Yu climbed to the third floor which took twice as long and blinked, surprised at what she found. Unlike the first two floors, she could actually see the lava pouring into the building from above. It appeared to fall in something of a round waterfall from a big hole in the roof into a circular pool in the floor. Channels of different widths guided the magma throughout the building where whatever enchantments were laid took it and used it to make this amazing structure function. Yu was scanning the area both impressed and terrified at the power and expertise being demonstrated. Who could possibly have created something this complicated? Yu reflected that it was odd there was no sulfur smell like in the cave of the Vermillion Bird. She figured it must have been one of the bajillion enchantments.

Returning her attention to her test, she looked around as before and could not find a stairwell leading up. But halfway around the room was a thin floating stone circular platform glowing with an obvious formation both on top and underneath. Yu stepped or leaped over the channels, and climbed on when she reached it. Had anyone ever fallen in? Shuddering at the thought, Yu looked around and muttered, “This is taking way too long.” She had to be the slowest by far.

Yu looked around for instructions but did not find any until she looked beneath her feet. A picture of a person in lotus position was glowing on the platform’s center with a swirling symbol where the dantian would be, just below the navel. Why in the nine hells would they make this such a pain? Just give people instructions. In this case, Yu figured that it made sense for a Qi purity test to require cycling. It seemed obvious in retrospect.

Yu sat and got into lotus and immediately gasped as her dantian began being emptied of purified Qi. She hurriedly cycled energy according to her scripture but could pull nothing in from the environment. It was like the power of the Heavens and Earth did not exist there. Nothing happened for a while outside of the draining until an irregular pitted glowing and smoking stone the size of Yu’s head rose from the large magma pool. It stopped rising and simply floated there until eventually turning black. Shortly after it was joined by another that turned dark gray. Yu had no idea what any of that meant but found her power draining faster and every stone that rose caused it to drain even faster. Each stone was progressively lighter in color until the sixth, which appeared perfectly white. After that last stone rose her dantian was about empty and Yu was feeling light-headed. She started to wobble and fall over while seated when the drain stopped and all six stones flashed a bright pure white matching the sixth stone and fell back into the pool with gloops and splashes. Through her forced exhaustion, Yu realized she heard no voice that time. That was until she heard the dull toned, “As per your badge, your results will be private.”

Yu was groggy and didn’t really care at that moment. Forceful Qi drain could get pretty nasty. It was very different from a cultivator draining through skills as the energy flowed through the cycling channels, or meridians, in a controlled way. But when energy was yanked out of a cultivator straight from the dantian. . . that was both dangerous to the delicate organ and physically draining. It was also why most sects and civilized cities, at least in her empire, outlawed the skills that did it. Thankfully they were rare.

Of course, none of that mattered to Yu who was trying to focus while barely staying upright. Looking up, she blearily saw a hole in the ceiling. When the platform rose into the hole, Yu found herself in the middle of a round room in which a formation was already formed and just activated as the platform completed the last connections. There was a flash of white and Yu found herself somewhere else completely. The Qi in the air felt almost suffocating it was so strong and she felt her dantian filling as she looked around.

After just a few breaths it was filled and Yu found herself standing opposite a. . . person whose features Yu could not make out for some reason. She and this individual were both standing, or floating?, in an empty black space. The voice that made it sound like it could have been either a male or female said, “Disciple, you do not have to take this test if you do not wish to. You have already passed.”

Yu stood there and looked at the person. “Umm. So I made it? Can I go then? I’m holding up the line.” Yu blushed as she said, “I took longer than the people in front of me.”

Chuckling, the voice said, “Actually you did not; it has taken many applicants many times longer to determine what to do at each stage. Time is different here. It is one of the capabilities of this structure.”

Thinking of her master’s ability to stop time, Yu believed it. “Oh. That’s good. At least I’m not causing others to be late.” Then she cleared her throat and asked, “Umm. . . So I’m done then?”

“You could be,” said the person who started pacing in front of Yu.

She blinked at him and looked around the endless black space that reminded her of her mindscape before it gained mist. Turning back to the pacing figure, Yu asked, “If I passed, why would I stay?”

Its answer was simply, “To prove yourself.”

Yu looked at him with a silver eyebrow raised. “No offense, but why would I bother? I don’t care what other people think.”

The blurry head nodded. “No. I suppose you wouldn’t.”

