Stan did not drink. Instead, he noticed that part of the platform had already disappeared. Realizing he had no other choice before the rest of his foothold vanished, he jumped into the lake.
The liquid was warm, not warm like heated water, but warm like sunlight, like something that carried its own internal source of gentle temperature. It reached his knees, then his waist, then his chest as he waded forward.
He felt his newly-opened Qi meridians respond immediately. The pathways within his body, which had been actively but slowly circulating Qi since the meridian clearing, began to hum with a steadier, deeper flow.
His foundation, the core reserve of Qi in his lower abdomen, solidified in a way he could physically feel. Something loose became something stable. Something new became something fundamental.
The system responded to the direct contact with the pool
[Body compatibility with spatial laws increased.] [Cultivation foundation stabilization in process.] [Resistance to spatial pressure acquired.]
The voice sighed; "As expected you’re still cautious. Well that’s wise of you... It’s the right thing to do."
Stan glanced up at the sky above the lake. "But you told me to drink."
"I did. And you didn’t. That was a test of your temperament. If you had drunk without hesitation, I would have known you were reckless. Reckless students don’t survive the trials that come later."
Stan let out a slow breath. "So the drinking would have hurt me."
"The lake is a pool of condensed spatial Qi. It is the same substance you have been interacting with in weaker forms throughout every previous trial. Consuming it directly, the mortal way, is extremely dangerous. At great number the Qi would attempt to integrate with your body faster than your foundation could adapt. You would suffer catastrophic damage. Bathing in it, however, allowing it to interact with you through your skin at a natural, controlled rate, stabilizes you. That is what you chose. That is what worked."
Stan stood in the middle of the lake, letting his Qi absorb the ambient effect, and thought about how close he had come to trusting the voice’s suggestion.
He filed the lesson away. ’Don’t drink anything strange, no matter how friendly the entity offering it sounds.’
The stillness of the lake broke. It broke abruptly.
Somewhere in the depths, far below the surface, a low, immense sound began to build. Stan felt it before he heard it, the pressure of it registering through the water, through his enhanced senses, through the small primal alarm system that lived at the base of every human being’s spine and warned them of predators.
The sound resolved into a roar that tore through the water.
It came from kilometers away, from somewhere deep in the lake, an animal cry so massive and so filled with focused killing intent that Stan felt his body lock in place for a heartbeat before his mind caught up. The roar carried through the liquid Qi as a physical wave, distorting the water’s surface around him, rippling outward in patterns his newly-improved spatial perception could actually see.
The lake’s smoothness broke and waves began to form.
Stan turned toward the source.
Something was rising through the depths, enormous, undulating, its body constantly flickering between dimensions as it moved. Its form was serpentine and vast. Even at kilometers of distance, Stan could see the sheer scale of it: a dragon-like shape made entirely of fractured space, its body existing partially in this reality and partially in others, each fragment of it shifting phase at speeds his eyes could barely register. Its head alone was larger than any structure Stan had ever seen.
It was closing and it was doing so fast.
"Void Leviathan," the voice said. Its tone had shifted into something slightly more urgent. "Try not to die. Just like the space devourer trial, there is a portal at the surface ahead. Good luck, kid."
Stan barely heard the voice. The killing intent locking onto him was overwhelming; deeper, colder, and more oppressive than anything the Space Devourer had ever projected.
Whatever this creature was, it made the previous trials’ guardians look like practice targets. Stan’s body was screaming at him to flee. His conscious mind was fully aligned with his body on this specific question.
He was not going to survive standing still.
[Warning. Host’s life is in immediate danger.]
[Recommended purchase: Flowing Tide Traversal Art.]
[Description: Envelops the user’s body in a thin layer of Qi that harmonizes with the natural flow of any liquid. Reduces resistance. Uses controlled bursts of Qi for propulsion. Movement speed scales with Qi circulation rate.]
[Cost: 7 system points.]
Stan did not look at the description, after all there was no time and his situation is quite urgent. ’Buy it!’
[Purchase confirmed.]
The knowledge downloaded into his mind in an instant. He implemented it in the same instant. His body’s Qi surged outward, coating his skin in a smooth, adhering layer that harmonized with the surrounding lake’s flow.
The resistance of the water dropped to a fraction of what it had been. He kicked once, hard, channeling Qi into the burst of propulsion the technique specified, and shot forward at a speed multiple times greater than his normal swimming pace.
The Leviathan was still faster. He could feel it closing behind him. He could not see it, the lake’s water and the pressure differential prevented him from turning to look, but his senses were painting the picture in the back of his mind with terrifying clarity. The Leviathan was covering ten times the distance he was covering with each stroke. It would reach him in seconds.
’Five seconds,’ his instincts told him.
’Five seconds until it’s on top of me.’ Desperate to survive, he kicked harder. He circulated Qi faster. He willed the Flowing Tide Traversal Art to run at its maximum output. His body streaked through the lake at speeds that would have been impossible for any ordinary swimmer.
He could not see the portal.
’Fuck you!’ he cursed, with focused, articulate hatred at the voice. ’You brought me here to die!’
However, a second roar tore through the water behind him. The immense pressure carried within that roar instantly erased the curse words forming in his mind.