Shen He, his eyes blurred and unfocused, climbed the enormous staircase slowly yet steadily.
Liu Taixuan, hidden inside the necklace, was surprised to see his disciple in such a state and quickly noticed that his soul seemed to be under the influence of the staircase.
'Infinite Dao Sect…' the old man muttered in his thoughts as he watched the scene in astonishment.
Even for him—someone who had completed the three soul realms of cultivation: Nascent Soul, Soul Formation, and Void Refinement—souls were still something particularly delicate to touch.
If they were stronger cultivators, he could impose such illusions, and on weaker cultivators this would not be an issue, but it would still bring some degree of damage to the target when attempting to systematically manipulate a soul in a certain direction.
But from what he saw, Shen He's soul, despite the faint ripples emitted by the staircase, was not being strained to the point of causing harm, but instead being gently guided with impressive precision.
Whether by the mastery over souls or by the masterful precision of the Formation arts present within that staircase, both reached an extraordinarily high level in Liu Taixuan's eyes, a level he had never witnessed before—something that made his heart race as he remembered his great-granddaughter's constant admonitions.
As he thought, he suddenly noticed something different.
With each step Shen He took, something… a sound… seemed to emerge.
'Music?' He blinked, surprised as he finally realized it.
As his disciple climbed, a gentle melody echoed, different on each step, but carrying a subtle charm capable of pulling the soul into different places, making it live new worlds within each note.
Liu Taixuan blinked, bewildered. Although it was far too weak to affect his powerful soul, it still impressed him.
It was not that he had never seen the Art of Music pushed to its limits in the Tribulation Transcendence realm—he had. But in the music he heard now, some words seemed ready to leap from his tongue.
'Flawless… untouched by the world.' He blinked again, astonished to find himself giving such a high evaluation.
Liu Taixuan had once witnessed and even fought against a Transcendent-Tier musician, and although the music he heard now did not even come close to the power to pull or damage souls like that of his former opponent, he still perceived something extraordinary in these melodies—something that the person he once fought had never achieved.
And that was… he could not find flaws in these songs.
It was as if the heavens themselves were singing: flawless, without disharmony.
So much so that he found himself slightly hypnotized, even considering hitting his disciple to stop him from advancing, allowing himself to listen to each song on each step to satisfy his heart.
Aotian did not know the old man's thoughts, but if he did, he would not have been surprised.
In the past eight months, he had continued seeking inheritances, spells, and techniques in the central continent and, with the enormous wealth found there, managed at least to synthesize a Nascent-Tier inheritance in the rare musical path. And when synthesizing something, a "flawless" evaluation was the bare minimum such an art could receive.
As for synthesizing a Formation-Tier inheritance in the musical arts, he could not obtain even a single common inheritance of that tier, let alone synthesize his own.
Even so, he did not give up, and for now he progressed slowly by using his numerous avatars to explore and create inheritances by themselves. But the problem was that, even with so many avatars, this demanded time.
He not only had to explore every possible corner of a path while developing an entirely new cultivation art—of which he possessed not a single example of that tier—but also needed to create not one, but hundreds of inheritances of a single realm before having the chance to synthesize anything. And these inheritances had to be very different from one another, demanding even more dedication, or synthesis would be impossible.
Thus, even with so many avatars, this required time, and that time only multiplied for each higher realm.
Perhaps creating two or three hundred Refiner-Tier inheritances would not take as long. But to create two or three hundred Formation-Tier inheritances was an exponentially greater challenge.
Furthermore, Aotian was not dedicated to a single cultivation path, but many, in addition to having an entire sect to care for, and he could not simply have all his avatars isolate themselves only to focus on the creation process.
Therefore, he had never put so much effort into creating things. Taking what already existed in the world was countless times faster and more practical.
If he had dedicated himself to creating his inheritances, spells, and techniques from the beginning in order to synthesize them later, Aotian was certain that his current achievements would be incomparably smaller.
In any case, the staircase he created for this challenge was anything but simple. It involved the Soul manipulation he learned from Soul Search spells, as well as being the ultimate expression of his current mastery in Formations, Music, Forging, and various other things he learned on his journey, such as spells and illusion.
All of this combined to create small illusory realities for the challengers—realities that existed without harming them. At most, they would leave them exhausted with a slight headache.
Returning to the present, as the challenge continued, Aotian's main body hovered in the sky, hidden among the clouds, watching the ceremony with curiosity alongside Rihai and the other sect disciples.
The disciples of the Punishment Pavilion, with their black robes different from ordinary disciples, were especially spread throughout the sky, stationed and ready to intervene at the slightest sign of trouble or disorder, their eyes like hawks monitoring the vast crowd advancing.
On the staircase, Shen He continued his climb upward.
With each step his unconscious body, guided by music, illusions, and formations, took forward, a new illusory world formed.
The memories of the previous scene slowly dissipated, and new ones rose.
On the first step, he was the leader of a gang of thieves, able to do whatever he wished with a beautiful girl who had been kidnapped by his men. The correct answer in that one was to kill the bandits and not touch the girl improperly.
On the second, he became a spoiled young master who found an extremely precious treasure in the hands of a simple, gentle, kind, and poor boy. Here, there was no absolute answer. As long as he did not cruelly kill the boy to silence him and steal his treasure, it was basically a pass.
