Lone Lamp Pavilion
The fifth pass of the World Road.
Each pass was a separate heaven and earth, a separate world. Unlike the deserted first two passes, the third pass and those beyond were gathering places for countless cultivators.
Nearly all the cultivators at the fifth pass were at the seventh layer of Profound Opening or above, and there was no shortage of prodigies at the peak of the ninth layer.
[Ding! An opportunity has been discovered eighty li ahead: Dao Comprehension Tea.]
An ordinary Dao Comprehension Tea tree was worth a hundred life-bearing planets, a testament to its preciousness.
To Fu Yuan, however, it was rather ordinary. There were not many Dao Comprehension Trees in the Indestructible Forbidden Zone either, only a hundred or so.
Among them was a Dao Comprehension Emperor Tree with astonishing effects. It could help saints comprehend the Dao, and even Great Emperors gained insights the first time they drank its tea.
The stuff was priceless to any Holy Son or Emperor's child, but to the original owner of Fu Yuan's body, it was little different from ordinary tea leaves.
The Indestructible Forbidden Zone's accumulation over hundreds of millions of years was staggering. In Fu Yuan's spatial storage realm alone, even after subtracting the portion he had given Brother Yang Ping, there were still several hundred jin.
Dao Comprehension Tea? Use one leaf? Who are you looking down on? I like my tea strong.
Fu Yuan did not collect the Dao Comprehension Tea leaves others treasured. Instead, he headed straight for the Lone Lamp Pavilion, the site of the greatest opportunity in the third pass.
The pavilion rose nine stories into the heavens. A solitary lamp stood at its peak, and within it burned a divine fire that could temper the body and improve bloodlines.
[Ding! An opportunity has been discovered one thousand li ahead: Spirit-Tempering Fire (immature).]
The Lone Lamp Pavilion, a place of opportunity.
"One solitary lamp has burned through the ages. If I can refine it and evolve my bloodline to the eighth grade, I might just be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with a Holy Son." Prodigies gazed enviously at the divine fire atop the pavilion.
"The Holy Son of Heavenly Wind Valley has already reached the eighth floor. I'm afraid the divine fire is bound to be his," one cultivator remarked, pointing out a peerless prodigy with the best chance of claiming it.
"Not necessarily. Zheng has climbed to the eighth floor too. He might yet overtake him," a blood tiger said in a muffled voice, identifying Zheng as a pure-blooded vicious beast of extraordinary might. He had once challenged a pure-blooded Black Tortoise and only narrowly lost after dozens of exchanges. He definitely possessed Holy Son-level combat power.
"You're all too shortsighted. That young man in blue on the seventh floor is the real ruthless one, one of the Zhuge Clan's five outstanding talents of this generation. He made his name in the Spirit Realm," a prodigy from the Spirit Realm said, revealing that the young man had once fought a Holy Son and remained undefeated.
Everyone looked in the direction of the voice. A young man in blue was climbing at an unhurried pace, his steps peculiar. He had only just entered the seventh floor, and among the prodigies climbing the pavilion, he did not even rank in the top ten.
But as they watched him longer, more and more beings noticed what was extraordinary about him. The pressure on each floor of the nine-story pavilion was different, growing stronger the higher one went and slowing the climbers down. Yet Zhuge Lingfeng remained completely unaffected, his speed never diminishing.
He looked as though he were taking a leisurely stroll through a courtyard.
"With every step, he seems to become one with the heaven and earth around him, diverting the resistance away. Terrifying." A prodigy fell speechless.
"Don't forget his surname is Zhuge!" someone reminded the crowd. The Zhuge Clan had once produced a supreme monster who was unmatched in both the Dao of arrays and the Dao itself, and bore two titles that had resounded throughout the ages.
One was the Array Emperor, the other the Dao Emperor!
"So this is the Lone Lamp Pavilion." Fu Yuan stepped onto the first floor and looked up. The pavilion was hollow, with a pillar soaring straight into the clouds. At the top of eighty-nine thousand steps stood a lamp that radiated red light.
It was red to the extreme, the purest blood-red, imbued with a strange enchantment that drew people in and left them spellbound.
Every ten thousand steps marked a floor, and the spirit fire on each floor was different. The higher one climbed, the brighter its color and the greater the power it contained. It could change bloodlines and strengthen physiques, making it a truly superb opportunity.
