Chapter 30: The Ingenious Box Turns the Tide

“I suspect that we have all fallen under some kind of spell,” the Junior Supreme Lord said, taking a deep breath.

“You mean, an illusion?” The moment he heard this, Hua Sheng felt a nervous contraction in his stomach. He recalled that on the subject of illusions, Immortal Yu Ran had once explained in class that illusions could be cast on multiple people simultaneously. If the illusion was at the Profound Illumination level or even the higher Lingxiao level, it could make everyone see the same thing. That was not at all unusual.

But the problem was, even if he himself had been deceived, Junior Supreme Lord, Mie Ying, and Tian Jizi were all top experts of the Academy of the Dao. For a spell to fool such immortals and spirits all at once, the caster would have to be at least an Immortal Master.

“It’s not just an illusion,” Junior Supreme Lord added, “we are probably inside some kind of formation, which is why none of us sensed anything amiss.”

Indeed, everyone had been exhausted after two rounds of trials, and upon seeing the familiar Academy, they had naturally let down their guard. Moreover, in the Divine Mind Calculation trial, Hua Sheng had witnessed the entire arena transform by means of the Universe Ring. It was entirely possible that this place, too, was conjured by some magical artifact.

A suspicion gnawed at Hua Sheng: if everything they saw was a mere illusion, when did the hallucination begin?

“If we’re inside a formation, does that mean the Celestial Eye Trial isn’t over?” he asked.

“It’s too early to say,” replied the Junior Supreme Lord, “but we absolutely cannot stay here any longer.”

His doubts and unease banished all trace of sleepiness. Hua Sheng pinched his arm to keep alert, then left the courtyard with the Junior Supreme Lord, one after the other.

They had just reached the gate when they nearly collided with Qi Guang, who looked thoroughly flustered. The moment he saw Hua Sheng, he grabbed his shoulders and cried, “Something’s wrong! My room is gone—it’s—”

Qi Guang shook him so hard that Hua Sheng grew dizzy. “Wait! Calm down, just tell me slowly.”

“Everything in my room is gone!” Qi Guang stammered.

“The room is empty?”

“Yes!”

“You mean, the kind of empty where there’s nothing at all inside, like you went into the wrong room? We understand. But that’s not important. What matters is that we may be under an illusion, so it’s possible we’re seeing—”

Qi Guang cut him off and dragged him inside. “No! You have to see this for yourselves!”

Despite suspecting that their senses were deceived, Hua Sheng was still shocked when he entered the courtyard of Qi Guang’s residence. He had expected that the furnishings, or perhaps even the rooms themselves, had vanished. But what he saw was far stranger.

The dormitories in this area were all built to much the same pattern, each courtyard and room in its place. But before them now was nothing but blackness.

The courtyard was not brightly lit, but by moonlight the gravel path at their feet was still clearly visible—up to a point. Where the path should have led to the dormitory, it simply ended, and the entire building had vanished without a trace. More than that, it wasn’t an empty space that stood before them, but an expanse of impenetrable darkness, like a bottomless pit that swallowed everything.

“What is this thing?” The Junior Supreme Lord spoke, unable to find a better word for what they saw.

Hua Sheng studied the irregular patch of blackness. “It looks like a strangely shaped bottomless hole.”

But it was clearly not a cave; there was no mountain here to contain such a thing.

Hua Sheng paced to the left and right, trying to see if it was a giant black curtain, but found no edges. He bent down, picked up a pebble, and tossed it into the darkness. The stone vanished as soon as it crossed the threshold—no sound, no bounce, no echo, as if it had never existed.

He formed an incantation and sent a fireball into the dark. The fireball illuminated the air outside, then began to fall once it entered the blackness. Clearly, the void within was vast and empty. The fireball shrank as it flew further and further away, never fading out, until it was a mere twinkle in the distance, still burning.

By his own reckoning, it must have traveled at least a hundred miles.

“This isn’t even the strangest part,” Qi Guang said, leading Hua Sheng and the Junior Supreme Lord out of the courtyard to the back. If the darkness were a bottomless hole, it should reach the rear of the house. But when the three of them got there, they found the courtyard wall intact.

They leapt atop the wall and saw that only the dormitory’s space had turned black. From every angle, where the room should have been, there was only blackness.

If he had to describe it, it was as if a piece of space itself had been gouged away.

“It seems your room isn’t the only one affected,” said the Junior Supreme Lord.

Looking around, Hua Sheng and Qi Guang saw that the surrounding dormitories had become incomplete—some, like Qi Guang’s, had vanished entirely; others were missing pieces, and some had even lost their courtyard walls.

Qi Guang grew anxious. “What’s happened to the Academy? Where is everyone?”

