Sam is having the easiest fight of the three checkpoints.
The whole forest became his target as he shot arrow after arrow filled with golden flames and Yanwu is burning down the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Hou Yi is having the second-worst time of his life. His wife leaving will always take the first place.
This Hou Yi has a weird enmity with the golden sun crows. He destroyed their tribe's ancestors leaving the only one which is a one-way ticket to the irreplaceable hate to the Golden sun crows.
They hate him like no other and Hou Yi who liked to brag and act pompous always showed an intense amount of disdain to the golden sun crows and their tribe. That is because they didn't take revenge against him.
But from what Yanwu said, it is an order or more like the agreement between the tenth ancestor and King Yao who ordered Hou Yi to deal with the problem of the ten suns.
The story is similar to what Modern earth's Chinese mythology portrays, but there are many differences and the first one is, Hou Yi is not as exaggeratedly strong as that story. It only happened because of the special arrows King Yao gave him and when the ten arrows are gone, the tenth ancestor or the tenth golden sun crow, who is the strongest of them all is still alive and kicking
As for the actual conflict, the ten golden sun crows gathered together as a protest about something and wanted to make King Yao come out and talk to them, but King Yao who is too lazy sent Hou Yi to see what the problem is, and he also gave the ten arrows to him just in case of emergency.
But this Hou Yi who is already known to slay many beasts that are running rampant in the heavenly realms, got too full of himself and provoked them too much, and attacked directly.
When the tenth ancestor tried to kill Hou Yi, King Yao has to come in and mediate.
It is a contract between King Yao and Hou Yi, that the former would protect the latter from any repercussions of the tasks he handed over and Hou Yi used this as a loophole to escape the immediate predicament as the tenth ancestor is not exactly confident in defeating King Yao.
That contract between both of them is only valid for a few more centuries, so the Golden sun crow tribe is waiting for the contract to be over and once it is over, then Hou Yi can count his blessings if the tenth ancestor just gives him a quick death.
Even Yanwu doesn't know the minor details, but this is the gist of the story. Then only Sam decided to use Yanwu as a medium to piss off Hou Yi.
But he didn't feel comfortable sending Yanwu alone as one of his companions.
He couldn't let Hou Yi take advantage of the situation and kill Yanwu. After all, it is specifically said that there is a chance for losing lives in the Palace of inheritances.
But now that he got a chance, there is no way he would let this go.
Sam had the most intense and direct archery battle he ever had as he shot one arrow after another and Yanwu destroyed every arrow that came towards him.
They just burned the whole forest and the beasts along with the archers that are inside and the task that was meant to test the abilities of the Player in a forest turned into a task that tests the calorific value of the forest trees and the beasts.
The only difference is instead of a sample, Sam is burning everything off and he doesn't care about the exact calorific value.
The third test was done and Sam went out once again and started his journey.
The fourth test is also some kind of direct confrontation with the archers, it is just that the archers are in a tower and Sam has to defeat the tower full of archers.
But Sam just changed it a bit and shot arrows directly at the tower, the tower is strong and most of the arrows impaled themselves in it without creating much damage. Even though it looked like a problem, Sam took advantage of this with his knowledge of formations, and his arrows are shot in such a pattern that formations are created on the walls.
The explosions started crumbling the tower and the archers came out to save their own lives, which didn't work that great as Sam killed them one by one as they came.
For the fourth test, the situation is almost the same. Sam just went on destroying the opponents and finally, the sixth round arrived.
The last round before he meets the Hou Yi.
But this time, the checkpoint didn't activate immediately. Sam just stood there.
Meanwhile, Hou Yi is banging his head as he thought of ways to deal with Sam. Actually, he manipulated the last two tests to make Sam pay for his arrogance, but the plan didn't work.
He increased the number crazily, but since they are of the same level and with the advantage of the terrain, Sam doesn't have much of a problem deal with them.
But now Sam already arrived at the sixth test but he didn't think of anything. As for the original test, he didn't think of using it, Sam would just break it easily.
That is why he thought of it so much but couldn't find a way.
Sam doesn't know that he did more than enough to not just piss him off, in fact, he almost brought the crazy insecure side of this guy out.
After some time, he couldn't take it anymore and did something no other god or someone close to that position would do.
At this moment, every other player and Sam's friends all disappeared in the middle of their tests. Even Sam disappeared from the spot and all of them reappeared in an open field.
"I am tired of this slow process. One final test for all of you. In a group fight, the last person standing will win and reach the final test. No external gadgets are considered beyond weapons. Only normal weapons are allowed. No beast companions and no necromancy allowed."
While they are surprised by the sudden announcement and the weird extra rules, the remaining players other than Sam and his friend got an extra message.
"The one who kills Sam gets an extra reward."
The rest of the players were dumbfounded.
They looked at Sam and exchanged glances. They didn't expect something like this from a god. The one who had the weirdest reaction is actually Arkiv. He is kind of on a friendly basis with Sam. With all the help he got from Naga Loka and everything else, he couldn't bring himself to hate him to kill.
But the one who is trying to do that is his own mentor or patron or whatever these gods are for them.
This made it extremely weird for him.
Sam didn't know and he might not even care if he really did listen to it. Giving an order to kill him Is easy, but killing is different.
Sam looked at them and said.
"So, how do we start? One on one or a group fight?"
As he spoke, his friends also took positions.
Even Arman is on his side.
Even though the players might have an edge over Chatur, it would be hard to deal with Arman. As for the trio, they are deadly in their own rights, they don't have much experience in fighting them, but they don't dare underestimate them.
They broke through under the pressure of cultivating under Sam, which is enough to give them enough respect.
As for Sam the main target, they could just forget about it, they already heard of what happened when Kumar and Noah.
If all of them cooperated, then things would get nasty.
They don't want to turn this into enmity too.
So, finally, they decided on one thing.
"How about a tournament? Whoever wins will go for the final round."
Arkiv is the one who suggested this and they all agreed.
Hou Yi who looked at this felt even more frustrated. The fact that Arkiv gave this idea burned him even more.
Sam doesn't know that he made a god behave like a little pathetic young master who feels like the world should revolve around them.
He couldn't take it, by this time, he wants to kill Sam so desperately.
He watched the tournament so intently that he wanted to just jump into their shoes and kill Sam directly.
When this thought came to his mind, he suddenly halted all his stupid spoiled actions.
He looked at their tournament as he thought of the tournament order and looked at the situation on how it goes.
He estimated their positions and found out when Sam would meet Arkiv.
And when the time came, there is a creepy and evil grin on his face.
