The 170th stair was still some distance away, yet with every step, Ace's understanding of the current Stairway's pressure grew more precise.
He had stopped treating it as a single force and determined there were layers to it.
One layer pressed against his soul, another challenged his will, and a subtler influence seemed to test the stability of his cultivation foundation. They went even deeper, but Ace still couldn't figure it out.
Ace assumed the layers overlapped, but they didn't always intensify at the same rate.
Sometimes the pressure upon his soul increased while the strain upon his foundation remained almost unchanged. At other times, the pressure seemed to shift toward the connection between the two.
Ace found this particularly intriguing because it meant the Stairway wasn't applying pressure blindly, as if it were responding to the condition of the person climbing it.