“Clearly, this is not the Academy,” Hua Sheng replied. “We’re trapped in a formation.”

“A formation?” Qi Guang echoed.

“Exactly. We have to get back to the stone box! We can’t be the only ones who’ve noticed something wrong; everyone who has must be heading for the meeting point.”

Without delay, the three mounted their clouds and flew to the stone box at the Sacred Dao site. As soon as they landed, they found Mie Ying, Xuan Wen, and Tian Jizi already there—Mie Ying’s hair had reverted to its golden-brown hue.

Qi Guang, seeing the one who had tormented him, shrank behind Hua Sheng and stole a few glances.

“What are you staring at? Never seen a girl change her hair before?” Mie Ying snapped.

Qi Guang stuck out his tongue.

“Keep it up and I’ll pluck out your eyes!”

Hua Sheng addressed Mie Ying, “You noticed it too?”

“I went back to my room and found everything gone! I’m furious!” Mie Ying puffed out her cheeks. “All that money spent on makeup and perfumes—and now it’s all vanished!”

“Now’s not the time to worry about that. Tell me—did everyone see strange black things near their dorms?” Hua Sheng asked.

Tian Jizi spoke, “If this isn’t the Academy, we must still be inside the Celestial Eye Trial.”

Xuan Wen added, “If the trial isn’t over, then we’re still in it. But which round are we in?”

Hua Sheng recalled, “We’re certain the Torch Battle was completed, and we advanced from the Divine Mind Calculation trial under normal rules.”

“But we didn’t see the supervising Immortal for the second round,” said the Junior Supreme Lord.

“No, I did,” Hua Sheng replied. “When I left, I saw the Immortal Overseer—Immortal Qingmiao.”

“You’re sure she was supervising?” Qi Guang pressed.

“Absolutely. Not just me—Mie Ying saw her too.” Remembering his promise to keep Qingmiao’s secret, he kept his answer vague.

Mie Ying played with her curls and said nothing.

The Junior Supreme Lord frowned. “If what you say is true, then the first two rounds must be over. But if we’ve left the Celestial Eye Trial, then what is this place disguised as the Academy?”

Tian Jizi said, “If we’re in a formation, it’s likely this is the third round of the trial.”

Hua Sheng thought of how the last arena was conjured by Qingmiao’s Universe Ring. This place, too, was probably the work of a magical artifact.

“But if this is the third round, as Tian Jizi said, he’s participated in the Celestial Eye Trial for ten years and has never seen a round with no instructions or rules, and no supervising Immortal. Why trap the candidates here?” Xuan Wen murmured.

This made everyone uneasy. Who had set this formation, and for what purpose?

“Speaking of everyone, has anyone seen Rong Ping?”

If Qi Guang hadn’t asked, they might have forgotten the chubby disciple.

“You were the last to see him,” Tian Jizi said to Hua Sheng.

“That’s right. Before I returned to the dorm, Rong Ping said he wanted to stay and study the stone box a while longer.”

“Studying the stone box?” Tian Jizi walked behind it, then called, “It seems…”

The others followed and saw a torn sleeve of an Academy robe on the ground, stained with blood.

“Blood!” Mie Ying immediately covered her eyes.

A heavy silence fell.

Junior Supreme Lord studied the sleeve. “Could this be Rong Ping’s?”

Hua Sheng braced himself and went closer, examining it without picking it up. “Rong Ping had a cut on his forehead earlier—he used his sleeve to wipe the blood, so this must be his. But the blood at the torn end is much heavier.”

One end was smeared as if from wiping, but the tear was soaked through.

“Are you sure it’s his?” Mie Ying’s voice trembled behind her hands.

Hua Sheng remembered clearly that Rong Ping had wiped his forehead with his sleeve before they parted. “It should be his.”

Mie Ying began to stomp in panic. “Don’t scare me! I’m terrified of blood!”

Junior Supreme Lord said, “If that’s Rong Ping’s sleeve, then clearly something happened to him not long after we left.”

Qi Guang suddenly called out, “Rong Ping! Rong Ping!”

“Don’t shout so loudly!” Mie Ying scolded him. “You startled me!”

But despite Qi Guang’s cries, the surroundings remained deathly silent.

Xuan Wen said, “You fool! If you shout like that, what if whatever dragged Rong Ping away comes for us?”

“Hey! Don’t be so grim!” Mie Ying shouted at him.

“Am I wrong? Maybe something is lurking in the dark, waiting for us to split up so it can pick us off one by one!”

Mie Ying shrieked and covered her eyes again.

Hua Sheng said, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Rong Ping is only missing for now.”

“I’d say his fate is uncertain,” Tian Jizi replied.

“But aren’t the Celestial Eye Trials supposed to be safe for the participants?” Mie Ying asked.

