The same scene played out for the two hooded cultivators locked in their fight against the Skyshatter Ape — a moment of distraction, a flash of light, and both of them were gone, disappeared from the trial zone in the same instant.
The sect's protective talismans — dormant until that point for every disciple facing a Tier Four Spirit Beast — activated on their own the instant each encounter turned fatal.
Across the entire examination realm, the same single thought surfaced in the minds of every disappearing disciple.
What was that?
Back in the clearing, the light slowly faded, and Mo Xuan's Soul Power began climbing at a rate that defied everything he understood about cultivation. Thirty-five. Thirty-seven. Thirty-nine.
Boom. Forty.
The Demon Tiger stood several meters away, its enormous body now marked with fresh wounds across its flank, its earlier composure entirely gone. It roared and charged forward one final time.
Mo Xuan raised his sword on instinct, tracing a slow circle through the air as he moved, his eyes completely calm despite the beast bearing down on him at full speed. The world around him seemed to slow to a crawl.
"Rune-Sword Unity."
The black-and-white radiance condensed along the length of his blade, gathering into something dense and absolute.
"Body-Soul Resonance."
The sword moved in a single arc — simple, unhurried, almost gentle in its execution, as though the blade itself had always known precisely which path it needed to travel and had simply been waiting for permission. A name surfaced in Mo Xuan's mind in that same instant, arriving without effort, as natural as breathing.
Taiji Severance.
The blade passed clean through the Demon Tiger's body.
For one breath, nothing happened at all.
Then the entire forest erupted in blinding light. The Demon Tiger's massive body froze mid-motion, its crimson eyes widening in something that, for the first time, looked unmistakably like fear. Cracks of black-and-white energy spread rapidly across its hide, tracing jagged lines from its shoulder down through its flank.
Then—
Boom!
A final flash of light swallowed the clearing whole, and when it faded, the Demon Tiger was simply gone, as though it had never existed at all.
Silence settled over the examination zone. Mo Xuan stood alone at the centre of the clearing, his sword lowering slowly at his side. Behind him, a new soul manifestation took shape in the air — neither purely Rune nor purely Sword, but something built from both, black and white Spiritual Energy spiralling together in a pattern of perfect, seamless harmony.
A Rune-Sword Soul.
For the first time since its strange formation at his awakening ceremony, Mo Xuan's Cosmic Soul had finally evolved into something whole.
High above the examination grounds, every elder watching through the crystal screen had gone completely silent, unable to look away.
As the last echoes of light faded from the clearing, Mo Xuan lowered himself back into a seated position and slipped once more into meditation, letting his newly unified Soul settle into its final shape.
Back at the examination arena, flashes of light kept appearing one after another across the platform, each one announcing the return of another disciple pulled from the trial zone.
Hum!
A disciple materialised out of thin air and collapsed almost immediately, his legs giving out from under him before he'd even fully registered where he was. An elder standing nearby caught him just before his head struck the stone floor. The young man's face was ghostly pale, and he looked around weakly, blinking as though he didn't trust his own eyes. "I'm... alive?" Before anyone could offer him an answer, his eyes rolled back, and he fainted outright.
Another flash followed close behind. A second disciple appeared, then a third, then a fourth, each one arriving in the same battered condition — exhausted, some slipping straight into unconsciousness, others barely lucid enough to grasp that they had, against whatever odds the trial zone had thrown at them, actually survived.
The mood among the spectators shifted with every new arrival. The excitement that had carried the crowd through the earlier days of the examination drained away, replaced by something heavier. They had come expecting a test. They hadn't expected to watch so many young disciples dragged back from the very edge of death.
Then—
Hum!
A particularly bright flash lit up the platform. Qin Hao and his partner appeared first, both pale and unsteady, followed by Feng Yan and her companion, then the two hooded cultivators. Last of all came Jin Bao, dropping onto the stone completely unconscious, his face pale, his robes coated in dust, several of his talismans reduced to ash scattered around him. The nearest elder knelt and checked him over quickly. "Only exhausted," he confirmed, waving over an attendant to carry him off for treatment.
But the examination wasn't finished yet. One name remained on the crystal screens, refusing to vanish along with the others.
Mo Xuan.
