Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

[Welcome to the Ascension Realm]

[Current Floor: 1]

[Task: Kill 20 Qi Condensation Realm Demon Beasts]

[Reward: 1 Ascension Coin, The Passage to the Second Floor reveals itself]

Looking at the panel once again as it slowly began to fade away, Xuan Hao casually moved his hand. Sending out a wisp of sword qi that quickly killed 20 Qi Condensation Realm Demon Beasts-

Rumble~

And not a second later a spiral staircase descended a few meters behind him. Connecting to the one he had walked up to reach the first floor of the tower.

[Current Floor: 1]

[Task: Kill the Guardian to the Second Floor]

[Reward: 3 Ascension Coins, Access to the Second Floor]

However, before he could take a step forward, a new demon beast suddenly emerged from the tall grass beside the staircase leading up to the second floor of the tower alongside a new task.

Roooar~!

”A floor boss?” Muttering this to himself as he inspected the new demon beast that had appeared in front of him, Xuan Hao could not help feeling amazed at the design of the tower so far, while also knowing that this first floor at least would be a great challenge for the sect’s Qi Condensation Realm Disciple.

The reason being that the overall strength of the monsters roaming around the grass plain were somewhere between the Fourth to Seventh Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm, while the floor boss roaring at him menacingly had reached the Ninth Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm and seemed stronger than a normal demon beast. Enough to pose a challenge even to a disciple at the Peak of the Ninth Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm.

Bang~

Of course, it posed no challenge to someone like himself, as he just casually knocked it aside with his hand when it jumped at him. Killing it in the process before making his ways up the stairs to the second floor of the dungeon.

[Welcome to the Second Floor]

[Current Floor: 2]

[Task: Kill 20 Foundation Establishment Realm Demon Beasts]

[Reward: 5 Ascension Coin, The Passage to the Third Floor reveals itself]

But… Outside of the environment changing from a peaceful grass plain to a rather gloomy forest, the objective of the floor remained the same, as Xuan Hao didn’t linger around for too long before moving on to the next floor of the dungeon. Curious if there would be other tasks outside of just killing demon beasts, something that took him longer than expected to find out, as a change only took place when he reached the sixth floor of the tower and the official point where the difficulty reached the Nascent Soul Realm.

[Welcome to the Sixth Floor]

[Current Floor: 6]

[Task: Avoid detection from locals and find the Tower Key]

[Reward: 250 Ascension Coins, Able to unlock passage to the Seventh Floor with the Tower Key]

The task itself seemed simple enough on the surface, but it was far more difficult compared to the tasks he had encountered so far from a same cultivation realm point of view, as the sixth floor itself was not just far larger than any of the floors that had come before, but also had several small towns spread throughout it where one would have to search through to find the Tower Key.

The difficult part of the task being that the towns spread throughout the sixth floor were inhabited by some kind of humanoid beings that looked almost the same as humans except for the upper parts of their bodies being entirely animal-like.

Beings that also attacked on sight no matter how he tried to communicate with them.

Although not dangerous to someone like himself, the overall strength level of these beings was nothing to scoff at, as their general cultivation was somewhere between the Foundation Establishment Realm and the Core Formation Realm, while there was at least three Nascent Soul Realm half animal beings in each town, with some of the larger ones having more than a dozen with a Ninth Stage Nascent Soul Realm half animal being at the top.

For a normal Nascent Soul Realm cultivator, the only way to succeed in overcoming the sixth floor of the tower would be follow the instructions of the task given and avoid detection from the locals while searching for the tower key… And even then, it would undoubtedly be difficult to remain hidden all the time.

The challenge posed by the sixth floor of the tower was by far the one he felt the most interested in, as it didn’t just test strength alone- well… Almost, as someone with overwhelming strength in the Nascent soul Realm would still be able to force their way through.

At least that was what he thought until he ended up clashing with the half animal beings in one of the larger towns and witnessed them combining their strength into some sort of tribal formation that enhanced the strength of the town lord to the Domain Lord Realm. A level that almost no Nascent Soul Realm cultivators could reasonably reach.

As for the tower key that was the goal of this task? He found it with a quick sweep of his divine sense inside a small wooden box hidden beneath a broken bed inside a rundown house that had seemingly been abandoned in the outskirts of a middle-sized town.