Even if he merely stole it secretly, as long as he did so without harming the boy and could still leave some spirit stones to help him afterward, he would be approved. And that was exactly what Shen He did.
Thus, the tests continued, each in a completely different scenario, testing greed, malice, envy, jealousy, and wrath.
In the hundredth scenario, he became a starving beggar who watched an equally starving and fragile little girl find half a piece of bread before he did.
In the two-hundredth, he became a severely wounded and crippled cultivator who had discovered a technique to devour humans to heal and improve his cultivation, and who had been rescued from death's door by a kind and gentle mortal village willing to help him survive at the cost of the little they had.
In the three-hundredth, he became an emperor on the brink of the exhaustion of his lifespan, possessing a technique to devour life force through a massive sacrificial ritual.
Shen He, with his gentle soul, persevered, never allowing cruelty or greed to blind him and make him do things he would regret, such as stealing from the starving girl, devouring the kind people of the village, or massacring cities for a longer lifespan.
His steps were firm, and he was close to the top of the Heart Trial after passing through hundreds of scenarios.
As for those who climbed alongside him, the vast majority had already been expelled by the staircase, being teleported to the base on either side, clearing the way for those who still wished to climb.
Aotian did not act against those who were expelled, even if their hearts were not good. After all, he understood.
In an illusion, where you are about to die or see a precious treasure in the hands of a gentle person, it is normal for selfishness to win often, and for killing others for personal interests to become a possibility.
Although he disagreed with such behavior, if he were to kill everyone with such tendencies, he would end up killing the majority of the one and a half billion people present that day—something that, even though he had the capability, he had neither the stomach nor any real need to do.
Humans were flawed beings, and Aotian expected nothing different.
But some people could not escape the hands of fate that day, and those were the ones who failed the challenge of the first step.
They were teleported to a different place—a prison that Aotian created—where he would slaughter them without mercy after confirming their hearts one last time.
Yes, the first step was a filter. If someone was willing to commit rape so easily in an illusion they didn't even know they were experiencing, in the real world it would be no different, and for such people, Aotian had not a shred of mercy, because he knew they had none for their victims.
As for killing, Aotian was no longer the same person from his past life. Ever since arriving in this world and being able to see the sins of others clearly, his hands had been stained with blood.
And since then, killing was no longer something that required time to process with his many minds. Killing had become something normal, like crushing an ant.
Perhaps he would feel pity for the ant for a moment after crushing it, but for those filthy people he judged, he did not feel even that.
Thus, as time passed, Shen He reached the top of the Heart Trial—the 333rd step—and there he faced the final illusion.
It was simple, yet complex.
In the illusion, a single certainty had been implanted in his mind:
Killing all the people he loved and valued would allow him to ascend to immortality.
On this floor, if someone had a family they truly loved in real life, they would be the ones the challenger saw in the illusion.
Otherwise, memories of a loving and happy family would be implanted.
Of course, Aotian was not yet capable of implanting an entire happy lifetime into someone's mind, so a mix of illusion and specific scenes were inserted, so that the confused mind would not perceive the abnormality—just like in a dream, where people are certain everything is real, without noticing that nothing matches the reality they lived up to that moment.
In the end, Shen He, without thinking much, refused.
He did indeed yearn for immortality, but when he looked at his father, mother, grandfather, and master—those who doted on him the most and supported him—each with gentle smiles as if approving of his choice, Shen He smiled softly, feeling without a doubt that he had made the right decision.
Perhaps his life would be short as a mortal, but he believed it would be far more valuable than living an empty eternity built upon the sacrifice of those he loved.
With that final thought, the illusory world unraveled, and Shen He returned to himself.
His eyes cleared, the enormous staircase entered his vision, and the memories that had been blocked returned. He finally remembered where he was and what his purpose was.
With clenched fists and his trembling heart calming from all he had experienced, his gaze grew increasingly firm.
Looking back at the enormous staircase where the crowd advanced—many disappearing in flashes of light upon failing—the boy fell into quiet contemplation.
His master, without his knowledge, watched him slightly stunned.
'Xiao He… he seems more stable and mature… more determined…'
Liu Taixuan was impressed by the change and the newfound steadiness in his disciple's gaze after such a short period of time, and he wondered what the boy had gone through while climbing those steps.
Shen He turned his gaze away from the lower part of the staircase, faced forward with determination, and stared at the large number of steps that still remained.
He did not worry about how the Infinite Dao Sect created such things, nor about what would happen on the upcoming steps. In his mind, there was only one word: Advance!
But sensing his mental state exhausted, Shen He could only reluctantly sit cross-legged and take a deep breath as he recovered his energy.
Climbing had not exhausted him physically, but experiencing so many scenarios within just a little more than a stick of incense (fifteen minutes) had taken a heavy toll on his spirit, and he needed to rest, or there was a real chance he would fall in the middle of the next trial.
While Shen He rested, the crowd behind him continued climbing nonstop.
Soon, several other cultivators with equally firm gazes arrived at the 333rd step and also sat down to recover their spirits, keeping the boy company.
In the sky, Aotian watched those people with a smile.
'With hearts that good, the second trial shouldn't be a problem for these people.'
He thought with amusement, before shifting his gaze to the sea of people still heading toward the staircase, a curious expression on his face.
'How many of you will be able to reach the top?'