Chapter 505 - 504: The Divine Ascension Stairs, the Price of Entering the Divine Hall
The path carved open by the Sword Qi was not, after all, eternal.
Mere hundreds of meters after Gu Yuexi and Chu Sheng charged through, the stasis field that had been forcibly torn open began to rapidly repair itself, completely resealing the path behind them.
But it was enough.
Seizing this brief reprieve, the human and the mosquito’s Speed did not diminish in the slightest. Soon, they passed through the last patch of forest and arrived at the foot of the magnificent Divine Hall of Stagnation.
Three distinct groups had already gathered before the Divine Hall.
The first group to arrive, led by a veiled woman, stood on the left side of the jade stairs. Their expressions were wary as they discussed something amongst themselves.
Gu Yuexi and Chu Sheng, meanwhile, landed on the right.
At the very top of the one-hundred-and-eight steps, before the open gates of the Divine Hall, stood the silent figure of Qin Wudao.
He seemed to be waiting specifically for Gu Yuexi.
A smile spread across Qin Wudao’s face when he saw Gu Yuexi appear.
"Sister Gu, you’ve arrived as well."
His voice drifted down from the top of the steps, over a hundred meters away, echoing clearly in everyone’s ears.
"A pity, I was still one step ahead of you. Heh, do you need me to tell you the secret of these long stairs to the Divine Hall?"
Gu Yuexi, however, couldn’t be bothered to give him the time of day.
Unfazed by her attitude, Qin Wudao wasn’t angry. He said calmly:
"Just as I thought. I’m afraid you’ve been here before as well."
"Heh, since that’s the case, I’ll be heading in first."
With that, he lingered no longer. He turned and stepped directly into the Divine Hall.
Seeing this, Chu Sheng grew anxious. With a beat of his wings, he subconsciously started to charge forward.
But the moment he moved, Gu Yuexi’s hand shot out and gently stopped him.
"Be careful."
Gu Yuexi’s voice was more serious than he had ever heard it.
"These steps are strange. It doesn’t matter if you fly, walk, or even use a Space jump. For every single step you ascend, you will lose one year of Lifespan."
’What?!’
Hearing this, Chu Sheng’s mosquito eyes went wide.
’Holy shit, that’s brutal!’
’Then what are we supposed to do? These one hundred and eight steps... wouldn’t that cost one hundred and eight years of Lifespan? Who could possibly withstand that... huh, wait a minute. I think I actually can, can’t I?’
Gu Yuexi didn’t elaborate.
She simply took out a string of beads from her Spatial Ring. They were polished from some unknown wood, their surfaces covered in fine patterns resembling the growth rings of a tree.
She gently placed the string of beads around Chu Sheng’s neck.
At the same time, an identical bracelet appeared on her own wrist.
Once this was done, she spoke in a low voice that only Chu Sheng could hear.
"These are Wood Spirit Beads, made from the heartwood of a thousand-year-old ancient tree."
"Ascending a single step does indeed cost one year of Lifespan... but it doesn’t necessarily have to be your own. The external items we carry can bear the cost for us."
’So that’s how it works!’
Chu Sheng understood at once.
’No wonder he was just puzzling over how Qin Wudao had ascended so easily, as if there was nothing wrong.’
’So, it turns out that bastard knew the secret of these stairs all along and came prepared.’
These Wood Spirit Beads were clearly something Gu Yuexi had prepared during the twenty-odd days he had spent evolving.
She had foreseen everything.
"Let’s go."
Wasting no more time, Gu Yuexi took the lead, stepping onto the white jade stairs.
Chu Sheng followed close behind.
The instant his mosquito leg touched the first step, he immediately felt the string of Wood Spirit Beads around his neck tremble slightly.
The outermost of the dense, ring-like patterns on one of the beads vanished into thin air.
’It really works!’
The human and the mosquito hesitated no more and began to ascend rapidly.
With each step they took, another ring on the bead around Chu Sheng’s neck would disappear.
By the time he reached the thirtieth step, all the rings on the first Wood Spirit Bead had vanished completely.
Immediately after, the bead could no longer maintain its form. With a soft SNAP, it disintegrated into a puff of fine sawdust and scattered in the wind.
At the same time, the second bead began to absorb the Lifespan drain for him.
’One bead can take on thirty years of Lifespan?’
Chu Sheng did a quick calculation. ’This string has nine beads in total. That adds up to two hundred and seventy years! It only costs one hundred and eight years to get to the top, so this is more than enough!’
However, Gu Yuexi’s next words poured a bucket of cold water on his excitement.
"Don’t celebrate too soon. It’s not just these steps. The drain will be even greater once we enter the Divine Hall. Inside, every minute you spend will consume one year of Lifespan."
’Holy hell! What kind of goddamn place is this?!’
Chu Sheng was utterly shocked.
One minute for one year of Lifespan.
He subconsciously glanced at his system panel.
[Lifespan: Two Thousand Years]
’Hmm...’
’In other words, if I didn’t use these beads and just tanked the drain with my own Lifespan, in a pinch, I could last two thousand minutes inside this Divine Hall?’
’A quick conversion... that’s about thirty-three hours?’
’That seems... doable?’
While Chu Sheng’s mind was racing, the two of them arrived at the entrance to the Divine Hall.
A sacred, heavy aura washed over them from within. The scene inside was one of resplendent, breathtaking grandeur.
Qin Wudao’s figure was long gone.
Gu Yuexi and Chu Sheng exchanged a look and plunged into the Divine Hall without hesitation.
The instant Chu Sheng stepped into the Divine Hall, he could clearly feel that a large portion of the rings on the fourth bead around his neck vanished instantly.
In other words, ascending the one hundred and eight steps had cost a total of one hundred and eight years of Lifespan—consuming three whole beads, and a portion of the fourth.
Not a year more, not a year less. Exactly right.
Now, besides the partially used one, he still had five whole beads left.
But.
The very moment Chu Sheng entered the Divine Hall.
In the deepest part of the Divine Hall, within a giant, strangely-patterned candle that burned with a ghostly flame.
A bizarre, six-winged, pitch-black mosquito lay submerged in viscous lamp oil. Its eyes, shut for untold millennia, suddenly snapped open!
...
「At the same time.」
「Outside the Divine Hall of Stagnation.」
「At the bottom of the jade steps.」
Watching as the figures of Gu Yuexi and Chu Sheng vanished through the gates of the Divine Hall, one of the subordinates behind the veiled woman known as the "Holy Daughter" could no longer hold back and asked anxiously:
"Holy Daughter, what do we do now! They’ve all gone in!"
The veiled woman, the one called the Holy Daughter, was named Yun Yao. Her heart was in turmoil, far from the calm she projected.
She was the current Holy Daughter of the reclusive Witch Race.
Her party had not entered this place through the normal Secret Realm entrance. Instead, they had used an ancient Teleportation Array, passed down for generations within the Witch Race, which had sent them directly to the edge of the Stasis Forest.
In Great Xia, the Xuanyuan Family was far from the only powerful, reclusive faction.
The Witch Race was a truly great and hidden clan, isolated from the rest of the world. They never concerned themselves with outside conflicts, focusing solely on their own survival and succession, so almost no one in the outside world even knew they existed.
For ten thousand years, the Witch Race had been searching for this legendary Holy Land.
Their goal was to lift the Bloodline curse that had plagued every generation of the Witch Race People for millennia, clinging to them like a maggot to a bone!
Generation after generation of Holy Daughters had thrown themselves at this goal, only to meet with failure.
And in this generation, that impossibly heavy burden had fallen upon her shoulders.