After countless repetitions, Ye Yi's cultivation advanced again through the trials, and he finally reached the 2,002nd step.
Without hesitation, he continued upward, ultimately stopping at the 4,000th step.
He tried the 4,000th step over and over, but he could not set foot on it.
"Am I really going to stop here?" He looked upward, his brows tightly furrowed as a trace of unwillingness rose in his heart.
He sat cross-legged at the 4,000th step and pondered for a long while before flashing back to the foot of the staircase.
"I will never give up until I reach the top."
Gritting his teeth, he stepped onto the first stair once more.
Time passed. After several tens of thousands of years, he arrived at the 4,000th step again.
After pausing briefly, he lifted his left foot and stepped forward.
A pressure powerful enough to turn someone into a bloody mist swept over him. He screamed in agony as blood hissed from his entire body and his flesh split open, yet he gritted his teeth and endured.
At last, he stepped onto the 4,001st stair.
By then, he was a mangled mass of flesh and blood. The flesh across his body fell away in streams until he became nothing but a skeleton, collapsing onto the stairs.
Whoosh—
A streak of purple light shot out from the bones, transforming into a graceful figure that landed beside the skeleton.
Her brows were tightly drawn as her red lips parted. She called out to the bones, "Disciple, get up! Your journey has only just begun. It is still very long..."
As though it had heard the woman's call, the skeleton stirred and tried to rise, but failed.
Its hollow eye sockets glanced toward the woman as though it wished to say something.
"Disciple, get up!