Dawn broke over the Azure Dragon Mountain Range, a spectacular play of light and shadow. The rising sun, a brilliant crimson orb, crested the jagged peaks, its rays spilling into the valleys below and setting the morning mist ablaze. At the base of the tallest mountain, a vast, man-made plaza of polished white stone gleamed, already filled with a veritable sea of people.
This was the day. The day of the Azure Dragon Academy's annual entrance examination.
Thousands of young aspirants, the finest talents from every city and town in the Azure Province, had gathered here. The air was a cacophony the sharp clang of steel on scabbard, the murmur of nervous prayers, the loud, hollow boasts of the insecure, and beneath it all, the low, vibrating hum of thousands of cultivators cycling their Qi. It was a pressure cooker of ambition, the air so thick with hope and fear it felt like a physical weight.
Aryan moved through this sea of people like a drop of oil in water. He had dismantled his temporary array an hour before dawn, carefully placing the Heart of an Earth Vein back into his Supreme Inventory. The three days spent in that spiritual paradise had been more transformative than the entire past month.
He hadn't broken through to the 9th layer of the Qi Condensation Realm. He had held himself back, pouring that immense, purified energy into his foundation instead. He was still at the peak of the 8th layer of the Qi Condensation Realm, but the quality of his Qi and the stability of his physical body were on a completely different level.
His dantian wasn't just full it was a deep, tranquil lake of incredibly dense, pure energy. His body felt light, yet grounded, a perfect harmony of power and control. He was a sword that had not just been sharpened, but perfectly balanced and tempered, its true quality hidden beneath a simple, plain scabbard.
As he found a spot at the edge of the plaza, his gaze swept over the crowd, his mind calmly analyzing the new variables. He saw the sons and daughters of powerful clans, surrounded by sycophants, their fine armor and spirit-infused weapons a stark contrast to his own simple clothes. He saw the lone cultivators, their eyes sharp and wary, their hands never straying far from their weapons. He saw the small, tightly-knit groups, their members bound by the shared hope of passing the trial together.
And then he saw him.
Samir Sharma stood near the front of the crowd, the center of a large, fawning circle. He had changed since their last encounter in Devgarh. He wore magnificent, silver-threaded armor that shimmered in the morning light, and a long, elegant saber with a jade-inlaid hilt was strapped to his waist. His aura was powerful and arrogant, clearly at the peak of the 8th layer of the Qi Condensation Realm, and he carried himself with the unshakable confidence of someone who believed his success was a foregone conclusion.
As if sensing Aryan's gaze, Samir's head turned, his eyes scanning the crowd. Their gazes met across the plaza. A flash of recognition, followed by a sneer of contempt, flickered in Samir's eyes. He gave a disdainful smirk, a look that clearly said, "You again? How did trash like you even make it this far?" Then he dismissed Aryan completely, turning back to his fawning admirers.
Aryan registered the encounter, logged it as a future probability, and then let it go. Samir was a known variable, a minor annoyance. He was not the real challenge.
The real challenge was the Academy itself. Its presence was overwhelming. A gate was carved into the sheer cliff face of the mountain, a hundred meters high, flanked by two colossal statues of coiled, azure dragons. The craftsmanship was divine every scale, every claw, every whisker was rendered in perfect, lifelike detail. The stone eyes of the dragons held a timeless, ancient wisdom, and their gaze seemed to pierce through the crowd, weighing and testing every soul.
At the base of the gate, on a raised dais, stood a dozen figures in the dark blue robes of the Academy's elders. Their auras were like deep, fathomless oceans, their mere presence enough to quiet the noisy crowd. The man in the center, an old man with a long, white beard and a stern, unyielding expression, stepped forward. This was Elder Rajendra, the head proctor.
"Silence," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it rolled across the entire plaza, cutting through the nervous chatter like a blade. The entire plaza immediately fell into a respectful hush.
"You stand before the gates of the Azure Dragon," Elder Rajendra began, his voice cold and emotionless. "You are the so-called geniuses of your generation, the pride of your insignificant clans. Today, you will learn that your pride is worthless here. Cultivation is not a game of talent. It is a war against your own weakness. It is about foundation. It is about will. It is about the strength to crawl forward when your spirit has already broken."
He gestured behind him. The ground before the massive gate was not flat. It was a staircase, a hundred steps of the same white stone, leading up to the gate's threshold.
"This is the 'Spirit Pressure Staircase'," Elder Rajendra announced. "Every step you take will increase the spiritual pressure on your body. It will test the stability of your foundation and the resilience of your will. Those whose foundations are weak will be crushed. Those whose wills are fragile will break. You have one hour. Those who reach the top may proceed to the second trial. Those who fail will return home in shame. Begin."