Chapter 150 - 79: The Trial Begins, the Earth Sinks

Chapter 150: Chapter 79: The Trial Begins, the Earth Sinks

This told Jiang Xuan that this person’s status in the Yin Daoist School was not low.

But soon, he had no time to dwell on such things.

SWOOSH!

Mere moments after the group stepped onto the Road of Purgatory, the hazy, ethereal figure of a Daoist abruptly materialized in mid-air.

After appearing, the figure wasted no time and directly announced the rules for the trial.

"You will all follow me to the finish line. You must remain within a one-thousand-meter radius of me at all times. Anyone who crosses this boundary will be eliminated immediately. Your final rank will be determined by your position among the remaining contestants when I arrive at the destination."

TAP...

As soon as he finished speaking, the Daoist turned and started walking into the depths of the barren plains.

His strides weren’t large, yet each step carried him over ten meters.

This brutally simple trial method made Jiang Xuan frown slightly. ’They’re deciding the winner based on speed alone?’

But before Jiang Xuan could ponder it further, his Celestial Sensing was suddenly triggered.

His pupils contracted. The next instant, his Magical Power surged. He activated his Nether Abyss Dharma Eye, and a Repulsive Force erupted from his body, instantly enveloping Su Linyin and Dong Hao.

HUMMM—!

Lifted by the Repulsive Force, the three of them shot into the sky and hovered steadily in mid-air, completely off the ground.

This sudden, swift maneuver caught Lin Yiyi off guard for a second. But then a thought seemed to strike her, and she let out a soft chuckle, looking up at Su Linyin in the air.

"Hehe, Sister Linyin, you’re so quick to run away. But don’t worry. Our elders’ feud is their own business; it has nothing to do with us. I’m not targeting you, you know."

That wasn’t entirely a lie.

Lin Yiyi was, in fact, the yellow-robed girl who had proposed a "divide and conquer" strategy to Chen Qianjun, and her first intended target was the Rooster Daoist School.

She had made this decision after gathering intelligence, concluding that the Rooster Daoist School posed a greater threat and should therefore be eliminated first.

Of course, her motives weren’t entirely selfless.

Her mother and Su Wanyi had been rivals for years—she’d heard the stories many times and had long wanted to get some payback on her mother’s behalf.

’But just eliminating Su Linyin directly would be too quick, too merciful. It would only make her suffer for a moment.’

’Making her wait and suffer, letting despair fill her heart—that is real torture.’

’And if I can use the momentum of our great victory to force her to surrender and submit... that would be the best revenge against Su Wanyi. It would let Mother finally feel some satisfaction.’

’It’s a shame I can’t contact Mother. If I could, I’d use sparing Su Linyin as a bargaining chip to force that woman to bow her head... and then, after she’s begged for mercy, I’d eliminate Su Linyin anyway...’

In the brief moment it took Jiang Xuan to lift Su Linyin into the air, Lin Yiyi’s mind had already raced through a thousand schemes.

The very fact that she was already having such thoughts revealed one thing: she had absolutely no doubt that the Yin Daoist School would win this joint trial.

It was only because she was so certain of victory that she was already plotting how to humiliate Su Linyin and avenge her mother before the trial had even truly begun.

However, just as Jiang Xuan, Su Linyin, and Dong Hao hovered in mid-air, while Lin Yiyi was still lost in her triumphant fantasies...

BOOM!

A violent roar suddenly erupted from beneath the earth.

Amid the earth-shattering roar, the ground began to tremble violently, rippling like waves before cracking and collapsing in an instant.

RUMBLE...

Massive, deep fissures and chasms suddenly spiderwebbed across the ground beneath them—a horrifying sight.

"AHH..."

"Help!"

"What is this?"

Because the ground cracked and collapsed so suddenly, most of the students from the three Daoist Schools couldn’t react in time.

Caught unprepared, countless Cultivators fell screaming into the fissures and abysses that had opened beneath them.

Of course, a few quick-witted individuals managed to leap away, narrowly avoiding the collapsing ground.

But that didn’t mean they were out of danger.

HISS...

ROAR!

"There are monsters...!"

"NO!!!"

From the cracked earth emerged countless venomous snakes, lizards, and scorpions, as well as giant earthworms several meters thick and over ten meters long.

Right now, these monsters were pouring out from underground in a ceaseless, horrifying tide.

The moment they appeared, these vicious-looking monsters began to frantically slaughter the Cultivators on the surface, who were either still shell-shocked or trying to flee for their lives.

Just like that, the once-peaceful scene was replaced in the blink of an eye by a brutal, chaotic battlefield.

On the ground, nearly a thousand students from the three Daoist Schools were locked in a fierce battle against thousands of monsters.

The brutal battle stained the barren plains with blood. People were constantly falling in a gory demise, or plunging into the chasms that continued to crack open and collapse.

And since the ground below was teeming with monsters, one could easily imagine the fate of the students who fell.

Witnessing this scene of desperate chaos, both Dong Hao and Su Linyin couldn’t help but shudder with lingering fear. Had they been in the midst of that chaos, there was a very real chance they could have been dragged underground and devoured by the Demons, especially given how suddenly the ground had collapsed.

However, the fear in their hearts faded as quickly as it had appeared.

They soon realized that a special power was holding them steadily afloat in mid-air.

Far removed from the collapsing earth and the tide of Demons, they had no reason to worry about the ground giving way or the monsters attacking.

Watching everyone else desperately fighting the monsters below while they looked on from high above, safe and serene—this stark contrast gave rise to a subtle sense of superiority in the Hearts of Dong Hao and Su Linyin.

At the same time, they were both filled with gratitude, thankful that they had chosen to follow Jiang Xuan in this trial and had thus avoided this great disaster.

Su Linyin, in particular, had experienced the most drastic emotional swing.

When she had seen Lin Yiyi at the joint trial and discovered her alliance with Chen Qianjun from the Yin Daoist School, she had fallen into despair.

But Jiang Xuan’s act of lifting her into the air just before the ground collapsed—a display of both power and foresight—had restored her confidence in the trial.

Seeing Lin Yiyi—who just moments ago had been all smiles, acting as if everything was under her control—now struggling desperately on the ground while she herself could look down on her from above... The contrast and the resulting sense of superiority instantly swept away the gloom that had filled her Heart.