"Ugh, this really doesn't feel good." Shaking his head, Ao Siqin muttered inwardly.
If Zhao Wuji's gravity domain was a shackle imposed on the body, then the pressure of the other teachers was a shackle imposed on the mind. It felt like he had just taken two consecutive math exams, with the thought processes of his entire brain falling into slow motion.
It wasn't that he hadn't considered telling the teachers about what had happened when he absorbed his soul rings. If he could remove the restriction imposed by the residual will of the soul beast, perhaps he could try absorbing a soul ring with a higher age limit. However, the phenomenon that occurred when he absorbed his soul rings was simply too bizarre. Ao Siqin couldn't be certain whether he would still be protected from the impact of the soul beast's residual will in that mysterious space when absorbing a soul ring beyond his level.
What if it didn't work? Ao Siqin didn't dare take that risk.
The spiritual power in his sea of consciousness stirred slightly. The dark-blue head battle armor that had been covering the sky above his sea of consciousness like a protective membrane immediately changed from illusory to solid, and the pressure of the teachers that had penetrated in immediately became much less influential.
As the test time passed, the differences in the students' physical qualities quickly began to show. While students with stronger physiques, such as Ao Siqin and Dai Mubai, were still handling it with ease,
Ning Rongrong, who was only at the Great Soul Master level, had already begun to turn pale. Ao Siqin noticed that when Ning Rongrong's face began to turn pale, the Grandmaster, standing outside the testing circle, wrote something down on the recording tablet in his hand.
"Hmm, looks like this test isn't simply about seeing how long we can hold out. Other factors still have to be taken into consideration and calculated."
In the end, this test completely ended after half an hour. It wasn't that the students' ability to withstand pressure was poor; the teachers' testing methods were simply too ruthless. Every five minutes, the pressure imposed on the students would suddenly rise by another level. It probably hadn't quite doubled, but the increase was definitely more than one-third.
After the students adapted to the previous pressure level, facing the suddenly increased pressure often required them to exert much more strength just to stabilize their bodies.
According to Ao Siqin's observations, the students basically collapsed whenever the pressure increased.
Ning Rongrong fell when the pressure intensity rose to the third stage;
Oscar and Ma Hongjun fell during the fourth pressure-intensity stage. When these two guys fell, Ao Siqin even suffered some collateral damage.
Flender was extremely dissatisfied with Ma Hongjun's performance and failed to control his aura for a moment. An aura at least at the Soul Emperor level slammed straight into Ao Siqin. Fortunately, Flender reacted quickly; otherwise, Ao Siqin definitely would have collapsed alongside those two.
However, Ao Siqin could understand why Flender was angry. A Battle Soul Elder possessing a top-tier beast martial soul and a Food Soul Elder having physical endurance at the same level was simply embarrassing. And when such an embarrassing guy happened to be his personal disciple, that was doubly embarrassing.
Oscar wasn't like Ao Siqin, an atypical Food-type soul master whose physical qualities had been strengthened multiple times through deep meditation with the Five Animal Play, battle armor, and an external soul bone.
After Ma Hongjun and Oscar fell, Zhu Zhuqing also collapsed three minutes later. This girl had always been someone with a firm will, so she endured the painful sensation brought about by the pressure's sudden changes. However, limited by her soul power level and the inherent strength of her martial soul, she still failed to hold out until the next stage of pressure intensity, becoming the only student among them to fall outside a period of pressure-intensity transition.
At the fifth stage of pressure intensity, only Dai Mubai and Ao Siqin remained in the field. Dai Mubai, who had the highest soul power level among the students, was already circulating his soul power with all his strength to resist the pressure. The faint White Tiger phantom behind Dai Mubai was proof of this.
As for Ao Siqin, there was also a phantom behind him, but that phantom was not a single entity. Instead, it was a composite phantom. Overall, it took the form of a Flame Armor Rhinoceros, except that around the Flame Armor Rhinoceros was another layer of dark-blue armor-like phantom.
From this phantom, it was not difficult to see that Ao Siqin's ability to hold out for so long actually had little to do with his martial soul. He was basically relying on the bonuses brought by his external soul bone and battle armor.
"Phew." Ao Siqin laboriously exhaled the stale breath he had held in his lungs for a long time, his face somewhat flushed. He didn't know whether it was because the teachers had seen that all the other students had already been eliminated, but Ao Siqin felt that when they adjusted the pressure, they seemed to have deliberately increased it a little more. The terrifying pressure around Ao Siqin now seemed almost ready to solidify, and under this terrifying pressure, even breathing could no longer be done comfortably.
Ao Siqin felt that he probably wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure of the sixth stage. Mentally, he still felt fine, but physically, he was already having some trouble.
The amount of oxygen that red blood cells could transport was gradually decreasing. Without sufficient oxygen, the chemical reactions constantly taking place in the mitochondria could not provide enough energy to the human muscles, and the brain's reactions would also gradually become sluggish, eventually entering a passive state of rest, namely unconsciousness.
As it turned out, Ao Siqin's premonition was quite accurate. Neither he nor Dai Mubai managed to withstand the sixth stage of pressure intensity. Although they did not collapse immediately after the pressure intensity changed, under the sixth-stage pressure, neither of them lasted for more than a minute. Strictly speaking, they had not even made it through the adaptation period following the change in pressure intensity, so Zhu Zhuqing was still the uniquely special one.
In the end, the second stage of the test was declared over less than half an hour after it began. After the students drank the sugar water made from Shao Xin's candy beans, they gradually woke from their unconscious states one after another, each of them looking as though they had been completely drained as they dragged their legs back to their dormitories and fell into sleep.
A physical endurance test had completely drained Ao Siqin's energy and spirit. In this condition, Ao Siqin absolutely did not dare attempt to absorb a soul ring beyond his level.
Fortunately, the Grandmaster also needed time to analyze the data collected during the test, so the originally scheduled departure date for Sunset Forest was pushed back by two days, giving Ao Siqin sufficient time to adjust his condition.
Of course, during these two days, Ao Siqin couldn't simply stay in his dormitory and sleep. After the Grandmaster reached a conclusion regarding the age limit of his soul ring, he would also need to go to the Grandmaster's office to determine the type of soul beast.
===============
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(End of Chapter)