To Li Chang'an, nothing ahead was unknown. He had already seen the outcome; all he had to do was keep walking.
After that, the trials he encountered grew increasingly vicious.
Yet he remained calm, his state of mind barely wavering.
Time flew by.
One hour, two hours...
The pitch-black, icy passage seemed to have no end.
As he walked on in a mechanical rhythm, Li Chang'an's sense of time grew increasingly hazy.
"Strange. How long have I been walking?"
A flicker of doubt rose in his mind.
Most of a day seemed to have passed since he entered the passage, yet he still had not seen the exit.
He held on to his patience and kept walking.
Ahead lay only darkness and deathly silence. No more sounds came, and nothing else appeared.
All Li Chang'an could sense was the slow passage of time.
One day, ten days, a hundred days...
In the end,
thousands of years seemed to have passed.
Li Chang'an faintly felt himself growing weaker and weaker, as though he had reached the end of his lifespan.
He could even smell decay on his own body.
Countless questions rose and sank through his mind.
How long had he been walking?
After all this time, what had become of the outside world?
The mounting questions made him want to turn back, retrace his steps, and leave this dark passage whose end he could never reach.
But the thought lasted only a moment before he forced it down.
"So that's how it is."
"Even knowing the outcome, I can still lose my way."
"Endless years can shake my convictions and make me doubt what I believed before..."
Understanding dawned on Li Chang'an.
This sensation of passing years was another trial of the Life-and-Death Path.
The instant he understood, his weakness