After leaving the room, Shang found himself in another long hallway, and this one was even longer than all the other ones.
Shang estimated that it was over 500,000 kilometers long.
With the previous hallways, Shang estimated that he was beneath the Eternal Ocean right now.
Finally, Shang reached the next door and opened it.
Library.
There was a humongous library on the other side. It wasn't as big as the Lightning Emperor's library, but it still had about 10% of its size.
One had to remember that the Lightning Emperor's library was probably the biggest one in the entire world unless the Archivist had his own library.
10% of the Lightning Emperor's library was already very much.
Shang slowly walked through the library without touching any of the old tomes.
The library was several kilometers wide, long, and high.
The humongous wall at the end of the library had several forms etched into it.
There were many rectangles, circles connected with lines, diagrams, and so on.
And above each group was a title.
"Family tree of the Wildhammer Clan."
"Political climate in the third Metal Mana Crystal War."
"World Ender Doctrines."
"Fundamental Laws of the Specter Summoner Kingdom."
This showed Shang that all these forms and shapes were simply empty diagrams that he had to fill out.
In short, this was essentially a huge exam.
Even more, everything was related to history.
And it wasn't even important history. Shang needed to fill out minor details that nobody really cared about.
Everything was just about who fought, but there was nothing about why they fought or what they fought over.
At the very top of the wall, Shang could see the instructions for this trial.
"Show your willpower and focus. When everything is correct, the door will open."
Below the instructions was a timer, which was currently at slightly less than a century.
'So, I have 100 years to fill out everything."
Shang looked at the wall again.
There was so much to fill out.
Shang probably had to fill out nearly a million individual fields.
'So, he wants to see if I am able to force myself to read uninteresting garbage for 100 years straight,' Shang thought.
Shang sat down in front of the wall, and the closest book to him flew over.
Shang didn't even create a plan. He just started reading.
After a couple of minutes, Shang found another problem.
None of the books directly gave Shang the answer.
Shang would need to piece the entire picture together by reading about different slightly connected events told via stories.
It was clear that Lucius had designed this trial to be as boring and frustrating as possible.
If anyone let the frustration get to them, their concentration would wane, making it difficult to learn efficiently.
Even more, the tight time limit made it almost impossible to take breaks.
Lastly, everything had to be correct, which meant that the reader wasn't allowed to forget stuff. After all, the reader would sometimes make mistakes and write an answer on the wall that had to be corrected later.
If the reader just copied things from the books, they wouldn't succeed.
At first glance, this trial seemed stupid, but it was actually very good at doing what it was supposed to do.
But Shang didn't care about any of these things.
Shang's unreal self-discipline made this task easy.
The trial was very time-consuming, but Shang was certain that he would pass.
And sure enough, he did.
How long did it take him to fill everything out with the correct information?
70 years.
Shang had expected to be finished sooner, but things had turned out more difficult than expected.
Lucius had made this trial really tough.
In the past 70 years, Shang had learned nearly nothing of relevance.
His head was filled with useless garbage about the internal rules of organizations that had been destroyed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Sure, there had been some interesting nuggets of information here and there, but Shang could recite all of the relevant information in an hour.
After he was done, Shang stood up and walked through the opened door.
The next hallway was just as long as the previous one.
By now, Shang was over a million kilometers away from Aterium.
After opening the door at the end, Shang saw a small hall with another transparent cube hovering in the middle.
"Infuse the cube with your will and survive for 50 years," the inscription read.
Shang wasn't sure what this trial was about, but he did what the cube told him to do.
As soon as Shang infused the cube with his will, he felt something change.
His head hurt a little.
It was a bit annoying.
Shang waited to see if anything else would happen.
No, that was it.
Eventually, Shang focused on comprehending anything that could be useful for him in an effort not to waste 50 years of his life during this trial.
And after 50 years, the mild headache vanished, and the door opened.
Another long hallway followed, and Shang entered the next trial.
There was another transparent cube.
"Increase your physical strength to the level of a Peak Ancestral Beast. Then, punch the cube," the inscription read.
Shang didn't do anything for a second.
Then, he slowly walked to the cube and slapped it.
BANG! BANG!
The cube immediately hit the walls and fell to the ground.
After that, the cube shuddered a little, and the door opened.
'I guess it makes sense,' Shang thought. 'Based on the difficulties of the trials, Lucius obviously expected a Mage to enter this trial. Obtaining the physical power of a beast for a Mage probably requires several complex and strong Spells.'
'I guess all these small trials are just to test the fundamentals. Concepts, willpower, pain-tolerance, and so on.'
'T'm not sure how many more trials there are, but we should be nearly done with everything."
'I guess the last thing missing would be my Battle-Strength.'
Shang stepped through the opened door and entered another long hallway.
