still feel the sword perfectly.

There was one other reason why the sword wouldn't respond.

"The Vein, finally! It was here after all!"

Only a few hours of recuperation were needed before Shin Sumi started to excavate the area, pushing sand around to reveal once more the Silver Desert Swordfish.

Shin Sumi was on the lookout for leeches despite not seeing any. Maybe the leeches could only move thanks to the flow of sand and were now stuck in place. The parasitic species depended entirely on the presence of the Silver Desert Swordfish.

Shin Sumi excavated the head of the fish before preoccupying herself with the Vein of Hell Fire.

"That moon crescent blade is really good, it's a pity I can't call it to me like the golden sword."

Reluctantly, Shin Sumi followed the path of the blade, digging deep into an eye with the diameter of an arm length. The short dagger she had took out for this lacerated blobs of flesh after blobs of flesh.

Cutting the optic nerve, Shin Sumi put away the remains of the greyed eye with disgust.

"Ew, I'm not eating fish for a while after that!"

Even without taking into consideration the repulsive torn flesh the fish seemed to be made of clay, somehow having a rocky texture all the while being a creature of flesh and blood.

Shin Sumi's body was leaning downwards half inside of the massive dead Silver Desert Swordfish when she finally reached the place where the moon crescent blade had ended up.

Mushy brain matter filled the hole inside of which the sword was floating. Shin Sumi extracted it, holding it with two fingers. Somehow the jelly-like brain was even more disgusting than the perforated eye.

Shin Sumi was about to leave the body of the sand fish when her divine sense caught something unexpected.

Expanding her perception range, she discovered that the body of the fish seemed to hold three treasures.

The first one was located right where she was, in the exact middle of the brain.

It was an orb that looked like condensed smoke, grey like the surrounding flesh. The ball the size of a fist gave off an eerie feeling, like fleeting thoughts, unable to put a name on it.

Probing it with divine sense gave of no result at all, like trying to look through a rock. Without understanding a single thing about it, Shin Sumi put it away, a bit puzzled.

The second treasure was of course the beast core that she had almost forgotten about.

That was obviously the most interesting point about slaying a powerful beast! Given the trouble she had gotten into, surely the beast core would be at least yellow rank.

Because of her unusual cultivation which not many people could equal, Shin Sumi sometimes had a hard time judging the strength of a creature. What she had thought was a strong yellow level creature was actually a powerful green level monster!

The core looked like a green apple, a smooth surface rippling with Shinsoo. Feeding it to the nut, Shin Sumi was ecstatic.

"Another great find! I didn't expect to be able to beat a creature of this level... Am I really that strong?"

Because she didn't have many points of reference, Shin Sumi always doubted her ability.

One thing was certain though. Despite being without equal in the Shinsoo Gathering Realm, the gap between her current level and the Liquid Realm was still too big of a step.

If she did not reach the Liquid Realm quickly, she would still risk quite a lot.

Along her journey she had made a few friends, but she had also made quite a few enemies.

The third and last 'treasure' was something that Shin Sumi half expected to find. It was located in the belly of the swordfish, still intact despite bathing in stomach acid.

If Shin Sumi had wondered about what became of the disciple that called for help, now her question had been answered.

A bag of holding was floating. A few pieces of torn clothes around it had retained their orange color, the rest of the body probably having been digested.

Shin Sumi pocketed the bag after looking for an identification jade with no success. She joined her hands in a short and silent prayer for the soul of the unknown disciple before finally leaving the corpse of the fish to decay under the hot red sky.

Shin Sumi started digging into the sand next to the Silver Desert Swordfish, while thinking about her last encounter with Chu Erlong.

"What if she reaches the last ring before me and breaks through to the Liquid Realm? If she then wanted, all it would take is a slap to completely crush me..."

Such was the gap between one realm to the next. A gap as big as the difference between heaven and earth.

Moving the sand around proved to be a more tiring task than she expected. With each move and each grain of sand displaced it seemed like two more were falling down to take its place.

After a task more exhausting than an actual fight, Shin Sumi finally touched on a hard surface.

It was a dome made of hardened sand and rock conglomerates. The entire thing was encased in sand and completely covered with glittering engraved runes.

Close to the very top of the dome, where Shin Sumi was currently, there was a hole.

It was quite large and showed traces of erosion on all sides. The repeated passage of the Silver Desert Swordfish had carved into it little by little.

Somehow the sand wasn't able to fall down inside the dome, resting on top of the hole as if an invisible layer kept it out. Shin Sumi's hand, on the other side, had no trouble passing through.

