Three hours!
The trial on the third floor had lasted a full three hours. Xia Ping stood where he was, gasping for breath in great gulps, drenched in sweat, his energy severely depleted.
Centered on his body, an area spanning over ten thousand kilometers had turned into a hellish sea of fire. The earth had split apart into ravines, through which bubbling, steaming magma flowed.
The landscape around him had been utterly transformed. What had once been a plain had, due to the ferocity of the battle, seen soil hurled into the air and piled into towering mountains thousands of meters high.
The land was even strewn with the corpses of vicious beasts—at least fifty million had died. Great quantities of blood flowed across the ground, filling the air with a thick stench of gore.
By now, not a single vicious beast could approach him again. They had either been blasted to pieces, burned alive by the flames into charcoal, or even reduced to ash.
Yet Xia Ping remained incomparably alert, his eyes gleaming with a strange light.
He felt better than ever before. Though this was a trial, it was also a form of tempering.
His progress had originally been too rapid, leaving a slight discord between his soul and body. He had not reached a state of perfect completion, which would have left a tiny flaw when he advanced to the Return to Truth Realm.
But after this battle, he felt that his soul and body had fused completely, carrying an aura of water and milk blending together, yin and yang merging, heaven and earth becoming one.
This was the sign of his soul aligning with his body.
Vaguely, the Primordial Spirit deep within his Golden Core seemed on the verge of maturing, ready to break out of