A few weeks later Sage was standing in front of a large gate. He took a deep breath and then stepped forward and reached out to push the gates open. Each of these two doors was constructed of stone, ten feet tall and ten feet wide. In addition to the considerable weight of their base construction, they were covered in array formations, formations that lit up as he pushed on them. Upon his first push, the gates slid backwards an inch. Then the formations lit up and the gates paused in place. They seemed to magnify in weight many times over, stopping Sage in his tracks.

He grit his teeth and leaned forward, putting his back into the push and bracing his legs upon the ground. The glowing symbols on the door brightened, showing the increase of energy that resisted his efforts. A symbol appeared on his forehead, the sign of his Human Seal loosening. In the past, Sage had placed his Human Seal upon his chest in the hopes it would be hidden, but his secret was already close to public knowledge so it didn’t matter anymore. Since the Human Seal was slower to activate when placed in a different position, he would rather leave it in the most effective position on his forehead near his temple.

The strength of his physical body was slowly unsealed, causing his muscles to inflate and his skin to darken. A blackened brick red color appeared upon his neck and hands, but he maintained the shape of a human body as he used all his strength to push against the stone gates. He used all the physical strength available to him without taking his true form, straining his body to its limits. This was not a place he could simply take his true form at ease.

No matter how hard he pushed, the gate did not succumb. Even so, he would not give up. It was far too important for him to get through. Then he felt something give. He quickly glanced down to look at the ground and could see the difference in its current position compared to debris built up on the ground where the gate usually sat while closed.

It moved!

The distance was miniscule, but the gates had opened another half inch. With one hand on each of the two huge stone doors, Sage maintained his pushing force and then looked closer at the arrays that were glowing with power. Earlier, he hadn’t bothered to look closely at them, as this was a test that had to be challenged directly. If he were to merely solve the arrays, then no one would recognize him as having passed the test, and that was not an option. Yet now that he took a closer look he saw inklings of what was going on and why it was so difficult.

So that’s how it is. No wonder.

Sage stopped trying to come up with new ways to increase his strength. He loosened his jaw, relaxing from the pressure of gritting his teeth as he tried to push harder and harder. Instead he focused on his breathing, taking rapid deep breaths. He exerted more strength on every exhale and then held strong on every inhale. Of course, this was mainly a mental exercise for him. Cultivators used special breathing exercises to help them accumulate Qi into their bodies, only when the Qi concentration reached a certain level would a person be able to sense Qi and assist the process along. Once enough of that gaseous Qi was contained in the body a mortal would officially step into the first rank and become an official Cultivator.

Qi, a special form of energy refined into the body, gave Cultivators abilities far beyond normal humans. By the fifth rank, a Cultivator had already moved beyond all the requirements of a normal human body. The Core constantly drew in and refined energy from the world, completely divorcing them from the need for food, water, and even air. Of course, these things weren’t useless, but they no longer became necessary. Lower level Cultivators could give up sleeping entirely, but they usually spent many hours a day in meditation, training to advance their cultivation. They didn’t actually sleep, but the influx of Qi refreshed their minds and bodies in a way superior to what sleep could provide. The same applied to their other needs. Normal food was useful to enhance mood, but there were also foods made from Demonic Beasts and Spirit Plants that were full of energy and could actually advance their cultivation and enhance their physical body.

At this point, Sage was breathing hard and pushing at the huge stone gates. They felt as if they were stuck in place, but they were in actuality slowly moving backwards. After realizing this fact, it was actually quite easy for Sage to gauge his progress. A Cultivator didn’t just have a powerful body, they also had powerful minds. Qi gave them a comprehensive improvement in every area, after rank 3 nearly every Cultivator would have already developed a photographic memory. Once he put his attention on measuring the movement of the stone doors it was easy for him to track exactly how far the gates had moved. These gates were not a test of strength, but a test of endurance. The arrays upon them could sense the rough level of his strength and require him to exert a high level of it over a long period of time.

Sage could not overcome the arrays, but he was quite pleased to see that he had driven the gates to their limits. They were something of a legend and so it was likely they were at a level that even a strength focused Nascent Soul couldn’t defeat them. He’d even heard that a fifth rank Body Cultivator couldn’t defeat them and their physical power was many times greater than normal Qi Cultivators. Even so, Sage could tell he’d pushed it near its limits and if he were to use his true form he felt there was a good chance he could break that impressive legend. On the other hand, using a body hundreds of feet tall to barely handle such a comparatively small door would not feel like such a great accomplishment.

Finally, after an hour of constant exertion, he’d pushed the gates open far enough for him to step forward, letting the two large stone doors slam closed behind him. While he was standing there triumphantly, feeling pleased to beat the challenge, three men walked around the side of the gates and walked up to join him.

The gates were not at the entrance to a building, but free standing within their own archway in the center of a large plaza. They did not block anyone from passing and these three just walked around the gates with playful smiles on their faces, teasing him for expending so much effort. Even so, Sage didn’t feel upset or annoyed by their action. Instead he smiled back at them and recovered from his exertion, standing tall and marching out of the plaza and down a wide street. The three men followed him, two at the right and one on the left, like an honor guard accompanying him down the street and under a paifang, a large decorative archway that bore the character ‘Wan’.