Wang Zhan wore a dark green martial outfit. He was travel-worn, the hem of his clothes still bearing the wear of a long journey and a faint trace of blood that had yet to disperse.
He also carried with him a heavy presence that made the heart tremble, like the oppressive stillness before a storm.
“Who is that?”
“That face is unfamiliar, but his aura is so profound!”
“Wait! That appearance, that bearing… Could he be the one from the Eastern Region…?”
Among the crowd, cultivators from the Eastern Region or those with well-informed connections suddenly shrank their pupils. A name was almost on the verge of escaping their lips.
“Wang Zhan! He’s Wang Zhan of the Ancient Wilderness Wang Clan—the Azure Heaven Sacred Physique!”
“He actually made it here?!”
“But arriving only now—isn’t it too late?”
Exclamations rang out, but they quickly subsided.
Most people’s attention was still drawn to the figure high above, beyond the nine thousandth step.
Wang Zhan paid no heed to the commotion. He glanced up at the ladder that towered into the clouds, then stepped onto the first stair.
Boom!
An oppressive force descended.
Wang Zhan’s figure remained as steady as a mountain. His dark green qi and blood circulated faintly, and the pressure was naturally dissolved and absorbed.
He did not pause for even a moment. He began climbing.
One hundred steps, three hundred, five hundred…
His speed was frighteningly fast, as though he were climbing an ordinary mountain rather than ascending the Heavenly Ladder.
The low-level pressure and heart-demon illusions along the way had not even come within three feet of him before they were silently annihilated by the thick, all-encompassing aura surrounding him.
Before long, he reached the two-thousandth step.
The pressure here was already considerable, and many prodigies were gasping for breath.
Whoosh!
A blurred dark-green afterimage, accompanied by a low whistle of compressed air, flashed past several prodigies who were gritting their teeth and struggling onward.
“What just passed us?!”
“How fast! Who was that?!”
The few of them turned back in shock, seeing only a dark-green figure rapidly shrinking into the distance as it continued upward at an almost uniform, terrifying speed.
It was as though the pressure they were enduring did not exist for that person at all.
Three thousand steps. Four thousand steps…
Wang Zhan’s speed still did not slow. He continued steadily along the center of the Heavenly Ladder.
Wherever he passed, the stairs gave off a faint, resonant hum, as though they were responding to his Dao.
Wang Zhan’s ascent also caught the attention of the elders and deans of the academy.
At Daozang Academy’s Hall of Illuminating the Mind, the elders were observing the situation on the Heavenly Ladder through a massive water mirror.
When they saw Wang Zhan steadily climbing at an almost uniform, terrifying speed, a dark-faced elder could not help uttering a soft cry of surprise. He pointed at the figure in the water mirror.
“Who is this child? His climbing speed is so steady and swift. The depth of his foundation is truly astonishing!”
Beside him, an elder with white hair and a youthful face stroked his beard thoughtfully.
“Judging by the vastness of his qi and blood, could he be that little fellow from the Ancient Wilderness Wang Clan in the Eastern Region—the one who possesses the Azure Heaven Sacred Physique, Wang Zhan?”
“I heard that he was defeated several times by the Battle Asura siblings. Yet look at him now. His qi and blood circulate with flawless harmony, and his Dao rhythm is vast, balanced, and righteous.”
“He must have shattered himself and rebuilt anew. His foundation is even stronger than before!”
The dark-faced elder drew in a sharp breath.
“At this rate, the position of true disciple is already within his grasp. He may even have the potential to reach the nine-thousandth step!”
The elders exchanged glances, each seeing shock and solemnity in the other’s eyes.
At the six-thousandth step, they had entered the region that marked the limits of many holy-land saints and heirs of ancient teachings. Everyone wore grave expressions, sweat pouring down their faces.
Suddenly, an invisible field of force spread outward, lightening the pressure weighing on those nearby by a fraction.
The crowd looked up in astonishment, only to see a dark-green figure steadily walking past them.
His steps were unhurried. His qi and blood were restrained, and only a faint radiance of Dao rhythm—one that seemed capable of bearing all things—flowed around him. It effortlessly swept aside the chaotic currents of Dao laws rushing toward him.
