After a single round of deduction, Jiang Chen pinpointed the location of the exit gate. Moments later, he found his way out of the maze without any trouble.
The labyrinthine formation spanning the entire island had Jiang Chen quietly impressed.
Had he not been well-versed in this art, he would never have made it through so smoothly.
"I'd wager this seventh trial will weed out a huge number of people. Any cultivator who isn't skilled in this sort of thing would have to rely on sheer luck to complete it."
Jiang Chen calculated that none of the Five Young Masters of the Eternal Sacred Land would make it through this round. After all, the seventh trial wasn't just a thorny maze — it came with a strict time limit. The time allotted for the seventh trial was seven two-hour periods.
It wasn't a particularly long time, nor was it a short one.
Just as Jiang Chen broke through the seventh trial, Lu Mingye happened to clear the fifth. His face was alight with excitement, and he nearly roared aloud to vent the thrill surging through him.
He told himself he had performed at the peak of his ability through five consecutive trials, wasting virtually no time and moving at the fastest possible pace.
He was thoroughly confident that with such impeccable speed, he must have left Jiang Chen far behind.
"Hmph — at my completion rate, reaching the sixth trial in this short a time means Jiang Chen is probably still stumbling around the third or fourth one."
Lu Mingye had no idea where his confidence came from, but it only reinforced his belief that his performance had thoroughly overshadowed Jiang Chen's.
Jiang Chen, naturally, had no inkling of Lu Mingye's thoughts — nor any interest in finding out.
He had already entered the eighth forbidden island. This eighth island was the third-to-last of the ten great islands.
In other words, the second phase of the trials had truly entered its most difficult stretch.
The task on the eighth forbidden island was no simple affair. This eighth island turned out to be a volcanic island, which took Jiang Chen by considerable surprise.
In this eighth trial, the task was to pass through the guardianship of a guardian creature — because the only way out of the eighth forbidden island lay behind the guardian's lair.
That meant to clear the eighth island, one had to endure the test of the guardian creature. This creature was called the Volcanic Giant.
It was a being born from the accumulated essence of heaven and earth within the long-active volcano.
Such a spirit creature might not possess the sharpest intelligence, but having been born from natural spiritual energy and backed by the terrain itself, its combat power was truly fearsome. Even Jiang Chen did not dare underestimate it.
However, Jiang Chen quickly realized something — he had absorbed and integrated the Vermilion Bird bloodline, and the Vermilion Bird divine bird accompanied him wherever he went.
Wasn't this volcanic island exactly the kind of environment the Vermilion Bird loved most?
At that thought, Jiang Chen summoned the Vermilion Bird divine bird and explained the situation. The Vermilion Bird let out an amused chuckle.
"Chen Shao, a creature like the Volcanic Giant is really just something with a large frame. In battle, its intense flames make a lot of people uncomfortable. But with my Vermilion Bird bloodline in you, its power and its flames are absolutely incapable of hurting you."
With the Vermilion Bird divine bird standing guard, Jiang Chen felt even more at ease about the eighth trial.
A short while later, Jiang Chen ventured into the core volcanic region. The cavern wound its way deep into the mountain, and as he advanced, boiling magma splashed and sprayed ceaselessly from below — as though countless ferocious beasts were imprisoned beneath, ready to burst forth and rampage at any moment.
Jiang Chen's expression remained perfectly calm. For many cultivators, this terrifying magma would have been a direct assault on and trial of their spiritual consciousness.
But Jiang Chen's physical body was immensely powerful, and he carried the Vermilion Bird bloodline — so this level of extreme heat did not particularly concern him.