After the mountain climbing challenge was concluded, around 10000 candidates finally made it to the enclosed space. Afterwards, a few people appeared and told them about further procedures. The candidates were all given a token which contained unique energy. All the people had obtained tokens with the same amount of energy in them. In the next part of the test, all the candidates were going to be left out in a vast forest and they would have to hunt other candidates. One had to defeat another person and take their token. With this, one would be able to transfer the energy from one token to another. The purpose of the test was to gather energy to completely fill up the token. Once the token was completely filled, one would be deemed to have passed the test and would be removed from the battlefield. Of course, the tokens could sense each other in a certain range to facilitate the test.

The test was to begin the next day. It was kept so to give enough time for all participants to recover their mental and physical states to the peak. Michael waited for the appropriate time. He had already made deductions that the tokens contained spirit energy refined to a particular form. If Michael had enough time to research, he would have been able to create this unique energy with his spirit-energy. But the time he had was not enough for him to do so. This showed how solid the testing system of the sect was. Cheating was not an option.

At the start of test time, Michael, as well as all other candidates, were transported to random locations. The battlefield was actually another independent space. This space was quite small, only a few hundred kilometres across in any direction. There was a patch of forest to one side of the space, a mountain range to another side. In between, there was a big lake which was joined to a small river. Michael marvelled at such an independent space. Opening one's own space that had laws inscribed was known to be a feat that only upper ascendants could do. But not all upper-ascendants could make spaces as diverse and complete as this one. It was said that once one attained divinity, one could, in essence, open a small world of their own - a semi-plane. The name was actually a misnomer. When people heard of the term semi-plane, they assumed that it was inferior to naturally occurring planes. But it was not necessarily the case. Someone like Divine Sea Divinity could, given sufficient resources, open a semi-plane that would be as stable as a primary-plane. Inside a semi-plane, the creator would be a god. The natural laws themselves would be at their beck and call.

Michael was not too worried about not being able to pass. After all, he had his own trump card for situations like these - intuition. As long as he concentrated actively, he would be able to find the best possible way to pass this test. Therefore, he took his time exploring the independent space. It was not every day that one could witness a space like this. He tried going to the boundary of the space but he could not. There was a suppressive force that prevented him from leaving. Michael traced the boundary of this independent space and made observations. While he did not learn anything new, it was a valuable experience for broadening his horizons. After making a round of the space, he concentrated on his intuition and followed the vague feeling. It had already been some time since he had mastered the second level of this skill and now, Michael was steadily comprehending the third level of it. The description of the third level was extremely vague - grasping the flow of the world. Michael did not know what it would entail, but it was for certain that it would increase his strength. Wisdom Emperor's psychic inheritance had already been immensely beneficial for him. His talent had improved with its help. Michael was looking forward to the day he could find the legacy inheritance and most likely the clue would unearth itself after he cultivated the initial inheritance to full mastery. That was why he had been continuously cultivating the inheritance over the past years.

As he reached the forest area, he travelled with great speed in absolute silence. Michael had already mastered the Formless Concealment Art he had extorted all those years ago from Grimjoy. At that time, Michael had felt that the art was too complex to learn but now, he had already mastered it. And while the art had been developed in Aterna, it was bonafide mortal-stage art. In fact, Michael had come across many bonafide mortal stage skills in Aterna - All-Seeing Eyes, Flowing River Art, Close Combat Soul Art, Vitality Burning, Disorientation art, Illusion Combat Art and many others. But as his realm was improving, these methods became useless to him. Michael had still not found a replacement for his All-Seeing Eyes which he had depended upon for so long. After obtaining celestial energy, his martial arts and soul arts became useless. Besides, these methods did not work on ascendants at all due to the protection of law marks. Thus, Michael needed new martial skills that could match his realm. He was hoping to find suitable skills after he enrolled in the sect.

