Meanwhile, inside the Thousand-Step Stairs.
Every candidate laboring up the steps had stopped climbing.
As if they'd seen a ghost, they stared in naked horror at the figure rapidly receding above them...
"Monster!"
"Freak!"
"That's not human!"
"Wait — I remember now. The one who injured those Crimson Heaven Sect direct disciples this morning and got taken as a Peak Lord's disciple on the spot — that's her, isn't it?"
"Like hell it is. You need your eyes checked — that one was a light-element spirit master."
"Exactly. You're not seriously suggesting a light-element spirit master can run up the Thousand-Step Stairs that fast?"
Talent was one thing — she was still light-element!
Since when did light-element cultivators treat the Thousand-Step Stairs like level ground?
Ning Ruan could no longer hear the commentary below.
Past the four hundredth step.
The whole space seemed to hold no one but her.
On the staircase woven from luminous mist, Ning Ruan finally slowed her pace.
Not that any of it felt strenuous.
She strolled up step after step at a walk.
Occasionally hopping in place.
Then clicking her tongue and murmuring to herself:
"So that's the trick. The famous Thousand-Step Stairs — it's just gravity suppression."
She knew this stuff inside and out.
She'd practically been raised on it.
Back in Longevity Village, her Second Dad — the sword maniac — had been deranged enough to stack extra layers of gravity on her even when she squatted over the latrine...
"Something's off about this space, though. My storage space seems to be sealed by something. Won't open."
Ning Ruan had never been one to make life hard for herself.
If a thing couldn't be puzzled out, she stopped puzzling.
Her climbing pace picked right back up.
...
Outside the Thousand-Step Stairs, the air had grown heavier and heavier.
One of them: a Suiyun Peak direct disciple, one of the Ten Great Prodigies, arrogant and radiating open killing intent.
The other: a Xueyang Peak direct disciple almost never seen in public, who had never once fought, smiling and unreadable, the picture of cultured mildness.
Elder Gao — nominally the highest authority on the testing plaza — could afford to offend neither.
He was, after all, only an outer-sect elder.
At that moment.
Luo Yue, smile intact, suddenly pointed at the jade token on Elder Gao's belt — the one that monitored conditions across the entire Thousand-Step Stairs:
"Elder Gao. Your monitoring token is glowing."
"Hm???" Elder Gao froze, then glanced down at his belt.
His eyes flew wide, and the shout tore out of him: "Five hundred! Someone has passed the five hundredth step!"
Elder Gao's delighted bellow rolled across the entire testing plaza in an instant.
"What?"
"On the final day of recruitment testing, someone passed step five hundred?"
The test officials' faces ran the full gamut of disbelief.
The plaza erupted.
"Five hundred steps — that's another direct-to-inner-sect admission."
"No kidding. Light-element candidates need only one hundred fifty to pass; everyone else needs two hundred.
People like us scrape past two hundred and stall out short of five hundred, so it's the outer sect for us.
Who knows if we'll ever claw our way into the inner sect."
"There's always the grand competition — chances will come. But wait. The one who just went in... you don't suppose she's the one at five hundred?
The monitoring token lit up almost right after she entered."
"Are you insane? The one who just went in is a light-element spirit master! Whose light-element cultivator blows past five hundred steps in that little time?"
"Fair. Even if her aptitude really is decent, and even if she somehow could pass five hundred — not that fast. No chance."
Having thus convinced each other — and themselves —
the crowd tossed that absurd, creeping suspicion firmly out of mind.
In midair, Shi Xunyang stood with his sword cradled in his arms, gaze dropping to the quietly smiling Luo Yue below, killing intent unconcealed:
"What exactly are you smiling at?
Don't tell me you also think the one in there is your light-element Little Sister?"
Luo Yue lifted his eyes slowly, smile unchanged. "Why shouldn't it be?"
It had been meant as pure mockery — but on actually hearing the answer, Shi Xunyang needed a long moment to process:
"What did you just say?
That feral stray? A light-element spirit master, passing the five hundredth step this fast?"
"Why not?" Luo Yue's lips curved slightly, tone perfectly even. "On our Invincible Peak, the disciples average above step nine hundred."
