Alex and the rest stepped onto the new island, looking at the single barren volcanic mountain that lay on it. They looked around, counting the remaining participants. There were precisely 103 of them remaining.

The fiery bird emerged once again, announcing the next trial.

This one was similar to the first trial. They had to walk to the center of the island, which was the crater itself, and they would have to do it while strong pressure forced them from moving.

They had 12 hours to complete it.

Alex started walking, giving no thought to anyone else but Pearl and Scarlet. Almost instantly, they could feel the pressure growing on them.

Once again, the pressure was very subjective, based on who it was landing upon. An Immortal Ascendant realm cultivator got way less pressure than someone in the Divine realm.

It was a fair amount of pressure to test the ability of a participant without relying on their cultivation base as a metric. As Alex continued, he felt the strength of the pressure this time be much higher than what it was in the first trial.

Anyone with a Battle Power of 2 or lower had already failed in the first trial, so the pressure started from there right away. It increased slowly as they walked, each beast struggling under the pressure.

Alex's group had no trouble handling the pressure as their body cultivation was much stronger than their own cultivation base. They walked through the land with relative ease.

The other beasts struggled quite a bit.

Many of the beasts walked slowly, taking their time as they climbed the mountain. Only a handful seemed unbothered by the pressure they felt.

Halfway up the mountain, Alex could already feel the strength of the pressure reach above Immortal Transcendent 4th realm, reaching the 5th realm. That would make anyone with a Battle Power of 4 or lower fail almost immediately.

Only those that were stronger, or had some treasures to protect themselves against the pressure, could pass it.

"Goddammit!" Scarlet said under her breath as they were reaching the top of the mountain.

Alex and Pearl turned toward her, a little confused.

"What's wrong?"

Scarlet looked at them, giving a helpless smile. "The pressure," she said. "It's reaching the Immortal Transcendent 5th realm for me."

Alex nodded slowly. That made sense. "Yeah, it's reaching 6th realm for me and Pearl. What's the issue?"

"Nothing really," she said. "Except for the fact that had you not given me any Elixir to consume, I would've failed already. My Battle Power is only 4, remember?"

"Oh!" Alex hadn't thought about it. Passing the trial was such an obvious concept to him that he hadn't bothered thinking about what would've happened had he not had his body cultivation.

"Your body cultivation is part of you now, sister," Pearl said. "Don't think of yourself as any worse just because you have it. You didn't blame yourself for having healing fire the last round, did you?"

Scarlet let out a sigh. "Thank you. I probably needed to hear that. Watching all these beasts, you can't help but wonder if you're cheating this way, but you're right. This isn't cheating. This is just me."

"If you were to consider this cheating, then you might as well consider everything we've done for the past 5 trials as cheating," Alex said with a bit of a chuckle to his voice.

Scarlet's mood improved, and she continued.

By the time they reached the peak of the volcano, if someone didn't have a way to stop the pressure of a cultivation base that was 6 realms higher than their own, they wouldn't be able to continue.

'The highest that monkey beast got to was the 8th trial, so it might even get stronger very soon,' Alex thought. He could only wonder how much more difficult the rest of the trials were going to get.

Scarlet was the first to step on the sole platform inside the dormant crater of the volcano. Pearl stepped after her, and Alex after them.

As Alex stood on it, he looked down at the platform, noticing something different.

"Look!" he said, catching the attention of the two beasts. "The carvings are changed."

There were no longer two trees on either half of the black and white platform, but rather something else. The white half now held a golden image of some sort of coiled reptilian beast with what appeared to be wings on its back. The black half held a circular depiction of a black and red bird.

Alex looked at the two pictures, a tiny thought growing inside of him. Were these two pictures what he thought they were?

'The reptilian beast has to be a dragon, right?' Alex thought. 'And that bird beast must be a phoenix. Does that mean these are the pictures of the Dragon Father and the Phoenix Mother?'

The pictures looked nothing like the carved statues and painted murals that were in the Azure Dragon and Vermilion Bird palaces, so Alex couldn't be certain if they were what he thought they were.

Even if they were, what did that mean?

"Are you going to get off?" a voice called, distracting him at that moment.

Alex turned to see a beast that had arrived at the crater and was ready to take the next step. Seeing that he was keeping the beast from continuing, he quickly stepped off and moved toward Pearl and Scarlet.

"What's wrong? You seem lost in thought, brother," Pearl said.

"Nothing," Alex said. He couldn't really explain it all when he didn't understand it himself. What exactly was the connection?

'The bird that's handling our trials, what is it?' Alex thought, his eyes narrowing. 'Could it be the Phoenix Mother?'

'All those fire birds, the lava, everything. Phoenixes are known for that, aren't they? Is it really the Phoenix Mother then?'

His eyes turned, looking toward the corner of his vision where the Sun God remained just as always, continuing to point in the same direction from the start.

'What does the Phoenix Mother have to do with your death?'

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