Even the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword had gone through to the inside. As soon as she found the hole, Shin Sumi could feel the presence of the Vein of Hell Fire.

"The fish was trying to get inside! This structure must be so powerful that even after however long the fish tried it only eroded this much... And because of this hole some Shinsoo must have leaked outside, making the fish more powerful and also bigger..."

It wasn't exactly empathy, but Shin Sumi still felt something at the thought of the fish trying its best to reach the source of Shinsoo. The more it opened up the hole the bigger it had become, and the longer it would have taken for it to be able to enter the dome.

"What irony. Thankfully it's big enough for me."

Shin Sumi dropped down inside the opening, following her mental link to her sword which at the time was surely already plunged to the hilt in the Vein.

The inside of the dome was vast like a great hall. Shin Sumi landed on top of a pillar that stood at the center of the giant rock bubble. A chain of pillars rose from the ground on the outermost part of the ground, forming a spiral ending where she was.

More carvings covered every surface. Shin Sumi recognized some characters from the ancient southern tongue of the People.

"Just like in the maze, the People have been here" she said out loud. But it wasn't only the People. Just by looking at the bizarre assortment of characters, Shin Sumi discerned at least five completely different writings.

Some of them could only barely be considered as writing, more like primal forms of drawings.

Shin Sumi reached the ground quickly, taking a mental image of the carvings but not bothering to try and decipher them. It was impossible after all.

Still following the presence of her sword, Shin Sumi walked around to the central pillar. She had landed on top of it, dozens of meters above, and now she had to get inside.

A staircase had been carved inside the pillar, descending into the earth in a reversed spiral, opposite that of the pillars.

Shin Sumi reached the fourth Vein of Hell Fire after months of searching in vain. The temple built around it must have been in order to worship the source of Shinsoo.

"Could it be that I am standing right where the first humans have discovered magic?"

It was a possible explanation for the primal carvings. The most recent seemed to have originated from the People whom she knew had been extinct for long before her birth.

Shin Sumi sat down a couple meters away from the radiating purple glow of the Vein of Hell Fire.

She was wondering about how the relatively small Dark Sky Starry Sect had come to own a training dimension so big and full of mysteries when she entered a state of meditation.

It was like drifting off to sleep. She knew that upon waking up, her cultivation would have advanced by leaps and bounds.

***

Shin Sumi only took a few days to reach the mountain range separating the fourth and the fifth ring.

"This is it" she told herself, looking up at the dark clouds that vibrated with thunder, hiding the peaks from view, "the last ring. Another Vein of Hell Fire and I will have opened the last Shinsoo Doors."

She clenched her fist, the cracking of her fingers seeming to rival the sound of the storm above her head.

Her recent absorption of Shinsoo had pushed her limits to the sixty second Shinsoo Doors. Her speed was so impressive to her that she didn't even think the top disciple under the Liquid Realm, Jun Qian, had been faster while using a magical talisman.

Her strength had undergone a massive change too. Just for the sake of entertainment, Shin Sumi wondered if she could take on the giant crocodile from the first ring of the tournament.

"With the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword in my hand, I could probably give that big lizard a run for its money, eh!"

The sword had once again been refined, now thinner than a butterfly wing. Golden veins now ran along the blade, a delicate pattern that reminded her of rays of sunshine peering through the clouds.

Another unexpected improvement had greatly surprised her upon waking up from meditation this time.

The Copper Bell hadn’t shown any reaction while being close to all the other Veins of Hell Fire, but somehow the purple one seemed to resonate strongly with it.

By itself the small bell had flown out of Shin Sumi’s bag of holding, landing close to the overbearing purple glow, not daring to plunge right into it like the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword did.

By the time it reacted, Shin Sumi had already reached a deep state of meditation and was unaware of it, but the bell absorbed the purple energy during a long time before returning to Shin Sumi’s side.

The Copper Bell was a mysterious item with unheard of abilities. It could change one’s Shinsoo attribute, impact one’s senses by balancing the ambient energy around its master.

Thanks to the bell, Shin Sumi could see in the darkness, feel warm in the cold and endure the harshest conditions like nobody else.

Its powers were strangely similar to the laws of the fourth ring that impacted strongly a type of Shinsoo or the other with different effects.

When Shin Sumi woke up, she had no idea that the Copper Bell had been absorbing the Vein too. She only thought of it when she was about to leave the stone temple built around the Vein.