Everyone’s faces were grave; no one answered.

“If it’s dangerous to be alone, then apart from me and Junior Supreme Lord, everyone else slept in different dorms. If being alone was fatal, we’d all be missing. Clearly, that’s not the case,” Hua Sheng reasoned.

“So what are you saying?” asked Xuan Wen.

“I guess Rong Ping discovered something while he was here alone…”

He muttered a spell for illumination, casting light around the area, and examined the bloodstained sleeve and the wall of the stone box. The wall was smooth black rock, nothing unusual, but upon closer inspection, he spotted faint dark red streaks.

“There seems to be… blood on the wall?”

“Splashed there?” someone asked.

“No,” Hua Sheng replied, noticing the blood had dried in narrow trails. He looked up. “It wasn’t splashed—it dripped from above.”

Mie Ying shrieked, “I’m terrified of blood! Especially lots of blood. Don’t tell me that fat guy died up there!”

Hua Sheng leapt atop the stone box. He found no sign of Rong Ping, nor anything out of the ordinary—just a dark rectangular platform.

The others joined him; only when nothing happened did Mie Ying finally come up.

As expected, the dried blood on the wall had trickled from the platform’s edge.

“Rong Ping was likely attacked up here for some reason, and his sleeve was torn off,” Hua Sheng deduced.

He looked around—the central avenue was straight and lined with thick trees. Nothing seemed amiss. He stepped to the center of the platform and, by the light in his hand, knelt to study the rock surface.

The stone was scored with countless lines, but some of them formed a pattern.

Were those… letters?

The script was heavily worn and hard to make out, but changing perspective, Hua Sheng gradually discerned that lines of text had been carved into the stone.

“There are words here!” he called.

Brushing away dust, he revealed four larger characters and read them aloud:

“The Cunning Box Decides the Trial?”

Everyone crowded around.

“The Cunning Box Decides the Trial? So we’re still in the Celestial Eye Trial?” said the Junior Supreme Lord.

Hua Sheng examined the rest. Most of the text was illegible, but he read what he could.

“Guard the Eight Trigram Porcelain Box… Endure the Box’s Trial…”

“The Path to Victory is hidden in the Yin-Yang Cunning Box… The candidates are to open it and obtain it…”

That was all he could make out.

“So the Path to Victory is here?” Xuan Wen slapped his thigh. “Not only is it the Celestial Eye Trial, but this is the final round!”

“Wait!” the Junior Supreme Lord interjected. “If this is the trial, why are the rules hidden so obscurely? And with so much blood here, Rong Ping must be seriously injured.”

“And the last two rounds made it clear that we weren’t to harm each other,” Mie Ying added. “So why is someone hurt now?”

Qi Guang stammered, “But… we can’t be sure the blood is—”

Mie Ying cut him off, “Isn’t it obvious? That torn sleeve is definitely his!”

A strange thought occurred to Hua Sheng. Rather than odd rules, it felt like something else entirely.

“I wonder,” Hua Sheng ventured, “if something has gone wrong with the Celestial Eye Trial.”

“Gone wrong?” the Junior Supreme Lord caught the ominous tone. “What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to describe. This is my first time in the trial, but after two rounds, I sensed that no matter the rules, the heart of the Celestial Eye Trial is to create an environment where the candidates compete according to clear rules for limited advancement.”

“That’s right,” said Mie Ying.

“But what if—just as sometimes amusement park rides break down—we’re now stuck inside a magical device that’s malfunctioned?”

No one spoke. Yet the bizarre circumstances lent weight to his theory.

“You fool! You think the Celestial Eye Trial is some mortal amusement park?” Mie Ying put her hands on her hips. “This is an immortal formation maintained by the Academy! How could it malfunction? There are Immortal Masters overseeing it. If it were shoddy, would it still be a formation?”

The Junior Supreme Lord agreed. “Mie Ying is right. The Academy’s immortal formations can’t go wrong. The Celestial Eye Trial has run for five hundred years—it’s a testament to the Academy’s power.”

“But the Academy would never deliberately hurt its own disciples, would it? That’s against the Dao,” said Xuan Wen.

Mie Ying brushed everyone aside. “Let me see!” She bent down and touched the stone. “Ugh, filthy.”

Suddenly, she must have triggered something. Red dots of light blossomed on the platform and began to sketch patterns on the stone, forming the Taiji symbol, then extending outwards until a full Eight Trigram Diagram appeared.

Taiji begets Two Forms, Two Forms beget Four Images, Four Images beget Eight Trigrams.

But unlike the usual black-and-white Taiji, the white half was a deep, bloody red—giving the whole diagram a sinister cast.

“The Blood Taiji!” Qi Guang’s voice cracked with terror, almost unrecognizable as his own.