Each person could obtain only one wisp of flame. Once one was refined, the others became untouchable, as though they had turned illusory.
The Three Thousand Worlds did have methods for improving bloodlines, but they either came at a tremendous cost or were of little use, and were far inferior to the spirit fire in the Lone Lamp Pavilion.
The entire Lone Lamp Pavilion stood within an immeasurably profound grand array. One could climb only by using the stairs on either side of the pillar that reached into the heavens. Anyone who tried to fly or jump their way up would be transported back to the very bottom and forced to start over.
The thousand-meter-wide stairs were covered with tiny spirit flames that flickered with faint blood-red light. Golden light glimmered beneath Fu Yuan's feet as he sped upward. In just half a day, he crossed fifty thousand steps and entered the fifth floor.
The higher the stairs went, the narrower they became, and the fewer spirit flames there were. On the fifth floor, they were only a hundred meters wide. The vast majority of cultivators stopped here, unable to climb any farther.
Ordinary prodigies who reached this floor would feel pressure like a flood and struggle to advance. They could only rely on their willpower to climb as far as they could, then sit down cross-legged to refine a spirit flame.
Fu Yuan, however, felt no pressure at all. He moved as though strolling through a courtyard, his speed not diminishing in the slightest. Like a nimble monkey, he leaped several steps with every breath.
"Who is that? He's so fast, no slower than the Heavenly Wind Holy Son."
"Even cultivators at the peak of the eighth layer of Profound Opening are greatly affected on the fifth floor and can barely take a few steps in a quarter of an hour. Yet he's moving as though on level ground."
Some prodigies noticed Fu Yuan's speed and cried out in shock.
"What extraordinary steps. He can stand alongside Brother Lingfeng." Zhuge Xiao, at the top of the sixth floor, was astonished. Fu Yuan's bearing was so extraordinary that one look at him made Zhuge Xiao feel ashamed of his own inferiority and stirred his respect.
"How can he compare to Brother Lingfeng? It's only the fifth floor. If you and I gave it our all, we could do the same," another Zhuge Clan prodigy beside Zhuge Xiao said indignantly. He thought Fu Yuan was an impetuous youngster who did not understand the value of steady, sustained effort and was climbing with all his might.
"It's different." Zhuge Xiao shook his head. "That bearing, that confidence, that gaze that looks down on everything-it always reminds me of Brother Wuding."
The most peerless monsters had much in common: matchless bearing and the confidence that none could stand against them.
"Then let me see what's so different about him." Zhuge Yi spoke coldly. Cultivation at the peak of the ninth layer of Profound Opening surged forth as runes interwove in his eyes. He used the Qi-Gazing Technique to look at Fu Yuan, but saw only a mass of chaos, unfathomably deep.
"Oh!" Fu Yuan sensed the prying gaze from below and looked up. His golden eyes met Zhuge Yi's, and the latter instantly grew dizzy, spat blood, and toppled backward headfirst.
"He's a monster, far stronger than us, stronger than Brother Lingfeng." Having suffered a backlash from the Qi-Gazing Technique, Zhuge Yi was pale, his breath weak, his face almost bloodless.
"Is he an Emperor's child-level monster?" Zhuge Yi murmured, asking his friend beside him uncertainly.
"Not necessarily. Our realms are too low, and our cultivation is too poor." Zhuge Xiao shook his head gently, indicating that Fu Yuan might be among the very strongest of Holy Sons, or a monster who had broken through the limits of Profound Opening and awakened his bloodline.
But either possibility meant that Fu Yuan was a monster through and through.
"Then what about Brother Lingfeng?" Zhuge Yi asked in a trembling voice. With such a monster's arrival, far too many unpredictable things could happen.
"We'll have to wait and see. He isn't the only one with ambitions." Zhuge Xiao looked toward the eighth floor, where there was more than one Holy Son-level prodigy.
One dragon fought a pack of tigers, and the victor was yet unknown.
"The Qi-Gazing Technique. Fellow Daoist, are you from the Zhuge Clan or Tianji?" At the top of the sixth floor, Fu Yuan stopped, a faint smile appearing on his face. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked warm and approachable.