On the Heavenly Ladder, Xing San swayed on his feet.
The pressure of heaven and earth surged toward him wave after wave, washing over his body and scouring his will.
He could feel that pressure tempering the True Qi in his newly opened Three Hundred Sixty Apertures, compressing and purifying the muddled Spirit Qi until it became power that was truly his own.
And within his sea of consciousness, a new will was quietly taking shape.
It was Grandmaster Will.
Unlike that of an ordinary Grandmaster, his will carried a heady note of wine—
Not the haze of drunkenness, but a clarity beyond worldly concerns.
As though, through that wine-soaked clarity, he could see an entirely different world.
The wind whispered, the clouds flowed, and the earth breathed.
All things between heaven and earth possessed a spirit.
Xing San stood on the third step of the Heavenly Ladder, trembling all over, yet he never fell.
He closed his eyes and let that will surge through his sea of consciousness, gathering and taking shape.
He had no idea how much time passed before the pressure gradually faded.
He opened his eyes and found himself back in the courtyard before the thatched hut.
The sunlight stung his eyes. Wine jars still littered the ground, and Li Yun still lay there, dead drunk.
But Xing San knew everything had changed.
He looked down at his hands, feeling the surging True Qi within him and the new will in his sea of consciousness. An emotion he could not name welled up in his heart.
A Grandmaster!
He had become a Grandmaster!
The Xing Lineage's third young master, who had cultivated for twenty years, been called useless for twenty years, and never even reached the Innate realm, had gotten drunk and ascended to the heavens