Before the final day's assessment began, Bo Saixi brought the six of them beneath the Sinking Silver Pillars. Tang San alone stepped into the deepest channel.
The one-year deadline fell that night. Zhu Zhuqing fastened her wrist rings first, Dai Mubai loosened his shoulders and back, and Ning Rongrong withdrew the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda into her body. All six took their places before the pillars. Oscar had not brought even a single sausage with him.
Xiao Wu gathered their outer clothes for them on shore.
From the day he returned to the pillar until now, Tang San's right shoulder had been battered red by the waves more times than he could count. For the first two months, he could endure only short stretches. Only afterward did he gradually work his way back to his old record of ten hours. By winter, he had begun staying late into the night to endure the crosscurrents after the tide receded. He had rebuilt his soul power from level sixty-six, but even at level seventy, his sixth ring slot remained empty, and he had never treated his seventh red ring as a restored true body.
The strength Xiao Wu had once sustained was gone. His waist and abdomen, his shoulders and back, and every meridian had to make up for it themselves.
Zhu Zhuqing and Oscar, meanwhile, had reached level seventy through genuine cultivation before winter. When they first reached that new ten-level bottleneck, each received a God-Given Soul Ring pearl from Bo Saixi. Both had saved the opportunity granted to sea trial participants upon first reaching a bottleneck for their seventh rings. Neither had collected one for anyone else, nor taken a second pearl.
On the day Zhu Zhuqing absorbed hers, the black ring's light formed a cat's silhouette around her.