It was the last little bit towards ice pillar and everyone thought that the hardest part was already finished so they raced towards the center. Why were they racing towards the center? Because they could all tell that there was massive amounts of Essence that they could channel to become stronger. This was the perfect chance for them to boost their strengths and create more blocks for their Path.

As for Rauf he was shivering a bit from the after effects from the ice, however when he managed to regain some composure he soon called out to Owen.

“Hey Owen!”

“I’m not carrying you even if you are cold and weak.”

Rauf snorted, but he didn’t feel like arguing with Owen. He had already learn that Owen no matter the circumstances would be able to argue him to his death bed. So he continued.

“I broke through to the Intermediate Opal!”

“What?”

Owen slightly raised his voice when he heard this and immediately looked back.

‘Sure enough, the amount of impurity has gone down a bit. Rauf is truly learning an interesting cultivating technique.’

He inwardly sighed in admiration. To be able to break through from healing alone was quite ridiculous. At least this was the conclusion Owen came to at that moment. With Rauf’s healing abilities and they fact that he would get younger when he healed, had an effect on his cultivation. Rauf had already told Owen, that the more he healed the weaker he became during the stage. For the purposes of cultivation, this didn’t really make any sense though. So both of them put their heads together and thought what its purpose was. With the two of them thinking together they came up with some weird conclusions such as the Rebirth Snake did it to motivate Rauf, but at the same time that didn’t follow up why he would get weaker.

At first when they came up wit the idea that it would allow him to get stronger in the long run they both laughed. However it sounded plausible when they thought that the amount of Essence would forcefully be taken away from him to store later for a potential breakthrough at the last moment. Naturally they had no way to prove this hypothesis, so when Owen saw the proof in front of him he thought it was indeed unique.

During this time, all the majority of Pathwalkers had quickly already pasted around 15 meters. They passed this distance so fast that the 10 meter ripple hadn’t even met with them yet It seemed like there was no ripple effect after the 10 meter mark and because of this everyone started to get excited thinking they were would be no more ripples. But in fact they were truly wrong. Once they hit the 20 meter mark this was when the ice pillar finally acted out. For Owen was well he was questioning why the ripples had stopped, but as he saw the folds of Essence gathering around the ice pillar he realized what it was.

‘20 meters, 20 ripples? There is going to be a ripple very meter?’

Owen frowned as he saw this. Originally he only thought that the 400 meter mark was going to be exceedingly difficult but luckily Rauf, and probably only Rauf, was able to fix that problem. However with only 80 meters left until the ice pillar, there were going to be 20 ripples every 20 meters? Not to mention the people who crossed those marks first, just withstanding 20 ripples back to back would be hard enough. But it was something they had to do nonetheless. Once you passed the 400 meter mark there was no going back, as everyone was swimming across when they found that there was no bottom.

They wouldn’t be fast enough to run away and even if they did the ripples would follow them until the lake shore. The only thing left was to block it!

Owen attempted to condense his Essence flow even more. His control of his Essence wasn’t perfect but it was definitely a tier about everyone else. As for Rauf he too had better control than everyone else. Although he was already an Intermediate Opal Pathwalker that didn’t mean that his ability to shield was significantly greater. His Essence was only slightly more pure, but this wasn’t a huge difference. Only through complete ranks was there a large difference.

Finally the ripples started to crash into the first set of people freezing them instantly as the fifth or sixth ripples hit them. As for some they were able to block the ripples while others managed to block most of them and sustain some injuries. Owen and Rauf were lucky as they had more time to prepare the sudden ripples and weren’t affected much by it.

But the next time would be different they had already caught up to the front of the Pathwalkers, and now with the increased amount of ripples this test just got exponentially more dangerous. But Owen was calm, and he was also fearless. He had already used the other Pathwalkers before as a shield, but that plan wouldn’t work past this point. Because he noticed that no longer were the first people effect and it was equally shared among all the Pathwalkers. So this last stretch was a race to the finish. Now that he knew that he swam as fast as he could towards the ice pillar followed right after by Rauf.