Yu opened her mouth to say she was ready to leave when the figure brought a hand to what Yu assumed was a chin and asked, “Would you make a bet with me?”

Yu clicked her mouth shut and tilted her head.

“I will reward you if you take this combat test.”

“You said take not win. Just to be clear, I will not risk my place in this sect. I cannot think of a reward that would force me to take that risk.”

The person stopped pacing and said, “You are too intriguing to let go without a fight but the rules say the reward and risk may be equal. If you want something spectacular, you must risk something equally so.”

What rules was it talking about? “Umm. What do I refer to you as?”

The blurry head bowed and said, “I apologize. I was a little caught up in your results. You may call me Ren.”

Yu nodded and said, “Ren, I don’t really have anything I am willing to risk for a mysterious reward of unknown worth.”

“Fair enough,” said Ren. “Here is what I propose then. You fight and the more you win the greater the reward, but it will stay unknown. You can stop any time before a fight starts but once it begins you must see it to the end. If you lose, you lose everything you have won. If you stop, you keep what you have to that point.”

Yu thought about that and saw no reason to not accept. “What are the rules of the fights?”

“You will battle demonic beasts of progressively higher levels of difficulty in this world of illusion. No physical wounds will remain after you decide to stop but you will retain the pain and memory of them. You will also retain each false wound from battle to battle and you will not have the opportunity to refill your Qi.” Yu shrugged at that; given everything she had been through, the memory of pain wasn’t something that bothered her. Not having a chance to refresh her Qi was a big loss but she could always stop before the fight if she felt disadvantaged.

Yu nodded and said, “I agree.”

The voice sounded quite pleased when it clapped its hands together once and said, “Excellent. Prepare yourself.”

Yu took her hook swords out of her ring and stood ready. There was another white flash and Yu found herself in a grassy field. About ten paces from her was a creature she knew well, a Stone Dog. Looking at the growths on its back and tail, she could tell it was a low grade 1. She blushed slightly remembering her first rather embarrassing fight with the simple low-grade creature.

Yu readied herself and the dog charged, barking and growling. Lowering herself, she waited for the leap and when it did she easily slid aside, slashed out with her swords, and slit its throat with a single sweep. The body tumbled away and vanished after a few moments of it bleeding out. There was another flash and two dogs of low grade 1 appeared. They charged. . .

***

Yu panted as she wiped the sweat and blood from her eyes. She was currently surrounded by three adult metal furred monkeys, the one on her left was the cause of the blood on her face. Their entire bodies except their face, hands, stomachs, and genitals were covered by steel-like fur which caused the cut on her forehead. It sliced through her hardened skin with a blow that caught her by surprise. Her country did not contain those creatures so she did not have any information on them; thus she was surprised when it tore hair off its arm and threw it at her face. She barely avoided losing an eye which would have forced her to use a Qi skill which she was trying to avoid to this point to save for later fights. Thankfully these particular monkeys, being only mid grade 2, were unable to use it either.

Yu raised her swords and fainted to the left monkey by starting a swing with her left arm. They reacted by shifting their positions, the one to the left away, the one to the right towards, and the one in front straight ahead. This shift gave her an opportunity to swiftly sweep her enhanced arms crossways in front of her rather than her pretend target. Her swords flashed in “X” and returned to a ready position in a blur. The monkey directly in front of her screeched and stumbled as blood pooled from its unprotected stomach. Holding its hands over its middle, it fell over, causing the skin to split and its innards to spill out.

Yu moved her head right and left with one sword facing each. They were all circling and the monkeys were screaming at her in unintelligible gibberish. The one that threw hair before grabbed at his shoulder and pulled more hair. The one on the right did the same but with a thigh. Just as they threw their handfuls forward, Yu dropped to the ground in a familiar split, releasing her left sword. Before it struck the ground, her whip appeared in her hand and swung out wrapping around the creature's extended wrist. With a surprised yelp, the monkey stumbled forward at her yank and the sharp metallic hairs aimed at her struck it in the face instead, causing it to call out in pain. The monkey on the right was furious and launched forward in the air at the prone human it presumed was vulnerable. The right sword turned backward and its spiked hilt awaited the flying monkey’s open mouth. Blood flooded all over Yu’s hand and arm. Yu weathered the dying blows of its hands against her chest and back with her reinforced skin and bones.

The monkey that she pulled with the whip was scraping its face attempting to remove the spines and Yu dropped the whip and her right sword which was embedded into the other monkey’s skull. She leaped to her feet while picking up her left sword, reversed it and jammed it hilt-first into the monkey’s eye.

