Chapter 223: Clearing the Demon Gate
The final checkpoint of the Demon Gate path.
Ning Zhuo's vision was filled with a vivid blood-red.
In the final checkpoint, the space was unexpectedly large—like a vast prairie!
It was evident that when this checkpoint was constructed, a certain spatial formation was laid out.
Inside the checkpoint, the blood aura was extremely thick, drifting between heaven and earth, forming large patches of blood mist.
The blood mist continuously flowed, with a wind constantly stirring it, making it dense at times and thin at others.
Ning Zhuo explored the blood mist, and after walking for a distance, he noticed a faint light shining through the mist.
He walked toward the light and reached the center of the room. There, he saw a blood lake.
It was the light emanating from the surface of the blood lake.
As Ning Zhuo stepped forward and approached the lake, the light on the surface of the water suddenly dimmed.
Reflected on the lake’s surface was Ning Zhuo’s own shadow.
The lake water began to ripple quickly, like boiling water, bubbling up violently.
A large mass of essence blood surged upwards, as if it had come to life, and shot out from the lake, rushing toward Ning Zhuo.
Ning Zhuo hurriedly dodged.
The essence blood fell onto a rock at his feet, immediately wrapping around the stone.
In no time, large blood tendons formed on the surface of the rock.
The blood tendons were extremely strong, continuously molding the rock. After a series of cracking sounds, the rock was shaped into a puppet that resembled Ning Zhuo.
Surprisingly, it was quite lifelike.
The stone puppet, under the control of the blood tendons, charged at Ning Zhuo without a word.
The two engaged in a fierce battle by the blood lake.
Ning Zhuo quickly fell into a disadvantage.
This was because the material of the stone puppet was far superior to his own wooden body; it was made from Foundation Establishment-level materials.
At the same time, the stone puppet's martial arts skills were also far superior to Ning Zhuo's.
Ning Zhuo had no choice but to fight while retreating.
Just as he was probing the stone puppet’s abilities, there was another disturbance in the blood lake.
The essence blood in the lake gushed out again, successively attaching itself to the earth and trees.
After being molded by the blood tendons, an earth puppet and a wooden puppet took shape.
In an instant, Ning Zhuo found himself in a one-against-three predicament!
After a round of fighting, Ning Zhuo had tested the result—each puppet’s martial arts skills far exceeded his own.
While Ning Zhuo was envious, he also made up his mind and frantically activated his own blood aura.
His blood aura was incredibly abundant, and the blood map panel inside his wooden body had been taken from Yuan Dasheng, a Foundation Establishment-level version.
With a clap of his hands, Ning Zhuo unleashed a waterfall of blood aura, directly overwhelming the three puppets.
An hour later...
The battlefield was littered with countless puppet remains—broken limbs and severed heads everywhere.
Ning Zhuo could barely stand, feeling extremely weak, but his heart was filled with relief and joy.
"Finally, I won!"
The hour-long battle had been both long and grueling.
Each of Ning Zhuo’s puppet opponents had been, like him, at the peak of the ninth layer.
"This time, it wasn’t a fair fight."
Ning Zhuo knew that his victory had been entirely due to the overwhelming force of his blood aura, crushing his opponents without reason.
It was a perfect display of overpowering skill with sheer strength.
The reason he had been able to do this was thanks to Yuan Dasheng.
Yuan Dasheng had created a Foundation Establishment-level blood map panel, and its ability to unleash a surge of blood aura far exceeded that of a Qi Refining-level blood map panel.
In the second-to-last checkpoint, the blood map panel had absorbed a lot of blood aura.
By the time he reached the final checkpoint, Ning Zhuo had recklessly squandered the blood aura without restraint. In the later stages, when his blood aura was nearly depleted, Ning Zhuo drained the blood map panel, then used it to absorb his opponents' blood aura, fighting battle after battle.
As a result, Ning Zhuo essentially had unlimited blood aura.
He didn’t need any techniques, just overwhelming his enemies with more than ten times the blood aura.
Each puppet fell, and more would rise from the blood lake.
The puppets came at him in waves, pushing Ning Zhuo to the brink of exhaustion.
"But in the end, I’m still the victor!"
"When I have time to refine my martial arts, I’ll come back and attempt this checkpoint again."
Ning Zhuo opened the final door of the Demon Gate path and entered the final reward room.
As soon as he stepped inside, he received the Foundation Establishment method of the Demon Gate path.
In coordination with the Buddhist Gate’s counterpart, this Foundation Establishment method focused on the lower dantian’s essence sea, with the other two dantians as support.
Ning Zhuo didn’t delve into the Foundation Establishment method but immediately examined the various position tokens hanging on the walls.
After carefully browsing through them multiple times, he selected the commander position of the Command Platform.
"Next is the Dao Gate path."
Ning Zhuo, now full of soul power, still had strength left after clearing the final checkpoint of the Demon Gate.
He used the Buddha Heart Demon Seal to retreat from the checkpoint and returned to the third transfer hall.
Then, he pushed open the third Dao Gate and charged forward with full force.
In the Lava Immortal Palace, the main hall.
The Dragon Turtle Fire Spirit’s gaze penetrated the void, its expression complicated as it watched Ning Zhuo’s every move.
It had previously thought about concealing and delaying information, but it ultimately realized that it could not stop Ning Zhuo from acquiring three different types of Foundation Establishment methods.
Thus, it revealed the secret of the Foundation Establishment methods ahead of time to earn Ning Zhuo’s trust.
"Our previous exchange should have gone well!"
"Especially the last one."
"Although the whip hurt me a lot, it was enough to gain Ning Zhuo’s trust and gratitude."
"Hehe, everything will turn out fine."
"I will definitely regain my freedom!"
