**Chapter 32: The Calm**

Hey everyone, apologies for the delayed update (none yesterday)! Moving forward, I've decided to adopt a new upload schedule based on whenever I feel the content is at its best, prioritizing quality over strict timing.

I'm also excited to announce a new fic by Bruhdamante titled "Reverend Insanity: White Shadow Demonic Venerable."

1. Among all Paths listed without any connection to a Venerable (*Blade Path, Bone Path, Cloud Path, Dark Path, Emotion Path, Enchantment Path, Fire Path, Ice Path, Illusion Path, Information Path, Light Path, Lightning Path, Metal Path, Moon Path, Phantom Path, Pill Path, Restriction Path, Shadow Path, Snow Path, Sound Path, Sword Path, Water Path, Weapon Path, Wind Path*), which combination of two would you choose?

2. Given the choice, would you prefer having 90% talent and being born as a mortal, or having 60% talent but being reborn as a rank 3 Gu Master?

3. What are your thoughts on Bruhdamante's new novel?

Discord: 5efZtawZKC

....

The yellow walls of light dissipated on their own after I spent all of my points.

What I saw was what I had expected, to be honest. Most people were looking around like me, with a few still in those small yellow rooms seemingly made of light.

But with each passing moment, more and more of these rooms disintegrated until, after three minutes, the last one did.

"Now that the appropriate rewards and punishments have been handed out, there is only one thing left."

*Snap*

"Ahhh…"

"Sob… Sob…. Make it stop."

For my part, I noticed a burning feeling on my hand, as if it had touched a stove on the outside and I was not letting it go.

This process happened to all the others as well. About 60% of people lost composure badly, crying or wishing to die. The other 40% had varying reactions, from low curses to gritted teeth. The ones who took it the best were like Mu Bao, strength Path cultivators.

It was a valuable opportunity to learn about my competition, so I made sure to feign a reaction and memorize the faces of anyone who did not show anything. These will undoubtedly be some of the stronger competitors I will have in the future.

"All of us have been marked on the right hand…"

Looking around, I noticed the newly formed marks, or should I say tattoos, on everybody's hands.

There were toads, spiders, flies, elephants… Basically, any animal you could imagine. And at first glance, I did not notice any animal repeating itself.

But every tattoo was only an outline; none of them were filled out, which made some animals look very strange.

With curiosity in my mind, I looked down at my own hand….

A snake.

"Very funny…."

"The land spirit might have looked into my Aperture, but if that is the case, at least it has a sense of humor."

"The next part of the trial will be more difficult; I recommend you and your Gu reach rank 2 before it."

"Oh, and it will start once half of you have indeed reached rank 2. Now out you go!"

*Snap*

Just like that, we were thrown out of the inheritance. From there, everything moved fast. For me, a Fei Yu clan Gu Master picked me up and brought me to the exact same tent we had all been assembled at one week ago.

I was getting a bit of déjà vu as the clan leader walked out onto the stage. And without waiting, he said:

"I have been informed of what has happened in that Inheritance."

"Out of 147 young Gu Masters of our clan that entered the Inheritance, you are the only ones who have been able to stay in the competition for the Inheritance."

"I will not make this too long. One of you needs to win. So there will be no school for those of you who would apply, and no mandatory missions for the others. All of you will get 500 primeval stones a month."

"There will be lessons once a fortnight, taught directly by me."

"One thing you should be aware of is that there are people out there who are willing to pay good money to see you all dead."

"That means none of you are allowed to leave our clan, but it also means that we will enforce stricter rules on anyone entering Fei Yu Island."

"Anyway, we are leaving here, right now. Me and all the elders will be on the same ship to prevent an attack."

...

*Swoosh*

*Crash*

*Swoosh*

My primeval sea mirrored the actual sea on the outside of the ship, one of them crashing against the hull of the ship while the other relentlessly assaulted my Aperture.

"Priority number one is to reach rank 2."

"Priority number two is for my full set of Gu to do the same…."

*Hummmm*

Looking at my right hand for the seventh time in the last five hours since the ship had set sail, as every few hours, in irregular intervals, the snake symbol would give off a humming sound.

"Especially considering this…."

My hand was only a few centimeters away from my face, and I was staring at it intently, without blinking.

"It definitely moved…."

I have a lot of birthmarks on my whole body, hundreds of them. Now, in my past life, I would have been worried about cancer, but this was about something different.

When I first got marked with that snake tattoo, I inspected it very carefully. There was this one birthmark that was very, very close to the tattoo, but it itself was not tattooed.

But just now, I saw that a small part of that birthmark was tattooed, directly after the tattoo vibrated for the seventh time.

"I think it's a timer…. If this tattoo becomes filled out, the second trial will start."

"The land spirit said that the trial would restart once half of the contestants reached rank 2."

"This leaves me with the suspicion that every time a contestant breaks through, the tattoo vibrates and fills itself in."

In effect, this would mean that 7 out of the 416 remaining competitors have already broken through to rank 2.

As only 208 have to break through for the trial to start, meaning that more than 3% of the requirement has already been met…

Now normally, I would not have been worried about this at all, as I already have rank 1 peak stage cultivation, much better than the average.

