Pathway

In order to learn something about where he was, Ju Feng had been feigning total memory loss. Something he said he had been suffering from despite all the medicinal plants and spirit plants he had been using. They had believed him and even sympathized with him. It was just the situation the boy found himself. After all, they all need to survive the 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 Oclegus galaxy as the planet Lorra, the home world of Ju Feng. Charat was a massive giant planet with a surface area of over five billion square kilometres, and a population of over twenty billion people.

Planet Charat was under the rule of a supreme sovereign who went by the name of 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 totally killed, he would continue to live for eternity.

Supremacy in a mortal world was determined by the level of cultivation and artifacts. Therefore, any ruler with divine artifacts 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 continents. Maferion[The Fortune Empire], Tioborat[The Etherel Yonder], Amuzan[The Jade Sanctuary], Cholinica[The Golden Lands], Nutipia[The Scarlet Empire], Vlethora[The Azure Nexus], Solicia[The Sacred Vale], Chilador[The Eclipse Domain], Emmirim[The Infernal Territory] and Palitara[The Undying World]. Each of these continent was being ruled by an Overlord.

Each continent was divided into ten Kingdoms with each of these kingdoms being ruled by a king. Each kingdom was made up of many cities and villages. The cities were governed by the lords and the villages by the chiefs.

His three room mates were from the same continent, Maferion but from different villages.

Jiang was from the Cloud Sea village.

Fa was from the Spring Moon village.

And Chuan came from Oracle Reach village.

The Flying stars sect that he found himself in, was regarded as one of the smallest sect on the Maferion continent despite being bigger than the Last-Sword sect on his home planet. 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.

With all the received information, he had a proper 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.

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 that daybreak was happening. By the look of it, the day had the potential to be a very bright and beautiful one.

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 had already finished preparing themselves and were standing beside their beds. He hurriedly followed suit by standing beside his bed of woven bamboo mats.

There were rules and regulations that every sect followed. For the Flying Stars sect, one of the regulations was that, every morning at daybreak, 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 today 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 leading them, they marched towards the arena. Audience were still streaking into the arena in numbers.

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 will be engaging in the Twenty Golem Steps. There were twenty sinkable bamboo sticks erected on the ground of the arena, these bamboo sticks are guarded by iron golems. You will need to move from the beginning to the end on these bamboo sticks. If you stay on a bamboo stick for too long, it will start to sink. If your feet touched the ground, the arena will be locked down and you will be attacked by dark steel golems for five minutes before the lock is removed. You have the maximum of fifteen minutes to navigate 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 will be accepted by a master. 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 star movements making it difficult to navigate.

Temporarily imbued in the ground, was the Space Seal array, a formation that would activate when a cultivator stepped on wrong bamboo stick and the cultivator's leg touched the ground.

Navigating the arena is all about the stars movements. But, the problem was the ever changing pattern.

Talismans were imbued into the core of these golems that were going to be facing. Talismans that made them recognize and follow the rules and regulations of the ground. Any wrong step on the part of the cultivator, and they would instantly be surrounded by dark steel golems of the same level and strength.

One by one, they started undergoing the heavenly mammoth dance.