Initiation

Xiang Yang led the way, with the others close behind. They arrived before a crimson bronze gate fused seamlessly with the entire hall. With a slight push, the doors of the Blade Testing Hall opened, and a powerful suction force drew them all into the great hall.

Once inside, the bronze doors behind them had already shut tight. Startled, Chai Ba and Chai Jiu retreated several steps and tried to push them open, only to find that no matter how they exerted force or circulated their qi, the doors did not budge in the slightest. None of the factions before them had mentioned such a situation.

Xiang Yang paid no attention to this. He merely surveyed the interior of the Blade Testing Hall. Countless blade artifacts hung overhead—long ones, short ones, broad ones, thick ones, in endlessly changing styles—like an ocean of blades.

Directly north of the bronze gates, against the edge of the bronze wall, stood three towering puppets, each a zhang tall and leaning on a saber. They wore armor in black, azure, and gold. Those who had escaped had seemingly mentioned only a single Black Iron Puppet, which differed somewhat from the scene before them.

The sharp-eyed group soon noticed that behind the three puppets were three separate hidden doors. The puppets' imposing bodies blocked them from view, and without close inspection, they truly could not be seen.

Behind and above the heads of the three puppets, a character had been carved for each: "Beginning" for black iron, "Higher" for bronze, and "Divine" for golden armor, corresponding exactly to the three doors.

Clearly, the three puppets were of different levels, and the hidden doors one could enter after challenging them also differed. Presumably, the final rewards would differ as well. For a moment, everyone fixed their eyes