章 24: Forest Duels: Defeat All Challengers!

Yun slept and relaxed most of the time between arriving and the next phase, but when she relaxed she also decided to cultivate a little bit. Upon beginning cultivation she was surprised, something had happened and she wasn't sure when! Somewhere, without her knowledge, she had broken through the First Change realm and stepped into Second Change Neidan Forging! This was incredibly unexpected, but she just smiled widely and cultivated a little more while she could. Every little bit would count later on.

The next day, when the Endurance Race officially ended, the Elders in charge gathered all of the passing individuals and gave them information on what had transpired during their journey. Over the last three months there had been two hundred fatalities, 2500 injured severely enough to drop out of the race, and 1300 more who failed to cross the finish in time. This resulted in a forty percent elimination rate for the first phase, bringing the number of cultivators still competing down from ten thousand directly to six thousand. This was actually a good year, most years there was at least a sixty percent elimination in phase one of the tournament! The death rate was also excellent, with only two percent of the total contestants dying this year, and only five percent of the total dropouts dying. The numbers sent a chill through the younger competitors. Two hundred dead, 2500 seriously wounded? That was definitely not what they had expected when they joined this. Most of the younger competitors, who were joining a competition between sects for the first time, didn't even consider death as something that could happen. Now they were witnessing for the first time in their lives that the road of cultivation was a one-way path to the grave. Succeed or die.

After giving the statistics thus far the Elders continued to inform the remaining participants of the next step in this tournament. Phase Two: the forest duels! In this phase every competitor would be given a single token to carry physically on their person. The goal was to end the contest with two tokens, but there were restrictions. If you did not have exactly two tokens at the end of this phase you would be eliminated. If you intentionally took tokens from others beyond your two tokens you would be eliminated. If you maliciously harmed others you would be eliminated. The goal of this phase was to eliminate half, and only half, of the remaining cultivators. The Elders would be paying close attention to everything happening within the trial space. The time for this phase would be one week, and the location would be to the east, in a large open plain where the trees were much less dense, but still provided for a good deal of cover. In the open area you could see approximately one kilometer clearly in the daytime, but there were enough trees obstructing the view that by the time you saw a kilometer away you were only seeing a very small space. This space also, with the lower density of trees, had much more bushes and other smaller plants. This was the real challenge. Every path you took would leave a trail of some sort, and each battle would leave a mark. The Elders gathered all the young fighters together within a formation and warned them one last time.

"When we activate this formation the battle will begin. You will have one week to return here with two tokens. We will be watching. This formation will randomly distribute all of you within the specified space, and you will have three hundred kilometers of space you could be placed. We will be watching."

With that said, they activated the formation and everyone felt a strange twisting feeling in their gut, like space itself was contorting, before they suddenly discovered they were standing in the middle of nowhere with nobody else in sight. They all knew the goal was to the west, so of course most of them naively walked west in the hopes of finding a token to take when they were close enough to the exit to keep it.

Yun contemplated for a short time, thinking what would be best, before she decided to climb a tree and get her bearings on where she was within the specified contest zone. Looking north and south, she could only see a body of water to the north, and woods to the south. This meant she was near the northern part of the region and to the south was quite a large space to fight in. Climbing back down she began to leisurely walk towards the south, keeping her senses focused on detecting any nearby opponents.

Three days passed like this, with no conflict at all. Yun had walked quite a ways south and finally decided to turn west and head for the goal. After only half a day of traveling west she stopped in front of a bush. Just on the other side was a trap that someone had set up to try and catch someone heading for the goal. Smiling to herself, she crouched down and focused on her hearing. Using her Qi to improve her already powerful hearing, Yun stayed deathly still for nearly five minutes until she heard an almost imperceptible sound nearby. The sound of someone standing in a tree shifting their weight, the gentle creak of the branch as it shifted to accommodate the new point of pressure. She tracked the sound and looked up at the area where she heard it, barely catching sight of a fluffy Vulpis tail around the side of a tree trunk. Smiling to herself, she stood and carefully moved around towards the back of that figure before pulling out one of the spears from the Volvaka Hunters again and launching it at top speed into the branch beneath the hiding trapster, and before it had even struck she had launched herself forward to get closer to the tree he was hiding on.

Crack! The flying spear pierced through the sturdy branch, the expansion of the hole so violent that the fibers shredded out into something like a net, but the spear passed through before embedding itself in another nearby branch. As the target branch had now lost all structural integrity it flopped down under the powerful gravity, leaving nowhere for that Vulpis to stand at all. To his credit, he reacted in the air and got his feet under him and his weapon in hand. As he landed with a grunt Yun was already less than three meters away with her spear out, already reaching out to slap him against the tree trunk with the flat of the blade.

He was a much larger Vulpis than her, easily standing two or three heads taller, and he wore a cloak that made it easier to camouflage himself against the tree trunk. In his hands was what looked like a small poleaxe. Using the handle of the poleaxe, he caught the spearhead and redirected the force while twisting his weapon's head towards her. Responding quickly, before he could counter with the spiked head of his weapon, Yun pulled back her spear blade and stepped in with a sweep of the end of her spear, striking him in the gut quickly. As he staggered back and tried to keep his weapon up to block, she swept in from the other side with a swift strike at his knees. The tail of his poleaxe reached over and blocker her as he stepped in and tried to hook around her neck with the spike and pull her into a knee strike, but as he reached in she stepped to the side, reaching up with her spear, and twisted against the back of his knee swiftly, taking away his balance. As he fell she swept down with a swift chop and hit the base of his head, knocking him out cold.