Hours bled into a day in the accelerated time. He fell countless times, washed back to the bottom, only to grit his teeth and start again. He learned to synchronize his breathing with the rhythm of the waterfall, to find moments of stillness within the chaos.
But the thousand steps were simply too arduous to complete the higher he climbed. His body, even through a simulation, became bruised and broken. The relentless pressure was designed not just to temper, but to break. By step 300, his progress slowed to a crawl. By step 400, every step felt like a new tearing of muscle and grinding of bone. He started wondering if the Premium Cultivation Room had truly materialized this challenge because it all felt real. The objective felt less like tempering and more like self-destruction.
He collapsed on step 412. The torrent hammered his back like a huge sledgehammer made of the densest of ores, it made his consciousness flicker.
