Preparation

Li Zhu didn't have much time to think of a solution, so he went with the first thing he could think of, which was to force the toad to open its mouth by jumping in its throat. It was the only way he thought would allow him to exit the toad, which was preferable to having to defend himself against the explosion.

The explosion could very well not force him out of shadow lurk, but he simply could not know before it actually happened, and it heavily depended on the toad itself. Spirit beasts accumulated their energy in a nucleus core, which rested in a different place for each species. The issue was that a beast could self detonate the nucleus, releasing all of the energy contained in it, which for a core consolidating realm beast, was immense.

This was usually only done when a beast was dying, since it would want to take out its enemies with the explosion. That said, Li Zhu had no way of knowing what choice the toad would make, since it could very well choose to keep its nucleus intact, and pointlessly try to heal himself. After all, suicide was not and easy thing to do, even for a spirit beast, even when it was the only way to kill your enemy.

Since Li Zhu was not sure what would happen, he was not willing to take any risks, and wanted to get out of the toad's mouth as soon as possible.

With this thought in mind, he jumped deeper into the toad's mouth, before coming out of shadow lurk. This was risky due to the poison, but it was a necessary step. Fortunately, the moment Li Zhu touched the toad's throat, It instinctively reacted. The mouth opened for a split second and Li Zhu charged out, while in shadow lurk.

All Bo Ai saw was a bright light coming from the toad, followed by a deafening noise. The dreaded moment had finally come, and as the explosion arrived, massive waves and wind whirls were formed, pushing Bo Ai back towards the outskirts of the swamp.

'Is he dead?' she wondered in panic, while struggling against the furious wind.

"Are you there!?" she yelled, but there was no response. Li Zhu was nowhere to be seen, and the toad had already exploded into a cloud of poisonous gas, which she did not dare enter.

It was a few minutes later, though, that she saw a figure limping out of the green cloud, injured. Li Zhu had been forced out of shadow lurk in the final moment of the explosion, resulting in only light injuries. The major issue was actually the poisonous gas, which he was trying his hardest not to inhale, to no avail.

Li Zhu limped a few seconds more, before stumbling a bit, and falling onto the ground. The poison had finally gotten to him, and knocked him out.

Bo Ai, seeing this, immediately ran over to him, and dragged him out of the poison, before laying him on a large rock. She had only been in the poison for a few seconds, but he had stayed in there for minutes, so he needed to be healed as soon as possible.

Knowing this, Bo Ai grabbed his arm, before using a technique that she had learned in Myriad Soul Palace to extract poison. It was not a flawless skill, and according to the quantity and purity of the poison, Bo Ai would not always be able to completely extract it.

This was the case with the toad's poison, as she only managed to remove half of it, before exhausting her energy. After all, she was not a skilled healer, and had only learned the poison extracting skill in case she would have to fight someone from the powerful Divine Beast Venom sect, which was a very mysterious organization in the mainland, one which instilled fear in most cultivators.

Since it was very rare to fight or even see a disciple of the Divine Beast Venom sect, Bo Ai had not spent a long time practicing her poison extracting skill, which she now regretted deeply.

Fortunately, Li Zhu regained consciousness shortly after she partially removed the poison, so he simply mumbled, "Thank you for saving me, don't worry about the rest of the poison" before sitting cross legged, a look of concentration in his eyes.

As the crown prince of the Heavenly Dragon Empire, he had also learned a skill to remove poison, for the same reasons as Bo Ai. The Divine Beast Venom sect was simply too mysterious, and no force would want their disciples to be unprotected against them, to the point that most cultivators in the mainland had developed methods to counter poisons.

The skill that he knew was called the Dragon Expelling Method, and it was a powerful method which only worked for the royal family of the empire. This was because it made use of the minuscule amount of dragon bloodline in the bodies of the royal family to expel the poison. Many of

the prided techniques of the Heavenly Dragon Empire could only be used by people with the bloodline of a dragon, which was another reason why everyone had been shocked when the emperor had announced that the future heir would be chosen from the people.

An imposing aura was released from Li Zhu, as his body began to shine brightly. In his body, the poison began to gather, before gradually moving out of him. The poison was quickly expelled, and Li Zhu collected it all in the palm of his hand, where a green sphere was now visible, containing the deadly substances that just a moment before had been in his body. He then fused with Blue, who had been nearby and used Frost Touch, freezing the poisonous sphere, before placing it into his spirit ring, for future fights.

Turning towards Bo Ai he then said, "Let's go! We have some soul crystals to find!"

Bo Ai was looking at him confused since the imposing aura he had released felt a bit familiar to her, though she could not remember why. Still, after shaking her head, she replied, "Yeah, I want to get out of this swamp!" and one couldn't blame her, since most of the beasts there had advantages over her.

Li Zhu sighed at the look of confusion that she had shown, since he fully knew what it had been caused by. The Dragon Expelling Method was one of the many royal techniques of the empire, so it was no wonder that Bo Ai would have had a sense of familiarity towards the aura released by it. Even though he had predicted this, Li Zhu had still used the skill because it was the only method that he knew to extract the poison, and if he had not removed the deadly toad's venom, death would have surely resulted.

Fortunately, Bo Ai had not yet realized where she remembered the aura from, so after recovering their energy, the two quickly exited the Silent Kill Marsh, jumping from tree to tree as soon as they had passed the center area.

Looking at their maps, they tried to decide where to go next, according to how many soul crystals there were. Surprisingly, they noticed a few of the marks were moving, which they quickly realized meant there was a team nearby.

Fighting other teams could be a good method, but if everyone stopped gathering soul crystals from locations such as Silent Kill Marsh, then the hundred crystals which were available would not all be in the hands of participants, and everyone would receive worse rewards at the end of the trial.

"I don't think we have a choice, Li Zhu... look at where they are heading!" replied Bo Ai, undeniably excited about the upcoming fight. Fighting against spirit beasts was one thing, but fighting other cultivators was much more interesting, since everyone had different skills and fighting styles.

Looking down at the map, Li Zhu noticed what Bo Ai was referring to, as the moving marks were headed straight towards them, at the outskirts of Silent Kill Marsh. Just as they could see where other teams with soul crystals were, everyone else could see them as well, and the nearby team had clearly decided that fighting was the best choice.

"Let's get ready for the fight!" said Li Zhu, before continuing, "Since they are coming to us, we should choose the environment which suits us best! After all, this illusion world has every possible environment!"

A large part of the trial was using the environment provided by the illusion world as an advantage, so after his realization, Li Zhu and Bo Ai quickly concocted a plan, before moving away from the swamp for good.

'Another five soul crystals are handing themselves to us!' thought Li Zhu, as he noticed how many marks there were on the map, coming towards them.