"What?!"
Inside the wooden pavilion, Ke Cheng spat out the tea he had just swallowed. His eyes widened in disbelief. "Qin Hao passed the Seventeenth Floor of the Heaven-Piercing Tower? How is that possible? His strength improved that much in just one month?!"
"That's impossible."
Qi Zhiyuan and He Kai stood frozen too, disbelief written across their faces. Almost in unison, the three shifted their gazes from the Heaven-Piercing Tower back to the Jade Stone Plaque floating above its entrance.
They were not the only ones. Across the plaza, countless talented Saint Martial Grandmasters also turned toward the Jade Stone Plaque.
Sure enough.
There, on the Jade Stone Plaque's eighteenth line, was a name.
Qin Hao!
The two words were neither large nor unusual, but alone on that line, with so many lines beneath them, they stood out like nothing else.
Everyone felt dizzy. None of them had imagined Qin Hao would actually clear the Seventeenth Floor.
"That guy..."
"Hiss! He passed the Sixteenth Layer a month ago and the Seventeenth Floor today. At this rate, won't he pass the Eighteenth Floor next month?"
"No matter how talented he is, his strength can't improve that fast! How exactly does Qin Hao train? Has he spent this month in a Heaven-Class Cultivation Chamber on Heaven-Piercing Azure Mountain?"
"No way! I heard that after reaching Heaven-Piercing Azure Mountain, Qin Hao defeated Shi Chengtian and took the Earth-Class Tenth Cultivation Chamber. He's trained there all month."
"I know Shi Chengtian. But if I remember right, he'd already passed the Sixteenth Layer then, and so had Qin Hao. Yet Shi Chengtian still lost to him..."
"That's not strange, is it? Above the Fifteenth Layer of the Heaven-Piercing Tower, the Guardians from the Sixteenth Layer through the Eighteenth Floor are tailored to each challenger. Differences