"Ma… Ma… Ma… Mas… Master???"
Su Lingyuan stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence, her mind a complete blank.
"How… how are you here?"
Her face wore an innocent, coaxing smile, her bright eyes blinking adorably, giving off a sense of pure naivety.
But it was of no use against Luo Huangjun. She simply looked at Su Lingyuan, a faint smile tugging at her lips, and it made Su Lingyuan suddenly fidget nervously.
"I'll let you off this time."
Luo Huangjun lightly patted Su Lingyuan's head, as if scolding a mischievous younger sister.
Her gaze then shifted to Chu Ge, who was still standing atop the platform.
Seeing that she had successfully avoided trouble, Su Lingyuan relaxed, obediently following behind Luo Huangjun.
On the platform, Chu Ge now felt an awkward sense of being trapped.
He had intended to withdraw his hand from the Spirit Stone, but it felt as if it were glued in place. An immense suction prevented him from moving his palm at all.
The high-level experts who had gathered, and even Xing Feng standing beside Chu Ge, initially assumed he simply wanted to linger on the stage a little longer, showing off.
But as time passed, and Chu Ge's expression revealed something unusual, they began to sense something was wrong.
"Young friend Chu Ge? Is something wrong?"
Xing Feng cautiously asked.
"I…" Chu Ge barely had a chance to respond before an even more terrifying aura erupted from the Spirit Stone, spreading in all directions.
Looking toward his hand, Chu Ge was horrified to see fine cracks spreading across the Spirit Stone amidst the golden light, forming a dense, web-like pattern!
'It's… it's going to explode?!!'
Chu Ge shouted in his heart.
The terrifying aura surged outward. Even Xing Feng could no longer stand his ground; his body uncontrollably flew out from the Spirit Testing Platform.
But unlike Ye Chen's earlier mishap, Xing Feng landed firmly on the ground.
The moment he touched down, Xing Feng's eyes darted to Chu Ge's position, horror written all over his face.
The earlier shockwave was as deep and vast as a bottomless abyss—it had tested even him, a Sixth-Heaven Realm cultivator, to his limits.
It was almost impossible to believe that such a force came from someone who hadn't even begun their cultivation journey, a person with only a trace of power in their body.
If even he felt this, then the newly tested disciples, whose aptitude had just been measured, were far more helpless—Ye Chen being the unluckiest of all.
Having been close, he naturally bore the brunt first.
But after his previous experience, he was now more alert.
Yet, strangely, he didn't think of retreating—he decided, for reasons unknown even to himself, to directly resist the wave of power head-on.
"Step back!"
A voice sounded in his mind.
But Ye Chen ignored it, a sly, wicked smile curling on his lips.
'Why retreat? Earlier I wasn't ready, but this time… I won't…'
"Ahhhh!!!" Ye Chen's scream tore through the air.
The thought was bold, but the outcome… far from ideal.
Though he had some cultivation backing him, the aura that even a Sixth-Heaven Realm cultivator struggled to resist was far beyond what a mere Second-Tier Condensed Seed-stage cultivator like him could withstand.
Ye Chen was lifted into the air like a kite caught in a violent storm, completely powerless, tossed left and right, spinning upside down.
His once-handsome face twisted grotesquely in the wind, while his otherwise neat robes were whipped into utter chaos.
He tried to call for help, but a mouthful of dust and sand, swept up by the raging wind, filled his mouth before he could even speak.