In the middle of a forest on top of a mountain, there was this large group of people all with powerful auras standing in front of a large ancient-looking door. This group of people seemed to be debating something important since their arguments were so loud that Nick could even hear it from tens of meters away.
"The answer is Immortal or sage!" One person said.
"No! That would be too easy, besides, how do you know it"s even human, maybe it"s the flame that is asking the question, you do know that flames can also possess consciousness, right?" Another person countered.
"You guys are forgetting about the most important part, how do we submit out answers?" A very important question was then raised.
Nick ran over to the source of the voices, his arrival did cause a little disturbance but was soon ignore once they saw his cultivation level, most of those here were at the gathering realm, and there were even a few powerhouses at the transcendence realm!! So what difference would an Origin realm brat make?
Being ignored didn"t bother Nick, in fact, he preferred it, a hidden blade was far scarier than a sharp one after all. Nick slowly walked around the group and began inspecting the door.
The door was gray in color with a blue flame insignia on the top middle corner, and below it, engraved, was a riddle.
"Pay your respects, tell me, what am I?" This was the riddle.
Nick now began to understand why the other people were debating so furiously, it was apparently all because of this riddle, Nick felt like he had the answer, but he didn"t want to say it in front of his compet.i.tion and risk them entering the door with him, so Nick began racking his brain trying to find a way to get rid of them.
"Hmm, if my years as the famous riddler do not fail me, pay you respects, this is definitely an answering mechanism, to submit one"s answer one needs to kneel down at the foot of the mountain and say their answer out loud, but what would the answer be?" Nick started murmuring as if he was thinking out loud.
Everyone in front of the gate grew quiet and stared wide-eyed at Nick, is this man dumb, why would he say something so important out loud, but when they thought about it it made sense, they felt it was likely that he was trying to curry their favor.
Besides, his a.s.sumption didn"t seem wrong, Paying respects usually went hand in hand with kneeling down.
Soon all chatter and argument began, no one wanted to go down the mountain alone, what if they unlocked the gate only for the people beside the door to take advantage of it, so they quickly came into an agreement they would all go down the mountain together.
As for Nick, no one really paid attention to him anymore, by right, he has contributed his share to this problem so they would throw him a bone later on for being a good boy, as for giving him a share of the treasure...please let"s be serious here.
"Boy, keep a lookout here, call us as soon as you see movement from the door!" One of the transcendence realm experts commanded Nick, they weren"t really worried that the boy would enter the place without them since they would be able to find him again when he went out of the place, and at that time hehe.
Nick nodded and patted his chest in a very soldier-like fas.h.i.+on, his eyes filled with pure determination to serve his elders.
Satisfied the group quickly rushed down the mountain, Nick knew that he didn"t have much time so he quickly turned to the gate and began to speak.
"You are the most powerful, invincible, and s.e.xy flame in existence!!" Nick said in reverence, Nick didn"t actually believe that pay your respects meant to kneel down, instead, he had the feeling that the flame needed someone to stroke its ego, to bootlick, to act as a kiss a.s.s and complement it.
"Hmph!! A tiny blue s.p.a.ck dares to claim its invincible!! And you, the future true Emperor, to actually look up to a flame in reverence, have you no shame?!" Nick heard the Old geezer snort and scoff throughout his statement.
"I swear I will curse it to oblivion if you can give me a better flame." Nick counter-attacked nonchalantly.
"Boy, keep on bootlicking, don"t waste this opportunity!" The cheap Old geezer changed his stance so fast that even Nick began to look down on this shameless geezer.
Creek!
And as hard as it was to believe, Nick was right since the door slowly opened, the roots and branches that had grown over it slowly slide back allowing the door to open completely, Nick then noticed that the door seemed to be struggling to stay open and looked like it would close anytime.
So Nick had no other choice but to jump in without even being certain of what awaited him inside.
At the foot of the mountain, there was a spectacular scene, famous cultivators and sect masters alike were all gathered around kneeling and yelling out names, each and every one of them blus.h.i.+ng from their actions but none of them were willing to give up!
After Nick jumped in he found that the place was incredibly dark, so dark that Nick couldn"t even see where he was stepping, Nick was about to buy a flashlight from the system when torches appeared at the sides of the wall, all of them burning in blue-colored flames.
Nick followed the now illuminated pathway and soon arrived in front of a large main hall, the hall was empty except for an inscribed table and three doors situated on different sides of the wall.
Then step by step Nick arrived in front of the table first, and just as he suspected the engravings on the table were instructions. There were three instructions to be exact which corresponded to a door each.
Nick read then first instruction.
"If you are here then you must be wise and filial for you have answered my riddle, but gaining my power won"t be easy, for the first test you will enter the door on your left.
But be warned, side effects may include baldness, dizziness, vomiting and even death, I believe you can do it, I truly believe that out of the thousands of people I had believed in before, you will succeed...sigh."
Nick wanted nothing more than to curse out this shameless flame, and what in the h.e.l.l was that sigh at the end for, was it perhaps predicting that he would fail?!!
After cursing out the flame in his head Nick found out that the writings of the second and third instructions were unreadable as if obstructed by a veil, Nick got the feeling that he would only be able to read them once he pa.s.ses the first trial.
And so Nick walked up to the first door with shaky footsteps.