Unrivaled Martial Emperor

"I feel like this test is even crazier than the first. People are losing their minds in there."

"That is Liu Daoyuan, right? The prodigy from Sword God Mountain Manor? He also received an Immortal Draft Token and was the ninth to reach the top of the Heavenly Staircase of Will. Now he's completely broken. I can't imagine what he went through."

"I know, right? Isn't it just farming? How bad can it be?"

"Don't be stupid. You think an immortal sect's trial would hand out anything easy? If people are going mad or collapsing, you better believe there's something deeper at play."

"Haaa! Doesn't matter how much we guess. We're just watching. Unless we step in there ourselves, we'll never understand what's actually happening."

Outside, expressions shifted. Shock. Disbelief. Fear. They watched as proud geniuses fell, one after another, crumpling like broken puppets.

But they saw only the visuals. No voices. No torment. No madness. Just a field and bodies moving, crawling, collapsing.

......

After plowing the last piece of farmland, Chen Fan collapsed at the end of the field, having lost all strength. Visions flooded his mind. Whispers and screams clawed at his ears. Noise that burrowed into his skull like worms.

In the beginning, Chen Fan had some reactions.

Rage. Frustration. Helplessness.

Now? Nothing. Not even a flinch.

His body was numb. His mind, even more so.

His eyes were lifeless. Like the dead who forgot to stop breathing.

At the very beginning, Chen Fan would look around to see how the others were doing.

Now, he didn't even have the energy to do that. Lifting his head felt like dragging a mountain.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Chen Fan got up, sore all over, like he was in a furnace.

He looked up at the sky. The sun still hung overhead, blazing relentlessly.

"This body..." He looked at himself. Sweat, blood, and soil had caked his clothes, leaving him almost unrecognizable.

Chen Fan stood up strenuously. Though clearly in pain, his expression stayed firm, unshaken, as if not even ten thousand arrows to the heart could faze him.

"After plowing is sowing."

He dragged his tired body, swaying with every step he took, and slowly walked toward his hut at the edge of the field.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed others. Some were still plowing, some were also heading to the hut for seeds, and others had already begun sowing.

However, regardless of their progress, their faces were the same: blank, emotionless. It was as if they were walking corpses.

Chen Fan understood that without the obsession driving them, perhaps they would have collapsed long ago.

Soon after, he emerged from the hut with a bag of wheat seeds slung over his back.

He studied the soil as he walked, silently relieved that this was only a test. The soil was fertile, no fertilizers needed. He could simply sow. Anything more would have been unbearable.

He reached his field and began sowing: dropping seeds into the furrows and covering them with his foot.

Hunched over, Chen Fan was like an old man worn down by life. Silently, he sowed the seeds with his trembling hands, step by step.

Sowing was easier than plowing, yet by the time he finished, exhaustion had deepened. He felt sore all over, his strength fading fast.

He felt he might collapse at any moment.

After sowing the seeds, he began watering them.

He pushed a small cart with a bucket of water on it, using a ladle made from half a gourd to water the fields.

After watering about five acres of land, Chen Fan's grip suddenly loosened. The ladle fell to the ground, and he trembled slightly.

He gritted his teeth stubbornly, pain etched across his face.

He could feel that he was nearing his limit.

Even walking under the noon sun could cause heatstroke. Chen Fan, starved and dehydrated, was doing hard labor under the scorching sun. Death was not a distant threat.

He looked at the fields, gritted his teeth, and continued watering.

After watering the whole field, he sat down at the edge. Next, he saw the crops growing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Chen Fan was stunned.

He thought he had time to rest, but the Valley of Hardship allowed no rest.

Now that the wheat had grown into seedlings, he needed to fertilize them.

If he was slow to do so, and the wheat withered, it would mean that he had failed the test.

Chen Fan got up helplessly and began applying fertilizer.

After he was done fertilizing, he gave the crops another round of watering, only to see weeds springing up everywhere.

Grinding his teeth, Chen Fan picked up a hoe and started weeding.

If the weeds were allowed to grow and rob the wheat seedlings of nutrients, they would also wither, and he would likewise fail the test.

Gritting his teeth, Chen Fan kept removing the weeds.

However, he realized that his movements were becoming slower and slower. Not from reluctance, but because he was riddled with injuries.

Then he noticed the wheat seedlings turning yellow from malnutrition.

His expression changed. With a determined look in his eyes, he quickly removed the weeds.

None of these could stop him.

After removing the weeds, he saw worms growing in the wheat field. He had no choice but to start removing the worms.

Through the entire growth cycle, Chen Fan had no real rest—only relentless, backbreaking labor: fertilizing, watering, weeding, removing pests—again and again.

The onerous and repetitive labor was enough to wear away the edges of a person. It could even turn everything numb for them.

Eventually, Chen Fan felt truly numb.

After an unknown amount of time, the sixteen and a half acres of wheat finally turned yellow.

The heavy wheat ears swayed gently to the wind, forming waves of wheat.

"It's almost done!"

Holding a sickle, Chen Fan bent down and gathered a handful of wheat with his left hand and cut through the wheat stalks with the sickle in his other hand.

He placed the handful of wheat on the ground and continued harvesting. After gathering enough, he tied the wheat into a bundle.

He kept bending down, cutting and harvesting the wheat.

His movements gradually became slower. His sickle could no longer slice cleanly through the stalks; each handful took several strained attempts.

Sweat poured like a stream of water, mixed with fresh blood, and dripped onto the field. He gritted his teeth and kept working away.

Bending down, his left hand grabbed a handful of wheat stalks, his right hand holding tightly onto the sickle and cutting, tying into a bundle, and bending down again...

He kept repeating this sequence of actions.

In front of him was a whole sixteen and a half acres of wheat field.

It didn't seem like much, but even a healthy person harvesting non-stop for an entire day—a full twenty-four hours—could barely finish one-fiftieth of it.

Chen Fan had already lost count of how many days he had spent here.

Perhaps a month, maybe three, and he didn't know how much longer he had to cut the wheat.

In the beginning, he would take a short rest every hour.

Then every half hour.

Soon, it became every twenty minutes. Then ten. Then five.

After a long time, he cut the last handful of wheat, threw it on the ground, and slowly got up. Holding his waist, he looked ahead blankly.

Between the blue sky and yellow earth, a young figure collapsed heavily backward.

Blood poured from his eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

Chen Fan looked at the blinding sun in the sky, aware that his body had finally given out.

"Did I fail?"

He went into a daze, feeling intense pain all over his body.

But then, a warm current wrapped around him. He fully recovered in an instant. His connection to his dantian snapped into place, and his powers returned.