Sixteenfold pressure, three hundred and two steps...
This was the absolute limit of what Little Bad King's body and Divine Soul could endure. Amid the Crimson Mist filling the sky, the last trace of strength had been squeezed out of him.
He lay face down on the Bluestone Steps, like a stray dog that had starved to death beside the road, a beggar no one cared about; like a wretched man who had fought on a battlefield until utterly spent, with every last companion dead...
Alone, despairing, barely breathing, about to die.
Inside the second Emperor's Scenery Pavilion, Little One was truly panicking. He instinctively wanted to rush down to rescue Lion-Tiger, wake him, and cheer him on, but when he ran with all his might, he slammed into an invisible, formless wall with a bang and promptly landed on his backside.
"Let me out! I gotta save Lion-Tiger... let me out!"
Ignoring the big lump he had raised on his forehead, he yelled and tried pushing both hands against the wall he could neither see nor touch. But however hard he pushed, he could not pass through the barrier and leave the Emperor's Scenery Pavilion.
Little One had only just reached the Grade-Entry Realm and still did not know how to direct his Divine Sense Perception. Yet inside the Emperor's Scenery Pavilion, he could clearly sense his master's condition.
He was dying. His breathing was very, very slow, almost imperceptible.
However strong Little One was inside, he was ultimately only a child of five or six. He was terrified and heartbroken, with a panic he could not even put into words.
"Lion-Tiger... don't die!"
"If you don't have my determination, stop trying... just give up!"
"I don't want the Great Emperor's inheritance! I don't want you to die!"
"Aah!!