Chapter 11: The Stairway to Heaven
The second test was designed to break the spirit.
After the chaos at the Mirror of Judgment, the fifty thousand remaining students were ushered toward the northern end of the plaza. There, rising into the clouds like a spine of white stone, was the Stairway to Heaven.
It consisted of ten thousand steps. Each step was inscribed with a Gravity Array and a Soul Suppression Formation. The higher you climbed, the heavier your body became, and the louder the whispers of dread in your mind grew.
"The rules are simple," Vice-Principal Vex announced, his voice amplified by magic to boom across the plaza. He hovered in the air, his green robes flapping like the wings of a vulture. "Reach the top before sunset. Use of movement techniques is allowed. Use of artifacts to negate pressure is… discouraged, but not forbidden. The path to the heavens is not fair. Neither is this academy."
He looked down, his snake-like eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on me.
"Begin."
The mass of students surged forward. The first few hundred steps were easy. Students ran up them, laughing and competing.
"Too easy!"
"I can fly up there in ten minutes!"
I stood at the bottom, watching them. Anya was yawning, holding my hand. Ria stood silently behind us, her luggage cart now stored in a spatial ring I had 'borrowed' from a rich merchant in the city.
"Big Brother," Anya tugged my sleeve. "I don't want to walk. My legs are short."
I looked at the stairs. To my eyes—the eyes of a former Divine Blacksmith—I could see the flow of energy in the stone. It was a standard pressure array, but there was a nasty modification around the 1,000th step. A manual override switch.
Vex was planning something.
"Hop on," I said, crouching down.
Anya cheered and jumped onto my shoulders, wrapping her small arms around my neck. "Giddy up!"
"Master," Ria stepped forward. "I can carry the Young Miss. It will conserve your stamina."
"No," I adjusted Anya's weight. "This isn't just a test, Ria. It's a free gym membership. The Academy is spending millions of Spirit Stones to power this gravity array. It would be rude not to use it to temper my body."
I took the first step.
Thud.
A gentle weight pressed down on my shoulders. About 1.5x gravity. Negligible.
I began to walk. Not run. Walk.
Around me, the chaos had already begun. By the 500th step, the weaker students—the Qi Condensation ones—were already gasping. The gravity here was 3x normal. Sweat soaked their robes. Some were crawling on their hands and knees.
I strolled past them, whistling a tune from my 9th life.
"Look at him," a student wheezed, pointing at me. "He's… he's carrying a child?"
"Showoff," another grunted, wiping vomit from his mouth.
I ignored them. I focused on the rhythm of my breathing.
Inhale. Draw the ambient pressure into my lungs.
Exhale. Expel the impurities in my blood.
This was the Heaven-Devouring Sutra: Body Refining Mode. While others fought the pressure, I invited it in. I let the gravity crush my muscle fibers so my regeneration could rebuild them denser, stronger.
By step 900, the crowd had thinned. Only the Foundation Establishment students remained.
Ahead of me, Prince Valerian was sprinting. He was glowing with a soft green light. A wind-attribute artifact—a Feather of the Sylph—was pinned to his chest, negating 80% of the gravity.
"Cheater," Anya whispered, seeing the feather.
"It's not cheating if you're rich," I corrected. "It's just boring."
We reached Step 1,000.
High above, Vice-Principal Vex watched. His finger hovered over a glowing rune on his command tablet.
"Let's see if you can eat this, Anomaly," Vex sneered.
He pressed the rune.
BOOM.
The air around me distorted.
For everyone else on the stairs, the gravity remained at 5x.
But for me—and only me—the array screamed. The pressure spiked instantly.
10x.
20x.
50x Gravity.
The stone beneath my foot cracked. A spiderweb of fractures spread out instantly.
My knees buckled. The sudden weight was like a mountain being dropped on my head. My bones creaked audibly, a sound like dry wood snapping.
"Big Brother?" Anya sensed the change. She tightened her grip.
"Don't… move," I gritted out through clenched teeth.
My vision blurred. Fifty times gravity was enough to crush a tank. My internal organs were being squeezed. My heart struggled to pump blood.
High above, Vex smiled. "Kneel. Kneel and break."
I looked down at the cracked stone. I felt the malice in the array.
Pain? Yes.
But also… Power.
The pressure was immense energy being forced onto me. It was trying to crush me, but my cells were screaming in delight. My Supreme Yang Body was a furnace, and this gravity was the hammer.
'More,' the beast inside me roared.
I didn't kneel.
I forced my leg to straighten. The muscles in my calves bulged, tearing my pants. My veins turned black as the impurities were forcibly squeezed out of my marrow.
'Technique: Titan's Spine.'
I channeled the pressure directly into my spinal column.
CRACK. POP. CRACK.
My spine realigned. My bones, which were still partially mortal, began to compress, becoming as hard as steel.
I took another step.
THUD.
The step shattered.
I took another.
THUD.
I wasn't walking anymore. I was stomping. Each step destroyed the Academy's expensive marble.
Up in the sky, Vex's smile vanished.
"He's… he's moving? Under 50x gravity? And he's still carrying the girl?"
Vex cranked the dial. 80x Gravity.
Blood trickled from my nose. The capillaries in my eyes burst.
"Rudra!" Anya cried, trying to jump off. "Let me down! It's too heavy!"
"Stay… put!" I roared.
I opened my mouth and sucked in a breath. The atmospheric pressure swirling around me was visible—a vortex of distorted air. I swallowed it.
My Void Talent devoured the crushing force, converting it into raw stamina.
I started to run.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
I shot up the stairs like a cannonball, leaving a trail of destroyed masonry behind me. I passed students who looked at me in horror. To them, I looked like a demon—covered in black sweat, eyes red, stomping the stairs into dust, carrying a little girl who was looking at me with pure adoration.
I passed Prince Valerian at Step 8,000.
He was panting, his artifact flickering. He looked to his left and saw me.
"What the—"
I didn't even look at him. The wind from my passing knocked him off balance, and he fell on his face.
Step 9,999.
Step 10,000.
I slammed my foot onto the final platform—the Floating Island of the First Years.
The pressure vanished instantly.
I stood there, heaving. Steam rose from my body. My clothes were soaked in black sludge—the toxins of fifteen years of mortal life, finally expelled.
I felt light. Incredibly light. My body felt like it was made of helium. If I jumped now, I could probably clear a mountain.
Vice-Principal Vex floated down, his face pale. He looked at the trail of destruction I had left behind—thousands of broken steps.
"You…" Vex pointed a trembling finger at me. "You destroyed school property!"
I wiped the blood from my nose and gave him a bloody grin.
"You said the path to the heavens isn't fair, Vice-Principal. You didn't say the stairs were made of cheap tofu."
I let Anya down. She looked at me, then at the terrified Vice-Principal.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
"My brother is the strongest," she declared.
I looked at the sun. It was barely noon. We had cleared it in record time.
"Now," I cracked my neck, feeling the new power surging in my refined bones. "Where is the cafeteria? I worked up an appetite."