A Path To Zhuji [VI]

In order to learn something about where he was, Jufeng had been feigning total memory loss. Something he convincingly revealed he'd been suffering from despite all the medicinal plants and spirit plants he'd been using. They had believed him and even sympathized with him. It was just the situation he found himself, afterall, the need to survive was a fundamental force of life.

And he had learned a lot from his three room mates Jiang, Fa and Chaun.

The planet, Charat, was a major mortal world of humans which was located in the same Mazha galaxy as the planet Lorra, the homeworld of Jufeng. Charat was a massive planet with a surface area of over five billion square kilometers and a population of over twenty billion people.

Planet Charat was under the rule of an supreme sovereign who went by the name emperor Qing Yuan. Emperor Qing Yuan was an hegemon cultivator who had reached the stage of immortal ascension but refused to ascend to the heavenly realm. Though, he would never be able to reach godhood, he had already attained natural immortality, unless he was killed, he would live for eternity.

Supremacy in a mortal world was determined by the level of cultivation and artifacts. Therefore, any ruler with a divine atifact was regarded as a supreme. Emperor Qin Yuan was a supreme sovereign in the possession of the Stellar Star divine armour. A water affinity armour with the total power of the universe, one of the divine artifacts created by the universe during the primordial creative expansion period. That made him a ruler of a massive planet with almost non existing opposition for hundreds of millions of years.

The planet he ruled, planet Charat, was divided into ten massive continets. Dajing[The Fotune Empire], Wupeng[The Etherel Yonder], Lujiao[The Jade Sanctuary], Hushan[The Golden Lands], Yangwu[The Scarlet Empire], Wubao[The Azure Nexus], Kantou[The Sacred Vale], Tashi[The Eclipse Domain], Gaolong[The Infernal Territory] and Dawan[The Undying World]. Each of these continent was being ruled by an Overlord.

Each continent was further divided into ten Kingdoms with each of these kingdoms made up of many cities and villages. The cities were gorverned by the lords and the villages by the chiefs.

His three room mates were from the same continent of Dajing but from different villages.

Jiang was from the Wuji village.

Fa was from the Linyi village.

And Chuan came from Guan village.

The Flying stars sect was regarded as one of the smallest sects on the Dajing continent despite being bigger than the Last Sages sect in his home world. On planet Charat, sects were ranked according to the size of the sect, the levels of the cultivators in the sect, the types of artifacts and manuscripts they possessed. The ranks determined the level of influence of the sects on the planet.

With all the recieved information, Ju Feng had a vague idea of the planet and how things worked in the world. 

Despite being one of the smallest sects on the planet, the premises of the Flying Stars sect was already extremely large and wide. It had more than five hundred disciples and over twenty masters and forty associate masters, not counting the savants and stewards.

If the sect was one of the smallest sects on the planet, how will the biggest look like?

The light of the morning was already seeping into the room which signified daybreak was happening. By the look of it, the day had the potential to be a very bright and beautiful one, and he secretly hoped it would turn out so.

He reached for the water basin and quickly washed his face. He used some of the water to clean his mouth before he quickly put some mint leaves in his mouth. He checked his robe to make sure it was in good condition before glancing at the other boys. He saw they'd already finished preparing themselves too and were standing beside their woven bamboo beds. Coming to a realization, he hurriedly followed suit by standing beside his bed of woven bamboo mats.

There were rules and regulations which every sect followed. For the Flying Stars sect, one of the regulations was the day-check. Every morning, the sect stewards in charge of the outer sections of sect premises, will entered the rooms to check their states. Then, they would marched outside ahead of him where they would be assigned their tasks for the day.

Some disciples would be sweeping and maintaining the premises, some disciples would be cutting the bamboo trees after which they would be arranging them in rolls, meanwhile, some disciples would be attending to the farms and gardens and others would be following stewards hunters to hunt

But on this day, it was different.

They would be following the sect stewards to the sect arena where the names of the successful disciples would be disclosed. After they had all assembled together, they were arranged into groups of ten. Their faces were radiating their anxiousness, the anxiety of anticipation that was mostly affecting the outer disciples. Not knowing if you are successful in becoming an inner disciple or not.

With the stewards at the lead, they marched towards the arena. Audience were still streaking into the arena in numbers when they got there. Not long after they arrived, the grandmaster, putting on a white robe, arrived alongside the masters and associate masters, all in white robes.

He raised his hands to gain silence from the audience.

"I welcome you all to the second and final day of the Bloodgrit competition which started yesterday. Today, you'll be participating in the Hundred-Golem-Steps. There are twenty sinkable bamboo sticks erected on the ground of the arena. These bamboo sticks are guarded by iron golems. You'll need to move from the beginning of the arena to the end, your feet only on the bamboo sticks. However, if you stay on a bamboo stick for too long, it will start to sink. If your feet touched the ground at any time, the whole arena will be locked, and you'll have to face the dark steel golems for a period of five minutes before the lock is removed. Bear in mind, you'll have fifteen minutes to the arena. If you didn't get to the other side, your time will be up."

The grandmaster halted his speech as he looked from one face to another.

"Intelligence and strength. These are needed to achieve success in this competition. If you are successful, you'll be accepted by a house. Put your heart into it and success is yours. Wish you all well. Now, let's commence."

There were fifty outer disciples left after the first phase of the competition. They formed ten lines of five near the entrance of the arena from where they will be entering one after the other.

Intelligence with strength was truly the nature of the game. There were twenty sinking bamboo sticks arranged on the ground at irregular pattern from one end of the arena to the other. The bamboo sticks were continually changing in pattern according to the transformation arrays, making it difficult to tread.

Temporarily imbued in the ground, was another array. The Space Seal array. A formation that would activate when any of the cultivators stepped on the wrong bamboo stick, and the cultivator's leg touched the ground. Treading the arena was all about the stars movements on which the transformation arrays was based. As long as the problem of the ever changing pattern was solved, they would have a great chance of making it through.

Talismans were imbued into the core of these golems, allowing them to recognize and follow the rules and regulations of the ground. Any wrong step on the part of the cultivator and they would instantly be sorrounded by the dark steel golems of the same level of cultivation and physical strength.

One by one, they began to undergo the Hundred-Golem-Steps dance.