She twisted her wrist as she removed the sword from the creature’s twitching form, picked up all her weapons, and put them away, still breathing hard from the nearly non-stop combat. The scene flashed and Ren stood before her with the bodies gone. It looked at her while tilting its head and said, “You have yet to use a Qi skill and have expended only a small amount of Qi to enhance your body. That is an interesting strategy to conserve Qi while tiring your body.”

Yu nodded, “Based on my experiences, I believe I have more physical stamina than available Qi so first I would use the greater on the lesser foes while conserving my lesser pool of stronger skills for what is likely coming next.”

In response, Ren asked, “Oh? And what do you expect to come next?”

Yu said, “If your pattern stays true, I think a single high grade 2 beast which is beyond anything I have fought before.”

The blurry head nodded and said, “True. Are you prepared?”

Yu nodded and said, “Yes.”

***

Yu dove to the side as an eagle as black as night with claws longer than Yu’s entire hand extended out to grab at her. Yu felt a tug on her ponytail as it swooped just above and beyond her. She raised her hand and a crack of lightning was followed by the screech of the mighty raptor, which was stunned sufficiently that it tumbled out of the sky with a thump followed by crunching sounds. Yu rolled forward again and leaped to her feet, the swipe of a spiked tail slamming in the ground where she just was. Her body was surrounded by silver flames as she swung her fist and slammed it into the opening jaw of the head of an unknown snake that just extended out to strike at her.

Sweat, blood, and gore covered Yu as she stumbled by the snake which she just barely managed to hit sufficiently to avoid death by poison. The snake turned around only to hit a face full of purple lightning as Yu once again dove forward to avoid the Stone Dog Alpha’s spiked tail. Yu used the momentum of the forward roll to rise and run around the back of the stunned snake and slice with her hand. The snake was just intelligent enough to be relieved when the human’s empty hand started its movement far out of range as it recovered from the blast of violet power that stunned it. What it was not fast enough to recognize was the flaming silver sword that appeared in the human’s hand as it swept by. And that was all the snake knew as its head fell to the ground with a thump.

The stone dog howled and charged at Yu, its enormous yellow teeth bared, saliva spraying everywhere. Just as it leaped at her there was a flash of silver fire and she flashed away only to stop in a stumble and roll a few paces away. It also landed in a heap and rolled over a few times, not expecting the human to disappear from its sight. Yu looked at the creature as it got to its feet. She screamed and charged at it. Enraged by the direct challenge, the alpha howled and charged back at her, clumps of grass and dirt flying away behind its clawed paws. Just as it reached a full stride, the human that challenged it skidded to a stop in the packed dirt and stomped her foot. Right at the moment when all four legs were in the air between leaps, a sharp spike of dark brown stone appeared beneath it. The spike was not particularly large, only about as wide as two or three finger widths, but it was long and sharp and the dog’s vulnerable neck was right above its point. The creature’s softer underside scales held for a moment as the beast’s throat landed on the spike but they were not firm enough and failed to save its life. The skin parted and the spike entered its body, puncturing its throat and breaking off from the creature’s weight and forward momentum. The scaled canine tumbled onto its side and slid forward, stopping a pace in front of Yu.

She walked up to the creature, bloody and dripping from the deep cuts its tail gave her across her shoulder and upper back. It nearly had her then. Just a Qi-enhanced shift forward saved her from losing her head. Yu kicked the spike further into its throat causing it to suffocate and then walked to the eagle, which had so many broken broken bones it was barely able to move. She dispatched it and fell on her butt onto the illusory grass.

Her knees were up in front of her, her arms across the top. Yu laid her forehead down on them and caught her breath.

Ren’s voice said next to her, “That was well fought, disciple.”

Yu said in an exhausted voice, “I’m done,” as she lifted her head up to face him.

The blurry form before her nodded. “Yes. I believe you are.”

Then the grassy field she had fought on for who knows how long disappeared and all of Yu’s wounds vanished with it. Her body and uniform were back to their pristine form, save the sweat, but her exhaustion remained. Yu asked, “I wish I could come back and do that again another time. It was extremely educational.”

Ren chuckled and said, “There are other formations which offer similar in the sect. You will learn about them during your Welcoming.”

Having caught her breath, Yu asked, “So, who are you exactly? And what did I win?”