Leisure time

The ground suddenly started to tremble and the huge arena floor split into over 500 pieces. The trial participants were teleported randomly onto one of these platforms, with each platform having two cultivators on it. The elder, having finished with the announcement of the previous trial's winners, started speaking about the Third Trial.

-The Third Trial is the final one. You 1024 are the toughest outer disciples. Even if you don't succeed in the third trial, the experience you've gained today should help you out greatly in the future. But if you do, glory and wealth await you. You all see that you've been teleported to a random platform, and there are two of you on each of these platforms. The goal of this trial is to knock your opponent out of the spherical energy barrier covering your platform. Once all the battles are concluded, pairs of platforms will merge to form a bigger platform with two people on them again, and the goal will be the same. This will all repeat until the end of the trial. You will be rewarded at that time based on the number of victories you've obtained. Additionally, if you manage to win two of your battles, thus placing in the top 256, you will have obtained the rights to enter the inner sect as an inner disciple. If you defeat six opponents, having reached the top 16, you will enter the inner sect as a sect successor candidate, occupying a place of prestige over the ordinary inner sect disciples. If you place in the top 4, after eight victories, you will have the option to become an outer disciple of the Heavenly Fate Sect. And finally, the winner, who wins all ten of their matches, will have a chance to enter the Heavenly Fate Sect as an inner disciple. The Heavenly Fate Sect is one of the strongest sects on the continent, but you can only enter as a disciple through special means, like our Inner Trials. The resources and knowledge they provide to their outer disciples are on par or even better than those we provide to our top sect successor candidates, but the drawback is that the competition for resources and fame is also much harder. It is an opportunity that comes once in a lifetime for most people, so please, do your best! You are allowed to kill your opponents this time, however doing so will reduce the rewards you obtain at the end, so please keep that in mind. You have one minute to familiarize yourself with the barrier's suppression effects, then, like before, the trial will begin at the ring of a bell.

I've long since noticed what the barrier does. It suppresses the power of those under it to the Beginner Soul Severing realm, but that doesn't mean anything to me, since I am at that level anyway, and my true power doesn't come from my cultivation level. It also suppresses the power of any external tools and treasures, with most unable to even activate. This is probably to make sure that the contestants fight with their own power instead of external assistance. Well, that just means that I can't hide behind any excuses if I use spatial and temporal abilities. Even so, at this stage I don't believe that I need to do so, but it never hurts to be careful.

I keep sitting in meditation, like before, only opening my eyes and standing up to face my opponent in the last few seconds before the bell's ring. When I finally hear the sound of the bell, I launch a thick but blunt sword qi towards my opponent, before he can even open his mouth to deliver a cheesy monologue about how powerful he is. I saw the pride in his eyes, he was fully intent on doing so, while I was fully intent on not listening to any of their bullshit.

When the sword qi hits him almost at the speed of sound, he doesn't even have the time to think about dodging, so it slams into him and he gets sent flying at almost the same speed. I controlled the sharpness and power carefully, so he's probably not heavily injured from it, the impact when he hits the ground will probably be the most painful part. I could have killed him, of course, in an instant, but this time there are no benefits of doing so, so I'm holding my strength back as much as I can. After all, I'm not a bloodthirsty person, I just do what I need to, to achieve my goals.

-Eve?

-Hmm?

-Did you manage to compile the information about the Soul Severing realm?

-Yeah, it's done. I'll load it into your mind after I've fully optimized it. I've analyzed your current cultivation method too. Your idea of gathering diluted energy at a high rate, thus pushing for quicker advancement through the cultivation stages with the trade-off of having a pathetically low power output from your cultivation level was indeed a good one. Since you're able to use powers related to comprehension, those should be your primary focus and use your cultivation level to gather higher concentrations of energy for me. In return I can use more and more power to analyzing the optimal advancement of your cultivation and comprehension, thus forming a cycle that boosts you to the top real fast. You will need some resources to strengthen the both of us, and based on my preliminary analysis, they should be super rare for ordinary people, but easily obtainable for us.

-Right. Can you also influence my battle prowess? As far as I know, that's what others use their spirits for.

-Well... That's going to be a problem for now. In this world's power system, I'm akin to an "innate spirit", sort of like a spirit that you were born with, and only had to awaken, not form from scratch at the Spirit Activation stage. But this world's innate spirits are highly integrated with the cultivator's Spiritual Artifact, and thus raise their battle prowess significantly. As for me, it's not that I can't do it, but it dulls my thinking, since the Spiritual Artifact synchronises our minds, and yours is just too slow compared to mine.

-Are you saying that I'm stupid?

-No, you poor dull thing. I'm saying, that every human is stupid, when compared to an AI. Anyways, my analytical speed is my most important asset, without that I'm truly just an average innate spirit, and only able to raise your cultivation-related power. So for the time being it's best if we don't do that and I'll handle the complex computations for the spatial and temporal powers instead. But when you advance to sainthood, you will be able to draw out your soul and your spirit to materialize in the world, and at that point we can work on having me operate independently, so we can speed up our progress.

While I chatted away with Eve, the rest of the duels finished, and the platforms started merging. Their number halved, their barriers united, and the bell rang out, signifying the start of the second round. I used the same method as before to deal with my opponent. It's hard to even call this a "fight" or a "duel".