In less than a minute the puzzle was now complete, but Zhang Long could not find an ounce of joy in him at this victory.
Instead, he sat there, dumbstruck as the puzzle formed the face of Jin Zhen!
"How in the world…?"
How did an inheritance that had supposedly been made at least decades, if not centuries, ago have a puzzle that formed the face of his fiancé on it?
Imagine, if you will, that you had decided to go on vacation to a different country. A country neither you nor any of your family had been to before, and a country you had no relation to beforehand. During your vacation there, your rental car suddenly broke down in the middle of the road, but thankfully, a kind stranger whom you had never met before who was passing by offered to give you a lift. You got into their car, only to find, as they were driving along, that they had a photo of your father on their dashboard.
Or to go a step further- imagine that you had chosen to become an astronaut and became part of the first manned mission to Mars. As you got off on the Red Planet, you noticed something lying in a crater on the planet's surface - and you approached it to find that it was your favorite childhood toy that you had lost twenty years ago, lying there, just like the day you had lost it.
To go even further, imagine if an alien spaceship landed on Earth. As part of the team tasked with exploring it, you went inside and saw heaps of alien technology - and also that one of the rooms was inexplicably an exact replica of your living room.
That was how Zhang Long felt in that instance!
His fiance's face, normally a welcome sight, stared back at him and gave him an uncomfortable feeling of jamais vu while looking at it.
Before, his mind had been somewhat turbulent since coming to this secret realm as he had been unsure of what to do, but he had managed to keep it under control until now. Much like a raft sailing down a turbulent river, he was able to just keep it steady.
Now though, it was like a sudden tidal wave had come out of nowhere, and all control over that vessel had left him, leaving him at the mercy of the river.
For a good minute - his brain felt as if it was being scrambled as he couldn't form a coherent thought.
When he slowly began to feel like the gears in his head were turning again, he went through what this could possibly mean.
Alright, this picture of Jin Zhen was rather recent and it was of her as an adult, so it should've been made in the past few years. This secret realm though, seemed to be far older than that.
Was this some kind of prank? If this had been a secret realm close to the sect, then he would have believed so, but out here - only two potential culprits came to mind.
One was Jin Zhen herself - but Zhang Long had known her since the two were three years old, and he didn't think she would do something like this. She wouldn't be able to, let alone would see a point in doing so. No, he discarded this possibility almost immediately. The idea that she was somehow involved in all of this was ludicrous.
The second was Tang Ze. He was also a cultivator, and had been in the area recently. Not to mention he knew what Jin Zhen looked like, and what she meant to Zhang Long.
However, as far as Zhang Long knew - Tang Ze had no way of doing something like this, unless one of his costumes could give him this kind of power. There was a slight possibility of that - was this just Tang Ze playing a prank on him? He didn't seem like the kind of person who would go to such an extent for a simple practical joke - but if it were Yin Tiang or Chen Yu it would be a different matter. However, those two had never been near his village as per his knowledge, and likely didn't even know its exact location.
So that also seemed highly unlikely.
What then could be the possible reasoning behind all of this?
One was that the person who had made this inheritance had been able to see the future, and knew that it was Zhang Long who would be the one to come here in the future, and so had designed this puzzle with this in mind.
As he took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself down using some mental exercises he had been taught, another answer came to him.
It could be that these puzzle pieces were enchanted, and were made to show the face of someone who that person loved dearly.
In such a case, it was merely this fact that had led to her face being on this puzzle, and there was no weird conspiracy going on behind the scenes.
The only way he could test this though was if he had someone along with him, and asked them what they saw now that the puzzle was complete. If they saw something else other than Jin Zhen's face, that would prove this theory.
However, he had come into this secret realm alone.
Most people would come into such places alone - and perhaps that was the ultimate goal of this test? To unnerve whoever came here before the real trials began?
The other paths had disappeared, leaving only one before him, and one that led back.
Zhang Long was now more apprehensive about this place after what he had just discovered. Should he turn back?
If he did, depending on how this secret realm worked, there was a chance that it would not let him come back afterwards. And given that he had seen something that related to Jin Zhen, he wanted to get to the bottom of it if she was actually involved in all of this in any way - or if the person who made this knew something about her.
As such, there was only one way to go if he wanted those answers - forward.
He kept walking on that stone path, while the jungle around him was eerily silent. That would usually mean that many animals were keeping quiet as there was a very dangerous predator around, though he had strangely enough not seen any kind of wildlife in this secret realm.
Not only that, but there was nothing else in the forest of note other than rows and rows of trees. He saw no large gaps between them, or such features like rivers or ponds. It was an endless formation of tightly-knit trees each of which looked the exact same that seemed to go on forever.
Occasionally, one might find animals or plants within pocket realms that had either gone extinct or did not exist anywhere else. The panda population in the Raswatian Empire, for example, would have nearly gone extinct several time, but for people finding some groups within pocket realms like these. And now, more dedicated efforts were put in place to preserving that species.
Still, it was not unheard of to find pocket realms where there was no living creatures at all.
It was highly unnerving though, and soon enough Zhang Long found himself at another dais.
It was like the one that he had seen before, only this one, instead of having a table, had a pile of gold and silver coins on it.
As he approached the platform, the voice spoke to him again.
"Take only a single copper coin and move ahead."
This was a far more straightforward test than the one before him, to the point that Zhang Long was almost slightly disappointed.
In all of these gold and silver coins, there were only a few copper ones.
In this world, precious metals were used as currency, especially among mortals. Farmers might prefer to trade with produce, though in any place where commerce was more developed coinage was the way to go.
Among cultivators, prices could soar to the point where one might need mountains of coins to make transactions for certain things.
At that point, cultivators would also engage in bartering much like farmers and peasants, usually swapping pills as a standard or other such things among themselves.
At the Qi Condensation and Qi Refinement realms, gold coins were still valuable, and if someone were to stuff their pockets full of all of the gold coins here it would be worth quite a lot. Even someone at Golden Core might be tempted.
But, Zhang Long could see through all of that.
This was a test of honesty - and one that was far more standard than the initial one.
Unlike the one that came before, solving this was simple, and didn't disorient him with its result.
He took a copper coin, and then embarked on one of the six paths that were laid out before him.
The way that these things worked, by taking just a single copper coin, whichever path he embarked on would lead him to the correct destination.
Conversely, if he had gotten greedy and taken more, either he would be ejected out of the secret realm, sent somewhere not so pleasant, or his rewards at the end would be sharply decreased. Which of these happened would depend on the proclivity of the one who had set up this inheritance, as well as their skill in being able to design and influence the world of the secret realm.
Given how the trial had gone up till now, Zhang Long could get some insight as to what kind of person had set this inheritance up. They valued honesty, which meant that they were a righteous person. If they had been demonic, his life would have been in far more danger through these trials, but they had been relatively benign in terms of the dangers he had faced.
Yes, the first trial had been somewhat... strange in its result, and he hadn't as of now figured out what it was about, but it wasn't like his life had been in danger at the time.
Given that, he had a new surge of courage as he stepped forward.
But, he was a bit taken about at how easy this round had been.
Compared to the first, it was quite straightforward - which made him think that he had just been overthinking the result of that puzzle.
Perhaps it really was just meant to form a drawing of someone he knew - though, for what reason?
It was hard to tell how long he had been walking for, as the dais disappeared behind him, and the jungle seemed to be perfectly identical all around.
The lighting did not change whatsoever either, so it was very hard to figure this out. Zhang Long felt that it was well over two hours in total that he had spent in this secret realm, though it could be far shorter or longer than that.
All of a sudden, another platform appeared in front of him.