Chapter 302: Spirit of a Powerhouse (II)
“Captain, the ability you use is called Asura Strike right?” Wang Yuanyuan suddenly asked.
Long Haochen nodded, replying, “That’s right!”
Wang Yuanyuan smiled, “This ability seems more suited to me than Asura Thrust. I have just obtained it from that skeleton. I’ll train with it once we get back.”
Ever since he had gotten his Energetic Ball of Light, Sima Xian’s attack power surpassed hers, and Wang Yuanyuan was eager to take back her original standing in the team. And for that pursuit, the ability Asura Strike was a perfect match for her Gigantic Divine Soul Shield.
Long Haochen declared, “Let’s do it like this, we’ll leave Cai’er here at the tower, while everyone else will head back with me. Cai’er can recover her spiritual energy here, but you guys can’t.”
Although he was unwilling to leave Cai’er at the tower, this was her own request. Furthermore, she told him once again that the death energy in here was advantageous for her cultivation, and caused her to gain some new understanding regarding her Spiritual Stove of Samsara.
Leaving Cai’er pretty close to the entrance of the Tower of Eternity, Long Haochen launched the Eternal Melody’s teleportation.
After returning to their room, everyone went back to cultivating. Long Haochen’s experiment turned out successful; and proved that leaving someone in the Tower of Eternity was possible. However, he still didn’t stop testing the teleportation once every half an hour. He was truly anxious about the fact Cai’er stayed there.
Only six hours later did he feel that he was able to teleport again, and gathered his comrades at his side, impatient to return to Cai’er’s side.
Cai’er was all right, still cultivating in the same place. Long Haochen had brought some food and water especially for her, and gave it to her while the others had some more rest, before continuing their tests.
However, a change occurred.
The first, second and third test had unexpectedly disappeared, and as they started to think that the cause for that could be that Ca’ier hadn’t left with them, the six Skeleton Warriors and the four Specter Assassins of the fourth test appeared.
This was however not enough to cause them to panic, and by combining everyone’s ability, they barely managed to get rid of those ten enemies. However, it became impossible for them to challenge the fifth test.
The Tower of Eternity seemed to be an eternal mystery. Even now, they were far from being able to grasp its rules. Without any other choice, everyone returned back to their own world to cultivate, and Long Haochen agreed with the others to gather six hours later, to try the tower once again.
Making use of that interval of time, Long Haochen went to look for his grandteacher Han Qian, to learn about the basic abilities of a Guardian Knight of a sixth step. For those, the Tower of Eternity was going to become an optimal training place.
Over the following days, they entered the Tower of Eternity twice everyday , and as time passed, they finally managed to grasp some rules little by little.
The disappearance of the first three tests wasn’t caused by the fact that Cai’er had remained there at that time, but because they passed the fourth test. From that moment onwards, the first three tests had stopped to appear.
After some more tries, they finally encountered the guardians of the fifth test.
There were five Skeleton Knights and five specter assassins. After passing the fourth test one more and making the decision to challenge the fifth test, the pressure they had to bear was huge. Although they had the Demonic Eye of the seventh rank at their side, which prevented the Skeleton Knights and the Specter Assassins to display their full power, these undead creatures were still a terrible opponent. By chance, Lin Xin took a Great Recovery Pill at the crucial timing, recovering enough to launch another Fire Curse, restricting the specters and helping the team pass the fifth test.
However, they clearly didn’t have any strength left to challenge the sixth test. Thus, after re-entering, they once again started from the fourth test.
For this reason, they took the fourth and the fifth tests everyday, trying to use different battle patterns, while distributing the balls of spiritual energy evenly.
Continuously facing the undead creatures’ pressure, everyone started to harmonize better and better with each other, and more importantly, even if the seven of them had to share the gains, there were enough for them to gain close to sixty units of spiritual energy per day. Ten days later, Cai’er, Lin Xin, Han Yu, Wang Yuanyuan reached the bottleneck of 4000 units of internal spiritual energy. Even Sima Xian and Chen Ying’er went beyond 3,600 units of internal spiritual energy.
Absorbing more balls of spiritual energy after reaching a bottleneck would only result in waste, thus Sima Xian and Chen Ying’er naturally became the ones who obtained the balls of spiritual energy.
Every day completing the fourth and fifth trials of the Tower of Eternity, everyone managed to get balls filled with twenty units of spiritual energy. That was to say, the two of them gained more than two hundred units of internal spiritual energy every day.
Two days later, when Sima Xian and Chen Ying’er also reached the bottleneck of the sixth step, everyone felt as if they were in a dream.
Before coming there, no one among them would have expected that they would be able to reach the bottleneck of the sixthstep so fast. As long as they made some breakthrough, they would be able to become powerhouses of the sixth step.
Now, except from Long Haochen, the others’ spiritual energy also reached the bottleneck, and thus when they re-entered the Tower of Eternity, the balls of spiritual energy were naturally absorbed by him.
