The voice spoke to Zhang Long again once he had reached this platform.
It was much smaller than the ones before it, being just big enough for someone to barely stand atop it comfortably.
"Stay on the platform for ten minutes."
That seemed to be easy enough, until a shadow emerged from the trees .
It was the first other living thing that Zhang Long had seen while in this secret realm.
A creature that he had seen only in paintings before - a manticore.
Its mere presence would've been enough to send grown men running. It had the main body of a lion, only the size of an elephant. Huge wings sprouted from its back, and its tail ended in the form of a snake which was as thick as a tree trunk.
Its gaze carried ferociousness and hatred, and it roared so loudly it felt like it would almost rupture Zhang Long's eardrums for an instant. Its muscled limbs could crush boulders like they were pebbles, and as it had opened its mouth, Zhang Long had seen canines as thick as his arm.
Faced with such a creature, even cultivators who were at the initial minor realms of Golden Core would hesitate to fight and be forced to turn tail and flee. Zhang Long could not even feel a drop of Qi from it, signifying that it far outclassed him in that regard.
However, Zhang Long did not run. The pathways leading to the platform had disappeared, and he still remembered what that voice had said.
He had to stay on this platform.
He knew he had no chance of beating this thing - the only ones in his squad who could last more than a few breath's time against this creature were Chen Yu thanks to his attribute, and Tang Ze depending on what costume he was wearing.
Even Chen Yu's defense would last for only but a few seconds before the manticore broke through it. Maybe Tang Ze could beat this creature depending on the circumstances.
Zhang Long did not have either Chen Yu's or Tang Ze's talent.
But, by now Zhang Long had a good understanding of this place and its inheritance.
In a way, the inheritance had communicated what to do in this round with the first two rounds.
Because it played an emphasis on honesty in the second round, it told Zhang Long that the person who had set up this inheritance put high value on virtue.
A demonic cultivator might've either set up a test that tested one's cruelty - such as offering a human sacrifice, or tested one's resilience, like forcing one to cut their right ear off to prove how badly they wanted the inheritance.
But, the person who had set up this inheritance had not made anything like that.
And such a person wouldn't have their applicant killed in the third round for no reason.
True to what he had expected, the manticore, though it did its best to look intimidating and growled, did not actually attempt to pounce upon him.
As it was, Zhang Long was not confident in his ability to run away from it anyway, and he sighed as he stood on the platform, not moving whatsoever.
The manticore now became more bold, approaching closer, and Zhang Long couldn't really say that he wasn't scared at all.
It was like being in the same room as a tiger and being just out of reach of its grasp while it was on a leash. The thought of what would happen if its leash had broken would constantly play in your mind - and it would be easy to take a few steps back, if only subconsciously.
But, Zhang Long did not take the bait and continued to stay there, as steadfast as a mountain.
This was a test of courage. He was sure of it now - the manticore would not actually attack him.
He had to stay there on the small platform for about a total of ten minutes, though every second seemed to feel like an hour as time moved at a glacial speed.
Right around the midpoint of this time, another manticore leaped out of the jungle, and began acting in a similar way, trying its best to get Zhang Long to step off the platform.
Both of them ended up orbiting the platform quite close to him, to the point that he could smell their rancid breath in the air. To the point where he could hear the sounds of them breathing - and even the beating of their hearts.
Or, was that actually his heart? Although he tried his best to control his emotions and fear, there was a limit to how successful that would be given his age and understanding of cultivation.
After what felt like an eternity, ten minutes were finally up and the two manticores retreated into the jungle, leaving no trace that they had ever been there in the first place.
Zhang Long had built up a huge layer of sweat on his forehead, and his clothes were soaked as well. HIs throat felt as dry as sandpaper, but at long last, the third trial was over.
A path now appeared, leading forward.
Nothing more came out of the forest to challenge him as he proceeded, and it was as eerily quiet as it was before.
This time though, rather than ending in another platform, the path led to a cliff, where there was what looked like the ruins of what once had been a large stone building.
Most conspicuous was the presence of a mirror on the outside.
As Zhang Long approached the mirror, he watched his reflection within it suddenly become distorted as the mirror rippled like a still pond that had just had a stone tossed into it.
A hand emerged from the mirror, then a leg, and finally the rest of the body, as Zhang Long's reflection walked out.
"Defeat your double image to advance."
Zhang Long's doppelganger charged at him.
Zhang Long avoided the initial kick, backing up slightly.
His mirror image did not let up, however, launching blow after blow in a fighting style that he recognized - because it was his own!
