As I closed my eyes, a vision unfolded before me.
In my consciousness hovered the White Tiger.
This time, it was far clearer than the first vision I had seen. I could see every strand of its silver-white fur and every ripple of Metal Qi radiating from its body. It was as if the real White Tiger stood in front of me.
It hovered motionless in the air, regarding me with a neutral expression.
Then it raised its paw.
Slowly, almost gently, it lowered the palm in a single, unhurried arc.
And as the paw descended, space itself tore apart before it.
It wasn't violent, nor was there any visible effort or explosive force. The very air and fabric of space simply separated. A deep, pitch-black abyss appeared within the cut. It greedily swallowed the surrounding air.
That single motion had severed space.
Then the White Tiger raised its paw again and repeated the motion. The same movement, and again, space was torn apart. It showcased it once more, as though ensuring I understood not just the technique but also the principle behind it.
As I watched fascinated, a name appeared in my mind.
White Tiger Severance Art.
It was a single cut.
And that single cut replicated everything I knew about metal and then surpassed it entirely.
This strike was inevitable and absolute. Everything that could be separated, this cut could separate.
The vision blurred, and I was back in the chamber.
At my current cultivation level and degree of insight, I could only execute a weakened version. The full technique would require power far beyond what Qi Condensation could provide. But the foundation was laid, and once I possessed the necessary cultivation, I would be able to replicate that exact movement.
A cut that severed even space.
I stepped out of the now-fading Insight Ring.
The others emerged from their circles as well.
Zhang Feng looked invigorated. His Lightning Qi crackled around him in strange new patterns, sharper and more refined than before. Although Lightning was not one of the five primary elements, the Insight Ring had clearly deepened his comprehension of his own path.
Liang Ruxue also seemed satisfied. Her Wood Qi had changed. It was not merely stronger, but denser, and more alive.
Dong Mei was the only exception.
She had benefited from the Insight Ring. That much was clear, but her expression remained unsatisfied. Her Darkness Qi had stabilized slightly, yet she had not achieved a true breakthrough in comprehension. That was only natural. The lower one's placement, the weaker the reward.
We hadn't had any time to exchange words before the chamber began to dissolve around us. The pillars faded, the five rings vanished, and the mountain revealed itself once more.
The path reappeared, stretching up ahead. Without exchanging words, we resumed climbing.
But the moment we took our first step—
"What?!" Dong Mei's exclamation shattered the silence.
Zhang Feng and Liang Ruxue visibly reacted as well. Their eyes widened, bodies stiffening against an unexpected force.
The pressure had changed.
The pressure from this single step was enormously stronger than anything we'd experienced before. And it wasn't merely stronger, but sharper, as if the mountain had removed a layer of restraint. Even standing upright required conscious effort.
At that moment, the Major Shards I had gathered reacted. They all activated, their elemental energies pushing outward to create a buffer against the crushing force. The pressure didn't vanish, but it lessened just enough to make movement possible.
The same phenomenon occurred for the others as their collected shards provided varying degrees of protection. Dong Mei, however, had the fewest among us. Her buffer was visibly weaker, her movements noticeably more labored from the very first step.
We continued climbing.
The ascent had become far more difficult. Each step required more effort than the last. Every ounce of concentration was directed toward simply continuing to move forward. The pressure was pushing against flesh, bones, meridians, and spirit all at once.
Then, at the eleven-thousand-meter mark, something appeared on the stone wall beside the path.
All four of us noticed it simultaneously.
A mural.
But calling it a mural was inaccurate.
It was more like a scene frozen in stone, yet somehow alive. The scene seemed alive. The colors shifted faintly, and the aura radiating from it carried an ancient weight that made even the pressure of the mountain feel secondary.
"..."
"...!"
But it wasn't the craftsmanship that shocked us, but the content.
At the center of absolute chaos stood a lone figure. Five colors spiraled around him: silver, green, blue, red, and gold. And those colors were immediately recognizable. They were the five elements themselves, responding to the figure's will like obedient servants. The figure stood with arms slightly raised, radiating an aura of absolute authority over all five elements simultaneously.
A cultivator who mastered all five elements...
Did this person create the Core of the Five Symbols?
I could only guess.
