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I carefully surveyed the area for any possible threats. There were a few large boulders that could conceal hidden enemies, but this area was far more open than the version of the path higher up the mountain.

To guard against anyone lying in ambush, LiTing and I left the path and made wide loops around any boulders or depressions in the ground. If there was a place where people could hide, we avoided it. To stop any illusionists from sneaking up on us, I deployed a few defensive formations that would provide us with a thin layer of defense and give us warning of any surprise attacks before they happened.

I also switched on my energy vision to keep a constant eye out for any potential dangers. Leaving it on for extended periods was taxing on my eyes, so I usually didn’t do it, but we were in a dangerous situation. We needed to be as careful as possible. Not only could my energy vision help me detect hidden opponents, but it would also light up dangerous energy-dense projectiles or insects that were too small to notice with normal vision.

Even though we took these precautions, I didn’t expect to be targeted by an ambush. I had no doubt that Lord Hao wanted revenge against us for killing his men, and I had noticed spies checking in on us over the years, but our departure from Mortal City was sudden enough that I didn’t expect him to have anything ready to go. Instead, I was worried more about someone targeting us simply because they felt that we looked like easy targets for a robbery.

As we made our way through the rocky terrain of the Path of Body, we were not attacked by evil cultivators even once. Instead, the two of us were constantly assaulted by hordes of low-level beasts. They only had the strength of mid-level Martial Masters, so they were easy to defeat, but the constant assaults slowed us down.

After the first day of nearly non-stop fighting, I realized that waiting to ambush someone on this path was a fool’s errand. Anyone who tried to hide themselves would quickly be exposed by the hordes of attacking beasts. No matter how well a cultivator tried to hide on this path, the demon beasts would soon find and attack them.

Still, knowing that these animals were not a real threat and that we needed to stay prepared for what lay ahead, LiTing and I refrained from blasting the animals with qi to conserve our energy. We also refrained from using her refined weapons in case anyone was somehow watching us from hiding, no matter how unlikely that seemed under the circumstances. So to fight, we relied on enhancing our bodies with qi and defeating our opponents in unarmed martial combat.

We only needed to walk a few kilometers, but with the need to defend against the constant attacks, this took us well over two hours to complete. The pace we moved at was slow, but there was no helping it.

As we fought wave after wave of enemies, LiTing became increasingly confused. Finally, she had to share what was on her mind.

“Hey Fang, where do you think they got all these beasts for us to fight? We must’ve killed over a hundred of them already. If this is what everyone has to go through, how are there any beasts left?”

I lifted my right foot and then slammed it down hard on the leg of a demon boar. This shattered the dead animal’s bones and caused its skin to tear open in several places. Blood slowly trickled out of the wound, staining the ground red.

“Hmmm. I didn’t expect that to happen.”

LiTing’s jaw dropped in confusion. “What did you do that for?”

I kicked the boar’s body and it rag-dolled away as one might expect of a corpse. I cocked my head to the side when I saw that. The whole setup was very impressive.

“Look at them with qi vision. They aren’t real. This is all an illusion. I thought attacking one of the corpses would cause the illusion to break, but it looks like someone put a lot of effort into making this place feel as real as they could.”

LiTing blinked at me. “Oh, that makes sense.”

She didn’t ask any further questions and just continued down the path. I was slightly taken aback by this reaction, but after only a brief pause, I followed after her.

Eventually, we arrived at the end of the first section of the Path of Body.

Ahead of us, the wide path we had been walking on split apart into five much narrower paths. Each of these narrow paths passed through a different stone archway, and then, on the other side, recombined to form a single wide path once more.

I checked to see if I could walk around the arches, but an invisible barrier blocked me from doing so. If we wanted to keep moving forward, we had to pass through one of these arches.

As I looked at the path ahead, I felt a twinge from my space affinity. Something was mucking about with space around here again. That gave me a fairly good idea of what we were up against.