“Is that Wang Zhan?”
One heir of an ancient teaching recognized him, his pupils contracting sharply.
“How is he moving so fast?!”
The voice of a holy-land saint beside him was dry and strained.
They were struggling to take even a single step, while the other man moved as though he were walking on level ground.
Wang Zhan did not even turn his eyes toward them. He simply continued forward step by step, overtaking them.
The few prodigies looked at one another in silence. Their faces burned, and the pride they had carried as peerless talents of their generation was crushed to pieces.
At the six-thousandth and seven-thousandth steps, the pressure multiplied.
Heart-demon tribulations and attacks formed from the Dao laws began to manifest.
Wang Zhan’s figure was finally no longer so relaxed.
The radiance of Dao rhythm around him began to flicker visibly, colliding fiercely with attacks of every attribute that came rushing in and producing muffled thunderclaps.
His footsteps also grew heavy. Every time he set his foot down, the stair beneath him let out a clear tremor.
But he did not stop.
Although his speed had slowed, he still maintained a steady, unstoppable rhythm as he advanced.
He was like a precision war chariot of immense power, roaring as it crushed every obstacle beneath its wheels and pressed firmly onward.
The eight-thousandth step!
The True Inheritance Platform!
Wang Zhan’s figure pierced through the barrier and landed steadily on the platform.
At that moment, Li Xuanfeng and the others had also finished meditating and were preparing to continue their ascent.
Wang Zhan’s gaze swept across the seven people, pausing briefly on Li Xuanfeng, but he did not linger.
After sensing the dense Dao rhythm here and the even greater pressure bearing down on everything, he stepped forward without the slightest hesitation and entered the hellish section beyond the eight-thousandth step.
“He isn’t stopping to recover? He’s going straight up?!” someone cried out in disbelief.
Near the eight-thousand-three-hundredth step, Ji Xuanye was meditating to recover, preparing to climb higher.
Suddenly, he sensed an aura approaching rapidly from behind and to the side—steady as a mountain, yet carrying a sharp, surging momentum.
He turned around abruptly.
Wang Zhan was walking toward him step by step, his aura condensed and weighty, far beyond what Ji Xuanye remembered.
What made Ji Xuanye’s heart tremble even more was that although Wang Zhan was climbing, his breathing and aura remained incomparably steady, as though he still had strength to spare.
Wang Zhan’s eyes met Ji Xuanye’s for a brief moment. He gave a slight nod in greeting.
But his footsteps did not pause in the slightest. He passed directly by Ji Xuanye and continued toward the heights above.
Ji Xuanye opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, it became only a bitter sigh.
There had been a time when he believed himself to be standing in the same foremost echelon as Wang Zhan.
Now, it seemed the gap between them was far greater than he had imagined.
Wang Zhan had risen later, yet had already left him far behind.
At the eight-thousand-six-hundredth step, Xinglan sat cross-legged. Suddenly sensing something, he opened his eyes.
Wang Zhan happened to be passing by not far ahead of him.
Clearly, he too was enduring immense pressure. His dark-green qi and blood clashed fiercely with the surrounding cold and corrosive Dao laws.
Yet his back remained straight and his steps resolute. The will to advance without fear—to trample even the heavens and earth beneath his feet—surged toward Xinglan like a tangible force.
Beyond the eight-thousand-seven-hundredth step, the Dao laws took physical form, and their attacks became terrifying.
Wang Zhan’s progress became exceedingly difficult.
He had no choice but to truly activate the power of his sacred physique. His dark-green qi and blood blazed like a raging fire, merging with his all-encompassing Dao rhythm.
A layer of incomparably solid armor formed over his body, allowing him to withstand the charging phantoms of colossal dragons, crimson lotuses of karmic fire, and waves of annihilating cold.
Boom! Bang! Crack!
The sounds of fierce collisions rang out without end.
Cracks continuously appeared across his armor, only to mend themselves at astonishing speed.
Yet his eyes grew brighter and brighter, while his battle intent soared ever higher.
Such extreme pressure and relentless confrontation were precisely the perfect battlefield for tempering the Dao he had newly comprehended.
Step by step, slow but resolute, he continued upward.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
