The examination room was actually a magical array. It would reset with each usage, and its structure would change randomly with each activation. This time, the appearance the array had assumed had been the floor of what seemed to be a castle's dungeon: a long corridor, with columns of marble erected every few steps, and large, skeleton-filled rooms on the two sides. No natural light filtered from any windows, as there were none. Only a few, small crystals on the ceiling would let out a bit of radiance.

Suddenly, on one end of the corridor, a hexagram lit up and let out a dazzling light. The bright glow was shrouding what looked to be a small, humanoid figure, but it was too bright to see clearly. It took ten breaths for the glow to subside. When the light finally disappeared, on the place where the hexagram had been previously now stood the young, eight-year-old, golden-eyed boy instead.

"Ahaha, what a fool!" Cheng Hao threw the huge backpack on the ground and couldn’t hold in his laughter as he clutched in his right hand a small belt pouch. On the small bag were several glittering runes: it was an Heaven&Earth Pouch, aka, a dimensional storage that could store within many objects while completely removing their weight at the same time. It was truly a wondrous item, with the only restriction being the on the actual amount of matter it could keep inside, and the inability to hold within any living creatures... and spitting them back out alive.

As soon as he had seen the pouch on Liu Biao's body for the first time, Cheng Hao had immediately began thinking of a way to get his hands on it… to his pleasant surprise, it had actually succeeded.

"An Advanced Martial Cultivator, robbed by a child with no cultivation... His ancestors should be so angry that they must have arisen from the grave just to slap themselves for having such an idiotic descendant! Seeing how dumb their descendant acted, I can’t help but wonder whether some of the more eager ones would even go as far as cutting off their decaying dicks in regret…"

" Now, now... What do we have here?" As Cheng Hao looked inside the pouch, his grin slowly grew wider and wider, eventually culminating with an expression of pleasant shock and surprise;

A fool like that guy actually had such a treasure on him! What the heck is wrong with this world?

He put his hand in the pouch almost in a trance and took out the small object that had attracted his attention: it was a blade less than a foot long, only as long as an adult's palm. It was almost transparent, but had a lightly golden color. It radiated an otherworldly light and, when Cheng Hao let go of the tiny crystal sword, instead of falling on the ground, it capriciously defied gravity and instead floated soundlessly, slightly moving up and down every few breaths.

"Lucky, lucky, lucky!" As Cheng Hao said that, he smiled and cut his finger, letting a drop of blood fall on top of the hovering object. A bright light suddenly flashed, and the sword grew to be three meters long. The object was entirely made of a transparent crystal-like substance, a material that was slowly growing more and more opaque as the drop of crimson blood flowed down the glittery surface.

Suddenly, Cheng Hao waved his sleeve and the three meters long sword melted into a golden liquid. He then clenched his hand, and the liquid imploded and compressed itself until it became a small marble that could be grasped within two fingers! This small marble was completely golden in color and there were no imperfections on neither its surface nor inside.

"Where could such a fool possibly have gotten a drop of blood with such a high cultivation? Is that guy actually from some incomparably high-status family? Amazing! Could I have actually robbed the son of an emperor? No way, no way, even a hundred emperors would be unable to get their hands on something like this! Unless... he just stumbled into this single drop by chance and thought it to be just a small sculpture or some random object?" As the child talked he would occasionally let go of the marble, which would keep hovering in place, and then grasp it again. Finally, Cheng Hao nodded, clearly pleased, and resumed checking the content of the Heaven&Earth Pouch. "Such an idiot… don't you think so as well, Goldy?"

"Goldy?!?" Suddenly, an enraged voice rang out from Cheng Hao's breasts.

Not that the breasts had suddenly gained life or anything. That would only have ever happened in some kind of 'h' novel. Nonono; the voice had come out from within the front pocket of Cheng Hao's worn-out robes.

Immediately afterwards, a golden-scaled, snake-like creature crawled out of Cheng Hao's clothes. "Did you just call me Goldy? Your grandfather is a Goldy! I have a name, you know? While for some reason you might want to change your name in this life, don't you dare do the same with mine! 'Goldy'? What kind of name is that!" It looked like a small dragon cub, about a third of an inch tall and a foot long. Its body sinuous and covered in golden scales, it had five clawed paws and his head slightly resembled that of a snake. The small snake also had a few short, pointy horns stemming from its nape and red hair that went from the top of its head down its neck like a horse's mane.

"Sorry, but Goldy is so cuuute... so cute in fact, that I wonder why I didn't think of that before I 'died'. Oh, how about Gold’Er? If you ask me, either option is much better than the mouthful that is your actual name!" Cheng Hao chuckled and changed his ragged clothes with a long, blue robe he had found in Liu Biao's Heaven&Earth Pouch.