“I think we have to do the next part on our own. We can try it together, but I don’t think it’s going to work. My guess is that when we walk through one of those arches, we’re going to be teleported somewhere else. Likely, this is the individual portion of our test. If the path so far is anything to go by, I don’t think this first test will be very difficult. This one should just be here to help us understand the rules of the path. Be safe in there, and if you need to, use your real weapon. I would say that the only people who will learn about what happens during the test likely already know what you can do.”

“Right. Thanks, Fang.”

LiTing moved slightly closer to me but then quickly headed off in the direction of one of the gateways, disappearing as she crossed its threshold. I sensed a confusion of emotions coming from her that I was entirely incapable of dealing with at the moment.

Setting myself, I chose my own gateway and entered.

The scenery around me flashed, and the arch disappeared, but the rest of the landscape remained exactly the same. The only real difference was that a large boar as tall as my shoulders appeared in front of me. However, it was only at the level of a Peak Master, so I didn’t even bother testing its strength. I threw out a qi-powered fist and killed it in one hit.

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With my enemy dead, the stone arch reappeared, and I walked through. The scenery around me flashed once more. I looked around. Everything had returned to ‘normal,’ and I was on the other side of the original arch.

Only moments later, LiTing appeared from another arch, gave me a brief smile, and started down the road.

The second section of the path had enemies around Grandmaster 1 or 2, and the third section had enemies around Grandmaster 3 to 5. The difficulty of the path was slowly increasing, but I was able to hold my own against this level of opponent without too much effort. The training I had done was showing its worth, and I had no difficulty keeping us both safe as we continued forward along the path.

At this point, LiTing wasn’t having any trouble against the beasts either, and I expected her to be able to defeat up to at least the third checkpoint’s boss monster without much problem, but we were both worried about what would happen at the end of this path. The way things were going, there should be five sections to this path, and at the fifth checkpoint, we would have to fight against a Peak Grandmaster demon beast.

Even with her refined weapons, LiTing would have a difficult time with that, so to prepare, she decided to spend more time fighting against the boss monsters at the earlier checkpoints to practice and prepare for the later ones. So, after I quickly finished off my enemy at the third checkpoint, I found myself waiting outside for LiTing to finish her practice session.

When someone did appear, they did so from the wrong arch. A woman roughly LiTing’s height walked out of the arch farthest from me and carefully looked around at her surroundings. The moment she saw me, I felt excitement well up within her, and she raced off down the path to the next checkpoint.

This worried me, but unless I was willing to kill a total stranger unprovoked, there wasn’t too much I could do about it. If that had been a scout for Lord Hao, I didn’t doubt that she had just raced off to coordinate with others. We would need to be more careful going forward.

If I had to guess, I would say that the most likely place for an ambush would be at the exit of a checkpoint. That would let our attackers target us while we were alone and vulnerable. It was a potentially dangerous situation, but as long as we expected it, we could be prepared.

As we walked toward the fourth checkpoint, I couldn’t detect anyone waiting for us on either side of the stone arch. The arches played with space, though, so that didn’t necessarily mean too much. Once I defeated the checkpoint’s Grandmaster 8 boss, I took a formation stone out of my storage space and looked at it.

This formation was the first precaution that I had put in place against anyone who might be ambushing us. Using formations to create a watch was beyond my abilities, but creating something that would light up after a set time wasn’t too difficult.

After 15 minutes, my formation stone lit up with a bright white light. I placed it back in my storage space for later and approached the arch that served as the checkpoint’s exit.

I took out several small formation stones from my storage bag and threw them through the exit. A few moments later, I walked out carefully and surveyed my surroundings.

Even in energy vision, the only items of note in my surroundings were the five formation stones lying on the ground. After picking them up, I looked back in the direction of the arch and saw that a small white stone remained exactly where I had placed it on the other side of the archway.

Since the arches were moving us through space, I wanted to use that stone to check if we were being returned to the same place we left or if it was a different area that only looked the same. The white stone remaining where I had placed it seemed to confirm that we were simply on the other side of the same arch, but I didn’t fully trust that to be true.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being teleported somewhere completely new after leaving each checkpoint. And if that were true, it meant it was possible for someone to ambush us as we exited a checkpoint even if it didn’t look like anyone was waiting for us when we entered.

