Xue Wei stared calmly as the two sculptures transformed from mute existences into actual threats. Although they were not individually as strong as him, they outnumbered him two to one, and they were tailored to match his strength.

The Qi he had infused into them came from his Azure Dragon Spirit and the stream of several thousand tiny roaring dragons coursing through his meridians. 

Xue Wei’s Qi was no longer ordinary after his core had hatched. It had caused a mutation in him.

The mutation had elevated his strength to new heights. Although his cultivation base had not moved an inch beyond its previous plateau, his Qi had undergone a full metamorphosis. He could vaguely sense that every ability required little to no Qi to use now, reducing his consumption of energy to abnormally low levels. The purity of his Qi could almost be called ‘absolute’, with no room for improvement. 

Xue Wei rolled his head and cracked his neck. He clenched his fists and gave a smile. 

"This will be interesting," he said, grinning. Xue Wei was itching for a fight. It had been far too long since he had truly let loose against a worthy foe. All of them had been weaker than him. Furthermore, he was feeling frustrated about what he had learned earlier about his father and his uncle. 

He would use these stone statues to give vent to said frustration now. The corners of his lips curved upwards.

Forbidden Rus.h.!.+

Xue Wei rushed at them with his movement technique, reappearing behind them in the blink of an eye like a gust of wind. 

Arcane Fist!

A thousand fist imprints appeared in the air. Each and every one of them had the power of Xue Wei’s renewed Qi behind them, but there was something different about them this time. Each illusory fist had a small dragon coiled around it 

The imprints drew an arc through the air before impacting with the first statue, which was pushed back . The resulting collision made it sound like the statue had been struck by a truck. Small stone bits cracked off from the statue’s exterior, but it was not enough damage to render it immobilized. 

In truth, the statue had only been pushed back five steps. Nor did it feel pain, so it had sustained virtually no actual damage. Without pause, the statue joined its companion statue in a pincer attack on Xue Wei, both with their arms covered in swirling, dense Qi.

Xue Wei retreated to the side by using his movement technique. Although he was not too fearful of these two statues, he did not dare look down on them either. 

Xue Wei kept narrowly dodging the attacks of the stone figures without letting up. 

"They are better than expected!" Xue Wei smirked, as they were actually forcing him to use his movement technique to its utmost just to dodge each attack. Furthermore, he could feel the intense vibrations from each attack on his skin after barely avoiding getting grazed.. 

"They are no ordinary opponents." He curbed his arrogance and kept pus.h.i.+ng his movement technique to its limits, cautiously circling the two statues to hopefully catch a weakness.

The more he looked, however, the more he realized just how tough they were to deal with. They were not living beings, so they had no vital areas, and losing a limb did not spell the end of their retaliation. 

"Break the horse, and the general will fall," Xue Wei muttered while looking at the statues' legs. If he could break just one of them, their speed would drastically decrease. 

Xue Wei focused the entirety of his energy and accelerated half a step beyond his usual limit, preparing an all-out attack to s.h.i.+ft the tide of the battle.

Kick of Forgotten Kings!

A sea of tiny Qi-dragons covered his leg as he swept it out at the leg of the first statue. His kick broke the sound barrier, which manifested as a pulse of turbulent, exploding air behind him.

The statues were not intelligent creatures. They felt no fear and did not inhabit any sense of self-preservation, so they just charged mindlessly at Xue Wei when he unleashed his attack. 

A loud cracking sound filled the area. Xue Wei retreated as fast as he could after the collision. His leg was numb, but it was much better off compared to the statue’s leg. Its leg had been shattered in half, which made the statue clumsily collapse onto its side. 

A smile appeared on Xue Wei's face. He glanced at the other statue, intending to repeat his strategy, but then he saw out of the corner of his eye that the other statue was mending its leg by reabsorbing the fragments of its shattered leg. 

Xue Wei’s eyes widened. "Hey! This is unfair," he muttered. While the statue’s leg was not truly without impairment, the situation was not going according to plan. 

"Do I need to turn them into dust or something?" Xue Wei muttered, glancing at the formation runes inscribed on the chests of the statues.

Xue Wei was not in a hurry. The first statue was still in the middle of restoring itself while the second one stood guard. Although they were not intelligent creatures, they seemed to possess pack mentality, which was most likely due to the nature of their twin formations. 

This gave Xue Wei some time to consider what exactly could be the way to deal with them. 

"The formation is what keeps them running," Xue Wei mused to himself. "I don't know much about formations yet, but it is to be expected that they are built in a complex way. So... all I have to do is destroy the formation, right?" 

