The first test

The group quickly walked up the bridge. When the group reached the part of the bridge hat curved upwards, they simply continued walking as if on a straight line. The gravity on the bridge was weird making them feel as if they were walking on a straight line on the ground even though they were walking up to the air.

Soon the bridge started to twist in the air like a screw. They found themselves lost in the clouds. After half an hour, they realized that they had reached above the clouds. On top of the clouds they found another small continent floating in the air. When they reached there, they realized that this continent was much smaller than the one they had come from. On top of the continent, they could see five more bridges leading up to the skies, disappearing into the clouds once again. There were a few waterfalls falling from the skies into the continent here. The continent was filled with vegetation that made it look like a magical forest. Tall tress rose to the skies creating a thick canopy.

When they saw the new continent, the entire group was stunned int silence. Other than Bai Yun they had all never even heard of something like this. They were shocked at the vastness and the magical nature of the world fragment. Even in blood moon they had never even heard of something like this much less seen one.

But Bai Yun was surprised by something else. World fragments having multiple floating levels were nothing new to him. He had seen worlds made up of multiple levels of floating mountains. He had seen worlds where the heavenly daos went haywire, like worlds were everything was upside down, where the people were inside out, and even a world where everything was made out of candy. So he was not surprised by the world itself.

What he did not expect that this was world fragment was still in a lower plane. A world such as this could be easily located by a strong enough god. The very fact that no one had found it yet was a miracle.

Just as they stepped onto the continent, they saw a sign in front of the bridge.

"Hello and welcome to the first test: Magical Forest. I am sure that you can all see that there are five paths up to the second test. Your mission is to navigate the forest and reach the five paths. But note that once the first person has stepped onto a bridge, then the bridge will start to collapse after a minute. So you better be quick."

The group looked at the five paths that were going up and chose the one closest to them. They decided to go for that one.

The group stood outside the forest and peered inside. They were hesitant to step inside as they had no idea what was inside the forest.

The trees in the forest were tall. They were over a hundred meters in height. Each tree towered over the group. The trees were completely green without any other color visible. Barely any light was coming through the thick canopy. But there was an eery silence covering the entire forest.

Bai Yun stood there and watched the forest for a while. He felt an oppressive aura coming from inside the forest. He had a feeling that this place was extremely dangerous.

But they had no choice but to head inside. Since they had already come this far, it was sink or swim for all of them.

Bai Yun stepped forward into the forest. Even though it was dark, all of them were cultivators at the peak of the qi condensation realm. They should be able to see, even if not perfectly, but at least adequately in the dark. But Bai Yun could barely see a few meters in front of him due to his injury.

It was only after he took a few steps into the forest that he realized that the others in his group had not entered the forest. He turned around to see them simply watching the forest. The eerie aura of the forest had completely subdued them. They had never faced anything like this in their lives before.

"Well don't just stand there." Bai Yun called out to them. "If you want to win the race, you need to first step inside the forest."

It seemed as if his words broke them out of a reverie. The leader of the group, shadow one, seemed to be almost ashamed at the fact that he had not come to himself all on his own. He grit his teeth and quickly stepped inside the boundary of the forest. The others gathered themselves and followed after him.

Once they were all inside, shadow one quickly directed them to move in a formation. He took the lead position and shadow ten was on the left side. Bai Yun covered their right side, while shadow forty four and shadow ninety brought up the rear. The other two were in the middle.

Initially shadow one wanted Bai Yun to be in the middle as he did not know of his skills, but Bai Yun vehemently refused. He was not going to be surrounded by a group of people he did not know. It was the same as throwing his life away. Finally they reached an agreement and decided that Bai Yun would take one of the sides.

As the group walked forwards, the five bridges quickly disappeared behind the canopy. But the seven of them had a good idea of the direction where the bridge was at, and they quickly went in that direction.

But the group was extremely careful. They took each step carefully as they were worried about the dangers off the forest. Since the person who owned the world fragment called this a test, it was obvious that it was going to be a lot more than simply walking to the bridge.

As they walked forwards, the forest seemed unchanging. All around them, tall trees rose to the skies. It seemed as if they were only marching on the spot instead of moving forward. Their knees were being scratched by the shrubbery. They could not see anything beyond their immediate vicinity.

One step at a time, all of them started to step forward. Bai Yun kept his ears open for any small movement that he could hear. They kept on walking for more than half an hour without encountering anything other than the oppressive silence broken only by the footsteps.

As time passed and nothing happened, the group slowly started to calm down. They were all highly wound up from the dangers of the forest at the beginning, but had calmed down by now. One by one they all started to relax.

Bu the only person who hadn't relaxed until now was Bai Yun. His feeling that something was wrong with this world fragment had not gone away. Thus he was still on high alert.

In this manner, the group advanced another quarter of an hour. Suddenly Bai Yun stiffened as he heard something. The sound was so faint that it was almost impossible to hear. But in the absolute silence bereft of wind, the sound was like rumbling thunder in Bai Yun's ears.

The same second Bai Yun froze, shadow one, who was leading the team, also stopped and raised his fist. Seeing his action, all the other members of the group stopped and started to look around.

Bai Yun was now completely focused on the surroundings, hoping to hear any more sounds. But try as they might, none of them could hear anything else.

Suddenly Bai Yun's eyes widened. He sharply turned and threw a knife at one of the two members of the group taking the rear. For a second they were all stunned. Bai Yun's movements were far too fast and far too sudden for any of them to react.

The next second the knife passed between the two of them who were standing at the rear and plunged into the middle of the ground just behind one of them. Before they could react and say anything, Bai Yun shouted "S**t."

He had completely turned around by then. As his eyes fell on the ground, an angry look appeared in his eyes. There, right next to the fallen knife, was a small vine that was creeping forwards towards them.

Bai Yun had felt something coming and turned. He had taken out the knife just in case. He saw the vine the moment he turned and threw the knife even though he could not recognize it. He just did so because when he passed by that spot earlier, there was nothing there. But due to his bad eyesight, he was not able to properly predict the trajectory of the vine and ended up missing it.

The vine froze for the shortest of moments and then slithered forwards at full speed towards shadow ninety. Thankfully shadow ninety was alerted by Bai Yun's knife throw and jumped forwards to avoid the vine. Bai Yun immediately took his sword, leapt towards the side and cut the vine. By now the rest of the group had seen the vine too. In front of their stunned eyes, the vine quickly retreated after being cut, while spilling some green blood like liquid along the away.

"Be careful." Bai Yun shouted. "This must be demonic plant. Such plants can often surround you. We better group up in a circular formation."

The rest of the group accepted Bai Yun's proposal and stood back to back. For a few moments, there was only silence. But then a small rustling was heard from all around them. It felt like hundreds of snakes that had their eyes on then slithering through fallen leaves to strike at them.

Not being able to see the various threats coming at them, they were all on the edge.

So the group gulped, held their weapons close, and waited for the fight to begin.