The Sect Master's gaze fixed on the screen, and the other elders gathered around him fell into the same watchful silence. The image showed the enormous clearing where the fight had taken place — Mo Xuan sitting cross-legged at its centre, completely motionless, his sword resting beside him, his eyes closed. The black-and-white radiance that had erupted from his body during the fight had gradually faded away, yet his Spiritual Energy continued circulating steadily through him, undisturbed.
He was meditating, and by every indication, meditating deeply.
Han Long's voice reached the Sect Master through Spiritual Sense a moment later. "No one should disturb him. Let him digest his gains." With that, he vanished from wherever he'd been standing, leaving no trace of his presence behind.
The Sect Master allowed himself a wry smile before turning to transmit something of his own through Spiritual Sense to the elder standing beside him. The elder's expression shifted slightly at whatever he'd received, and he immediately cupped his hands in acknowledgement. "Understood." Turning toward the senior disciples assisting with the examination, he issued the order without elaboration: keep the formation running, tend to the unconscious disciples, and make certain nothing disturbed Mo Xuan.
Earlier, deep in the trial zone, Mo Xuan's sword had been descending toward the Demon Tiger in that final, decisive strike. The black-and-white light wrapped around his blade had grown steadily more intense as the technique built toward its peak, and the tiger, already teetering on the edge of death from the accumulated damage of the fight, had no way to escape what was coming. Mo Xuan had gathered everything he had — every fragment of his newly merged Cosmic Soul — into that single strike.
Taiji Severance.
But something happened in that instant that Mo Xuan never noticed, that not even the elders watching through the crystal screens caught. Only the Sect Master saw it.
Within the blinding wash of black-and-white light, a figure appeared.
For a single instant, the entire world seemed to stop moving. Falling leaves froze mid-descent. The Spiritual Energy saturating the air stilled completely, as though time itself had simply forgotten to continue. The figure stood directly between Mo Xuan and the Demon Tiger and raised one hand. The terrifying strike that should have ended the beast's life outright simply stopped, suspended mid-motion as if it had struck an invisible wall.
The figure looked first at the Spirit Beast, then turned his attention toward Mo Xuan, his expression giving nothing away. With the barest movement of his hand, he pushed the Demon Tiger's body backwards, redirecting the sword strike off its original path. The terrifying force dispersed harmlessly into the surrounding forest instead of tearing through the spirit beast's core, and the Demon Tiger survived, unconscious and broken but alive.
Then the figure took the Demon Tiger and vanished without a trace.
Time resumed as though nothing had happened at all. Mo Xuan's sword completed its arc through empty air, and by the time his blade finished its motion, the Demon Tiger was already gone. He believed, with complete certainty, that he had killed it. He had no way of knowing that someone had intervened at the very last moment — and whoever that person was, he clearly had no intention of ever revealing himself.
Back in the present, the examination realm had fallen into an uneasy quiet. Mo Xuan remained seated exactly where he'd been, his consciousness entirely absorbed into meditation, deaf to whatever noise still stirred around him in the waking world. He had no sense of how much time had passed. All he knew, somewhere beneath the surface of his awareness, was that something inside his Sea of Consciousness continued shifting, slowly settling into a shape that hadn't existed before.
Outside, the atmosphere across the examination grounds had curdled from excitement into uncertainty. The elders murmured among themselves about what exactly they'd witnessed. The eliminated disciples were receiving treatment for their injuries. Jin Bao remained unconscious in the recovery hall. And Mo Xuan still hadn't returned.
Eventually, an elder stepped onto the platform, his voice carrying easily across the assembled crowd. "The final stage of the examination has been postponed."
The disciples stirred immediately, murmurs rippling through the stands. "Postponed? Why? What happened?" The elder raised a hand, offering no further explanation, and the crowd gradually dispersed, still murmuring among themselves. Some guessed the delay had something to do with the disciples who'd collapsed and were undergoing treatment. Others suspected it was connected to Mo Xuan somehow. However, no one could say for certain which theory was correct.
Two moons passed in the time that followed. Deep within the trial zone, sealed inside a formation meant to protect his motionless body, Mo Xuan remained locked in meditation. Outside that formation, the sect continued moving forward without him. The disciples who had survived the examination gradually recovered from their ordeal.