Albeit simple, this idea was Xue Wei’s best bet. He snickered. "I don't know if that is the test, but it should work."

Xue Wei began moving again, targeting the one with the crushed leg, and unleashed a flurry of attacks.

Azure Light Finger!

Shattering Mountain Palm!

Kick of Forgotten Kings!

Xue Wei released one attack after the other upon the formation engraved on the statue’s chest.

The first attack, the Azure Light Finger, was not able to do much damage to the formation itself, but it left a small mark on the engraving that made the statue stagger.

The Shattering Mountain Palm descended onto the mark that had been made, and half the formation was shattered. 

Following the Shattering Mountain Palm came the Kick of Forgotten Kings. This kick was able to shatter the remaining part of the formation and even managed to break the statue into two halves. 

Before Xue Wei had the time to rejoice, an acute sense of crisis came over him, and he retreated fast as the wind. 

The place where he had been standing moments before was now a crater on the ground, the remaining stone statue tightly clenching its hands together and using them as a blunt weapon to smash anything that came into reach.

The remaining statue seemed almost berserk because its companion had been destroyed. It flailed its arms about wildly and made it impossible to safely approach it.

Azure Light Finger!

Inner Might!

Xue Wei knew better than to get close to the stone statue when it was in a frenzy so he released a beam of green azure light from his finger. It managed to perfectly wipe out one of the runes in the formation that was engraved on the chest.

After that, he used Inner Might to create a zither. He was not the most skilled zither player, but he was not terrible either. 

Waves of violent zither music spread out from the strings plucked by his hands. There was a clear killing intent and a domineering aura that came from being a sovereign above others within this music.

Xue Wei did not know why, but he felt like he had undergone a fundamental, existential change ever since his core had hatched a dragon spirit. He truly felt above all others, in the objective sense. He felt that he had the right to look down upon them even if he was still weak, and this feeling was reflected in the music he played. 

Although Xue Wei felt superior to others, he was adamant in opposing the absoluteness of the feeling lest he slip into a spell of arrogance. 

He was a mere warrior-realm expert. He had not even stepped into the Heavenly Warrior stage yet, so he needed more strength to actually back up this peculiar change to the composition of his demeanor. 

The waves from the violent zither music instantly diced up the statue into multiple layers of saucers from head to toe the very moment they reached it. 

The formation on the statue’s chest naturally collapsed as a result. 

Xue Wei looked at the two statues with a few mixed emotions in his eyes. Although the fight had not been too complicated, this was after all only the second test out of ten, but it had already made him feel danger a few times. 

He shook his head. Xue Wei’s blood was boiling. These were true trials, trials that might end in life-and-death situations. He had not felt this alive for a long time. 

Even more exciting were the rewards at the end of the trials. He was already looking forward to it. 

However, his confidence did not mean complacency. He was very much on alert. These trials were not simple. 

When he entered the third room, he spotted a snow jade bottle on the table in the middle. This was the reward for finis.h.i.+ng the second room.

Xue Wei walked to the table and slowly opened the snow jade bottle. Inside it sat a pill of unknown origin. No smell was emitted, so it was evidently a pill of highest purity. 

Pausing for a moment, Xue Wei considered what to do. There had been no explanation as to what kind of pill he had been given, but he had an urge to eat this one right away.

Without hesitating, Xue Wei sat down on the floor in the third trial room and consumed it.

The moment it entered his mouth, it turned into Qi that started to pour into his body. He flinched when this happened. An enormous, shocking amount of Qi had suddenly been released from that one small little pill. 

And it continued endlessly like a flood that crashed into and pa.s.sed right through his body with hitherto unknown force.  He felt like a small boat in the middle of a storming ocean. The Qi crashed about and caused havoc within his body, and he had no way of controlling it. 

However, the Azure Dragon Spirit within his core slowly awakened and opened its eyes. A roar emerged from deep within his body, and the thousands upon thousands of small dragons in his meridians suddenly sprang into action and started consuming the flood-like Qi that was pouring into his body.

These dragons were multiplying at an unbelievable speed. They grew larger, reached a certain size, and split into two – repeatedly. It was an exponential increase in amount. 

It got to a point where his meridians were on the verge of bursting from the sudden overload of tiny Qi-dragons flooding them. 

The pain wrecked his body. Xue Wei could sense how his meridians were being forced to expand, which he recognized as a disaster. If the meridians were severed, it would cripple him, but fortunately his meridians were incredibly tough. 

Rather than break, they widened to adapt to the overflow. The downside was that Xue Wei had to experience mind-shattering pain in the process. He started sweating bullets and groaned loudly with every deep breath he took.