Suddenly the mountain lord's eyes opened. He sat on the same mountaintop, surrounded by the arrays he created. Wasn't he about to take the trial within the artifact?
He looked forward and found the artifact still in front of him in the same spot where he left it, yet it wasn't quite the same.
It had a slight green hue and emitted purer energy than before. Did I pass the trial on the floor? Why can't I remember a thing?
The mountain lord quickly activated his spiritual energy to dive back into the artifact but suddenly realized something truly shocking.
My Qi? It's... different?? He felt it while circulating the Qi within his body. It wasn't the same. It was even purer. No, not purer. It was more like it transcended Qi itself, like it was something else entirely, something he had never felt.
He quickly tried to absorb the spiritual energy around him to turn it into Qi, and something weird happened. He could still absorb the spiritual energy into his body, but the conversion to Qi required much more energy to be converted to Qi. And the Qi that was created was the same kind of Qi now within his body. Something had changed within his body.
Something fundamentally changed. Was it truly because of the artifact, and how long did it take for my body to transform in such a way?
The mountain lord quickly got up and headed to his self-made calendar. It tracked every 100 years by using the sun and moon as well as multiple arrays to measure time. The time was displayed by layers of stone, each representing 100 years.
He headed towards his calendar and shockingly realized. 100 more layers! Meaning 10,000 years had passed.
It was a shock, yet in the end, he could only smile. It didn't matter how many years had passed or that I didn't retain any memories of the trials. This qualitative change of my Qi is infinitely more valuable.
It was likely that in the last 10,000 years he had completed all 100 floors and reached the reward the voice was talking about.
"Clear all floors to ascend boundaries."
Although he was sure about completing the trials, he still tried to head into the artifact once more. With his higher quality Qi, he got inside with much less trouble than last time and was in front of the familiar building again.
The floor numbered one now had a golden glow on it, indicating the floor to be passed, but it was only the one.
Every other floor still maintained the stone-cold grey color without any indication of completion.
The mountain lord quickly ran towards the entrance of the first floor again and entered inside. Within the floor, there seemed to be nothing but walls and stairways. Stairways to the second floor.
At this point the mountain lord was shocked beyond anything he had experienced in his life. If a singular floor has this effect on my Qi, what happens if I complete all 100 floors? Excited about the prospect of infinitely more powerful and purer Qi, he stepped onto the second floor.
Once more he woke up in his real body. He quickly checked for the quality of his Qi and couldn't contain his laughter and joy. His Qi had changed once more.
He checked his calendar, and once again 10,000 years had passed, and then he headed back to the artifact, where the second floor was now complete, and he could head up to the third.
97 floors later:
990,000 years had passed since the mountain lord received the artifact. He didn't know whether the clans were still alive or if they had perished. The only thing he knew was that his Qi had become something unimaginable.
After completing floor after floor and coming out 10,000 years later each time, he understood some things. The changes didn't just influence his Qi; it was his whole body. His bones, muscles, veins, organs. Everything changed.
He cut himself, and his blood was no longer red; it was golden. Golden, like the color of his Qi. Golden like the artifact, which had changed colors from green to yellow to blue, purple, orange, red, silver, and finally gold throughout the trials.
At the same time, the artifact also slowly lost its aura. From overwhelming after a few floors to nearly nonexistent now. It seemed like the tower was distributing its spiritual energy to the mountain lord for each trial he completed.
The mountain lord, while knowing all of this, wasted no time at all. It was time for the final floor. He headed up through the 99 completed floors within the building and reached the stairs to floor 100 in a heartbeat, not caring to enjoy the moment. He walked up the stairs and went into the final trial.
As he woke up, he was once again on the same mountaintop. 1,000,000 years after getting the artifact, he had completed it and felt that his body had become divine. Of course he didn't know what divinity was like, but he just felt like if a god existed, this would be their body.
Although his exterior hadn't changed at all, the inside was truly something he never imagined to be possible, something he had longed for since starting cultivation. It truly felt like his body was perfection.
"The Xiao clan sent me this, right? I need to reward them somehow if they still exist," he mumbled. Normally he wouldn't care for these clans, but the Xiao clan had let him ascend to new heights; they deserved a reward.
As the mountain lord made up his mind, suddenly the artifact began to tremble. First a little bit, then more and more, before it was undeniable that something was not right.
What is happening? The mountain lord asked himself. Now that the trial is completed, will the artifact explode?
The artifact didn't explode, but something else entirely happened. Suddenly the artifact turned into a black dot. A dot that expanded itself until it was a black oval floating in the air right in front of the mountain lord.
It stopped expanding and stayed in place. The mountain lord curiously tried to touch it, but as soon as the tip of his finger reached the black space, it sucked him in, and everything went black.
There was no chance to escape, and the mountain lord got sucked into the black space.
The mountain lord woke up with his face on the solid ground. He slowly got up, not sure what had happened, but the next thing he saw made his head spin.
Concrete on the floor, multiple skyscrapers on the right, and cars on the left. He was on Earth.