Accompanied by the hopeful thoughts from last night, when the first ray of morning sunlight pierced the dilapidated window lattice and spilled onto the hard plank bed, Mo Fan opened his eyes right on time.
He stretched luxuriantly, listening to the crisp, popping sounds from his bones like roasting beans, feeling completely refreshed.
The sudden night raid last night hadn't affected his sleep quality in the slightest. Instead, it thoroughly convinced him that his elaborate act of deception had successfully wrapped up.
Mo Fan rolled out of bed and washed up simply.
He looked around this drafty dirt hut where he had lived for months, without a shred of nostalgia in his eyes.
He patted the storage bag at his waist, which was stuffed with his entire net worth (including his skeleton warriors), and touched the twenty mid-grade Spirit Stones and loose low-grade shards kept securely against his chest through his clothes.
A wave of lofty ambition welled up spontaneously: "I, am now a VIP of the inner sect, about to reach the peak of my life."
Pushing open the courtyard gate and facing the morning sun, Mo Fan took large, confident strides out of the servant district, heading toward the Azure Cloud Sect's main peak that towered into the clouds.
"A beautiful new life, exclusive resources of the inner sect, and that grand base camp belonging to me..."
As Mo Fan walked, he sketched a beautiful blueprint for his future in his mind.
However.
When he had walked for a full half-hour, crossed the boundary of the outer court, and truly arrived at the foot of the mountain leading to the inner sect main peak, the smile on his face froze.
Stretching out before him was not some broad, flat avenue.
Instead, it was a flight of stairs paved entirely with white jade, embedded straight into the mountainside, piercing directly into the sky—you simply couldn't see the end of it with a single glance!
The densely packed stairs looked like a giant white dragon leading to the heavenly realm, disappearing into the thick sea of clouds halfway up the mountain.
"This..."
Standing at the foot of the mountain, Mo Fan tilted his head back until his neck ached, yet he couldn't even see the base of the inner sect's archway.
A blast of cold high-altitude wind blew past, lifting the slightly tattered corners of his clothes.
In this moment, Mo Fan suddenly recalled the scene at the Spirit Testing Ceremony when the elders left with A-Song.
They had simply waved their large sleeves, summoned their radiant, iridescent flying swords, turned into streaks of rainbow light, and flew up with a whoosh in just a few seconds.
"I finally understand why those inner sect elders and true legacy disciples looked at me like I was trash."
The corners of Mo Fan's mouth twitched violently. A cruel realization named "class barrier" smashed heavily onto his forehead like a club.
In the inner sect, or rather, in the true cultivation world, "aerial flight" was the most basic threshold separating immortals from mortals.
Only upon reaching the Foundation Establishment stage, or possessing an extremely expensive, high-tier flying magical artifact, could one commute decently between the various mountain peaks.
And him?
He was a waste Spirit Root who couldn't even sense spiritual Qi!
Although he possessed an extremely high amount of necromantic Mana, that was energy filled with death and Yin-cold attributes; it couldn't drive orthodox cultivation artifacts at all.
Even if he forcibly got a flying sword and stepped on it, with that appearance of billowing black smoke and dripping corpse water, he'd probably be blasted into slag by the Mountain Protection Array as a demonic cultivator the moment he took off.
As for riding Summon No. 003 up?
Don't joke around. Inner sect disciples could pass by these Ascension Steps at any time. Bringing out a skeleton to use as a vehicle—did he think he wasn't dying fast enough?
"In other words, in this immortal realm of the inner sect, I am just a disabled person who doesn't even possess 'basic commuting ability'?!"
Mo Fan roared frantically in his heart.
"If there's some morning meeting at the inner sect main peak in the future, and others fly over in two minutes with a whoosh, I'll have to leave the house three days in advance to hike up a fucking mountain?!"
But complaints aside, he still had to report in.
"Let's climb. I'll treat it as weighted off-road training."
Mo Fan sighed and resignedly stepped onto the first white jade step.
The first thousand steps were indeed like walking on flat ground for Mo Fan, who was at the consummate Iron Bones Stage. He could even distract himself to admire the green pines and cypresses on the cliffs on both sides.
But as the altitude continuously increased, things began to go wrong.
These Ascension Steps were actually faintly covered by a natural gravity array meant to test a disciple's temperament. The higher you went, the more the gravity on your body multiplied geometrically.
Huff... huff...
By the time he reached the 10,000th step, Mo Fan's forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat.
By the time he climbed to the 30,000th step, the washed-out coarse servant uniform he wore was completely soaked with sweat, clinging tightly to his body.
He gasped heavily for air, his legs as heavy as lead; every time he lifted his foot, it consumed an immense amount of stamina.
The physical torture was secondary. The most fatal part was the dimensional strike on a mental level.
SWISH—!
A streak of blue sword light whistled past in the sky dozens of meters above his head.
Standing on the sword light was a graceful inner sect disciple, robes fluttering, not a single hair out of place, holding a teacup and admiring the sunrise over the sea of clouds.
SQUAWK—!
Before long, another elegantly postured white crane swept past his side.
Sitting on the crane's back were two female cultivators chatting and laughing merrily, their laughter crisp and pleasing to the ear. A few flower petals even drifted down from the sky, landing exactly on the tip of Mo Fan's sweat-and-mud-stained nose.
Resting his hands on his knees, Mo Fan looked up at those "car owners of the cultivation world" shuttling through the clouds, his eyes turning red.
"This is not fair..."
He wiped away a handful of sweat mixed with grime, cursing frantically in his heart.
