Huang Xie held the five items in his hand and arranged them in his palm.
All during this, the room around them was still shrinking.
There was less and less space for them to stand as the room continued to shrink.
However, Huang Xie didn’t seem worried at all as he casually looked at the items in his hand. He even looked at them carefully as if he was making sure that something was correct, though the others had no idea what he was doing.
Though they didn’t say anything, it was clear by the way that everyone looked at him as if they were begging him to hurry up.
When he was finally satisfied, Huang Xie put the items in his hand into the panel based on the order that he had arranged them in.
When he put the final item in, the panel released a green light and suddenly opened up.
Behind the panel was the key, one that was just like the one that he had found in the previous room. At the same time, there was a key hole that suddenly appeared on the front of the statue.
However…that didn’t stop the room from shrinking.
It seemed like the room would continue to shrink until they cleared this second task.
But even then Huang Xie just slowly walked over to the front of the statue even though the walls were closing in around them. In an even slower manner, he put the key into the key hole and turned it.
It was only when the key was fully turned that the room finally stopped shrinking.
Seeing the room stop shrinking, the rest of them let out a sigh of relief.
With how much it had shrunken and the rate that it was shrinking, it would have only taken a few more minutes to reach them. So of course they were relieved that it had stopped right there before reaching them.
“Congratulations on passing the second task.”
The familiar mechanical voice of the statue rang out once again.
Everyone let out another sigh of relief before becoming tense again. After all, the reappearance of this voice wasn’t exactly a good thing.
It meant that they would most likely be thrown into the next task right away. There wouldn’t be a chance for them to relax and catch their breath.
As if on cue, the floor suddenly disappeared from under them and they were thrown down into the abyss again.
Everyone had bitter smiles on their faces, but they also let out a sigh of relief.
At the very least, they were leaving this room where they could have died at any moment. At least they no longer had to feel suffocated from being in this cramped room anymore.
Though there were still three more tasks ahead, at least they had Huang Xie.
He had shown that he had the abilities to clear these tasks for them, so they would depend on him to clear out the next few tasks as well.
It felt like they would be able to get through this trial in the end.
…
There were only half of them left when the trial was over.
Even though they didn’t lose anyone on the second task, they couldn’t stop what eventually came. The third and fourth task were just too hard for them to not lose anyone.
They weren’t able to save everyone and eventually there were people that fell to the traps that were in those tasks.
But that was only a fourth of their group.
They had only lost a fourth of their group during the third and fourth task.
As for the other fourth, they lost all of those people in the last task.
That was close to ten people in one go.
That was because during the last task, there was a large trap that had caught all of those people at once. So all of them lost their lives at the same time because of that one trap that had caught them all.
Huang Xie had wanted to save them, but he had been too late.
Even if he had his powerful abilities, it wasn’t as if he was able to do everything.
So by the time that he had gone forward to save them, it was already too late as they had lost their lives.
Once the fifth and final task was over and all of the key holes had been unlocked, the statue said, “Congratulations on completing this trial. The exit to the next floor will now open.”
As soon as its voice fell, there was a set of stairs that came down from above.
This set of stairs landed right where the statue was and was for them to reach the next floor, but there wasn’t a single person that went forward to leave.
That was because all of them turned around to gather around Huang Xie.
At first, they tried to comfort him over the fact that he hadn’t been able to save the ones that they had lost. They had tried telling him that it wasn’t his fault and that there wasn’t anything that he could do, but Huang Xie still blamed himself.
With the way that they were acting, it was almost as if they had become friends after going through these trials together.
However, those that knew what the real situation was wouldn’t believe that.
There was one thing that all of these people wanted from Huang Xie, which was why they had stuck around in the first place. Without getting that thing back from Huang Xie, they wouldn’t be able to leave this place feeling assured.
They had to get the piece of their soul that Huang Xie took back from him.
So they were trying to act friendly to him in an attempt to get the fragment of their souls back from him. They knew that it was impossible to take it by force since he had already shown what he was capable of, so the only thing that they could do was try to befriend him and try to get him to give them back willingly.
Naturally, Huang Xie knew what they were doing and he didn’t fall for it at all.
That was why he was ignoring their attempts to comfort him over the loss of these people.
In fact, what he was really regretting was the fact that he had lost those servants just now.
Since he had their souls in his hands, it meant that as long as they didn’t give up all hope, they would have no choice but to follow his orders.
Huang Xie didn’t know what would be coming up, but he was certain that this wouldn’t be the only floor where they would have to work together. So if he were able to gather more slaves and send them up, that meant that it would be easier for them.
As long as he had the souls of these people in his hands, then it would be easier for them in the future.
The loss of half of them was a serious blow…
Still, it wasn’t as if he could keep moping about it forever.
All he could do was accept that half of them were gone and focus on the other half.
Just because he lost half of them didn’t mean that it was all over. Instead, he should see it as still having half instead of losing everything.
Taking a deep breath, Huang Xie calmed himself and turned to head over to Xiao Ming’s group.
When the others saw this, they revealed ugly looks.
They knew that since Huang Xie was going over to them, it meant that he still didn’t trust them. It meant that he was still treating them as outsiders and they were the only ones that he really cared about.
That meant that there was no chance to get their souls back.
There were some that immediately turned to head up to the next floor.
Since they couldn’t get their souls back, they would do the only other thing that they could do.
They would climb as quickly as possible so they wouldn’t run into Huang Xie again. As long as they were able to avoid him, then they wouldn’t be influenced by the fact that he held their souls.
Once they were out of this tower, all they had to do was go to their sect elders to put pressure on Huang Xie’s Love Sect.
With all of the people that were here, there was no way that the Love Sect would ignore all of them. As long as the elders of all of their sects put pressure on the Love Sect, then there was no doubt that they would be able to recover their souls.
Though some of them headed up, there were some of them that remained.
It seemed like they still wanted to try and befriend Huang Xie to get their souls back.
But…they were completely disappointed by what happened next.
“Take these. Use them when the time comes.”
Huang Xie said this as he handed a few balls of light to Xiao Ming and the others.
The ones that remained recognized these immediately as the soul fragments that Huang Xie had taken from them.
As soon as they saw this, they knew what Huang Xie was planning and didn’t waste any more time.
They knew that it was impossible to get their soul fragments back, so the only thing that they could do was climb as quickly as possible to avoid meeting Huang Xie in the future.
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