Zhang Long didn't even have room to think as he focused on blocking his enemy's strikes.
There were limits to how mirrors like this could copy one's abilities - he doubted that it could fully copy say, a Golden Core cultivator's strength, for example. However, Zhang Long was not a Golden Core cultivator. And unfortunately, it looked like this other Zhang Long was just as strong and skilled as he was.
The mirror image was also likely unable to copy any powerful treasures or secret techniques that Zhang Long knew - the issue was that he had none of those things. As such, the two of them were playing on an even field, with nothing available that could give Zhang Long an advantage.
The two of them exchanged blows for several minutes. Both of them ended up with bruises - though the original Zhang Long had more of them. He had already been somewhat exhausted, and was caught off guard by the ferocity with which his mirror image attacked him.
His mirror image was fully focused on defeating him without regard to its own safety, and in that, Zhang Long had a major disadvantage as it would not matter if he had won if it lead to him being given a fatal injury. Not to mention he had to watch out for the terrain - that cliff looked like it lead to a significant drop and he might end up pinned down against it if he was not careful. Sadly, it looked like his mirror image had realized the same thing.
They exchanged blows for several more rounds, with Zhang Long being forced back to the edge of the cliff despite his best efforts, until, all of a sudden, his mirror image stopped, and then collapsed to one knee.
Zhang Long chuckled.
So it had finally worked!
This might've been a challenge for Zhang Long in the past, but he had already engaged in a similar 'mirror-training' experiment three years ago.
They had had a different martial arts instructor at that time, and he had thought that such training would help them understand their own training styles. Not to mention, there were some techniques that cultivators could use that could achieve the same effect, so they all had to be wary of something like this in the future.
"So how do we deal with something like this?" Xu Feng had asked as his mirror image had knocked him down despite three attempts at beating it.
It was then that the martial arts instructor had taught them of a 'hidden method' to defeat one's body double if they did not have access to any unique treasures or techniques which could not easily be copied.
Such doubles were made using the user's own strength as a template - that included their Qi flows. If the user suppressed their Qi flow, a weak mirror image would appear. However, to counter that, when they would actually begin to use their Qi unrestrained in combat, they would also increase their power. But, vice-versa, should the opposite happen, it would also have to adapt. There was no such thing as a free lunch, after all, and that was how their internal systems were designed. Perhaps there were ways to patch up this design flaw, but that probably required a higher level of technique.
The mirror image needed to accommodate for fluctuations in the original owner's Qi.
Naturally, there was a limit to this ability.
That was what Zhang Long had been doing during their fight till now, wildly causing fluctuations in his Qi that he knew his mirror image wouldn't be able to keep up with.
And now, Zhang Long, had, by doing so, made it so that his mirror image could no longer keep up with the Qi fluctuations.
It was a creature entirely dependent on Qi in a way that Zhang Long wasn't, being a sort of construct made directly from Qi. As such, the fluctuations were causing it immense damage, and leading to it unraveling itself.
Zhang Long did not relent though, altering his Qi rapidly until finally, the mirror image broke down into a million pieces, and then these pieces turned into tiny motes of light which disappeared.
It was kind of odd seeing himself being destroyed.
"Congratulations - step forth and my treasure awaits you."
'So that was it, huh?'- Zhang Long thought to himself as he advanced past the cliff. 'Mirror images' were a pretty old-fashioned way of testing cultivators out, and he suspected that any high-ranked cultivator would have something to deal with them, even if the mirror image was of a higher grade than this which had this specific design flaw he had exploited patched up.
Overall, he would rank the difficulty of this inheritance, on a scale from one to ten, as a one or two.
There were far more deadly inheritances in this world, some that required weeks to get through, and could easily lead to death.
This by far, had been far more benign than some of the stories of inheritance's he had heard about in the past.
A book awaited him atop a desk inside the ruins of the abandoned building, and he took it. The moment he did so, the world changed, and he found himself back near his village.
The whole thing had likely been set up so that the secret realm would eject him the moment he got his hands on the treasure, or if he failed.
Out of curiosity, Zhang Long tried to enter the secret realm again, but found that he couldn't.
It was possible that the secret realm was designed to collapse and destroy itself once someone took the inheritance.
And so, it appeared that he had been overthinking that puzzle back in the beginning.
He still didn't understand the point of it showing him Jin Zhen's face though.
He opened up the book and saw that the first page had these words on it: "The True Treasure is Friendship."
That was it.
The next page was blank.
So was the one after that.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Zhang Long screamed.