Choices

On the eighth level, he encountered an old man.

The old man wore a gray Daoist robe and leaned on a cane. His face was gaunt, yet his eyes shone as brightly as twin stars.

The test he posed was "choice and sacrifice."

He asked Chu Ming, "If you had to choose between your closest kin and all living beings under heaven, which would you choose?"

Chu Ming answered, "Neither."

The old man asked, "Why?" Chu Ming replied, "Because a true strong man does not need to make such a choice."

The old man froze, then burst into booming laughter, laughing so hard that even his cane fell from his hand.

"What a 'does not need to make such a choice'! This old man has lived for fifty thousand years, and this is the first time I've heard such an arrogant answer. But I like it. You pass."

The ninth level, the tenth level, the eleventh level...

Chu Ming cleared them one after another.

At every level, figures vanished, and at every level, golden stairways emerged.

He stepped over those stairways, crossed those arenas, and passed through those dark voids, walking step by step toward the deepest part of the trial ground.

The twelfth level.

There was no arena here.

Only a platform.

The platform was not large, merely three zhang square, built entirely from some grayish-white stone.

Its surface was smooth as a mirror, without a single crack, stain of blood, or rune.

It floated there in the void like a piece of carefully polished jade.

A gray-robed Daoist stood upon the platform.

The Daoist stood with his hands behind his back, facing away from Chu Ming.

He wore a gray Daoist robe without the slightest decoration, plain to the utmost extreme.

His frame was lean, his shoulders slightly