Hearing that, the golden dragon-snake glared at the boy's back. "Mmph! Do not call me Gold’Er either! When I was at my peak I had been so big that a single finger could crush mountains and create oceans! Call me by my real name!" The small beast seemed to pout and at that Cheng Hao couldn't help but chuckle.

Seeing the glare of the snake though, Cheng Hao sighed and looked at the small golden beast with a pained expression. "Alright, alright, I will call you by your true name, for this once... But just once! Calling you by your name each time would waste so much time… mister ‘Blindlight Alldevouring Stormchallenger Thronebreaker Awokenflame Rebellious Devourer Starextinguisher Nightbright Arisenoath Killightning Ender-of-Kings!’ Ah, truly a name to be remembered! Who in the world came up with it, I ask? It's such a mess of titles... In short, you are just B-A-S-T-A-R-D S-N-A-K-E, aren't you?"

Blindlight's expression turned sour and he gritted his teeth. "AAAAAGH! Shut up, shut up! Don't you dare joke around with my great name! You know I hate when people do that!"

Cheng Hao shrugged his shoulders. "Well, you were the one who stared it. If you didn’t want that to happen, then you should just have not brought it up at all! I still can't help but wonder whether it was intentional or not..."

The small golden snake suddenly turned red from embarrassment and purple from fury. "Y-you shut up! If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have DREAMED of besieging the three Outer Heavens! I was the one that taught you and made you able to use my cultivation method of the Golden Gates of Old, as well as allowing you to mount me!" The snake tried to regain some of its lost face.

When he heard that though, Cheng Hao's expression turned ice-cold. "You are also the one that claimed that Lord Tian's strength was weak for a Deity stage Heavenly Beast, and even urged me to fight him with a weaker cultivation base! You probably only did that to sleep for this thousand years, thousand years that I spent looking at the empty sky of the underworld! If it weren't for that strange golden bead of light that I swallowed, I would have still been there, wasting my death away!" Recalling the starless sky and the cries of the agonizing souls, Cheng Hao couldn't help but shudder and put his hand on his stomach, where the Golden Bead of Light was previously located. It had now been long consumed into his body.

“Oh yeah... that time, it had truly been my mistake. We had all underestimated how much of the former Heavenly Lord’s might Tian had absorbed… I am really, really sorry, Xu Ling.” The golden snake’s expression darkened.

"Whatever… Cheer up.” Cheng Hao shrugged his shoulders “That time had been my fault too! After all, I should have never trusted the opinion of a Bastard Snake…"

"Aaah!!! Cheng Hao, you...!" The two started to brawl. They rolled on the ground as Cheng Hao tried to catch and squeeze the snake, while the small beast kept trying to bite with its small head a portion of the exposed skin...

"Ahem!" A voice suddenly rang out! At that, the duo immediately stopped their movements – Cheng Hao still holding the snake's lower body with his left fist while the reptile was biting with its tooth-less mouth that same hand – and turned to look towards the source of the sound: a humanoid figure was standing a few meters away.

"Uhm... Are you ok buddy? You have been talking to yourself for a while and said some really weird things... Something about some weird blood and a bastard snake..."

"I'm NOT a bastard snake! I'll EAT you!" Goldy yelled.

"Shut up!" Cheng Hao hissed. "He can't see you, let alone hear you! You are a Primordial Beast for Heaven's sake, only those connected through Karma with you can notice you!"

“Also… you don’t have any teeth!”

Hearing this, the small dragon fell silent.

Meanwhile, seeing that the youth in front of him was not answering, the humanoid figure asked again, " So... are you ok?"

"He's not! He's a huge bitch and the world’s greatest bast-GEH!" Goldy failed to squeeze out the rest of the words as the golden-eyed boy had immediately tightened his hold around the snake's neck.

"I told you to shut up Little Gold!"

"Ouch! Cheng Hao, let me go you ass!"

"I'll let you go yes… but only when I reach a cliff that is tall enough! And at that time, I'll be sure to add some downward momentum myself! Be quiet Blindlight Gold’Er, I'm trying to engage in a conversation between gentlemen here!"

"Uhm, should I come back later?" The creature was a two meters tall humanoid Spirit Beast. It resembled a human but had the head similar to that of a rat. It wore some kind of leather armor and clutched a wooden club in his hands. That, plus the fact that both the club and the armor were dirty and stained with blood, made it so that its appearance wasn't really pleasant to the eyes. This beast apparently was supposed to be some kind of obstacle for the new disciples' acceptance exam but, seeing the way Cheng Hao was acting, it was actually pondering whether the weird human in front of him would go crazy anyways and lose any fighting abilities before it even had to lift a finger...