I turned to my right just as LiTing stepped out of her own checkpoint. We nodded at each other and then quickly moved off to the side of the path, out of easy view of any spies that might be lurking about.

Walking off the path wasn\'t a way to avoid our enemies, but it was a way to keep them from knowing exactly when we would arrive at the next checkpoint.

For the fourth checkpoint, I hadn’t considered this too important. I simply didn’t believe that was where we would face an ambush. If Lord Hao was going to send people after us, they wouldn’t know for certain which path we took. The most likely scenario was that they would rush to the end of the shortest path and then wait for us in the area where all three paths converged on the way to Yellow City. That way, all our attackers could gang up on us right as we left the final checkpoint.

The scout who spotted us earlier was no doubt on her way to tell them where we were and when to expect us.

When we approached the final checkpoint, I looked around carefully, but I didn’t see anyone on either side of the archway. It seemed like we wouldn’t need to worry about any ambushes. I didn’t believe that for even a second.

Over the past few hours, I had worked out a plan. After explaining it to LiTing, she didn’t seem overly happy about it, but she agreed to it. I set our formation timers to one hour and we stepped through to face the final boss monster. I could only hope that one hour was enough time for LiTing to defeat her opponent and restore her energy for what came after.

The fight was against a large demon bull, but compared to the golem that I fought at the end of the Earth Peak Trial, it didn’t pose any challenge at all. However, since I had some time to burn, I still spent close to half an hour practicing my fighting skills with the sparring partner I had been provided.

After my opponent was defeated, I sat down to cultivate. Time passed and my formation timer turned a bright blue. That meant I had five minutes left. I could only hope that LiTing had finished her fight, because if she hadn’t, what came next might interfere with it.

“System, change my physical appearance to that of WuJing, and change LiTing’s physical appearance to that of…”

I stumbled. What name should I give? Mei? SuYin? Jiao? These names were quickly considered and rejected. They had too much weight behind them. Another idea brushed my consciousness but drifted away before the thought fully formed. Finally, I said the only name I could bring to mind.

“Change LiTing’s physical appearance to that of Meng LuYao from South Gate City’s Blue Wind Pavilion.”

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After changing into a new robe, I walked up to the stone arch. Even if I hadn’t seen anyone on the other side, I was sure people were waiting for me. I retrieved a handful of formation stones from my bag and threw them into the arch. Twenty seconds later, I stepped through.

Around me, the entire area was in pandemonium as nearly a dozen cultivators hacked and slashed at the air, injuring each other in the process. I slipped into the crowd unnoticed and did my best to look like I was a random lackey who joined the crew.

The formations I had deployed were from my work with Yan and had various illusions incorporated into them. Ideally, I would’ve had an invisibility formation, but that wasn’t something that could be done easily without an illusionist actively controlling it.

Since I couldn’t be invisible, I needed to be unnoticed. Each of these formations created a copy of my image that fought against anyone within range. They couldn’t do any actual damage, but they were strong enough illusions to make people think otherwise, and with so many cultivators firing indiscriminately at illusions, many people ended up being attacked by their compatriots.

Less than a minute after exiting the checkpoint, I saw a somewhat familiar form appear in the crowd. She was a beautiful middle-aged woman who looked several years older than everyone else present.

I realized the small mistake I had made. Meng LuYao was a mortal, and while age had barely touched us cultivators, she would be nearly two decades older than the girl I remembered from when I first arrived in South Gate City.

Still, I knew it was LiTing, so I sent out a quick flash of energy to catch her attention.

The two of us carefully snuck away from the increasingly bloody battlefield.

In our disguises, we entered Yellow City without causing even a hint of a commotion. However, I knew that if I used my name or identity jade, I would quickly bring the wrath of an angry Lord down upon my head. Even disguised as we were, I was worried that a minor slip-up could cost us our lives, so the two of us hurried to the ‘temple’ and purchased the karmic energy we needed.

After that, we didn’t even wait around long enough to advance to Lord. We immediately exited the city and headed down the road to Profound City. We didn’t rest for even a moment until after we entered the Path of Soul.