The others were transfixed and remained frozen before the sight. I was the first to break free of the mural's hold. I turned from it and continued climbing.
"Hmph~ That's not fair, Kiyotaka!" Liang Ruxue shouted from behind before rushing to follow.
The other two quickly did the same.
Then, at eleven thousand five hundred meters, a scream came from behind us.
It was Dong Mei.
The shards that had been shielding her could no longer bear the full weight of the pressure at this altitude. The protection failed, and for the first time, she was forced to endure the mountain's force directly with her own insight and cultivation base.
She dropped to one knee. Blood appeared immediately at the point of impact, and even from my position ahead, I could see the joint twist at a wrong angle. The bone had fractured.
"Tch!"
She tried to rise and forced herself upright through sheer willpower, her teeth bared in a grimace. She managed one more step forward—
"Arghh!"
Her other knee buckled, and she collapsed on both knees. Both legs were now compromised.
The trial was over for her, and both Zhang Feng and Liang Ruxue understood the same thing. Neither moved to help. This was a trial, and everyone already knew the consequences of continuing beyond their limits. They spared her a brief glance before resuming their climb.
This wasn't cruelty. In the cultivation world, each person walked their own path. Dong Mei had reached her limit. Stopping to comfort her wouldn't change the mountain's pressure or heal her injuries. It would only waste time and energy that could be spent climbing higher.
"DAMN IT!" One final shout of frustration erupted from below.
Then a flash of brilliant white light graced the edge of my peripheral vision. She had activated her medallion.
With that, it was officially over for her.
Only I, Liang Ruxue, and Zhang Feng remained.
We continued climbing.
At the twelve-thousand-meter mark, another mural appeared.
The same figure from before, now clearly male, stood before five colossal beasts. But this mural didn't depict him commanding them or standing alongside them as allies. It depicted him creating them. His hands were extended, and from them flowed pure elemental essence, taking form and gaining substance as it solidified into the White Tiger, the Azure Dragon, the Vermillion Bird, the Black Tortoise, and the Yellow Dragon.
They were not natural divine beasts, but they were constructs born from his will and comprehension.
How powerful must one be to create beings of this magnitude through will alone? And how deep must one's elemental comprehension run for those constructs to possess such profound elemental authority?
By now, the pattern was clear. Every thousand meters, a new mural would reveal another chapter of this ancient story.
At thirteen thousand meters, the third mural emerged.
It stretched across an entire section of the mountain wall, perhaps thirty meters wide. The same figure stood before tens of thousands of disciples, all bowing in reverence.
Behind them stretched a sect divided into five vast branches, each aligned with one of the five elements and one of the five guardians. Five paths under one origin.
And dominating the background, dwarfing everything else in the composition, was a mountain.
But this mountain defied comprehension.
The mountain was planet-sized, rising from nothingness, its peak vanishing beyond stars. It had not been carved by nature, and it had not formed over time. It had been shaped by the founder's will.
I looked down at the stone path beneath my feet. Then I looked up at the summit still hidden in the clouds above.
This mountain...
Is it a miniature replica?
The thought remained in my mind as we continued upward.
By now, I had almost forgotten about the pressure, the altitude, the thin air, and the trial. The story unfolding on these walls had captured my attention completely.
I wanted to know what came next.
Fourteen thousand meters. The fourth mural.
The tone shifted.
The mural depicted war.
The founder stood at the forefront of his sect, facing an army. And that army wasn't measured in thousands. Not in millions. Not even in billions.
But trillions.
Somehow, against all logical possibility, a single mural captured trillions of figures in one composition. The artistry, or perhaps the technique behind it, compressed an incomprehensible number of people into a scene that the mind could actually process.
The army opposing the founder consisted of two factions that had combined their forces. One group blazed with white-gold auras. The other was wreathed in dark shadows. Those were light-path and dark-path cultivators. Two fundamentally opposing philosophies were united against a common enemy.
And the founder faced them with one hand raised. One hand against trillions.
And the mural suggested he wasn't losing.
What kind of existence was this person?
And why did the Light and Dark paths unite against him? What could possibly make two opposing philosophies set aside their differences to confront a single sect?
Are these the same factions that exist on this planet now?
