As he advanced, the pressure on the Life God Tree's stairway increased exponentially.
When Lu Xuan reached the thirtieth step.
That crushing force weighed on his shoulders like a mountain, making the bones throughout his body creak.
"Asura Domain, activate!"
Lu Xuan growled, his eyes instantly turning blood-red.
Bone-chilling, pure white killing intent and scarlet cultivation power surged out of his body.
They formed an area around him that resisted the pressure.
Lu Xuan gritted his teeth and continued climbing.
However, when he set one foot on the sixtieth step.
The pressure swept over him again. Even with the Asura Domain active, he could not advance another inch.
It seemed that the enhancement from a single domain could only take him this far.
But he had more than one innate domain!
"Life Domain, activate!"
Lu Xuan released his second domain without hesitation.
In an instant, rich emerald light bloomed from within him and began spreading outward.
An unending stream of life force began repairing his flesh and easing his mental strain.
At once, more than half the pressure on him eased.
Lu Xuan once again began charging upward!
One step... two steps...
Lu Xuan did not stop.
Not until the ninety-first step.
Bang-!
Lu Xuan dropped heavily to one knee on the stairs.
The muscles throughout his body began spasming violently.
Tiny beads of blood even began seeping through his skin.
He gasped for breath, yet his eyes were exceptionally bright.
At that moment, the ninety-first step beneath his feet was his limit.
He looked up. The stairway spiraled ever upward, its end nowhere in sight.
Having established his limits, Lu Xuan did not force himself to keep climbing.
Instead, he decisively retreated.
He went all the way back to the thirty-sixth step.
The pressure here was perfectly suited to his cultivation.
It could constantly exert pressure on him and stimulate the circulation of his soul power while remaining within what his body could endure.
Lu Xuan sat cross-legged on the step, closed his eyes, and entered deep cultivation.
At some point, beneath the Life God Tree, several vines quietly descended between its thick roots, forming a simple, rustic swing.
The woman in the green dress, whose face could not be seen clearly, sat quietly on the swing, swaying gently in the breeze.
With her head tilted slightly upward, she quietly watched Lu Xuan as he began cultivating on the stairway.
Half a year quietly passed within the God Tree Space.
By now, Lu Xuan was sitting on the ninety-first step-the highest level he had been able to withstand during his first ascent of the Life God Tree.
His eyes were tightly closed, his aura drawn inward to the utmost.
It was as though he had become one with the step beneath him.
His face was utterly calm, without the slightest ripple, yet it exuded a heart-pounding sense of pressure.
Boom-!
Suddenly, a deep, muffled rumble erupted within Lu Xuan.
His previously deathly still aura began rising steadily.
A violent blast of air visible to the naked eye spread outward from him in every direction.
"Level sixty!"
Lu Xuan's eyes snapped open.
"Congratulations on breaking through to level sixty."
The green-dressed woman appeared before Lu Xuan without warning. Her gentle voice, like a spring breeze bringing rain, soothed the violent currents of air around them.
"Every participant in the divine trial is granted a God-bestowed Soul Ring upon reaching a bottleneck."
"There is no need to hunt soul beasts. A God-bestowed Soul Ring will grant you the soul skill you need most, along with a soul ring of the greatest age you can withstand!"
As she finished speaking, the green-dressed woman raised her slender, fair hand.
An emerald-gold bead hovered above her palm.
The golden bead seemed carved from the most precious golden crystal, clear and utterly flawless.
Most peculiar of all was the thin layer of green mist within the bead, constantly swirling and rippling.
"Go!"
The green-dressed woman flicked a finger. With a flash of golden light, the emerald-gold bead flew above Lu Xuan's head and shattered with a boom.
Dense green mist poured straight down like a waterfall, carrying a hazy, sacred hue as it instantly engulfed Lu Xuan's entire body.
Strange halos began appearing around Lu Xuan, one after another.
A vast, boundless, yet utterly pure power.
Like a wild horse freed from its reins, it surged madly into his body, rampaging through his broad meridians.
Lu Xuan clenched his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead.
He knew very well that the more pressure he could withstand now, the older the God-bestowed Soul Ring would be, and the better its soul skill's effects would become.
Naturally, Lu Xuan hoped his Sixth Soul Ring would be a hundred-thousand-year one.
So he would give it everything he had.
"Asura Domain, Life Domain, activate!"
The halo surrounding him began changing colors rapidly.
Yellow... purple... then, in an instant, a deep black!
The black light grew increasingly dense, like thick ink that would not dissolve.
Then, along the edges of that deepest black, heart-pounding strands of blood-red began seeping through!
"Aaargh-!"
The terrifying energy made Lu Xuan's capillaries burst, inch by inch.
Crimson beads of blood began seeping endlessly through his skin.
They dripped down his cheeks and arms. Within a few short breaths, they had drenched him entirely, turning him into an alarming figure of blood.
"Such perseverance!"
Although the green-dressed woman's face could not be seen clearly, her voice was filled with irrepressible satisfaction.
When two-thirds of the soul ring's color had turned a glaring scarlet.
Lu Xuan's consciousness began to blur.
He felt his internal organs wailing, his flesh seemingly about to explode completely in the next second.
His limit.
This was the absolute limit of what he could currently withstand.
But he was just a little short.
He refused to give up.
Lu Xuan bit hard into the tip of his tongue, forcibly using the intense pain to rouse his consciousness as it threatened to scatter.
He was only a single step away from a hundred-thousand-year Sixth Soul Ring.
"Could he really succeed?" the green-dressed woman murmured.
As though in answer to her question-
Boom!
A dazzling pillar of blood-red light shot skyward from Lu Xuan's body, piercing straight toward the dome of the God Tree Space!
At that moment, the black-and-red soul ring surrounding him completely shed every trace of its other color.
It became a pure red, so vivid it seemed about to drip, radiating endless pressure!
A hundred-thousand-year soul ring, complete!
However, the instant the soul ring formed, Lu Xuan's body finally reached the brink of collapse.
Blood sprayed from every pore like a fountain, and his aura instantly dwindled to its weakest.
"His body collapsed?" The green-dressed woman stared at Lu Xuan. "No!"
Suddenly, an exceptionally dazzling emerald-gold light burst from the surface of Lu Xuan's ravaged body.
It began ceaselessly repairing his damaged body.
At the same time, the Life Domain Lu Xuan had already activated seemed to develop a consciousness of its own.
Countless crystalline green threads extended from the domain.
Like a spring silkworm spinning silk, they tightly wrapped his battered body, layer after layer.
Within moments, the blood-soaked youth on the stairway disappeared.
In his place was an enormous green oval cocoon, brimming with vitality and pulsing rhythmically like a heart.
In the green-dressed woman's perception, the aura within was weak, but it was undergoing rebirth from the ashes at an astonishing speed.
"Shattered before rebuilding, finding life in the face of death..." The green-dressed woman's tense body finally relaxed, her voice carrying relief she could hardly conceal.
"It seems that after this brush with life and death, this little fellow has finally gained an understanding of his own of the true meaning of 'life'!"
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