Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Having essentially handed over the job of integrating the ascension realm tower into the sect to Elder Song who was more than happy to take on this job, Xuan Hao didn’t linger around the ground floor of the ascension realm tower for long. Soon enough following in the footsteps of his disciples as he made his way up the spiral staircase. Only to remember that he could also take one of the teleportation formations in the reception part of the ground floor to get back up to the eighth floor of the tower where he had last left off.

Luckily, moving up the spiral staircase wouldn’t take him back to the first floor of the tower again and would instead transport him to highest completed floor. Not that he wouldn’t be able to move lower again, just that he would have to descend through the spiral staircase on his own in that case… And although it teleported him upon reaching a certain area. The distance covered by the spiral staircase before reaching that point would still be exhausting, as the distance one needed to travel to reach the next floor seemingly increased with each floor.

Taking the eighth floor of the tower, he found himself on now. Although it wouldn’t take him more than a few seconds to reach the ninth floor of the tower, it would take someone in the Nascent Soul Realm more than two hours and someone in the Domain Lord Realm between ten to fifteen minutes.

Why such a lengthy transition between floors existed and if it would reach the point where even he would need hours to reach the next floor, he didn’t know. All he could do was guess that this was some kind of endurance test or perhaps a test of one’s movement techniques.

If it really was some kind of test, he had a feeling that he might not know about it solely due to the fact that his own strength was far above the strength that the floor he was on had been adjusted to. In the future when he reached a floor that was more appropriate for his current level of strength, he might be able to figure out if there really was some kind of test in the space between the different floors or if it was just a way to test endurance or root out anyone with insignificant cultivation from recklessly advancing to a floor that was far beyond what they could handle.

No matter what it was, he should figure it out in the future.

For now, he focused his attention back on the scenery that spread out before him after he reached the ninth floor of the tower. Peaceful rolling hills and a small river alongside a forest teeming with life. From a glance there was no sign of demon beasts or other creatures that could threaten him in sight.

And so, having taken in his surroundings and ensuring no immediate threat, he turned his attention towards the panel that had appeared the second he had stepped onto the ninth floor. Curious about what he needed to do to get to the tenth floor.

[Welcome to the Ninth Floor]

[Current Floor: 9]

[Task: Survive 24 Hours]

[Reward: 1000 Ascension Coin, The Passage to the Tenth Floor reveals itself]

Not only had the reward reached four digits, but the task given by the tower had changed from him having to do a task to just surviving for 24 hours.

This change, though harder on the surface compared to the other tasks he had been given, was in fact far easier considering the only reason why he had been able to breeze through the past few floors was due to his overwhelmingly strong cultivation base when compared to the demon beasts and creatures he had to face.

If the demon beasts had been on a similar level as himself, he could easily see it taking days if not weeks to complete even the simplest first floor of the tower to hunt down twenty Qi Condensation Realm demon beasts. After all, one’s qi wasn’t unlimited and after a battle, there would be a time of recovery.

Because of this, it was clear that this ninth floor would be far from simple, as just surviving for 24 hours was an extremely simple task compared to those that had come before when scaled up accordingly.

For this reason alone, the peaceful surrounding environment and the lack of any threats seemed even more ominous, as there was no way surviving for 24 hours in such an idyllic location would be worthy of a challenge compared to what had come before. Instead, it seemed more like a vacation.

Rumble~

And soon enough, he got his answer as to what would be so difficult about completing the ninth floor of the tower, as a large horde of demon beasts suddenly appeared in the distance at the edge of his divine sense. Barreling directly towards him without showing any signs of stopping.

Worse yet, the strength of these demon beasts ranged anywhere between the Early Stage of the Core Formation Realm all the way up to the Third Stage of the Domain Lord Realm. Posing a significant challenge even to someone at the Seventh Stage of the Domain Lord Realm.

However, the challenging part of the ninth floor was not just this horde of demon beasts that seemed to be charging him. Instead, it was the fact that when he expanded his divine sense outwards to cover a large section of the ninth floor, he discovered that there were countless hordes of demon beasts of similar size and strength scattered all over the place.

The challenge for the ninth floor of the tower seemed to be finding a way to avoid these demon beast hordes, as even drawing the attention of one of them would end up inevitably drawing the attention of the rest. Resulting in a massive horde that even someone at the Soul Ascension Realm might fear confronting…