Like I would expect 50 to 100 people, including myself, to break through relatively fast, but everyone who is not rank 1 peak stage will naturally take a longer time to do so.

Well, what's my problem then, you ask?

-One thing you should be aware of is that there are people out there who are willing to pay good money to see you all dead.-

and

-Oh, and it will start once half of you have indeed reached rank 2. Now out you go!-

Now do you see the problem?

That's right, the more people are killed, the fewer overall competitors there are, which means half is getting closer….

There are 7 people who have achieved rank 2 at this point, so if for example, all but 14 people were to be killed right now? Then the second part of the inheritance would start right now.

"But there is nothing I can do about that, apart from cultivating faster, and trying to not be killed, of course…."

*Swoosh*

*Crash* ...

*Fei Yu Island*

A young man with long blond hair and a snake tattoo was sitting in front of the cauldron, just the standard version present in every refinement room of the refinement hall.

The room itself looked clean and tidy, but the floor on the right side of Zhen Wei did not. It was filled with a mountain of flesh, muscles to be precise.

If one had attainment in poison path, it would be possible to notice that the muscles belonged to beasts that had been poisoned, all of them rank 2.

"My Aperture will be nurtured enough to attempt a breakthrough in about a week, but I don't know when I will have to go to the inheritance again…."

I did not let myself be distracted by my thoughts as I lit the fire under the cauldron and chucked the first of the poisoned muscles in.

"So I should not waste time and start refining my Gu to rank 2."

After 15 minutes, the muscle was burned, leaving only a black piece of meat, about one-fifth of the original size.

Summoning the Poison Muscle Gu from my Aperture, I pet the little horned beetle.

But it did not let itself be distracted by me, its eyes locked onto the piece of burned meat in my other hand.

"Hope this works…."

As my hands closed in on each other, and before they could touch, the Poison Muscle Gu jumped onto the piece of meat and started devouring it.

Over the next few minutes, I watched something that would not have been possible in my past life: a beetle no bigger than 5 centimeters devouring a piece of meat three times its size and weighing over a kilogram.

*Munch*

*Crunch*

*Munch*

*Burb*

After the Gu had eaten its fill, it looked at me, as if to say:

"Was that everything already?"

"Seems that this refinement failed…."

I was not too disappointed, as I did not expect the refinement to succeed. It would even be a stretch to call it a legitimate refinement.

The Poison Muscle Gu, like the Woman's Heart Gu, is one of the rare ones that can be fed and refined at the same time.

Unlike with the Woman's Heart Gu, this was the unconventional way to refine it, with the conventional one being a normal Human Isolation Style Refinement. So this was more of an alternative.

"Well, I will just continue doing that. If it works, that's great; if not, that's not too bad either."

The Poison Muscle Gu was not part of my main Gu set, but also not in the same category as, for example, the Bookworm Gu.

"More of a side project to bring it to rank 2…."

"If I am honest with myself, I just did this first because I am kind of nervous about failing the refinement for the truly important Gu."

"But no use delaying the inevitable, so which should be the first to be ranked up?"

"I am just joking, of course it's going to be the poison refinement Gu…."

There were just too many advantages to choosing it. First, it is one of my vital Gu and cannot die in refinement.

The second thing is that I have dozens of rank 1 poison refinement Gu, as they are my main means of procuring poison. So even if I practice and fail a bit, it will not be as big of a problem as if I were to fail the refinement of the Thought Poison Gu, for example.

My problem is that I have quite a few rank 1 Gu that need to be upgraded but would be very bad to lose for my current self.

Standing up, I go from my refinement room to the dungeon.

Behind door number 1 was a room filled with about 100 Venomspine Beetles. Normally, this type of beetle would be very active, but they are constantly poisoned by different paralyzing poisons.

"Tsk Tsk Tsk."

"You guys are really a disappointment to your ancestors…."

"Let's see if we have gotten anything…."

My eyes darted through the room frantically, scanning for anything slightly different.

"Nothing there," I thought as I carefully inspected the floor on the right side.

"Nothing on the left either…."

As my gaze wandered to the wall, I saw some movement, nothing fast but way faster than any of the paralyzed Venomspine Beetles should be able to move.

"Bingo!"

What I did here was to breed these insects in the cell of my basement, and every day, I would use a lot of the poison my Poison Refinement Gu created to poison them all.

And from time to time, they would become resistant to an extent, and as they are poison-typed animals, if that happened, they would advance to rank 1.

Now normally, I would put these into another cell as a hopeful preparation for the refinement of my rank 3 Vital Gu, but this one would graciously have to sacrifice itself for the rank 2 version of the Gu, without ever having the chance to become rank 3 itself.

I did not stop at the first cell though; I continued until I had caught 7 insects, all of them advanced to rank 1.

"It would have never been this easy to catch them, but all their strength comes from poison. Poison that I created and gave to them, so it would be."

Walking back to my refinement room, I put a big glass container onto my desk, threw the 7 insects in there, and sat down in front of my desk.

"These are rank 1 beasts, so they should be aggressive enough, so I don't need to put flames under them, but they are also more durable, so it might take a while."

*Swoosh*

*Crash*

"Time is precious, no use wasting it…."

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