In the trial

Without knowing it Musk had found himself in some kind of trial without even knowing it.

He walked from stone stele to another as he practiced the martial arts present all the way to the fourth level and those that he could not practice, he would take his time to review them repeatedly. Close to a third of all the techniques he had seen were indeed like that and he could not practice them and being a decisive person, he made up his mind to not force it, rather take some ideas from them. He could see that perhaps in the future they might be useful to him. 

As soon as he came to this place, he knew one basic truth, the current him is not strong enough to walk sideways in this place he found himself. That was due to the immense energy in the air and how easily he has managed to breakthrough to the six level of Tortoise Longevity Art.

Having come from somewhere without such conditions and unaware of how he even got in this place, he had to at least do something to improve his strength further and this martial arts stele, has shown him that he was correct. 

His level of strength is not anything in this place and so he will take his time to polish his foundation and this led to this situation he is in.  

You know when Liu Musk was reborn and practiced martial arts, they were not as organized as this ones, and the improvements to the third level was due to time and his hard work, making it easier to improve this martial arts to the third level and for the fourth, he found some trick that allowed him to also improve his will by a tiny point. 

He failed to even realize the passage of time and hundreds of years went by just like that, in this period, the participants of the trial he had entered without even knowing seemed to be staring at the island in the distance with some greed in their eyes.

Musk knew that this place was definitely owned by someone, but since he was already here, he would not go without visiting the steles. Truth be told, he had no idea how to leave this place and the plan he had wanted to put in action would require him to go ahead and follow a certain path, of collecting resources and the huge snake coiling on the bamboo seemed to have given him some fear.

What he did not know was that it was not a snake rather a dragon like spirit of this Martial Tomb. Since it did not detect malice from him directed towards the Martial Tomb, it ignored him. 

….

Standing on some balcony of a newly constructed building at the edge of the continent, three individuals looked into the distance with some frustration. One was a woman with red hair, her body seemed to generate heat that could burn the surroundings. 

Beside her, there was also two other men, both with black hair but one had blue eyes and the other brown. Looking at her back, the two seemed to have some trouble withstanding the pressure coming from the woman's body. 

"Senior brother refused to come with us on this adventure to let us temper ourselves and headed directly to the headquarters, it seems he really looks down on my strength." As she muttered this, she even grits her teeth before looking at the other participants in the trial that had arrived on the beach seemingly discussing something. 

"I was wondering who it was it turned out to be my defeated opponent." As she looked into the distance, she saw some man appearing with a smile that did not seem like one. He was not talking to her, but someone under the castle.

The man was retreating as though about to escape, she could feel some fear from him and when she seriously looked at the person that was talking, she had some slight fear for no reason. She had to take some time to calm down.

In this moment, her most important goal was to reach the island, and she did not seem to mind even collaborating with her competition as among those informed minority, she knew the actual test was on that island and all the other tests they had were not even looked at. To most of them, it was just an opportunity and if eliminated in that round, they could go ahead and try again at some other region that had started late. 

Those involved would not be willing to refuse anyone especially since the more talents they could present in the main competition the higher the benefits for their region. 

Some people were smart enough to rally those they could trying to come up with a solution, seeing this the woman started to descend. "Follow me!" She ordered as she had realized that the only way into the sea is by use of group capabilities. 

Perhaps, due to her background, she was able to see through this instantly and knew it was beneficial for her to rally her own group to assist her in crossing the sea. She knew that the sea was not some safe place and even though those creatures that could threaten them have been chased into the depths of the sea, there were many others on their level but fighting them alone and in the water was stupid.

It seemed she was not the only that had realized this and all the others also followed her approach, gathering groups and when they finished organizing themselves started to gather resources for crafting means of travel. 

You know the continent is so big and the restrictions on it made it hard for them as they would lose their essence faster when they attempted to use flight, forcing them to walk on the ground. The level of strength they have has been useful, but they still had to kill each other for resources to be capable of surviving for the time in this trial. Things from the outside are also allowed but it has to not reach a certain level, making it worse than not even having it. 

The continent was very vast, but that took them all that time, thus the travel on the sea, that seemed to also occupy half the distance they had moved on the continent might take even thrice the time. Other than the dangers in the vast waters, the waves that come from time to time might be a major issue. Most also knew that managing to move halfway without wasting their essence was already good enough.

Musk was unaware of this and the aura on his body had become more divergent, disordered and gave others a feeling that he would go mad at any time. This however was not the case, as he did not take the techniques beyond the fourth level.  He continued to practice the techniques and rarely went outside unless switching to another stone stele space. 

More importantly Musk has been on the island for far longer with the number of techniques he practiced reaching thousands. Just standing there his aura seems to be increasing with every passing moment and could be said to encompass everything due to different artistic conceptions he has been gaining insight on.