As Michael proceeded along, he came across the stench of blood. Michael went further ahead to find a gory battlefield. There were corpses laid around - at least ten people had died here. A battle was currently underway and five people were fighting a single person. The person who was alone was wearing a khaki martial-arts dress while the others were wearing a white uniform - most likely representing a sect. Though the white-robed attackers had many bloodstains on their clothes, it was actually their own blood. It was interesting that the single combatant was on the winning side given that the attackers were all demi-ascendants. The other party too was a demi-ascendant but clearly, his bloodline was not simple. Michael's arrival did not cause any disturbance and none of these guys had noticed him in between their fight. Suddenly, one of the bloodstained figures shouted

You bastard! You killed the love of my life! Even though she had surrendered! Even if I have to die myself, I will take you down with me.

Following that, the figure rushed towards his enemy and exploded his cultivation base! It was a gruesome scene as his body was blasted apart by the power he himself had let loose. The power rushed toward the man in the khaki dress like a storm. His expression changed as his bloodline erupted with great power. The space around him warped and an image of a shield appeared between him and the incoming storm of energy. But the storm of energy still managed to completely shatter the shield and hit the man. As the guy retreated, his body spilt blood as if he had gone through a grinder. But he recovered swiftly and continued fighting the remaining four enemies. In the total candidates that had passed the preliminary exam, there were only about 500 demi-ascendants. Looking at the battlefield, it seemed as if all the corpses were demi-ascendants. It was indeed an unusual situation. The battle continued and finally, all the people in white ended up dying at the Khaki dressed man's hands. Then, he looked around before black blood emerged from his body and started covering the entire area. He started absorbing the vitality and cultivation essence from the dead-bodies around.

Devouring Bloodline!

There were many different bloodlines that were known to the people in the super-plane. But there were few bloodlines that were considered heretical and were not tolerated by people. And one of the prominent ones in this category was an entire family of bloodlines known as devouring bloodline. The devouring bloodline was capable of improving its power by devouring and digesting other cultivators. It originated from a race of True God Beasts - World Devourers. These were mythical beasts that could devour entire planes! This youngster was definitely interesting as his devouring bloodline was actually hidden below his prominent bloodline. In short, this man actually had two bloodlines.

The guy was sitting cross-legged absorbing the power from dead-bodies when the space around him rippled and a hand shot out. It slapped his skull and a terrifying amount of power entered his body. The power was violent and unending directly shattering his skull and brain and destroying his soul! His conscient along with his soul was extinguished! The power continued to rampage destroying his body as well.

Ripples spread out and Michael appeared. His eyes were gloomy looking at the scene around him. This was the first time Michael had assassinated someone. It was not because he could not win in a head-on fight. But because the conscient of this person was strange! It was as if there was a seed in his conscient that did not belong to him. Most likely, this person was being controlled by someone else! Adding the fact that there were two bloodlines in his body, it was likely that there was something shady going on.

One had to know that the psychic path and dao path were rare like True God Beasts - legendary. Michael already knew about a lot of celestials and had even heard the name of upper-ascendants. But he had yet to see a psychic cultivator. This was the first time he had seen the handiwork of one. He would not have acted but his intuition kept on nagging him. Michael knew that if he left the guy alone, he would be facing danger due to it. Thus, he acted in the best possible way and killed the guy without revealing his identity. The chances of him being traced back were extremely slim as long as he was not up against a divinity. He then searched through the carnage and found all the tokens. After transferring the energy from about 10 of them, Michael had enough energy to activate the teleportation formation to leave this space. But to make sure he was not traced back by his timing, he lingered around for a few hours before leaving.

In a separate space, a person was sitting cross-legged on a dais. His appearance was indistinct and seemed to change constantly. There was unique energy surrounding him that made him feel extremely dangerous. It was not the effect of his realm but his path. This man was a feared psychic cultivator. At that moment, he frowned before his expression changed. His face paled and blood started flowing from his nose and eyes! His face contorted in pain before regaining its usual calm. As he opened his eyes, they were filled with confusion.

What the fuck? How was one of his most important nodes killed?

Given that there was no indication before the attack, it was most likely that a fearsome assassin had targeted him. But who could it be? Was his plan exposed? He did not know anything!

He took out a contact talisman and sent a voice transmission.

Find out what happened at the side of the dead-sea sect. One of the nodes was killed. We need to figure this situation out.