Chapter 309: Compromise
The situation featured three huge problems.
First, while Liam could use his perception to gauge the buildings’ power and the rewards they could warrant, he had no way of controlling the trials’ nature.
Even in the face of something outside Liam’s expertise, he believed he could break the trial and face its punishment instead. Fighting was the most straightforward solution after all, and doing so would also improve the reward.
Nevertheless, that was when the second problem stepped in. Liam had no interest in hoarding rank 1 rewards. He would consider that if he were alone and had time, but that wasn’t his predicament, and he had already seen what the punishments for trials tuned for his relative level could consist of.
Liam was willing to face level three magical beasts if that earned him rank 3 assets. Yet, he would likely get heavily injured every time, demanding long recoveries.
That was where the third problem appeared. Liam would do all that, trading his safety and healing products for more powerful assets, but he didn’t have the liberty of taking his sweet time.
Liam might be greedy, but that desire didn’t make him deaf to the spirit’s warning. If the Church ended up seizing the inheritance, Liam would lose access to that valuable playground.
Sharing could be troublesome, and the same went for failing to accumulate powerful assets before the main challenge, but wasting too much time could make Liam lose everything.
That was a crossroads with no right solutions.
On the one hand, Liam had no confidence that his interference with the Church’s teams would translate into seizing the inheritance.
Liam might head for the central building directly, only to lose the race for the inheritance’s reward while becoming the Church’s enemy. His gains would end at the two martial arts, which were already great, but probably not enough to compensate for that consequence.
Instead, Liam could focus on clearing other trials until the Church’s teams ultimately claimed the inheritance, getting as much as possible for himself. The risks would still be there, but they were lower, and Liam could hope to get another valuable asset at the very least, probably dodging the Church’s enmity on top of that.
There were just two issues with the more selfish option.
Liam’s idea of a team was pretty unwavering, and ignoring his companions would be no different than betraying them in his mind.
Then, there was the impossible nature of Liam’s journey. His current gains were priceless for the average cultivator. In theory, he had already made his money, or time, back, but that just wasn’t enough for him.
So, Liam did both. He couldn’t ignore the central building due to his loyalty to his team and how mandatory the greater rewards were for him. Yet, he would also keep an eye out for closed Churches.
Stopping to seize resources literally on the way couldn’t be classified as betrayal. That was where Liam drew his personal line.
’What is this?’ Liam cursed. ’Another puzzle?’
The closed Church Liam had entered featured a series of intricate carvings on its white floor. They resembled incomplete inscriptions, but he couldn’t be sure since he knew nothing about that noble art.
’Why can’t a single one be just a fight?’ Liam cursed again, holding back the urge to break the floor to trigger the trial’s punishment.
The compromise Liam had settled upon involved only visiting the closed rank 2 Churches to check whether their trials looked battle-related or easy.
However, even after delving deeper into the city, Liam had mostly found open Churches, their trials probably having been cleared before he was born, which made sense considering how long that inheritance had been open.
Nevertheless, of the four closed Churches Liam had found, two had more chessboards, one had a series of poems written on banners hanging from the altar, and the last had something involving inscriptions.
None of that was within Liam’s expertise, and triggering the punishments would waste too much time, so he had been forced to leave every time, which was starting to get to his nerves.
’Since when was finding danger hard?’ Liam cursed for a third time, storming out of the Church, its doors closing automatically behind him. ’Come on. I just want a rank 2 martial art, and a rank 2 weapon, and a rank 2 item, and ...’
Liam’s list of wishes didn’t end after he resumed heading for the city’s center, his eyes darting left and right under the hood whenever he reached another row of Churches.
Still, Liam wasn’t alone in the area, and he couldn’t bother hiding. He had already reached the limit of what he could compromise.
A white-wearing foundation expert, a middle-aged man, exited a large tent occupying one of the city’s flowery crossroads. Large pouches rested between his arms, and some weariness afflicted his bearded face.
It hadn’t been easy to stay in the inheritance for so long. Rooting experts weren’t a problem, but foundation experts still needed to eat and rest quite often, which created logistical issues.
That unchanging white world wasn’t even great for people’s mental health, but the foundation expert still faced the fake sky with a smile. After all, his companions were getting close to overcoming a challenge that had opposed the Church for centuries.
So, the foundation expert hurried through the flowery streets, wanting to deliver those pouches as soon as possible, when something caught his attention and halted his steps.
The middle-aged man rushed toward the next crossroad closer to the city’s center and looked to his left, finding something he couldn’t initially identify due to how rare an occurrence it had become in recent times.
The tall frame of a cloaked rooting expert stood a few blocks away, his hood darting left and right, checking the area.
Naturally, the cloaked cultivator spotted the foundation expert, but only cupped his fist and uttered a brief "Fellow Daoist" before moving to the next row of Churches.
The middle-aged man instinctively nodded before the realization hit his brain. That was an outsider. Moreover, he was someone who had reached the real inheritance, and at such a critical time on top of that.
Before the foundation expert could consider the matter any longer, his feet were already moving, chasing after the cloaked figure while shouting at the top of his lungs. "Fellow Daoist, wait a moment!"
