Chapter 299: Life and Death Trials
All the members of the True Empire in the Hyeran Clan headquarters found themselves suddenly unable to move, and those who were at least Law Masters felt that there was something weird with the laws inside the barrier cast by Liye, but they were still unable to detect the reason for that feeling.
“It is already starting; even I can’t stop it now. A true Essence God would be able to stop it at any time, but sadly, with my power, I can only start it. However, don’t worry it will end when you succeed or fail.”
Liye’s devilish smile scared those experts of the True Empire who were unable to move because they felt that Liye was really able to force them to do that training he was speaking of.
“You will remain conscious a bit more until the training starts completely. Thus, I may tell you some points out of boredom.”
The experts of the True Empire knew that Liye was teasing them, but they were unable to reply.
“You all will now face the Life and Death Trials, there is a huge benefit if you succeed, but failure would be akin of death.”
Liye hid the fact that failure was far worse than simply dying, but he wasn’t informing his opponents to help them.
“That is the official name, but it has another one, Reincarnation Trials. The training is simple; you will face in your minds ten thousand reincarnations without losing your memories. The answer you obtain after experiencing all of them will determine the result. The chances of success are one in a thousand million being optimistic, but you I need to tell you that I succeeded in that training before, so I can guarantee that success isn’t impossible.”
After Liye finished his words, all the members of the True Empire lost their consciousness as they sunk up into the trial.
Liye wanted to laugh as he had just mixed truth and lies to explain those people the Life and Death Trials.
It was true that Liye succeeded in that trial before and that there would be a ten thousand simulated reincarnations in their minds. However, Liye lied in respect of the answer that needed to be obtained to success because although a global answer was needed at the end, there was another one needed at the end of each reincarnation cycle.
Although not having a correct answer in those answers wouldn’t make the trial fail, only failing the last one would provoke immediate failure, it wasn’t without consequences.
The first fail didn’t have any impact on the person, but a messed life and death aura would appear on their bodies to notify the Essence God who cast the trial that something went wrong.
In those cases, usually, the Essence God would stop the trial to avoid the person undergoing it to have true harm at the next failure.
The Life and Death Trial was a test to improve the control of Life and Death and cleaning the trial was one of the methods to be able to train Life and Death as if they were only one. Thus, in case of danger the one who cast it wouldn’t risk the disciple’s life for just that.
The consequences of the second failure would affect the soul directly and would erase part of it. Moreover, after that, failing would be even easier, and the soul part erased each time would also increase in each failure.
There were a lot of crazy people who wanted to succeed no matter what and asked the Essence God in charge to not stop under any reason. However, all of them ended lost in those reincarnations and their souls dissipated in the real world, or they managed to get out after failure but having lost self-awareness and didn’t even know who they were, and usually, they ended up killing themselves because they felt life more painful than death.
Liye disappeared from the sky and went to look to the enslaved people as there were no need to check the members of the True Empire. Although the time in those ten thousand reincarnations was thousand times quicker, even with an average of hundred years in each reincarnation, they would still need about thousand years to finish in case of success.
Those reincarnations were truly random, sometimes being a newborn or sometimes appearing as someone already grown up, so the length of each life was different in each reincarnation and was difficult setting a standard, but about a thousand years was considered the average.
Liye looked for all the slaves and sent them to reincarnation freeing them from slavery in the process. Liye put special attention into the reincarnation of a little girl and ensured that she would have a better life after reincarnation than the others that would have a random one. That little girl was Hyrk’s little sister who was unable to resist the enslavement of the True Empire and ended becoming their toy.
Since Liye felt that there was some fate between him and Hyrk and even helped Hyrk in his last battle, he also decided to help his sister.
When Liye finished sending all the slaves to reincarnation, he felt that some members of the True Empire in the Life and Death trials died.
“So fast? This doesn’t have any sense; it has been less than an hour in the real world.”
Liye teleported to the place where those who died were, and he found that those who had died were the Fake Law Masters and the Fake Law Gods.
“Maybe the forced increase of power made their souls destroy after having entered in the Life and Death Trials.”
It was just as Liye guessed, they were people who were doomed to never reincarnate again, and his souls couldn’t resist even a simulated reincarnation.
When Liye was about to leave again, he saw that some blood flooded from the True Empire’s leader stomach.
“Did he kill himself? That is the greatest taboo in the Life and Death Trials, being killed by others was alright, and you will just go to the next reincarnation, but if you kill yourself, you will also kill yourself in the real world, and your soul would be tortured eternally without truly existing in this world.”
Of course, a wound in the stomach wasn’t that important for a Law God, but the death was because the leader of the True Empire also provoked the destruction of his own soul in the real world after killing himself. However, he would feel an endless torture in the Life and Death Trials forever. In fact, not even Liye understood well how that worked, but there was no doubt about the fate of those who killed themselves in the trial.
Usually, it was always told by the Essence God casting the Life and Death Trial that no matter the circumstance, one should never provoke his own death. Just because you don’t like one of the lives of the trial you couldn’t rely on such a shortcut. Of course, Liye skipped that explanation as he didn’t want to train them but to kill them.
“Well, the most problematic one already died. The others wouldn’t be able to succeed due to that mark on their souls, so it is just a matter of time that they died.”
Initially, the only one who had a slight chance to succeed was the leader of the True Empire because he didn’t have a mark on his soul. Thus, Liye planned to let him suffer until the Origin Link’s effects were about to disappear and then Liye use his last power to send the True Empire’s leader to the Purgatory World, but at the end, there was no need for that.
The Purgatory Word and the Reincarnation Trials had some points in common since Liye’s father created the Purgatory World based on the Reincarnation Trial, but the later has the effect of wiping out parts of the soul that were replaced by new ones after each reincarnation. The torture felt by losing parts of oneself while reincarnating was far worse than just endless reincarnations. Of course, the Purgatory World provoke more desperation in a long-term as the reincarnations are always hopeless while in the Life and Death Trials the fate was random.
However, having a good fate in the Life and Death Trials was sometimes worse than a bad fate as would make it easier to lose oneself in the simulated reincarnation and failing the trial.
“I still remember when I did this trial. When I told my answer to father, he said that it was quite a unique one. Sadly, Revgen failed, and my father needed to save him after the first failure.”
Revgen endured very well the first five thousand reincarnations, but after that, he made a huge mistake, and his master didn’t plan to let him die due to continuing the trial.
As for Liye, he completed the whole trial without a single mistake and the time he spent was far longer than it should have been. Usually, staying longer meant bad news as one would have lost into the reincarnations.
However, Liye chose to accept all the identities obtained in those reincarnations turning them part of his self instead of rejecting them or let them erase his original self. All those lives turned to be successful ones; no matter how they started, Liye managed to build up his own fate the ten thousand times.
That was the reason for Liye not feeling attached to just one True Name and the fact that he usually created a new identity in foreign worlds instead of using one of those that already existed.
In fact, even Liye considered that Yale was just another of his identities, just that was an identity with sealed memories that wasn’t fully aware of the other ones.
All the lives Liye had experimented due to the trial or by changing his identity had contributed something important to him that made him different from before experimenting them, and Yale had developed something that Liye had always lacked, affection for the family.
The fact that Liye didn’t feel affection that surpassed the level of friendship was due to a curse that was cast on him before being born by an enemy of his father. However, the damage on Liye’s soul also erased part of the curse while the Mysterious Expert modified the Last Wish System before Yale was born to use it as a seal to the rest of the curse making it easy for Yale to develop affection towards people, he considered his family.