As the Dragon Turtle Fire Spirit was cheering itself up, Ning Zhuo had already begun his new challenge.
Just as the Dragon Turtle Fire Spirit had introduced, the purpose of the Dao Gate path was to cultivate the spellcasting abilities of trial disciples.
During a previous reward checkpoint, Ning Zhuo had obtained the Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk. Now, this disk had become his main weapon.
Holding the Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk, he continuously cast Five Elements spells, sometimes attacking and sometimes defending.
Every now and then, a Five Elements spell would strike from within the checkpoint.
Sometimes it was a golden blade, other times it was a tide of water, and sometimes it was scorching flames.
Ning Zhuo had to use spells to counter spells.
To conserve more spiritual power, he followed the principles of elemental counteraction.
He used water-element spells to counter fire-element flames and wood-element spells to counter earth-element flying rocks.
This approach was undoubtedly the most energy and spirit efficient.
The Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk allowed the spiritual energy within him to transform into Five Elements mana.
Using this mana to cast Five Elements spells was undoubtedly more efficient.
But that wasn’t all—the Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk had other uses as well.
At its core, it was a formation disk. After Ning Zhuo activated it, it extended an invisible formation outward.
Within the range of this formation, the spiritual energy in the air was affected by the formation, and with a single thought, Ning Zhuo could change the elemental attributes of the energy within it.
In other words, the Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk was a battle tool capable of altering or setting up the battlefield.
"When my mastery of the Five Elements mutual generation and restriction techniques improves in the future, I’ll be able to obtain a higher-quality Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk."
The way to acquire the Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk was similar to the method for obtaining the blood map panel, primarily referencing a certain spell or cultivation technique.
The reward checkpoint after the second Dao Gate was the Five Elements Spirit Transformation Disk.
The reward checkpoint after the third Demon Gate was the blood map panel.
These two reward checkpoint items could be collected repeatedly.
In fact, the reward checkpoint after the first Buddhist Gate was the same. However, Ning Zhuo had used Yuan Dasheng’s corpse to craft the Foundation Establishment-level Golden-Blooded Battle Ape, Dasheng.
The normal reward from the first Buddhist Gate was a spirit puppet, but its spirituality was far from perfect, and it was destined to eventually run out of energy. Ning Zhuo, however, had obtained the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape, Dasheng, which he had used ever since.
Under normal circumstances, the trial disciples' spirit puppets would be consumed after a period of time, and the trial disciples would have to venture into the Buddhist Gate path again to claim another puppet.
After barely clearing the second-to-last checkpoint of the Dao Gate path, Ning Zhuo found it difficult to continue.
His spiritual energy was less than thirty percent.
"The difficulty of the second-to-last checkpoint is still too high for me."
"I
expended too much time, energy, and spiritual power in this one."
Ning Zhuo didn’t have much confidence in the final checkpoint of the Dao Gate path.
After all, he had just cleared the Demon Gate path, and his condition was far from optimal.
However, out of curiosity, Ning Zhuo still pushed open the final door.
As expected, he failed.
Returning to his body, Ning Zhuo came back to reality.
He was floating in the clouds, his eyes tightly closed, and he had not opened them for a long time.
He recalled his conversation with the Dragon Turtle Fire Spirit and pondered his current situation.
The exchange with the Dragon Turtle Fire Spirit had been incredibly rewarding.
Ning Zhuo had validated the Foundation Establishment method and had deepened his cooperation with the Dragon Turtle Fire Spirit.
Most importantly, he had figured out the main mechanism of the palace examination.
"To participate in the palace examination as soon as possible, I don’t actually need to accumulate enough merit for a first-grade position."
"After all, my merit points are negative, and it would take too long to accumulate the amount required for a first-grade position."
The main issue was that he had previously blown up the Immortal Palace, causing his merit points to plummet into the negative. The hole was too deep, and filling it wouldn’t be easy.
Ning Zhuo calculated in his mind.
In fact, all he needed was to qualify for the formal palace examination.
This meant that he didn’t need to aim for first place in merit contribution; he only needed to rank within the top thirty-three among all the palace examination candidates.
Lava Immortal Palace, medical clinic.
Ning Xiaohui felt a sudden surge of excitement as she discovered a new repair task.
"It’s that mechanical ape." Ning Xiaohui’s eyes lit up.
Ning Zhuo had continuously cleared the Demon Gate path and even reached the final checkpoint of the Dao Gate path, causing Yuan Dasheng to be injured in the process.
Without hesitation, Ning Zhuo issued the repair task for the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape to Ning Xiaohui.
Ning Xiaohui immediately accepted the repair task.
The teleportation circle pulsed, and the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape was placed on the workbench.
After a thorough inspection, Ning Xiaohui happily realized that this time, the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape’s injuries were much lighter than before.
After all, the previous injuries had accumulated over time while Ning Zhuo had been using the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape.
While using the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape, Dasheng, Ning Zhuo had only been able to patch it up without fully understanding the puppet’s mechanisms, merely applying makeshift repairs.
Seeing the lighter damage, Ning Xiaohui couldn’t help but smile.
To her, the lighter damage indicated that the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape had the upper hand in battle, and it must have inflicted far more damage on its opponent.
"You should unleash your full power more often!"
The more Ning Xiaohui looked at the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape, the more she liked it, and the more she felt it had an impressive aura.
Previously, the Golden-Blooded Battle Ape had brought her many nightmares and countless embarrassing moments, but now, Ning Xiaohui had come to terms with it. Her feelings had completely changed from before.
"Once I’ve repaired you, I’ll go find out who’s been suffering lately."
"I’ll give those trial disciples a hard time, let them suffer a bit—it’ll help them grow."
At this point, Ning Xiaohui couldn’t help but giggle.