The Blood Forbidden Trial

After hearing this, Han Li knew he was being given well-intentioned advice. He could only offer a few vague words of agreement before changing the subject and finally asking about the source of the Foundation Establishment Pill’s main ingredients.

“Junior Han wants to know where spiritual medicines like the Jade Marrow Mushroom come from?” Wu Feng asked, surprised.

“That’s right. You’ve been in the sect for many years, Senior Brother. You must know something about it,” Han Li said, his tone expectant.

Wu Feng was silent for a moment before replying.

“I do know a bit, of course, but I advise you to give up on that idea, Junior Brother. The place is not only incredibly dangerous, but under normal circumstances, it is completely inaccessible. You can only enter at a specific time, from a specific location, with the help of senior sect elders.”

Han Li’s heart lifted when he heard the other party knew something, but the follow-up words made him start. He pressed for more details at once.

As it turned out, medicines of this kind had become rare in the cultivation world long ago, vanishing entirely from ordinary places. The only places where they could still be found were the so-called forbidden lands.

Since cultivators themselves called them forbidden lands, these places were naturally all extremely dangerous, generally remote locations with harsh environments. Some were even the lairs of demons, requiring one to fight through every step of the way. Others still held ancient prohibitions, forcing one to expend great effort to break through the restrictions before there was any hope of entering.

The main ingredients for the Foundation Establishment Pill used year after year by the Yue Nation’s sects, including the Yellow Maple Valley, all came from the latter type of forbidden land—a place long sealed by an ancient wind-attribute prohibition.

The prohibition there was incredibly powerful. Originally, relying on the strength of their sects alone, there was no hope of breaking it open. But later, someone somehow discovered that this prohibition had a five-day period of weakness every five years. During this window, if several Core Formation cultivators worked together to forcefully break the seal, they could temporarily open a passage, allowing a fixed number of people to enter.

But when the passage first appeared and all the cultivators tried to enter, another unexpected problem emerged.

Those who had already established their Foundation were all blocked by a different, stranger prohibition on the inner layer, while Qi Condensation cultivators walked in without any hindrance. They gathered a large quantity of rare spiritual medicines and brought them back out.

This discovery immediately caused a sensation across the Yue Nation’s cultivation world. The seven great immortal sects began sending batches of disciples below Foundation Establishment into the forbidden land every five years to collect large amounts of spiritual medicines, with the ingredients for the Foundation Establishment Pill being the top priority.

In the beginning, the disciples of each sect kept to themselves, and being selected for the mission was considered a good assignment. But as year after year of collection stripped the forbidden land of its resources, the spiritual medicines gradually grew scarce. Disputes between sects over a single rare herb, and the violent conflicts that followed, began to occur with increasing frequency. By a certain mission several hundred years ago, disciples had even lost their lives in the fighting.

That first loss of life tore away the thin veil between the major sects. They openly raised the banners of the strong devouring the weak and Heaven and Earth showing no mercy, encouraging their disciples to rob others. The trip into the forbidden land was stained with blood.

From then on, spiritual medicines grew fewer, and the fighting within the forbidden land grew fiercer with each mission, more bloody with each cycle.

In the last hundred years, the slaughter had become so brutal that fewer than a third of the disciples who entered returned alive. The elite among each sect’s low-level disciples were being decimated. The disciples of every sect began to call the mission the “Blood Forbidden Trial,” doing everything they could to avoid it. At one point, there was the embarrassing situation where no one was willing to go.

Forcing disciples to go was even worse.

A disciple who did not truly wish to enter the forbidden land in search of medicine would surely go through the motions. Nine times out of ten, they would find a place to hide and wait for the time to pass before emerging safely.

This had happened before, infuriating the higher-ups who had sent them, but there was nothing they could do. After all, if someone had been forced to go, who could blame them for not trying?

And so, with every sect in Yue Nation hungering for spiritual medicines but few disciples willing to risk the journey, all sects began to use heavy rewards to recruit disciples for the forbidden land mission, linking the value of the medicines brought back to the level of the reward.

Take the Yellow Maple Valley, for instance.

From the past few missions, the sect had made it an explicit rule: any disciple who signed up would receive a mid-grade spirit stone and a magical tool from the sect’s stores as an advance reward, to encourage participation.

If they actually brought spiritual medicines back from the forbidden land, the sect would give them even richer rewards based on the quantity and quality of what they returned with—everything from spirit stones to magical artifacts to elixirs were available. The highest reward even included the sect’s secret stock of Foundation Establishment Pills, something that could make any low-level disciple gamble everything.

These generous rewards did cause a wave of sign-ups across the sects, but that wave lasted only for two or three missions before it died down completely.

The bloody reality made the disciples realize that these rewards were not easy to claim.

Back when there were no heavy rewards, about one-third of those who entered the forbidden land survived. After the rewards were implemented, fewer than a quarter made it out of the Blood Forbidden Trial alive. And among those who survived, the number who actually brought out spiritual medicines was pitifully small. Most returned with nothing but severe injuries, let alone a Foundation Establishment Pill to show for it.

And it was precisely in this situation that Han Li had asked Wu Feng about the sources of the three main ingredients.

Now that he had heard all of this, Han Li felt nothing but frustration.

He had not expected that gathering a few medicinal ingredients would require going to some forbidden land, killing his way through disciples from other sects, and only escaping after emerging victorious. The survival rate was staggeringly low—fewer than a quarter of those who entered the so-called “Blood Forbidden Trial” walked out alive.

The risk was far too great. He was no expert. Among the low-level disciples of the Yellow Maple Valley, he was only average.

He had no profound magical power, no mastery of powerful spells. His only real assets were a few decent magical tools and a not-so-stupid head.

But relying on just those, Han Li did not think he was certain to be among the final quarter who survived.

Annoyed, he asked Wu Feng why the various sects could not restrain their disciples and simply share the spiritual medicines equally. After all, the medicines were all used to refine Foundation Establishment Pills together anyway. Why tear each other apart and make enemies?

Wu Feng smiled bitterly and replied:

“Junior Brother does not understand. Even when the Foundation Establishment Pill is refined together, the distribution of the pills depends entirely on how many spiritual medicines each sect provides, calculated by proportion. Under these circumstances, how could the sects not fight tooth and nail for the medicines?”

Han Li was speechless for a long time.

Finally, his mind heavy with thoughts, he clarified that the next “Blood Forbidden Trial” would take place six months from now. Then, under Wu Feng’s repeated warnings to be careful, he left the Technique Transmission Hall and returned to the Hundred Medicines Garden.

Over the next few days, Han Li was listless, brooding over the matter. He weighed the pros and cons, the risks involved, over and over, trying to force himself to make a sensible decision.

It was obvious that within Yue Nation, there was no way to find these three spiritual medicines outside the forbidden land. Otherwise, the seven great immortal sects would not have been tearing themselves apart every five years in self-weakening internal conflict.

If Han Li wanted to avoid this risk, he had to pin his hopes on finding the medicines outside Yue Nation. Otherwise, Foundation Establishment would be utterly hopeless, and he would turn into a pile of bones in a little over a hundred years. But thinking it over carefully, finding the medicines outside was even more hopeless—there was no chance at all.

But if he truly joined the “Blood Forbidden Trial,” the death rate of over three-quarters was far too high. The odds of him dying there were incredibly high. This truly put Han Li in a bind.