50 - The true test

A year had passed in the endless grasslands, and there was now a miniature mountain of broken throwing knife pieces.

At the foot of this mountain stood Su Tao.

In his hand was a completely black knife, and it had razor sharp edges that could slice open skin like it was paper.

Su Tao then threw this knife, and it maintained its state so completely that when it hit the miniature mountain of knife pieces, it actually cut some of them in half even though they were made of metal.

Only about a minute after Su Tao had actually thrown the knife did it start to get unstable and explode.

It was not like before where it would just crumble. It now contained enough energy that it would explode into shrapnel when it got unstable enough.

Then, without any warning, a bow, arrow, and a throwing knife all fell from the sky.

Su Tao realized that he had completely mastered the ability to use the black power in the throwing knife, but it still gave him one, meaning that he had more to learn.

However, a bow was a much bigger challenge, and that was because not only was a bow more delicate than a knife, it also had to bend and even had two separate objects.

But regardless, he still went into learning.

He was able to pretty easily learn how to get the black power into the bow and arrow, and it only took him about half a year to do so.

But as soon as he completed getting them perfect five years later, he had to start pulling back on the bowstring, which almost instantly caused the bow to explode.

It ended up taking him more than a hundred years to finally perfect it, being able to pull back the bow all the way with it being completely stable, and then he released the arrow, which was completely pure black.

The arrow flew perfectly through the air before sticking into the massive mountain of bows and arrows in front of him.

But a minute later, just like the knife, the arrow exploded into shrapnel.

However, Su Tao figured that this challenge was not as simple as it seemed.

Even though he had managed to control the black power, he didn't know how to safely retract it or make it permanently stable.

As such, he spent the next hundred years learning how to properly retract the energy out of the bow.

He also worked on making it permanently stable, and he was able to do so in this time as well.

He was now capable of throwing a knife or shooting an arrow, having it stick into something, and it would no longer explode at all, allowing him to go collect them and take back the energy within them.

This would be useful in the real world, and he had also figured out how to have the energy disperse or explode upon contact as well, which was also extremely good to have.

But this still took an immense amount of effort to pull off, and it took all his focus to do this. This meant that it was ultimately not very useful in a battle and only useful in an assassination.

But as soon as he completely mastered his control over the black power, all the bows, arrows, and knives in the massive piles completely vanished.

All that was left were the ones in front of him. They were still flawed just like all the ones before, but there was a difference this time.

Around the arrow was a quiver, and around the knife was a sheath. Su Tao quickly understood that these were likely infinite sources of arrows and knives just like in the first trial.

He then put the quiver on his back and the knife sheath on his side. Taking the bow, he looked around.

As expected, a few moments after Su Tao took the bow, a few figures appeared in the distance. They were about half a mile from Su Tao, and there were two of them.

However, without his more powerful eyes, he could only see a faint blob that showed they were there.

But one thing was for sure: they were moving towards him with killing intent.

As such, he took the bow at his side, put the black power of his heart into it, and took out an arrow, doing the same for it.

However, he realized that by the time he had done this, they had covered almost half of the distance to him, and they getting closer by the second.

It was at this time that Su Tao felt anxiety. Without his eyes being stronger, he didn't know if he still had the same aim with his bow, and he really didn't want to miss because it might end up causing his death if he did.

However, he really didn't have much choice but to shoot.

*TWANG!* the sound of the bow releasing sounded out as the pure black arrow went flying at incredible speeds towards the two figures.

However, the arrow only managed to get within a few feet of the two figures even though they were not that far away.

Su Tao felt even more anxiety when he saw this, and he took out another arrow, filling it with the black power of his heart.

By the time he had done so, the two figures had covered half of the distance left to him, and he could clearly see what they were now. It was two large people covered in golden armor that shimmered in the sun.

One was a man and the other was a woman.

But Su Tao couldn't care less what they looked like as he drew the bow and fired again.

This time, the arrow struck into the shoulder of the man, and it pierced through the golden armor with only a little resistance.

Su Tao hadn't spent much time practicing his bow skills since he didn't ever believe he would be in this situation, and he now regretted that.

But now that they were so close and he felt the danger of death approaching, he suddenly calmed down a little bit as his heart slowed down.

Unexpectedly, the arrow he took out this time filled with the black power of his heart much faster than before, and he managed to quickly send out an arrow that struck the neck of the man in golden armor, killing him.

Su Tao suddenly realized that this was likely what the book had meant by a steady heart, but he couldn't care less as long as he survived.

He had long ago realized that these trials were not simply him learning the power of the abomination.

These trials were to see if he was *worthy* of the power of the abomination, which meant that if he died here, he was truly dead. Otherwise, there would be no point to the trials.

As the man died, the woman was now super close to Su Tao, close enough that he could use the throwing knife now. He had obviously practiced throwing it a lot in two hundred years.

He took out the knife because he was able to fill it with the black power of his heart a lot faster than the arrows and the bow.

As such, he took back the power of his heart from the bow and put it into the throwing knife, turning it from a useless piece of trash into a deadly weapon.

By now, the woman was only a few feet in front of him, and he could feel the looming feeling of death cover him. He knew that if she reached him, he would die.

Then, he took a breath as his heart calmed down a little more, and he threw the knife.

He was happy when he saw the knife strike exactly over the woman's heart.

However, he failed to account for the extra padding over that area for women, and the knife did not reach her heart after it pierced into her breast.

Luckily, he was precautious, and the next moment, the knife exploded into bits, and the woman's heart was pierced through by shrapnel, killing her right as she reached him.

He only barely managed to dodge to the side as the woman's dead body scraped right past him. A piece of her armor had even managed to cut Su Tao's shoulder with its sharp edge.

Su Tao finally breathed a sigh of relief. However, it didn't last long as he saw three figures appear in the distance, all of them covered in golden armor.

Su Tao then took the chance to take out an arrow and fill it with the power of his heart, with it filling much quicker than before due to the steadiness of his heart.

He managed to fire off a few arrows this time before they reached him, with him once again only barely managing to avoid death.

The process continued as there were then four golden armored giants, then five, then six, and so on.

Each round of golden armored giant people would increase the steadiness of Su Tao's heart a bit more, and after a long while and a lot of very close calls with death, Su Tao was capable of controlling the power of his heart as he pleased and without pause.

His heart was completely stable at this point, and he no longer felt even a flutter in his heart in moments of fear or anxiety.

At this moment, all the thousands upon thousands of golden armored giant bodies suddenly turned into ash and sunk into the grass of the endless grassland, vanishing entirely.

Then, Su Tao felt his mind leave the endless grassland and return to his real body.