Stairs - 132

After Jack and the old man finished talking, Jack decided to try and climb the stairs to the floating palace. He didn't think he would be able to reach the top, but he wanted to see how far he could make it.

At first, Jack was a bit frightened to do so, but the old man explained to him that severe injuries on the stairs were uncommon, while deaths were one in a thousand. And out of those who get killed, 99% were weak idiots.

Therefore, Jack didn't see a problem in trying to climb the stairs. Jack started walking towards the south of the town and quickly found the path that led to the floating palace.

The path was completely empty and even birds couldn't be seen. Jack walked through it pretty quickly and made it to the floating palace.

The first thing he noticed, besides the stairs and the palace themselves, was the abandoned buildings near them. Although none of them looked like houses, there were plenty that looked like shops or stalls.

Jack guessed that at one point in time, the floating palace was a good tourist attraction. However, it seemed that as time passed nobody was interested in it.

It was likely that people realized that only the strongest people in the Zhou World had a chance to reach the top, but even they barely got halfway when they tried to climb it many thousands of years ago.

Since there was nothing else to look at around the floating palace, Jack walked up to the stairs. They seemed to be floating in the air without any assistance and they were a transparent light blue.

Despite them being called stairs, they were just flat rectangles that you stepped on. After seeing that there was nothing else on the stairs, Jack stepped on the first step.

A pressure instantly washed over him, but it was so weak that a 7th level core formation cultivator could handle it.

It was right before he took his first step that Zhou Fan lowered the pressure needed to reach the top. Instead of strength at the 5th level of the space shattering realm, the stairs could now be cleared by someone at the first level of void traversing.

Even so, Jack would have to struggle immensely to reach the top. As someone at the 9th level of soul formation, reaching the strength of a first level void traversing was nearly impossible. Zhou Fan, however, believed that Jack could do it. His talent was too big for him to fail such a challenge.

As Jack took his second step, the pressure once again increased. Looking ahead, he could see that there were 998 more steps to go.

After his twentieth step, Jack felt the pressure become strong enough to knock off a 8th level core formation cultivator. Jack didn't waver as he continued up. After the hundreth step, the pressure was enough to knock off a 2nd level nascent soul realm cultivator. Once again, Jack shrugged it off and kept walking up.

At the 500th step, Jack felt the pressure become strong enough to knock off a 4th level soul formation cultivator. He was starting to feel suspicious after seeing that he could reach a height that the oldest cultivators had been unable to, but the pressure was starting to burden him and he had to focus.

At the 900th step, Jack felt the pressure reach a level that could knock off someone at the 9th level of soul formation. For the first time since he started climbing, he had to use 100% of his strength.

After another fifty steps, Jack felt the pressure become strong enough to knock off a tenth level soul formation cultivator. He was now under so much pressure that he couldn't even look up. Every step he took exhausted all of his strength.

It took 10 hours for Jack to reach the 990th step. By then, he was nearly dead from the immense pressure, yet it increased one again. Jack almost instantly fell off, but he pulled his trident from his back and attacked towards the palace in a desperate attempt to decrease the pressure.

Unfortunately, the old man had forgotten to tell him what happened to the last group that attacked the palace.

To Jack's surprise, the pressure pushing on him instantly disappeared. After he comprehended that it stopped, he happily ran up the next nine steps, before an aura of death covered his entire body.

In the next second, a lightning dragon appeared above his head. Before he could process what was happening, he was already attacking it with the trident as it shot forwards with the power of a full power strike from a first level void traversing cultivator.

Instinctually, Jack covered his trident with every type of Qi he had an affinity to. First was Gold Qi, then Water Qi, then Light Qi, then metal Qi, and finally, Space Qi covered the trident as it shot forward towards the lightning dragon at an incredible speed.

From the forming of the lightning dragon to the throwing of the trident, not even a second had passed, but their attacks reached each other.

BOOM!

A loud boom, followed by a large shockwave shot out. The sound reached the edges of the beast lands, while the shockwave seemed to not even leave the confines of the floating palace's stairs.

The lightning dragon, instantly dispersed at the point of collision, while the trident was sent flying off in an unknown direction.

As for Jack, the shockwave hit his body so hard that he didn't even get pushed back. Instead, his skin was instantly ripped off and in some sections, his bones were visible.

Jack fell forward and landed on the small flat platform in front of the giant golden door of the floating palace.

His blood instantly poured onto the floor, and Jack didn't move an inch. He stayed like that for 5 minutes, his lifeforce slowly depleting.

Just as he was nearly dead, his hand went up and fell in front of him. He started to drag himself to the golden door of the floating palace almost instinctively.

Just as he was inches from death, he touched the golden door and a golden light covered him.