Chapter 12

The first stage of the trial began and Yun Che immediately took out his Overlord's sword, getting into his fighting stance. The effects of the Star Concealing pellet had worn off by now and he was visible again.

His enemies materialized in front of him. They were three Stone Dragon Warriors, each of them at 1st level Earth Profound realm, more than an entire realm above Yun Che. They were respectively holding a sword, a spear and a bow with a quiver of arrows.

It was significantly harder than the trial that the original Yun Che had taken in the original sequence of events, both qualitatively and quantitatively. But Yun Che was not daunted – he had already formed a winning plan and was going to execute it.

Opening the Heretic Soul, he activated the Star God's Broken Shadow. The archer had shot an arrow at Yun Che's previous location, but it only went through his illusion. The real Yun Che abruptly appeared in front of the archer Stone Dragon Warrior and executed his Heavenly Wolf Slash.

With his current cultivation, boost from the Heretic Soul and the extraordinary strength of the Overlord's sword, the Heavenly Wolf Slash was enough to destroy the 1st level Earth Profound realm Stone Dragon Warrior.

After the archer had been taken care of, Yun Che finally turned towards the other two Warriors. Now that there was no longer any long-range threat, he didn't have to use the Star God's Broken Shadow. Taking his time, he first destroyed the sword wielding Warrior, then beat up the spear wielding one until it was incapacitated.

But he didn't destroy the spear wielding Warrior immediately. Instead, he sat down at a distance and began recovering his depleted profound energy. Jasmine and the Dragon spirit were both baffled at this, but then finally realized what he was doing: as long as the last Warrior was not eliminated, the next wave would not appear. He was exploiting this rule to recover his profound energy.

This was the plan he had formed for the first stage.

A few minutes later when he had fully recovered, Yun Che walked over to the Warrior and easily destroyed him. A new wave of enemies immediately appeared – there were six of them, each at the 1st level of Earth Profound realm. Two were archers, one was wielding a spear, one was wielding a sword, one was wielding a blade and the last one was wielding a war hammer.

Yun Che used the exact same strategy as the last time – he used the Star God's Broken Shadow to evade the archers' attacks, then destroyed both the archers, then took his time to destroy the other four one after another, leaving the hammer wielder incapacitated.

This time he had consumed more profound energy than the previous time and took longer to recover to his peak. Finally, he went over and destroyed the last one.

The third wave appeared and this time there were 12 enemies, doubled again. Yun Che knew he wouldn't be able to deal with them all using the same strategy before running out of energy, so he used a stronger offense instead of the Heavenly Wolf Slash – after evading the arrows, he appeared before the archers and swung down his sword with 'Falling Moon Sinking Star'. All three archers were annihilated at once.

The rest of the enemies went down in the same way. After recovering his energy and destroying the last one, the fourth wave appeared, and they too went down with the same strategy.

For the fifth wave, there were 48 enemies, a number that couldn't be dealt with just Falling Moon Sinking Star. So he changed his offense to his newly created move – a combination of Heavenly Wolf Slash and Empyrean Dance of the Phoenix Wing. Each of his attacks was able to destroy 7-8 Warriors at once with its explosion.

The sixth wave went down in the same way and the seventh wave appeared, with a total of 192 enemies. Once again, the number couldn't be taken down with his previous strategy. So he used his offense with the largest range, which could eliminate the highest number of enemies at once – Star Scorching Demon Lotus.

Now, the Star Scorching Demon Lotus by itself couldn't have taken down someone at the 1st level Earth Profound realm at Yun Che's current cultivation, but it was indeed able to do so with Heretic Soul activated. Almost all the enemies instantly vanished and Yun Che easily took out the rest.

The eighth wave also went down with this same strategy.

Finally, the ninth wave appeared which had a total of 768 enemies. This number was, once again, too large to deal with the previous strategy, but Yun Che had no other offensive moves left with a greater range. So he used a different strategy.

After using Star Scorching Demon Lotus twice and eliminating half of the enemies, he had depleted all of his energy, but didn't have the opportunity to rest and recover. So he used one of the profound energy restoration pellets he had brought and his energy recovered to the peak in just a few seconds.

Using Star Scorching Demon Lotus two more times, he destroyed the rest of the Warriors.

Finally, after having recovered once again and destroyed the last Warrior, the final wave of the first stage of the trial appeared – a Stone Dragon General at the 6th level of Earth Profound realm, wielding an even more powerful heavy sword than Yun Che's Overlord's sword.

This was actually easy for Yun Che. Evading the General with Star God's Broken Shadow and opening Heretic Soul, he appeared right behind him and fiercely struck him with the combined Heavenly Wolf Slash and Empyrean Dance of the Phoenix Wing move. The General was critically injured but not immediately eliminated.

So Yun Che just repeated the attack once more and the General finally vanished, leaving behind the heavy sword Dragon Fault, a Sky Profound weapon. He immediately collected the sword into his Sky Poison Pearl.

The Dragon spirit appeared, "You have truly surprised me with your strategy and tactics. I am glad to see that at the very least, you aren't all brawn and no brain. Take some rest and recover your energy. When you are ready you will go to the second stage."

Yun Che took a few minutes to recover and then arrived in the vast wilderness where the second stage would take place. His objective was then made known – he had to kill 99,999 profound beasts within six months, which were at least at the 1st level Earth Profound realm.

Once again, the challenge was harder both qualitatively and quantitatively than in the original sequence of events. But Yun Che wasn't bothered – he had an easy way to complete this trial.

Concealing his profound aura, he sneaked into a part of the forest which had a large number of profound beasts, and executed the Star Scorching Demon Lotus. Hundreds of profound beasts were burned in an instant. Then he sneaked over to another region and repeated, which killed another hundred profound beasts.

He kept repeating this manoeuvre and his kill count increased dramatically. Whenever his profound energy was depleted, he would consume a restoration pellet and recover within a few seconds – he didn't want to waste any time recovering his profound energy naturally since this was a time consuming stage.

Of course, he would kill a beast physically with his sword once a day to satisfy his hunger.

In this way, he completed the task within just a single month. It was the easiest stage in the trial.

But the trial was not yet over. The Dragon spirit arrived once again and spoke, "Congratulations for passing this stage. Now you must mentally prepare yourself for the third stage. The third stage will be a test of mental strength just like in the Phoenix trial. Originally I wouldn't have taken this test since you had already proven yourself in the Phoenix trial, but the test for complete inheritance will be a lot more difficult. This is also the most crucial test."

Having anticipated this, Yun Che prepared himself. The first two stages were simply harder versions of the original trials, and were in fact somewhat easier since he didn't have to take care of a crippled person simultaneously. But this third stage will be truly new, since the third stage did not occur in the original sequence of events.

Soon, he found himself in front of Yun Gu, the original Yun Che's master from his previous life.