After I left the sect, the entire sect knelt down and begged for forgiveness.

Chapter 188 Trial of the Secret Realm 3
Taking advantage of the chaos, Lin Yan pulled out an explosive talisman and threw it. The ground exploded, sending dust flying. The remaining three disciples barely managed to dodge it but suffered minor injuries.

She didn't linger; using the terrain to conceal herself, she quickly escaped.

Their battle with the demonic beasts was so loud that it would soon attract other people's attention. Once the demonic beasts were dealt with, their attention would turn to her. Clearly, she couldn't reap the benefits by staying behind.

She hid in a relatively safe place, surveyed the terrain, and chose a location that was easy to defend and difficult to attack to set up her formation. She placed talismans in many places, waiting for the destined person to join her.

She would stay in the formation, running away when there were too many people, harvesting when there were few, and resting during the day when no one came.

After a night of fussing, as dawn broke, she set up another barrier within the formation before taking out a futon, sitting cross-legged, and taking the pills.

She only gained 300 points tonight because she encountered the Thorn Bull Demon Beast and the disciples of Xingyan Sect, which is much less than the previous two days.

At this rate, she won't be able to find a place to hide and survive until the end of the secret realm trial in five days.

She needed to find a way to avoid being disturbed while farming monsters. Five days later, her bracelet would display her ranking, and her situation would only worsen.

In truth, she could have gathered the independent cultivators together to resist the exclusion they faced from others, but she didn't want to. Human hearts and nature were too complex; the waters were too deep for her to fathom.

The spiritual energy in this secret realm is similar to that of the Xuantian Sect. It seems that it has existed for too long, and its spiritual energy has been lost. Once the spiritual energy here becomes scarce, this secret realm will gradually disappear, just like the Yellow Sand Secret Realm.

……

Lin Yan felt that she had only scored 300 points after a whole night of hard work, which was very low. She was tired of being eliminated from the competition!

Is this the score a solo cultivator could achieve?

If someone scores 300 points in one night all by themselves, without any teammates, what do those who have teamed up with teammates think?
The rogue cultivator who hadn't been eliminated even once thought that Lin Yan wouldn't be so lucky next time and that her score definitely wouldn't increase again. He ran over expectantly to check, but his face darkened!

Everyone else felt incredibly envious when they saw that Lin Yan was still ranked first!
What's going on? It's normal that teams didn't get any points on the first day, since they all went to gather and rest. But what about the second and third days? Shouldn't they have caught up by then?
Why are everyone's scores still so low? The second place is more than a thousand points behind the first place!

Those disciples who hadn't received their share were now green with envy. They didn't stay any longer to embarrass themselves and went straight back to their camp.

It's no wonder that the second-place score was lower. As soon as they entered, everyone gathered together, trying to eliminate the rogue cultivators first. However, some rogue cultivators were very clever; if they couldn't beat them, they would hide and avoid meeting the sect's disciples.

Tao Zhizhi also rallied a group of people to go find Lin Yan, hoping to eliminate her first.

Her reasoning was that Lin Yan had already earned the top score, and if she ranked high in the Secret Realm Trial, her total score would be higher, making her the overall champion of the Immortal Sect Competition.

A rogue cultivator winning the grand competition—isn't that a slap in the face to all the disciples of the sects?

If a rogue cultivator is allowed to rise to the top of a sect, doesn't that just prove that the sect's disciples are useless?
In previous years, everyone worked together to eliminate rogue cultivators first, putting them in a lower ranking. This year, a dark horse has emerged, and the disciples of their sect are helpless. Wouldn't that be even more embarrassing?
Tao Zhizhi's words didn't actually have a brainwashing effect; these sect disciples were already proud and agreed with her without prior agreement.

This year's competition champion wasn't a disciple of a sect, which was already a huge loss of face for them. If the secret realm trial also resulted in a rogue cultivator achieving good results, they would feel even more ashamed.

Tao Zhizhi took advantage of this mentality to gather a group of people to find Lin Yan. On the way, they encountered disciples from other small sects, and she stood up to stop her teammates from eliminating them.

Her reasoning was that the most important thing right now was to unite and eliminate the rogue cultivators. She argued that all disciples of the sect were one family, and once the rogue cultivators were mostly eliminated, everyone could rely on their own abilities. The small team of ten was deeply moved and praised Tao Zhizhi for her kindness and sense of the bigger picture.

Tao Zhizhi smiled shyly and said that crossing the jungle was dangerous, but they could follow at a distance that was neither too close nor too far. If they encountered high-level monsters, they could kill them together, which would ensure their safety.

Tao Zhizhi's team was a consolidation of two sect teams, a small team of forty people, searching the secret realm in a grand manner, dealing with any low-level monsters they encountered along the way.

Although a lot of monsters were killed, the number of monsters distributed among so many people meant that each person didn't get many, so their score was naturally low.

The group conducted a thorough search but didn't encounter any of the people they wanted to eliminate. Instead, they found some hidden rogue cultivators and eliminated them.

The group found a relatively flat spot, set up a defensive formation, and camped out in their tents.

Tao Zhizhi had a small house in her spatial bracelet, but seeing that everyone was using tents, she didn't want to be different, so she could only purse her lips, take out the tent, and cast a spell to set it up.

After exchanging a few pleasantries with the team leaders, she returned to her tent and set up a shielding barrier.

"Master, what do we do now? She's hidden too well; we can't find her at all."

Ling Yun emerged from the spatial bracelet and embraced the person, comforting them: "Good disciple, don't worry, the person is in the secret realm, we'll definitely run into them. The most important thing now is to find food for your master."

“Okay…” Tao Zhizhi looked at the pitch black outside, then changed into a set of clothes that would make her invisible before going out.

Wearing an invisibility cloak, Tao Zhizhi moved silently through the darkness, approaching the direction where the disciples of the small sect were stationed.

The moonlight was obscured by thick clouds, and the surroundings were eerily quiet, broken only by the occasional chirping of insects.

Using her memory of the terrain, she quickly found her way to the vicinity of the small sect's camp.

Tao Zhizhi observed them carefully. Their ten-person team was stationed there, with only one disciple left to keep watch at night.

She took out a bewitching talisman specially made by her master from her spatial bracelet, poured spiritual power into it, and the talisman turned into a fluorescent light, silently disappearing into the back of the night watch disciple's head.

The disciple's eyes instantly lost focus, his body swayed a few times, and then he collapsed softly to the ground without making a sound.

After dealing with the night watch disciples, she quickly approached a tent and used the same method to render the disciples inside unconscious.

She used the same method to make them all lose consciousness, then put them all into her spatial bracelet for her master to absorb.

After doing all this, Tao Zhizhi cautiously looked around to make sure there was nothing amiss, then quietly returned to her tent, and no one noticed what she had done outside.

Meanwhile, Lin Yan was unaware that she had become Tao Zhizhi's "elimination" target, and that a large team of forty people had been assembled to search for her in the secret realm.

As night fell again, she opened her eyes and got up from the futon.

After meditating and regulating her breathing during the day, she is now full of energy.