Gu Zhi ran through the camp with his wife hand in hand. As they made their way to the portal all the other cultivators were cheering them on.
With a ticket in Gu Xiao hand and her husbands hand in her other they eventually entered the black hole that was the portal to the eternal palace. She felt the ticket grow warm and glow as space warped around them. It was a very unique experience she had never felt before. They saw different colors come in and out of view before finally space snapped into place.
"Bleghhh!"
Gu Zhi threw up on the floor. Even the small bits of exploration he remembered from his soul traveling was not as violent as this.
Gu Zhi had worn the demon fearing robes earlier when he was at the market. The robes looked more like armor pretending to be robes than anything. It was a tight fitting robe with built in leather pauldrons, padded armor, tight belts, and barley any loose moving pieces of cloth. To allow for easy movement, the robes were obviously designed for combat yet were still rather comfortable.
He eventually stood up to examine his surroundings. They were in the middle of a rather sparse forest. There were trees but there wasn't much grass, as well as some small bushes here and there.
"Welcome to the palace of eternal love, for the first trial, it is the trial of pilgrimage. Head north and find the palace gates. If you make it their with your partner and yourself alive then you have passed the trial. Good luck and I wish you eternal love on your journey".
The voice seemed to come from above but when he looked up he saw nothing but the blue sky.
"The trial of pilgrimage, this isn't good" Gu Xiao said.
"This trial is about making it to the palace, but what they don't tell you is that contestants are all taking this trial together. Meaning this is a trial where contestants can kill each other. A trial like this for the first one were their is the highest amount of couples. The implications are obvious, this is going to be a culling" she said.
"That should hardly matter to us, I doubt those big sects have their eyes on us and for medium sized sects we have few enemies".
"DON'T GET ARROGANT, have you forgotten your in the Gu clan. The Gu clan will have enemies so we will have enemies, all it takes is a little bit of carelessness to lose your life. Your not at the estate anymore we need to be cautious" she snapped back at him.
"You're right I'm sorry, years of cultivation in protected estates seems to have left me thinking we have no enemies".
"Good, now let's move, this is a pilgrimage, meaning it will take a while to reach the palace. Past pilgrimages had tough beasts in the area, and a lack of edible food with hard conditions. We should be searching for fresh water, a way to store it, and edible food. Let's move north while looking as there's no point looking south."
In other parts of world meanwhile other people had other plans.
"We should kill as many as we can. Now is probably the only time we can kill other couples, if they aren't apart of our faction or one of those chosen I don't see a reason to let them live" A male youth said.
"Sure but what if we run into a couple that we don't know, as in we don't know their strength" a girl in her twenties said. She looked to be older than the male but seemed to not show any signs of using that to lecture the youth.
"Then we wait and see. Honestly if we don't know them that probably means they aren't worth knowing. If that's the case then its probably a weak couple" he responded.
"I don't know, I've heard many things about how some clans go through great lengths to hide the talents of their couples."
"It matters not, all we have to do is observe and then determine. We don't have to fight to the death with every couple we meet. Let's just cull of the weak and move on."
"*Sigh* If you say so".
"Then let's move, I have a tracking technique I can use to find the nearest couple to us".
-----
"We're lucky" Gu Zhi said.
"Indeed we are" Gu Xiao responded.
They had found themselves a small river, it couldn't really even be called a river because it was so small, more like a creek. Never the less, it was fresh moving water all they had to do know was find a way to store it.
"Maybe we could use the bladder of a wild animal" he said.
"If you can find one sure" she replied.
They couldn't just bring a water skin in because the palace would take it away when they got here. Because the difficulty in a pilgrimage had to do with resources, they would take away stuff that would make the trial too easy. The palace would eventually give it back, if you passed. If not, then good luck trying to get whatever thing you brought in back. This is why people just stopped bringing in dimensional storage items with everything they could ever need inside of it.
A dagger appeared out of nowhere as a man that seemed to come out of thin air thrusted it to Gu Zhi head.
It bounced off after piercing his skin, as he was quick to grab the mans throat with his bare hands and crushed it like a pipe made out of paper.
"I think I found a bladder to use" Gu Zhi responded.
"You idiot theirs two, go after the girl she ran in that direction" Gu Xiao pointed southeast.
"*Sigh* fine, you take care of this corpse I'll go after the girl" he said as he full on sprinted in that direction.