Faced with this odd location and the fact that that the wooden box itself had some guard against divine sense and pretty much made it impossible to find for someone below the Soul Ascension Realm with divine sense alone, he quickly took another look through the sixth floor and soon realized that one was originally supposed to search for clues throughout the different towns by listening to locals or sneaking inside a local library to search for information.

Far more challenging than he had originally expected. Although he also found a second tower key appearing after killing the town lord of a large town. Showing that if one could defeat the town lord empowered to the Domain Lord Realm, one would be able to get their hands on the tower key without going through the trouble of searching for it.

Having finished up looking through everything he could about the sixth floor of the tower, Xuan Hao soon enough found himself ascending the spiral staircase leading up to the seventh floor of the tower while silently wondering if there would be more floors associated with the Nascent Soul Realm given that the distance between each minor realm significantly widen with the increase in cultivation…

[Welcome to the Eighth Floor]

[Current Floor: 8]

[Task 1: Kill 5 Nascent Soul Realm Demon Beast]

[Task 2: Locate the Spiral Flower Tree and obtain a Red Spiral Flower]

[Reward: 500 Ascension Coins, Able to unlock passage to the Ninth Floor]

And soon enough he got his answer, as he swept through the equally unique seventh floor of the tower and stepped onto the eighth floor of the tower and was met with another Nascent Soul Realm floor. The main difference on the eighth floor was the appearance of more than one task at the same time. Even if the second task had him collecting flowers from what ended up being a rather unique-looking flower tree with a demon beast that had reached the Half-Step Domain Lord Realm guarding it.

Though not specifically a floor boss one needed to kill to reach the next floor of the tower, he considered it to be one, as it was close to impossible for someone in the Nascent Soul Realm to sneak past a demon beast that had already started forming its domain.

As for the location of the red spiral flower one needed collect… it was literally blooming a few meters from where the Half-Step Domain Lord Realm demon beast was sleeping.

Not that it was much of a challenge for him to quietly steal it away from the sleeping demon beast that didn’t even notice its most priced treasure was gone, as he soon enough found himself back on the spiral staircase looking up towards the ninth floor of the tower that had emerged above him.

As much as he wanted to continue, he had already spent a few hours inside the tower so far and had a feeling that Elder Song and the rest of the sect’s elders wanted to know more about this tower that had appeared out of seemingly nowhere. So for now, he decided to return back to the ground floor to check for any changes before meeting up with those likely still waiting outside the tower.

Luckily, he didn’t have to walk all the way down, as he had found out that a teleportation formation appeared next to the spiral staircase from the second he had stepped onto the second floor of the tower and this teleportation formation allowed him to return directly to the ground floor of the tower or take another teleportation formation located in the reception part of the ground floor to get back to the highest reached floor.

In the process of playing around with this feature, he had also realized that new unique tasks would appear for the highest floor he had cleared so far, whenever he returned to his highest reached floor.

The tasks did give a far lower number of ascension coins, but it was a clear way to continue earning ascension coins even after having completed the task of a tower floor while being unable to advance.

Although… Some of the new tasks issued were far harder than the original first task he had been given for completing the floor…

Tower floors explored so far

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First Floor, Qi Condensation Realm: Normal mobs, fourth to seventh stage, floor boss, Ninth Stage.

Second Floor, Foundation Establishment Realm: Normal mobs, First to Third Stage, floor boss, Fourth Stage.

Third Floor, Foundation Establishment Realm: Normal mobs, Fourth to Seventh Stage, floor boss, Ninth Stage.

Fourth Floor, Core Formation Realm: Normal mobs, First to Third Stage, floor boss, Fourth Stage.

Fifth Floor, Core Formation Realm: Normal mobs, Fourth to Seventh Stage, floor boss, Ninth Stage.

Sixth Floor, Nascent Soul Realm: Normal mobs, First to Ninth Stage, No floor boss.

Seventh Floor, Nascent Soul Realm: Normal mobs, Fourth to Sixth Stage, floor boss, Seventh Stage.

Eighth Floor, Nascent Soul Realm: Normal mobs, Fifth to Seventh Stage, floor boss, Half-Step Domain Lord Realm.