However, Long Haochen quickly had to tell everyone sad news: the balls of spiritual energy lost their effectiveness.
When Long Haochen’s internal spiritual energy reached 5,000 units, the balls of spiritual energy lost all effectiveness: although he absorbed a few of them, it had no progressing effect on his internal spiritual energy.
This situation caused everyone to feel a bit panicked. Returning to the normal situation after having gotten used to progressing so quickly every day definitely didn’t feel good.
“How did this happen? Could it be that spiritual energy can only be gained that way up to 5,000 units?” Lin Xin asked eagerly.
Long Haochen didn’t give a response, but sunk in his thoughts.
A long time later, Long Haochen responded with a serious tone, “This is likely the limit of the Tower of Eternity. After all, the cultivating speed here is just too fast. Based on this cultivating speed, it would only take us one year to get the chance to break through to the seventh step. Let’s try out the sixth test. If the balls of spiritual energy obtained then are still unable to make my internal spiritual energy increase, it will mean that at least on the first floor of the Tower of Eternity, the increase of spiritual energy is limited to a level of 5,000 units.”
Hearing Long Haochen say the words ‘first floor’, the others’ expressions immediately eased up. He was right, they were currently only on the first floor, and the Tower of Eternity had a total of seven floors. Who said that they wouldn’t be able to find this type of balls increasing one’s spiritual energy in the upper floors?
Han Yu replied with a sigh, “We should be already plentifully satisfied with the situation. Just how many are even able to break through past the bottleneck of the sixth step? After making a breakthrough to the sixth step, everyone will have spiritual cavities, and this will naturally increase our cultivation speed. Having a too easy time cultivating is not necessarily a good thing either.”
Wang Yuanyuan nodded, responding, “What Han Yu said makes sense. If everything becomes too simple, the progress will also lose stability. From my estimate, breaking through to the sixth step will be rather complicated, and that’s because our spiritual energy rose too fast.”
Long Haochen suddenly revealed a smile, “That’s for sure! Breaking through the bottleneck is enough of a pressure. And anyway, in this Tower of Eternity, pressure is really what we miss the least. Let’s go challenge the sixth test then.”
Now that everyone in the group except from him were at the peak of the fifth step, passing through the fourth and the fifth tests was already a lot easier than before.
But how about the sixth test? According to the current distance they had covered, the first floor came very possibly with nine or ten trials, and each one of them would be harder than the previous one. How could the pressure be low? In addition that they couldn’t make their spiritual energy progress anymore here, the pressure they bore was still tremendous.
But considering that they had to break through a bottleneck, being subjected to a great pressure would be of great help. Wasn’t it the pressure when facing the Moon Demon of the eighth step that helped Long Haochen to break through?
Placing themselves in a good formation, they decided to take on the sixth challenge under Long Haochen’s lead.
This time, they took no less than ten steps forward, before seeing a sudden change happen in front of them.
A white glow of light appeared suddenly, but unlike those undead creatures that appeared with a little spark of white light, this time it was a huge white light pillar that appeared.
Immediately afterwards, a red cloud appeared on the top of the light pillar, and a Skeleton Warrior like those they had faced before appeared.
That red glow was impressively a specter. Colored red, it was the first time Long Haochen got to see one of that kind. What they saw next was that red specter descended slowly, falling on the Skeleton Warrior.
Long Haochen attempted to launch a Light Thorn, but the blade of light disappeared instantly upon contact with the white pillar of light. This meant that preventing the red specter and the white skeleton to get in contact would be impossible for them.
Observing with caution, Long Haochen noticed that although that specter that had appeared so suddenly wasn’t different from the other specters in size, its energy concentration was a lot greater. If the other specters could be said to look very transparent, then this one seemed to look a lot more real, just like a lump of pure energy.
Without even giving him the time to search in the memories left inside him, the characteristics of that kind of specter appeared from his subconscious.
It was the spirit of a powerhouse. Only the soul of powerhouses with top-level innate talent had the possibility to keep their own attributes after their deaths. In case they became real undead creatures, they would then be a lot more powerful than those undeads without a consciousness of their own.
“Be careful, everyone. Those red specters are spirits of powerhouses, very possibly not only possessing fighting instinct, but furthermore battle skills in using the fire element. Lin Xin, don’t use Fire Curse, and focus on supporting everyone’s defenses.”
When used defensively, magic would reduce the elementary power of spells of the same elements, but attacks would naturally get weakened.
At the time Long Haochen was speaking, the red colored spirit of a powerhouse seemed to have dissolved into the Skeleton Warrior, and the latter, originally devoid of vitality, slowly raised its head, intense red light glowing in its eyes. Soon after, his body abruptly became flame colored, and his sore-looking bones grew rapidly. It took no more than a blink of an eye for him to gain one meter in height, becoming a three meter high gigantic Skeleton Warrior.