Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Several minutes had passed.
The giant probably remembered something, and it was looking at Yang Dingtian in a somewhat troubled manner like it wasn’t sure whether to kill him right away or to leave him be.
So it did recognize the ornament. That was for certain. The ornament probably served as some kind of command signal, but the giant wasn’t sure what it was instructed to do. It wasn’t even sure if Yang Dingtian had anything to do the Five Elements Hall, to begin with.
It probably wasn’t intelligent enough to ask questions. After all, it was just a statue, a gatekeeper built by those in ancient times.
Yang Dingtian, on the other hand, was wandering around the edge of hell. If the stone giant, say, remembered something unpleasant now, Yang Dingtian would’ve been mashed instantly along with Dugu Fengwu.
“Whoo…”
As though having made up its mind, the giant decided to withdraw its hammer and went back to sleep, which signified that the two intruders were free to do as they pleased.
Yang Dingtian took a long sigh of relief. Without Dugu Fengwu noticing it, he quickly opened his storage ring and put the teardrop-shaped ornament back in.
Dugu Fengwu had her eyes closed this entire time. She was waiting for her eventual end, but since the hit never landed on her, she slowly opened her eyes and saw that the stone giant had returned to being a statue.
“Yang Dingtian, just who are you?” Dugu Fengwu stared blankly at Yang Dingtian, but Yang Dingtian didn’t bother to answer back. He was just staring back at her in a very dulled manner.
“Stop asking that,” Yang Dingtian spoke after a while, “It’s either this or ‘I’m going to kill you.’ Is that the only two things you know how to say?”
“Honestly, I’m really not sure if I should kill you right here,” Dugu Fengwu replied, but Yang Dingtian couldn’t care less. It was scary the first time he heard it, but the words started to lose their meaning once they were repeated so many times.
“So do the five doors represent the five elements? Fire. Ice. Gold. Wind. Thunder. Is that it?” Yang Dingtian asked.
“Yes…” Dugu Fengwu said. Yang Dingtian could feel his heart beating really fast now. If what Dugu Fengwu said was true, then today was really his lucky day.
As far as Yang Dingtian could remember, the second stage of the Pig Slaying Sword Art, namely the Yin Yang Heaven and Earth Sword, needed a training ground which was composed of all five elements. In other words, the Five Elements Hall was basically a blessing to him, dedicated to helping him train to the next level.
“You were supposed to die from that fall, but you survived and found a secret realm,” Dugu Fengwu exclaimed, “And you said you would become a Great Mystic Martial Master in three months, which is borderline impossible, but now you’ve found the Five Elements Hall. Are you really blessed by the Gods?”
Yang Dingtian replied, “Actually, I’m not the only here.”
“So you’re saying I’m here because of you,” Dugu Fengwu sneered, “Well, before you get any more arrogant, how about you find an exit? Being a Great Mystic Martial Master is good and all, but it won’t be much use if you’re trapped here for the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, okay. So which door do you think would lead us out of here?” Yang Dingtian asked. “You’d have to try to know,” Dugu Fengwu answered, then turned to look at the five tall doors around them. Finally, after having made up her mind, Dugu Fengwu walked towards the golden door.
Yang Dingtian wasn’t sure about it, but he decided to follow her. He wanted to explore this secret realm as well, but most importantly, he wanted to find a way out.
As Yang Dingtian stood in front of the giant golden door, he gently placed his hand onto it and, surprisingly, was able to push it open with very little strength.
There was a massive, massive room inside, and at the other end, there was a door that was smaller than the one here at the entrance.
“Wait…”
After just taking one step in, Yang Dingtian found his body to be drastically heavier than outside, so much so that he almost fell flat on the ground.
It wasn’t certain how something like this could be done, but the gravity in this room was about three times the gravity on Earth.
There was no gravity back then, and now it was three times the normal gravity. And while it wasn’t like Yang Dingtian couldn’t move around, the youngling sword in his hand was really starting to become a burden.
Meanwhile, Dugu Fengwu didn’t spend any second to care about Yang Dingtian. Three times the normal gravity was nothing to her, so even if there were about one hundred meters of distance to walk, it still didn’t take much time for her to reach the door at the other end of the room.
Needless to say, this other door was the second door of the Five Elements Halls.
Compared to the last one, this door was not so easy to open, but Dugu Fengwu could still push it away with her mystic qi and made her way into the second room.
Once Yang Dingtian had entered too, he saw that this second room was smaller than the first one, at just about several tens of meters in both height and length. The door at the end was also smaller, and the route to walk there was shorter.
However, just as Yang Dingtian stepped in, the youngling sword in his hand almost crashed on the ground. It turned out that this room had three times more gravity than the last one, and Yang Dingtian’s youngling sword went from 9 times its original 150 kg in mass.
While shielding his body with his mystic qi, Yang Dingtian followed Dugu Fengwu and continued his way forward. He was still managing onto himself, despite the drastic change in the difficulty of this trial.
Having walked through the second room, Dugu Fengwu reached the third door. And although she took some time to open this third door, it seemed like she wasn’t at her limit yet.
Dang.
While having arrived in the third room, Yang Dingtian’s youngling sword immediately slipped out of his hand. It was like the floor was made out of magnet or something, and there was just no way he could keep holding onto it.
Dugu Fengwu was slowing down as well. It was three times the normal gravity in the first room, nine times in the second, so it’s twenty-seven times in the third room.
