Su Chen, who was reading the screen, stared at what the system had written about him.
"Shameless?!" His expression twitched. "Fine, I'm shameless... but if I'm shameless, then what the hell are you?" he thought bitterly, glaring at the screen like it had just insulted his ancestors.
But the moment his eyes landed on the task, his heart skipped a beat.
"F*ck... this system wants to make me the enemy of the entire world!"
Even if everyone here was currently restricted to the Core Formation Realm, that didn't make them weak. If several of them attacked him together, it would still be extremely dangerous. Worse, this place was clearly bound by some strange rules—no one could speak about what happened here outside.
"But what if the rest of them really do gang up on me at the same time?"
He clenched his jaw. His instincts screamed at him to back off.
And yet…
"That Immortal Undying Flame… I can't just let it go." His eyes narrowed. "I need to think this through."
"Alright, let's start with the nearest one first," Su Chen muttered under his breath and took his first step onto the Heaven Stairs.
Thud.
A faint pressure pressed against his body, but it was so weak that he barely noticed. He shrugged and continued walking.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Ten steps in, Su Chen spotted a young cultivator standing on one of the higher steps. The boy looked about nineteen, dressed in clean robes, his posture proud and straight.
Su Chen approached with a sincere-looking smile and said politely,
"Fellow Daoist, has anyone ever told you that you look quite handsome? Like the very Prince of Heaven himself."
The young man turned toward Su Chen, clearly pleased by the compliment. He smiled modestly and replied,
"Haha, no one's said that before. But… thank you."
Su Chen nodded thoughtfully, then suddenly said with a straight face,
"Yeah, I figured. Because you're not."
Before the boy could even react, Su Chen had already darted up four or five more steps.
The young cultivator froze. His smile vanished. He replayed the sentence in his head—and then his face twisted in fury.
"You son of a—! You're courting death!" he shouted, charging up after Su Chen in rage.
But the moment he placed his foot on the next step, a heavy wave of pressure slammed down on him. His legs buckled. His body trembled. He couldn't move even an inch forward. His physical body clearly wasn't strong enough to resist the pressure at this level.
"Ahhh! You bastard! You don't know who I am!" he screamed, stuck in place.
Su Chen glanced back from a few steps above, snorting with laughter.
"I don't know who you are," he said with a grin, "but judging from how you're stuck there, I do know one thing—your 'below' seems really weak. Maybe consider taking some power-boosting pills next time?"
Su Chen turned his gaze upward and continued climbing the Heaven Stairs. Behind him, the young cultivator was still screaming curses, but Su Chen didn't even glance back.
The surrounding cultivators noticed the commotion, but no one stepped in. Instead, they stood on the sidelines, chuckling and treating it like entertainment.
As Su Chen moved forward, his eyes landed on a young female cultivator a few steps ahead. Judging from her plain clothing and unremarkable aura, she didn't seem like a chosen genius or daughter of fate. In Su Chen's eyes, she screamed side character.
He climbed to her step and flashed his signature grin.
"Fairy, you look like you're struggling a bit. I wouldn't mind giving you a hand," he said with a perfectly serious expression as he extended his hand toward her.
The girl turned to face him. Her eyes lingered on Su Chen's face for a moment—handsome features, a faint lotus mark between his brows, flowing white robes. For a second, she was dazed.
But then she remembered what he'd just done to that poor cultivator below.
With a sharp glare, she slapped his hand away and quickly stepped back, keeping her distance.
Su Chen didn't get angry. In fact, his expression became even more shameless.
"Aiya, looks like Fairy is just shy," he said, rubbing his chin. "No worries, we'll have time to talk later tonight. I hope you don't mind, hehe…"
With a smirk, he turned and climbed the next step.
"Shameless!" the female cultivator snapped, her cheeks flushed red with anger and embarrassment.
Su Chen ignored her completely. He wasn't doing it for romance—he was just completing his system task. And besides, being shameless was part of his cultivation path now.
But while the crowd had laughed when he mocked a male cultivator, things changed the moment he approached the girl.
Suddenly, a furious voice echoed from above:
"You bastard! How dare you insult the Fairy!"
A cultivator from the higher steps jumped down with a sword drawn, his aura surging as he lunged straight at Su Chen with killing intent.
"Yeah! Punish that bastard for what he did!"
"He's already counting his deaths!"
Voices rang out from the crowd below, filled with righteous fury and excitement.
But Su Chen wasn't one to sit back and take a beating—he was anything but passive. With a cold glint in his eyes, he gathered his Qi into his fist—swish!—and launched a full-force punch at the approaching cultivator.
Boom!
His fist collided directly with the man's sword. A crisp crack echoed in the air as the blade shattered like brittle straw. But Su Chen's fist didn't stop there—it surged forward, and just a hair's breadth away from hitting the man's chest, it halted.
The pressure alone was terrifying. The cultivator's hair blew backward from the force, and the fear on his face couldn't be hidden—his pupils trembled, and his body stiffened.
But Su Chen didn't finish him off.
Not because he was merciful. No, not at all.
It was simply because killing someone here wouldn't mean anything. This place—this strange realm—they would revive. The real task could only be completed after reaching the top of the Heaven Stairs.
So here?
Hehe… it was just a warm-up.
Gasps and murmurs of disbelief swept through the crowd. Even the girl below, the one the cultivator had harassed, looked up in shock.
Before the man could open his mouth to plead or curse, Su Chen grabbed him by the collar, lifted him with one hand like a sack of rice, and casually tossed him off the stair path.
As the man tumbled down, Su Chen turned to the girl.
"Is she your sister, or are you trying to take responsibility for the whole world?" he said mockingly. "You brother of
your sister," he said, patting his hands before turning to climb upward —calm, composed, and completely shameless.