Questions multiplied with every detail I absorbed, each one branching into further unknowns.
The answers likely waited further ahead. So I kept climbing.
By now, the pressure had grown nearly unbearable, and not only for me. Zhang Feng and Liang Ruxue were both beginning to show signs of strain.
Liang Ruxue's pace had slowed considerably. Her breathing remained measured, but blood had begun to seep not only from the corner of her mouth but also from her ears and the edges of her eyes. Green Wood Qi wrapped around her body in layers, constantly repairing and reinforcing her flesh, yet the mountain's pressure crushed through it without hesitation.
Zhang Feng was struggling as well.
Lightning crackled around him in short, unstable bursts. The arcs no longer carried their previous precision. They flickered wildly, as though even his Qi was being forced to endure the burden of the climb.
My own condition was worse than either of theirs.
I was still only at Qi Condensation. My body was fundamentally inferior to theirs. My bones, meridians, organs, and dantian could not compare to those of Foundation Establishment cultivators.
But my newfound comprehension of Metal and the discovery of my path helped more than I had anticipated.
Without the Insight Ring's breakthrough, this would have been my absolute limit. Perhaps I wouldn't have even reached twelve thousand meters. But the deepened understanding had changed something fundamental in how my body and Qi interacted with the mountain's force, granting me a margin of endurance that shouldn't exist at my cultivation level.
I came to a stop.
Zhang Feng and Liang Ruxue overtook me, each glancing back once. Zhang Feng gave a single nod. Liang Ruxue's bloodied eyes met mine briefly, and she too nodded before pressing onward.
They thought I was about to give up.
I wasn't.
I closed my eyes and focused entirely on the pressure.
What I was about to do was close to suicidal. But it would help.
Slowly, deliberately, I began reducing the protective barrier the Major Shards projected around my body. Layer by layer, I peeled back their elemental shield, allowing more of the mountain's raw pressure to descend onto my unprotected flesh.
The instant it made contact, my internal organs shifted inside my chest cavity. I vomited multiple mouthfuls of blood.
And it wasn't over.
My bones began to crack and grind against each other, the structural integrity of my skeleton protesting forces it was never designed to endure. Micro-tears appeared across my meridians, the delicate Qi pathways fraying under the assault.
If this continues unchecked, my meridians will rupture completely. I'll be crippled. Unable to cultivate ever again.
But I held on.
And I began to feel the pressure.
I was perceiving it, trying to understand its structure, behavior, and nature.
Without the shards' interference, the raw force revealed properties I'd been completely blind to before. The pressure wasn't uniform. Instead, it had a direction, even a rhythm. There were pulses of greater and lesser intensity, with faint gaps between their descending layers.
I couldn't sever it. The gap between my power and the mountain's force was astronomical.
But I could perceive the gaps. Hairline fractures in the pressure's otherwise seamless descent.
And with that perception, I could adjust.
I began redirecting my Qi circulation to match the pressure's rhythm. Metal Qi flowed to reinforce the specific lines of stress across my bones and meridians at the exact moments of peak force, then redistributed during the brief intervals of lesser intensity. Instead of resisting the pressure directly, I shifted with it.
It wasn't enough to make the climb easy. Nothing I had in my mind could accomplish that.
But it was enough to let me keep moving.
Fourteen thousand two hundred meters.
Blood marked every step I took. So much blood that it was a wonder I remained conscious, let alone focused.
Fourteen thousand three hundred.
Fourteen thousand four hundred.
Then Liang Ruxue stopped.
For several breaths, she stood motionless on the path ahead, her shoulders rising and falling with labored breathing. Wood Qi flickered around her in increasingly desperate cycles.
Then she laughed softly.
"How annoying..."
Ahead of her, Zhang Feng stopped and looked back.
She turned around. When she saw the state I was in and the fact that I was somehow still climbing behind her despite being an entire realm weaker, surprise flashed across her face.
Then respect appeared in her eyes. Genuine respect, completely unlike her usual teasing nature.
Her face was deathly pale, and fresh blood traced a thin line down her chin, but her smile had returned.
"I suppose this is my limit."
Zhang Feng frowned. "You can still continue."