"Doesn't this broken cultivation world even have shared flying swords?! I currently have a massive fortune of exactly two thousand low-grade Spirit Stones (equivalent) in my pocket! I'm a rich man now, and I can't even get an Uber-Sword?!"
Under this dual physical and psychological torture, after going through unspeakable hardships for the better part of a day, climbing from sunrise until the sun hung low in the west.
Mo Fan finally pierced through that thick sea of clouds.
His vision suddenly opened up.
A massive, dazzlingly magnificent white jade archway, dozens of feet tall and wreathed in immortal mist, stood at the entrance of the cloud-top plaza. The sunlight spilled onto the archway, refracting colorful neon lights.
Right in the center of the archway, four large characters were carved with bold, flying strokes: Azure Cloud Inner Sect.
"Phew... finally... arrived."
Panting like a bull, Mo Fan rested his hands on his knees, feeling like his lungs were about to explode.
He raised his head, preparing to properly admire the gate to his "new life."
However, in the next second, his back—which had just prepared to straighten—silently hunched over again.
Standing under that extraordinarily imposing archway, on the left and right, were two rows of inner sect guards on duty.
These guards uniformly possessed late-stage Qi Condensation cultivation.
They wore iridescent silver-white Dharma robes, warm jade pendants hanging at their waists, and held highly-ranked magical halberds that sparkled with spiritual light and were clearly no ordinary goods.
Each of them stood tall and straight, with imposing bearing. Their eyes exuded the coldness and majesty of a great sect's core foundation.
Standing there in the clouds, they looked exactly like legendary heavenly soldiers and divine generals.
Mo Fan froze.
He subconsciously looked down at himself.
Dressed in a washed-out servant's coarse cloth outfit with loose threads everywhere; pant legs covered in mud and grass picked up during the climb; cloth shoes worn at the edges.
Carrying a dusty, broken bundle on his back, along with a "fire poker" ([ Pale Bone Scepter ]) wrapped tightly in rags.
An extreme visual contrast.
A strong, suffocating sense of inferiority instantly pierced through the pride of "reaching the peak of life" that Mo Fan had been fantasizing about just moments ago.
"This is so fucking..."
Looking at the guards whose outfits combined could probably buy his life a hundred times over, and then looking at his own refugee-fleeing-a-famine appearance, Mo Fan couldn't help but issue the ultimate self-roast in his heart:
"I, a legitimate Top 8 finalist of the inner sect, am doing worse than the Daoist boys watching their front gate?!"
This was exactly like wearing worn-out cheap canvas shoes and carrying a plastic woven sack, preparing to check into a high-end five-star hotel, only to look up and realize the valet parking cars at the door was wearing a custom Armani suit.
Too tragic.
But he was already here; he couldn't just climb back down.
Mo Fan took a deep breath, rubbed the sweat and dirt off his face vigorously, and forcibly propped up the last shred of decency belonging to an "inner sect disciple."
He squeezed out a slightly stiff, flattering smile and leaned toward that god-like guard.
"Hello, Senior Brother, hello."
Bowing and scraping, Mo Fan approached.
Extremely preciously, he pulled out that crude, unpatinaed, splintery "Hundred Forging Peak" broken wooden token from his waist and handed it over with both hands.
"Excuse me, little brother is here to report for duty. This Hundred Forging Peak... which way is it?"
The guard, who was originally resting with his eyes closed, frowned upon hearing someone approach.
When he opened his eyes and clearly saw Mo Fan's refugee attire, as well as the crudely made wooden token—which looked like it had just been sawed off a broken door panel—thrust toward him, his eyes went through a series of extremely rich changes.
First vigilance, then confusion, and then undisguised disgust.
Finally, when he clearly saw the crooked characters "Hundred Forging Peak" on the wooden token, the disgust in his eyes instantly transformed into a deep sympathy, mixed with 40% of looking at a hopeless idiot.
The guard did not reach out to take the wooden token.
He even took a half-step back, as if afraid of being tainted by bad luck.
Then, he slowly raised his hand, pointing over Mo Fan's shoulder, through the rolling layers of the cloud sea, toward a solitary, isolated mountain peak far, far away on the horizon.
That mountain peak was bare. There were no spirit cranes circling, no clouds or mist lingering.
There was only a desolate dead silence, completely out of place with this dazzling main peak.
"Hundred Forging Peak?"
The guard spoke in an extremely cold voice, as if pronouncing a death sentence:
"You climbed the wrong mountain."
Mo Fan froze: "Huh? Wrong mountain?"
"That is the abandoned back mountain mine, situated at the very edge of the main peak's formation coverage."
The guard looked at Mo Fan as if reading a cruel verdict.
"You need to follow these Ascension Steps you just climbed... walk all the way back down, step by step, and then go climb that mountain next door."
"..."
The wind stopped. The clouds dispersed.
The flattering smile on Mo Fan's face, the moment he heard the words "walk back down" and "climb that mountain next door," instantly stiffened, froze, and then cracked into pieces.
A biting alpine wind blew past at an extremely inappropriate time, piercing through his sweat-drenched clothes.
Mo Fan slowly turned his stiff neck, looking at the bottomless, thirty-thousand-step white jade stairway that had just cost him half his life to climb.
He then looked at the bare, barren mountain in the distant sky, not knowing how long it would take to climb that one.
Gulp.
Mo Fan swallowed hard.
A violent cramp shot through his calf muscles. His vision went black, the world spun, and his entire body fell straight backward, rigid as a board.
He almost rolled down those tens of thousands of white jade stone steps like a bouncing rubber ball right then and there.