How many mechanical puppets lurked within these trial grounds? No one had told them, and there was no way to find out.
Everything was an unknown.
"Alright, time's up—enter!"
Truth be told, the time allotted wasn't long. They only needed to hold out for a quarter of an hour inside. Surviving that quarter of an hour without being knocked down meant passing this trial.
On the surface, it didn't seem all that difficult.
But the moment Jiang Chen stepped inside, he could sense that the supposed ease was nothing more than an illusion. Even mechanical puppets were no idle fodder.
Though the puppets lacked human intelligence, they were brilliantly designed and expertly concealed. Traps lurked everywhere, and threats could spring from any direction at any moment.
The first thing Jiang Chen did after entering was distance himself from the other warriors. He wasn't afraid of the mechanical puppets—his divine consciousness was powerful enough to grant him predictive awareness.
The puppets did appear with startling abruptness, but Jiang Chen felt confident he could handle them.
Still, one could never let one's guard down around others.
Perhaps the real danger in this first trial wasn't merely the mechanical puppets, but the other competitors as well.
In the chaos, it would be all too easy for someone to take advantage of the confusion and attack fellow contestants in order to reduce the number of rivals.
It might not be the smartest strategy, but the human heart was the hardest thing to guard against.
Jiang Chen had no expectation of cooperation with others, nor did he want to be ambushed and foolishly become someone else's pawn.
With that decided, he felt considerably more at ease.
His evasive technique was seamless, leaving no trace. At the same time, he activated his divine consciousness, sensing every possible threat before it could materialize.
The mechanical puppets weren't particularly ferocious at the start. But as time wore on, their ferocity intensified. More and more puppets emerged from every direction.
Before long, their numbers had already exceeded the original group of one hundred contestants.
Once the chaos took hold, the difference in strength became immediately apparent.
The weaker cultivators were struck down by the puppets almost at once, falling to the ground and eliminated one after another. The stronger ones barely managed to hold their own.
After a few moments, some of the cleverer warriors began tacitly cooperating, forming groups of three to five, each holding a section of ground.
But such unspoken alliances couldn't withstand any real scrutiny. The puppets emerged from random, unpredictable locations with no discernible pattern.
Just when their defensive line was established, several more puppets might burst through from the very middle of it.
These ad hoc formations were built on fragile trust at best. The slightest crack in their cohesion and the whole thing would collapse in an instant. After all, none of them truly trusted each other—no one was willing to entrust their back to an unknown competitor.
And so, screams of pain echoed across the battlefield.
The scene devolved into a free-for-all. Every defensive line that had been carefully put together was ruthlessly torn apart by the mechanical puppets.
From the very beginning, Jiang Chen had never intended to cooperate with anyone. He didn't believe that a genuine sense of mutual trust could form within a mere quarter of an hour.
Such alliances might work when things were going smoothly, but the moment conditions shifted even slightly, they could easily become a liability.
Time ticked by, second by second.
And the mechanical puppets in the arena grew ever stronger, ever more violent.
Under these conditions, the most visible change was the steadily shrinking number of participants. One after another, people were struck down—transmitted out of the arena, eliminated.
In the end, out of a hundred warriors, only thirty or forty remained.
And the number was still dwindling.
Fortunately, the first trial lasted only a quarter of an hour. Just as the situation was growing increasingly dire, that quarter hour of torment finally came to an end.
A sharp whistle pierced the air, and all of the mechanical puppets froze in place as though someone had cast a spell on them. Then, one by one, they vanished from the arena.
"Time's up!"
The examiner in charge of this segment walked in with a pleasant smile. "Not bad—your group managed to keep nearly thirty people standing. That's a very respectable result. Congratulations. I hope you'll keep it up in the next trial."
In the first examination, a team of one hundred had been reduced to fewer than thirty. And this was supposedly one of the better-performing groups.
Jiang Chen was somewhat speechless.
These qualifying trials were crazier than he'd imagined. At this rate of elimination, it was entirely possible that fewer than five hundred people would remain after all three trials.
After all, the very first trial had already eliminated this many. The attrition rate was frankly alarming.
For Jiang Chen, though, the first trial had been nothing more than a warm-up. He'd barely exchanged blows with any of the puppets at all, making only token movements here and there.
For the most part, he'd simply used his divine consciousness to sense threats in advance and relied on his speed to dodge before they could reach him.
That said, he hadn't been overly cautious—he did, on occasion, engage the puppets in direct combat for a round or two.