"I can," she admitted. "Perhaps another ten steps. Maybe twenty if I'm willing to damage my foundation permanently."
Her gaze shifted upward toward the unseen summit.
"But there is a difference between persistence and stupidity. Wood survives because it knows when to bend."
Then she looked at me.
"Kiyotaka."
"Yes?"
"Don't die up there."
"I don't plan to."
Her lips twitched. "How very you."
She withdrew her medallion. Before activating it, she looked between Zhang Feng and me one final time.
"Senior Brother Zhang. Kiyotaka." Her voice softened. "Climb a little higher for me, will you?"
Zhang Feng nodded. "I will."
I remained silent.
Liang Ruxue looked at me expectantly, one eyebrow raised despite the blood streaking her face.
After a moment, I said, "I will climb until I cannot."
She laughed, "That is good enough."
White light enveloped her, and she vanished.
Only Zhang Feng and I remained.
We continued climbing. I caught up to his position, and we walked almost side by side.
Fourteen thousand five hundred.
Fourteen thousand six hundred.
Zhang Feng's pace began to slow. His lightning Qi flickered in increasingly unstable patterns, and the cracks in his skin had deepened. Blood seeped from splits in his knuckles that hadn't been there minutes ago.
At fourteen thousand six hundred fifty meters, he stopped.
There wasn't a stumble or a collapse. Instead, he simply halted mid-step, as though he had walked into an invisible wall.
Lightning gathered around him, then scattered. His aura flickered like a candle caught in a violent wind.
For a long moment, he stared upward.
"So this is my limit," he said quietly.
I stopped several steps ahead and turned back.
His robes were no longer pristine. Blood stained his collar, and the skin on his hands had split open in thin cracks. The pressure had begun damaging him from within.
Yet his eyes remained clear.
"You could continue," I said.
"For perhaps twenty meters."
"Maybe thirty."
He gave a faint smile. "And cripple myself in the process."
"Likely."
He looked at me for a long moment. The silence between us was comfortable in a way that silence between near-strangers rarely was.
Then he spoke.
"Ayanokoji Kiyotaka."
I waited.
"When your cultivation reaches Foundation Establishment... fight me."
The request was sudden but not surprising. I'd seen it forming behind his eyes for some time now. There was this curiosity, the competitive respect, the desire to test himself against something he couldn't quite categorize.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I want to know whether my lightning can reach you."
There was no arrogance in his tone.
"You are weaker than me by an entire realm," he continued. "Yet you came this far. You defeated Zhao Wuying. You surpassed me in the Dao Debate. Your comprehension is strange, and your combat sense is even stranger."
Lightning flickered faintly in his eyes.
"I admire that."
I studied him silently for several seconds.
"I see."
"What is your answer?"
"Cultivate faster," I said. "I have no intention of waiting."
For the first time since I had met him, Zhang Feng laughed.
It was an actual, genuine laugh that echoed off the mountain walls.
"Good!"
He withdrew his medallion, and following that, white light swallowed him.
Zhang Feng vanished.
I was alone.
I stood still for a moment, looking around at the empty mountain path. Below me, through the layered sky, was the distant place where we had begun. Above me was the summit, still hidden, shrouded in mist.
Here, alone on the mountainside at fourteen thousand six hundred fifty meters, a strange, solitary feeling washed over me. It wasn't exactly loneliness, but something else, something akin to clarity.
I continued climbing.
Fourteen thousand seven hundred.
Fourteen thousand eight hundred.
Every step was painful. Each movement required adjustment. I had to shift the flow of Qi within my body constantly, reinforcing different sections of bone, muscle, and meridian according to the pressure's rhythm.
Fourteen thousand nine hundred meters.
My vision narrowed to a tunnel. The world became simple. All that mattered was the path and me.
The pressure intensified again, and this time it no longer felt like mere physical force. It felt like rejection. It was as though the mountain itself had become aware that something was still climbing its slopes and had decided that it did not belong here.
Fourteen thousand nine hundred fifty meters.
My lungs still moved, but breathing no longer helped. The air at this altitude was so thin that normal respiration served almost no purpose.
The Major Shards pulsed with desperate intensity, their diminished shields flickering in and out of existence.
One by one, their light dimmed further.
They were not enough.
Fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty meters.
Blood vessels burst beneath my skin, creating dark bruises that spread across my arms and torso in real time. My bones groaned under pressure. Actual audible sounds emanated from within my own body. My dantian trembled violently, the small pool of liquified Qi inside threatening to scatter and dissolve.
Fourteen thousand nine hundred ninety meters.
I considered Crimson Surge, but I quickly discarded the thought. Using it would be akin to suicide.
I continued. Step by step.
Fourteen thousand nine hundred ninety-nine meters.
I lifted my foot. The simple act of raising one leg required the coordinated effort of every remaining shred of Qi in my body. My vision went white, then red, then white again.
The foot descended, and it landed.
Fifteen thousand meters.
The world changed, and the pressure vanished.
No. That was wrong. The pressure became something else.
For one infinitesimal instant, a new world unfolded before my eyes.
The mountain changed.
Until now, even though it had seemed impossibly tall, there had still been a faint sense of scale. A summit existed somewhere above, something that could theoretically be reached with sufficient power and determination.
But in that moment, the mountain revealed another layer of itself.
It stretched higher. Much higher. Much, much higher.
The peak that had seemed distant but real was exposed as a lie. A veil placed over something far greater. What we had been climbing was not the whole mountain.
It was only a minuscule portion we had been allowed to see.
The true mountain extended beyond comprehension. We had been climbing the foothills of something seemingly infinite.
Then I felt something deep within my body.
The stone idol. The artifact tied to the Crimson Sage's inheritance, resting inside my dantian since the day I'd absorbed it.
It trembled. A violent pulse erupted from it, primal and hungry. The sensation was unlike anything I had felt from it before.
It wanted something.
Somewhere higher on this mountain.
For the first time since I'd received the Crimson Sage's inheritance, the stone idol exhibited desire. That desire was so powerful that it nearly overwhelmed my own senses and nearly hijacked my own body's remaining Qi to propel me upward regardless of the cost.
There is something here.
Not the Core of the Five Symbols.
Something else.
Something connected to the idol. Or perhaps...
Another idol.
The next instant, the pressure returned.
My body nearly exploded.
Skin split open across my arms. Blood erupted from my mouth in a continuous stream. My dantian shook so violently that the liquefied Qi inside scattered to the edges of my spiritual sea, barely maintaining cohesion. The Blood Core seed within me flickered, its stability compromised.
I could not stand. The mountain rejected me.
I did not belong here, not at this level of cultivation.
My knees buckled, and simultaneously, the ground vanished beneath my feet.
I began to fall.
The path, the mountain, the sky—everything blurred into streaks of color and lights as I plunged downward. Wind tore past my broken body. Blood scattered upward in thin crimson streams, pulled from my wounds by the rushing air.
The pressure faded with each meter I fell, but the damage had already been done.
As I fell, I looked upward.
The mountain had returned to its previous appearance. The hidden world beyond fifteen thousand meters had vanished, sealed away once more behind whatever barrier separated the visible from the true.
But I remembered it.
I am too weak.
That was the conclusion. Simple as that.
For now.
I reached into my robes with fingers that barely responded and gripped the medallion.
Before activating it, I looked upward one final time.
The summit was invisible, lost in clouds and distance and the mountain's deliberate concealment. But I knew it was there.
I will return.
Not as a Qi Condensation cultivator. Not even as a Foundation Establishment or Core Formation cultivator.
I will return when this mountain can no longer reject me. When I am strong enough.
Qi entered the medallion.
White light erupted around me, consuming the world around me.
The mountain disappeared.
And with that, my time in the Obsidium Sanctum came to an end.
[End of the Obsidium Sanctum Arc]
***
A/N: Well, the Obsidium Sanctum arc is finally over. I hope you all enjoyed it!
This was a pretty important chapter lore-wise. And as you've seen, no one managed to obtain the Core of the Five Symbols, which means Kiyotaka will have to return once again if he wants to claim it... or if he wants to learn more about that mysterious figure.
The arc ended up being a bit longer than I originally intended, but I didn't want to rush it.
Anyway, the next chapter will focus on the aftermath, including the elders' reactions and everything that follows. After that, the next arc will begin.
See you soon!