The second a thought formed in her head about having to change into Bai Fulong again, she heard the crystalline ringing of the bell, finding herself instantly transformed.

"Whaaa… ? I didn’t use a Confusion Pill but I can feel that I have morphed already ! I’m certain the last pill’s effects ran out before I absorbed the Vein so how can it have worked ?"

It hadn’t taken long for her to inspect her things and see the light purple glow that emanated from the rows of engravings on the copper of the bell.

From a single thought, Shin Sumi realized that she could now assume the appearance of Bai Fulong, Yan Yan and obviously herself. She didn't have to rely on Confusion Pills anymore.

It was as if she had truly become the other two characters she personified. They had always been a part of her, but now she could be all of them whenever she wanted, according to her situation.

Focusing on her next task at hand, Shin Sumi sped up, crossing the mountain path with unrivaled speed.

During her absorption of the Vein of Hell Fire, she had again lost track of time. She was unable to determine if somebody had already reached the fifth ring, even though it was highly improbable that nobody did.

"I hope no one has reached the exit yet, at least."

The fifth ring was very different from the other four.

Being the central ring it was much smaller than the others, and contrarily to them it didn’t consist of flat ground. The entire domain was a huge mountain, incredibly tall and large.

The barely visible top of the mountain had been flattened, like by the cut of a giant sword swung by the heavens themselves. It was from there that the yellow pillar of light representing the exit was located.

From where she stood Shin Sumi could discern tiny spots moving along the mountain, rushing to get to the top.

"So people have already arrived this far…"

She didn’t know if they were advancing slowly or if the mountain was simply too big but the ant sized silhouettes were making almost no progress at all in a relatively long time.

Surely this had to do with a trial of some sort. Shin Sumi thought about the climb right before reaching the giant floating continent.

With each step the Shinsoo pressure had increased. Maybe that was the case there too.

That would also explain why no one seemed to have broken through to the Liquid Realm yet.

Just like she and Xiao Yue had theorized, the disciples were waiting for the right time, taking in as much Shinsoo as possible to ensure the success of a breakthrough.

By watching the people walking the slope in the distance, Shin Sumi realized that at least ninety percent of them were yellow robed disciples. The others wore orange robes and of course no red level disciple had made it this far this early.

"This time I will really stick out too much if I keep wearing my red garments. Brother Unknown, let me borrow one of yours" she asked silently, referring to the cultivator whose remains were scattered inside a rotting Silver Desert Swordfish.

The bag of holding she had retrieved from the stomach acid had plenty of useful weapons, talismans, pills, parchments and scrolls. So much that Shin Sumi had decided to wait before investigating the full extent of the resources. She knew herself, if she started reading the different scrolls, she would not be able to take her eyes off them before she was done.

Shin Sumi didn't have that luxury yet. First she had to place first at the end of the Rising Star Tournament.

In one quick movement, she had donned the robes of the fallen disciple, throwing away her old red ones.

"He-he, it's like I've had a breakthrough!" she smiled to herself.

Shin Sumi advanced progressively. She was at the base of the mountain, about to start her climb when her divine sense picked up on a strange connexion.

As if the entire mountain was alive, the overflowing divine sense completely took over her own. An unavoidable signal appearing in her mind.

"The last trial of the Rising Star Tournament is upon you. Like a star, rise along the edge of the mountain. On each step there can be only a limited number of people. Defeat those in front before ascending to the next step."

The message was simple and disappeared as fast as it had appeared.

"These are the rules to the trial then. It’s a real tournament this time, we have to fight for real !"

As it turned out, Shin Sumi found it physically impossible to climb the mountain by any other path than the four twisted line that came from the bottom. The closest one to her was not far, and she could see in the distance that it joined with another one.

"At the bottom there are more of us, and as we climb the number reduces. I wonder if I’ll find myself having to fight Yue…"

Shin Sumi was also worried about the Vein of Hell Fire. Because the area was restricted, she feared that she would never be able to get to the final source of Shinsoo.

An almost invisible barrier rippling with light carved the path so that nobody under the Liquid Realm could ever cross it. The barrier was seemingly so strong that Shin Sumi couldn’t even feel the Shinsoo fluctuations coming from the slight ripples.

From what she imagined, barriers like this were positioned everywhere on the mountain, blocking the path of those who tried to climb without having defeated their adversaries.

Testing her dantian, Shin Sumi also realized the implications of the sudden message about the rules.

"Breaking through is still impossible. I thought we would have a chance as soon as we advanced to the central domain but no. The top is the only goal then."