Ning slowly trekked through the jungle. He was walking very slowly to not agitate his wound, so it took him forever to come out of the jungle.
However, just as he did, yellow light surrounded him and he disappeared for the third time.
When he reappeared, he was inside another jungle. "F*ck, I just got out of one," he said in anger. However, there was nothing that could be done, so he just sighed and moved on.
Now that 3 days had gone by, finding a single ingredient or beast worth killing was hard to come by. He kept on walking forward to get out of the jungle. Unfortunately, after an hour or so, he couldn't walk anymore.
In front of him was an iridescent barrier that shifted to purple the further up it went.
"Did I… walk all this way only to get to the edge?" Ning was in disbelief. He couldn't even fault anyone for this. He looked back and thought, "I have to walk all that way and more again, don't I?"
He didn't want to, but the forest was too narrow and obstructive to let Aegis carry him. "Sigh, whatever, let's go."
* * * * * *
"I'm sorry sect leaders, I wasn't able to last through the entire tournament," a bald, buff guy said to Gion and Yelca.
"Sigh, I guess it's hard. There are so many strong participants this time around. It's not surprising you were thrown out," Gion said.
"By the way, how exactly did you lose?" Yelca asked.
"It was a guy in Orange cloth. He had a really high cultivation base and kept attacking everyone in sight. I actually tried to team up with three other guys, but none of us was his match," the disciple said.
"I see. You did well either way. Take a rest," Yelca said.
"So, that's all but Doctor Ning right?" Gion asked.
"I'm afraid so. How many participants are still left? 300? The top 128 should be revealed soon," Yelca said.
They all were now looking for Ning through the many screens hovering in the air. Now that the ground was shrunken down, there weren't as many screens like the initial times.
Still, the center of the secret realm was where most of the fun stuff took place, so the tournament holders had made sure for there to be enough screens to see all the important places, some from multiple directions.
Still, after all of this, they still couldn't find Ning at all.
* * * * *
"Ah finally," Ning said as he left the forest and reached a long stretch of grassland. The sun was coming down and the evening was approaching.
"I guess this is as far as I get today," he thought and started searching for a rock or similar place to cultivate throughout the night.
Just as he was searching, he saw a group of people walk towards him. 'Sigh, I'm not in the mood to fight right now,' he thought.
Still, he took out his sword and got ready.
"Oh, there is someone there," a voice said.
"Hmm, he has a sword," another voice said.
As the group approached closer, Ning could see a group of unfamiliar faces consisting of 3 girls and 2 boys. They all had different robes so they couldn't be from the same sect.
Ning got a little curious about this. The strongest one of the group was a girl with a 9th Qi Condensation realm cultivation base. That wouldn't really be a problem to Ning.
"Brother, please put your sword down. We aren't here to fight you," the girl said.
"Oh, then you wouldn't mind taking a different route away from here right?" Ning asked.
"Actually, we are looking for people to add to our group and we're hoping that you would join us," the girl said.
Ning looked at the group carefully and acted like he was cautious about it. "What is your motive? To kill people to make their points? Or steal their corpses and materials?"
"No, our motive is to… survive," the girl said.
"…. Sorry what?" Ning asked.
"To survive. We hope to gather enough people so that people get scared of us enough to not mess with us. Like that, we can all survive for the rest of the competition, and we can definitely use someone with an 8th realm cultivation like you" the girl said.
"Hmm…" Ning thought. He was quite surprised by their motive. 'It does make sense though,' he thought and looked at the group. They had 2 7th Qi Condensation realms and 2 8th Qi Condensation realm cultivators along with this girl.
If they were together, the only ones who could fight them were Foundation Establishment realm cultivators, and those were few and far in between.
Ning didn't want to believe her, but she looked so innocent saying that. He almost wanted to believe what she was saying. It was like his brain kept telling him that she wasn't a liar at all and that he should follow her.
'Interesting. Is this hypnosis? Or charm? Either way, she must have the incredible mental fortitude to make me even have these feelings,' Ning thought.
Whatever was coming up, he thought it was going to be fun.
"Sure," Ning said and joined the group.
The group didn't rush through the grassland and Ning was thankful about that. 'Well, at least the bones seem to have set properly. I should properly treat myself once I go out,' Ning thought as he checked his ribs.
They were much better now, but he still didn't want to do anything to worsen it.
The 4 people conversed like normal people, asking each other about their lives and how their day was going, and they surprisingly answered very easily.
One person asked for the points they earned and the other person even answered very simply. 'Is their mind influenced to just accept suggestions and be truthful? Does she not really control them' he wondered.
Whatever the girl was doing, however devious she was, Ning couldn't help but secretly applaud her for being so amazing at it.
He couldn't wait to see where she was taking the sheep to be slaughtered.