Shi Xunyang: "..."
Elder Gao: "..."
And as if the heavens themselves wished to underline Luo Yue's outrageous claim —
the monitoring token now clenched in Elder Gao's fist erupted with a still more brilliant light.
Step six hundred!
...
Step seven hundred!
...
Step eight hundred!
...
The entire testing plaza had gone graveyard silent.
There was only the monitoring token in Elder Gao's hand, flaring brighter and brighter.
Bright enough to sear every watching eye.
The instant the glow marking step eight hundred appeared, Elder Gao abruptly stuffed the token into his storage space.
Shaking with awe and excitement, he pulled out a voice-transmission paper crane:
"Report to the Sect Master at once... someone has passed the eight hundredth step of the Thousand-Step Stairs!"
The paper crane dissolved into a streak of light and shot away.
Below, countless gazes burned on, feverish.
"Then I needn't wait any longer."
Luo Yue smoothed his plain white sleeves and stepped lightly up onto the Scarlet Feather Kite that had carried them here.
Every eye in the crowd was riveted to the receiving platform.
Only Shi Xunyang, face rigid, kept glaring at Luo Yue.
His hand clenched white around his sword, and his aura came pressing down like a blade:
"You're that certain of the stray?
She's been inside barely two incense sticks' time. Climbers who cleared eight hundred steps that fast have existed in the Crimson Heaven Sect's history, yes —
but every last one was an offense-heavy monster: sword cultivators, summoners, mutation-element spirit masters.
Light-element? Heh. You think far too highly of her."
Atop the Scarlet Feather Kite.
Luo Yue smiled thinly. "Just because you can't doesn't mean my Little Sister can't."
He paused — then, as though a thought had just struck him, added with warm-eyed sincerity:
"Anyone who passes step eight hundred is transported directly to Tianshu Peak. If you're planning to wait here for my Little Sister... I'm afraid you'll be waiting for nothing."
Shi Xunyang's face turned the color of iron. He would die before believing that stray could pass eight hundred steps.
He drew breath to retort — but Luo Yue had already sailed off on the Scarlet Feather Kite.
Gone before Shi Xunyang could even issue the challenge burning on his tongue.
"Luo Yue!"
"That worthless stray will never pass eight hundred!"
"Never!"
...
Inside the Thousand-Step Stairs.
Ning Ruan — the girl no one believed in — stood in a formless void crisscrossed with seething thunderbolts.
And for the first time, her unshakable calm gave way to an expression of pure holy hell.
"I thought the Thousand-Step Stairs only had nine hundred ninety-nine steps?"
"I signed up for stair-climbing. Since when does it come with lightning to the face?"
If she'd known the thousandth step was this, she'd have to have been insane to climb all the way up.
BOOM!
The gathering storm had no interest in Ning Ruan's opinions.
A bolt of lightning came straight down—
Ning Ruan's mouth opened, the words "holy hell" not yet out, when the thunderbolt struck her full on.
Sword casket and all. Nothing was spared...
...
Crimson Heaven Sect, main peak. Tianshu Peak, Changyun Hall.
The Sect Master held the voice-transmission paper crane, watching the Peak Lords and elders below wage verbal war over who would claim the new disciple.
Aside from those in seclusion — and Liu Yun, who had bolted early —
virtually everyone was fighting over this candidate who had passed the eight hundredth step.
Just then.
As if sensing something, the Sect Master shot to his feet, and a rare flicker of genuine shock crossed that eternally indifferent face:
"Step one thousand..."
The words had barely fallen.
And he was gone from where he stood.
Leaving a hall full of people exchanging blank stares.
"Where did the Sect Master go?"
"What did he mean, 'step one thousand'?"
"Wait... he couldn't have meant the new disciple passed the thousandth step?"
"Impossible. Didn't that disciple only just clear eight hundred..."
"I don't care! If that child truly passed the thousandth step, they're mine — whoever tries to take them can fight me to the death!"
"Senior Brother Lu, have you no shame left? For a disciple who passed the thousandth step? For that, dying to you sounds perfectly acceptable!"
"Then come try."
"Try it is."
"..."