Chapter 108: Step Up

"Nine steps," the captain said, her voice low enough that only their group could hear it. "Each one presses on with some sort of aura that tests a person’s cultivation, courage, and the mind’s fortitude. By the seventh step, most people break from the inside before their bodies ever fail."

Kian watched Su Chen on the eighth step. The man wasn’t even breathing hard, and the bell above him hadn’t rung yet. Though, clearly, even he was stuck at the eigth step.

"I climbed till the sixth step with him," the captain went on, staring at Su Chen as well. "The moment we touched the seventh step, the people already there attacked us. They are monopolizing the seventh step. I fought one off, then another, and then Su Chen grabbed my shoulder and threw me behind him and used me as a shield."

Her jaw tightened.

Kian chuckled.

She continued: "He used me as a shield. The moment they saw me stumble, they all rushed me. That’s why I am rough for ware. He used that opening to climb."

Kian turned his head. "And when they finally went for him, he just scared them away?"

The captain frowned, sharp and bitter. "He stood there and looked at them like they were insects...In fact, he told them to come. No one moved."

Kian let a long breath out through his nose. "How hard is each step, really?"

"For you?" She studied him, then the bell. "The first five would be like walking over soft sand, I’d say, since you are stronger than me. Maybe six would make you sweat. Seven is where the real pressure starts. Rest depends.

She paused. "Other than you, none of your women stand a chance."

Kian watched the sixth step, where only two figures stood, then the seventh, where a woman stood alone and quivering. Then he looked back at the captain.

She had a small wound darkening her jaw, and the torn sleeve had left her collarbone bare under the lantern light.

He tilted her chin up. Her eyes flared at the touch, but she didn’t pull away.

"You look good like this," he said, thumb grazing her chin. "Now recite our deal for me again."

She swallowed. "If you can defeat Su Chen and get me into the Bell Ceremony, no price is too much."

"Good."

Kian let the captain slip out from under his arm and turned toward the nine steps.

"Let’s see what the hype is worth."

When he set his foot on the first one, the chatter around the steps thinned. Heads turned. A few of the waiting cultivators snickered, already expecting him to buckle like the others before him.

The pressure coiled up his shin like cold water, probing around his ankle.

It tried to press.

He didn’t press back.

He took another breath.

Hm?

The Qi in the air was indeed restless, churning like a storm waiting to break, but the step itself felt like standing in shallow water. No weight. No burn. No phantom fingers dragging at his chest.

Behind him, the girls followed without a word, one after another. Jiao Yin blinked as if she had been shocked, then stepped back. Xiao Cui followed the same fate.

Mia let out a soft sound, more curious than worried, and looked fully at ease. "Shouldn’t it be doing something?" she whispered.

Kian frowned at the girl. Jiao Yin and Xiao Cui are not yet cultivators. Is the Qi too much for them?

The first step should have been easy for him, but this felt like no test at all. He had braced for pain, for pressure behind his eyes, for anything. Yet the step was just Qi. He rolled his shoulders once, then looked up at Su Chen on the eighth step, still motionless.

The man hadn’t turned around, but Kian knew that he knew.

"Stay close," Kian said, not looking back. Then he took the second step.

The air thickened for half a heartbeat, buzzed along his skin like startled insects, and parted around his body as if it recognized him.

The restless Qi grew louder, rattling the insides of Kian’s body, but it didn’t sink into his flesh. His own Qi control was so immaculate that this could barely tickle him.

The girls followed behind him, steady and close, and Kian kept walking up.

Mia and Jia still looked quite at ease.

Feimei was fully normal as well.

The Captain looked somewhat worse for ware. She truly was injured.

"Oh?" Kian’s eyes lit up with realization.

The first step tested the ability to sense Qi. Any cultivator at Stage 1 could do it easily. That was the unique ability that reaching stage 1 unlocked.

Stage 2 unlocked Qi circulation. And Step 2 tested that.

’Then step 3 should test the ability to expel Qi and control it outside the body?’

Kian nodded to himself and stepped onto the third stone.

The third step didn’t wait. Qi snapped at him from three sides—short, sharp bursts aimed at his ribs, his temple, and the back of his knee. He didn’t dodge. He met each burst with a thin blade of his own Qi, knocking them aside until the air sizzled and went still.

A test of external Qi control, exactly as he had guessed.

Mia lasted two breaths before the bursts shoved her down to the second step.

"Wow..."

She didn’t complain, just gripped the edge of her robe and watched. Jia held on for one shaky second longer, then shook her head at Kian and stepped back down beside her sister.

"You kids truly need training," said their mom.

Feimei walked up through the same bursts without breaking stride. Her crimson eyes flared only once, soft as a veil, and the pressure curled away from her body.

She stopped at Kian’s side and said, "It seems these steps are testing a cultivation stage on every step. Step one tests stage one skills, step two stage two, and so on."

Kian nodded. "Then step four will test my weapon manifestation. It’s just weird that I can’t figure this our by seeing others try, they just look to be standing still."

"Ancient arts indeed," she replied.

Kian gave her his hand. "Come on."

Feimei looked at his hand for only a moment, then nodded and laced her fingers through his. They stepped onto the fourth stone together.

The people on the step all watched them.

The air split before their feet fully landed. Pale Qi curved out of the glowing mist like scythes thrown from three directions at once. One came straight for Kian’s throat, two arched toward Feimei’s ribs.

Kian didn’t bother with thought. A sword of pure indigo light snapped into his right hand, and he smashed the first blade into a spray of sparks. Feimei was already moving. A crimson edge flared along her palm, shaped like a slender jian, and she carved through the two strikes aimed at her with one clean swing.

More blades formed. Three, then six, then eight. The fourth step wasn’t finished.

Kian conjured a second sword into his off hand and stepped in front of Feimei, shattering the first wave before it reached her.

"Easy game."

"I could have handled it on my own, hero."

Feimei pressed her back to his. Her crimson sword hummed against another incoming blade, then they shifted as one. Their weapons flashed through the lamplight, crossing and cutting until the last of the Qi shattered.

The pressure broke like a wave against stone, and the fourth step went still beneath them.

They looked up at the fifth step and its inhabitants, then stepped up.

The fifth step opened into a wide stone shelf, broader than the four below it, and it held twelve people scattered like wounded animals.

Most were Stage 4 cultivators with hidden bloodlines or borrowed talismans, and it showed. Seeing them from here, all of them were in full body armor.

They were clearly using their full body Qi armors to defend themselves.

One sat cross-legged with a gash across his scalp and an empty pill bottle rolling near his knee. Another stood at the far edge, breathing in short, wet gasps and hugging a cracked iron shield to his chest.

None of them smiled when Kian and Feimei stepped up.

The pressure changed the moment both their feet landed.

The first strike came before the pressure fully settled. Three crescent blades curved in from the left, the right, and overhead. From the air itself.

Feimei snapped into motion.

Blood-colored Qi burst from her skin and covered her in powerful armor.

Kian didn’t bother, just spreading his arms wide and smiling.

"Kian, what are you doing?!" Feimei exclaimed.

He chuckled.

Everyone stood shocked, even the others on the step.

Ding.

Ding.

The sound of iron hitting iron echoed everywhere, and despite the fact that Kian’s iron like skin was unharmed, his clothes were immediately torn apart, revealing his entirely naked body.

Feimei sighed.

"Might as well used an armor. You deserve it. Aren’t you ashamed?"

"I did it deliberately so that I can let the ladies enjoy it, darling. And I am itching for a fight, so can’t care about clothes."

She shook her head.