The staff Yang Dingtian was holding was about more than five tons right now. He couldn’t even hold it in his hand, let alone taking a step more from where he was at with it.
Dugu Fengwu, on the other hand, was somehow still managing. The youngling sword she was holding was about 1 to 1.5 tons right now, and she was still walking forward.
Yang Dingtian leaned his body forward. He wanted to grab his youngling sword, but the damn heavy thing just wouldn’t move.
“Agh!” Yang Dingtian screamed at the top of his lung. Using both of his arms, he was able to lift the youngling sword at about three cuns from the ground, but the thing still slipped out of his grip and made a loud noise as it fell.
Dugu Fengwu turned her head back, “You’ll have to give up that youngling sword here if you want to leave this place. Five tons is too much for you.”
“No way,” Yang Dingtian stated. “Stay here, then. I’ll search the path up head,” Dugu Fengwu replied while moving forward with her sword in hand.
Funnily enough, Dugu Fengwu’s breasts might be firm, but it was not as if they could withstand twenty-seven times the normal gravity, meaning that while she had to carry the youngling sword with one hand, she had to use her other hand to try lifting her cleavage from bottom up.
If Yang Dingtian weren’t in his current condition, he would’ve burst out laughing the moment he saw Dugu Fengwu like this. However, with all this weight around him, he decided to stay where he was and watched as Dugu Fengwu kept leading ahead of him.
While Dugu Fengwu was finished with the third room, she focused her mystic qi and began pushing the fourth door. This time, however, she had to push the door very slowly instead of pushing it away like before. That being said, she eventually got herself into the fourth room.
The fourth room was even smaller, and it was only about thirty meters tall.
Miserably enough, there was still another door at the end of this room. It’s like there really was no end to this whole trial.
Unlike previous times, though, the fourth door closed itself as soon as Dugu Fengwu went in, which meant that she and Yang Dingtian were completely separated now.
Yang Dingtian was left alone in the third room. He was standing next to his youngling sword, trying to pick it up with all the strength that he had. And just as he was able to lift it a bit, Yang Dingtian opened his storage ring and quickly put it in before it fell out of his grip again.
So, no problem with the youngling sword now. With that out of the way, Yang Dingtian started taking slow steps towards the end of this third room, which was twenty-seven times heavier than normal.
After two minutes, Yang Dingtian reached the end of the third door and was now in front of the fourth door.
“Agh…”
For a human, Yang Dingtian was already pretty overpowered. By pushing on this door, he could release about at least several tons of force from his body, but even that was nowhere near enough to make it flinch.
Seeing that he had no chance to enter the fourth room, Yang Dingtian gave up on trying to follow Dugu Fengwu. Instead, he decided to wait in front of the fourth door, while using his qi to resist the heavy weight around his body.
Five minutes had passed.
Ten minutes.
Thirty minutes.
An hour.
Dugu Fengwu was still not back yet. Yang Dingtian had no idea how many rooms she had gone into, and he didn’t know how many rooms were there either. And most importantly, was there even an exit out of this place? What if Dugu Fengwu had already found one and abandoned Yang Dingtian?
“Screw that woman. I don’t care if you leave me here. It’s safer without you around me anyway,” Yang Dingtian thought, then proceeded to return to the main hall of the Five Elements Hall.
Actually, even if he knew a way out, Yang Dingtian wasn’t planning on leaving early anyway. Finding a secret realm was no easy task, to begin with, so he might as well make the most out of this opportunity.
*************************
Once Yang Dingtian had returned to the main hall, his body was feeling so light that he almost believed he could fly. So this was what it was like to go from high gravity to absolutely no gravity.
As he took a deep breath of the fresh, relaxing air around here, Yang Dingtian could sense a very vigorous source of mystic qi in this palace.
He could feel it with his soul. At the center of this hall, there was a very concentrated, pure mystic qi floating around!
It was just like that time back at the Terror Manor during the Yin Yang Festival. While the level of the qi was not as strong as back then, obviously, given that the Yin Yang Festival occurred once-every-three-hundred-year, the level of the qi’s purity was almost identical.
And while still on the subject, the amount of mystic qi here was already more pure than most areas in this world. Most importantly, it’s completely pure, which meant that whoever’s surrounded by it could just absorb it without any filtering.
Come to think of it that this secret realm was just a massive formation of the five elements, those doors representing the different elements on each side. No wonder there was such a high concentration of mystic qi in the center.
Also, it would make sense that there was no gravity here. Since all the five elements were present, they would, essentially, cancel each other out, hence form a vacuum where only the purest essence remained.
If Yang Dingtian were looking for a spot to absorb the mystic qi here, then it would definitely have to be the center of this hall. That’s where the qi was at its purest and thickest.
With that being said, Yang Dingtian sat down and began his meditation. He closed his eyes, channeled his qi around his body, opened the entrance to his meridian, and started chanting lines from the Pig Slaying Sword Art.
Yang Dingtian couldn’t believe it.
He knew this place had a lot of mystic qi, but he didn’t expect it to be hundreds of times purer than the outside world. There was just a limitless amount of energy, so eager to flood through his body the moment he opened up his meridian.
Better yet, there was no one he needed to share it with. It was all his to take. In other words, a meditation session here would be more fruitful than doing it outside for two to three months.
