457: Chapter 457 So Close

Mo Wuxin, one of the more famous Geniuses among the younger generation of the Demon Race, born of illustrious lineage and possessing widely acknowledged, impressive talent, was currently lying on the 593rd step, looking utterly disheveled and pathetic.

His luxurious brocade robe, embroidered with dark patterns, had long been thoroughly soaked with sweat, clinging wetly and wrinkled against his body, which trembled incessantly from exhaustion.

His face, which usually carried three parts arrogance and seven parts reserve, was now twisted in extreme pain and fatigue. Sweat surged frantically from his forehead and temples like a breached stream, pooling into rivulets that dripped onto the cold, smooth jade steps beneath him, spreading into dark, ever-expanding water stains.

His fingers, having exhausted his last ounce of strength, were dug desperately into the barely existent crevices of the jade steps. His knuckles were flushed a deathly, pale white from the excessive force, as if they would shatter the next second.

He had been lying here in this utterly humiliating, defeated-dog posture for two full hours.

The Devilish Qi within him, once surging like a river, was already near exhaustion, and his parched Meridians sent waves of needle-like pain. His robust bones and muscles were emitting faint, overwhelmed groans, while his Soul felt as if it had been placed under an invisible, massive millstone, being repeatedly and slowly ground down, bringing with it a deep-seated fatigue and weakness that penetrated to the marrow.

The 594th step, which was within reach and seemed so close, now stood like an insurmountable chasm, a wall of despair that could not be broken.

No matter how frantically he struggled, how he roared in his heart, or how he squeezed out the last bit of strength from his Soul, his body seemed cast onto this 593rd step, motionless. Even lifting a single finger had become a luxury.

Just as his consciousness began to blur and drift due to extreme pain and powerlessness, on the verge of being swallowed by darkness, a sound of footsteps approached from afar, clearly entering his buzzing ears.

They were not heavy; one could even say they were light. They were not hurried; the interval between each step was terrifyingly even.

These footsteps were completely different from the heavy, stumbling, or unsteady climbing sounds he had heard before.

They carried a strange sense of stability, a nearly cold regularity that pierced through the fog of pain enveloping him, reaching straight to his nearly numb nerves.

Mo Wuxin lifted his head, which felt as if it were filled with heavy molten lead and no longer belonged to him, with great difficulty and agonizing slowness.

His vision was blurred by sweat, and the world in his eyes turned into a patch of shaking, distorted light spots.

He blinked hard, squeezing out more salty sweat, before he could barely force the scene before him to refocus and clear up.

Then, his entire being froze completely, as if struck by a bolt of thunder from the Nine Heavens.

His blood seemed to freeze in an instant, and even his heart stopped beating; only the buzzing roar in his eardrums grew louder and louder.

What did he see?

That piece of trash, whom he had publicly mocked as the "shame of the Demon Race," the "watchdog of the Graveyard of Ancestral Sins," and a "maggot only fit to roll in the mud"—that trash who, in his impression, had flaws in even the most basic circulation of Devilish Qi, and whom he could send flying and vomiting blood with a casual, teasing beam of devilish light—was now standing before him, less than three steps away.

It was still that same small, withered frame that looked like a gust of wind could blow it over. It was still that same old cloth garment, washed to a pale white and covered in several patches.

His complexion remained that same malnourished pale, and his aura remained weak, impure, and chaotic—so faint it was almost imperceptible.

But he stood there just like that, standing straight.

Sweat had also dampened the somewhat withered yellow hair on his forehead, sticking wetly to his equally pale cheeks and temples, but although his breathing was slightly heavy, it still maintained a rhythm so steady it made one's heart crawl.

Those eyes were now slightly lowered, looking over.

Those eyes were pitch black, bottomless, and calm, like two ancient wells abandoned for a thousand years. They reflected no emotion, only clearly mirroring his own current appearance—utterly disheveled, lying prone on the ground like mud, his face a mixture of sweat, dust, and an expression twisted by extreme pain, so ugly that he himself felt a wave of intense nausea and dizziness.

"You..."

Mo Wuxin's lips began to tremble violently and uncontrollably, and a strange sound like a leaking, broken bellows issued from his throat: "Hah... hah..."

A torrent of scorching heat, mixed with boundless humiliation, monstrous rage, and a deeper level of horror he was unwilling to admit even to himself, rushed to his head, searing his reason.

He wanted to roar; he wanted to use the most vicious, filthiest language to curse this piece of trash who dared to look down on him in such a posture!

He wanted to interrogate him, to tear apart that hateful, calm face to see what was hidden beneath!

But the numbness brought by extreme shock, the stagnation of thought caused by an indescribable sense of absurdity, and the weakness and pain that penetrated to his marrow and nearly crushed his Soul, coalesced into a solid dam, tightly blocking all his sounds and all his impulses.

He opened his mouth wide, his gums bleeding from the effort, but in the end, he could only squeeze out a broken, discordant monosyllable from the depths of his throat.

What remained was only the increasingly heavy, panting breath of a dying beast, and the figure reflected in his wildly contracting pupils—small, yet standing as straight as ancient cold iron, carrying a silent sense of oppression.

Yi Wufa did not speak.

He did not even let his gaze linger for even a second on Mo Wuxin's face, which was twisted and flushed with extremely complex emotions.

Just as he had bypassed all the "obstacles" on the road—those who were collapsed, struggling, or groaning—he calmly and quite naturally turned slightly and walked past Mo Wuxin's body, which lay limp on the ground, exuding an aura of failure and despair.

His movements were fluid, without a trace of hesitation, even carrying a nearly instinctive avoidance of trouble, carefully ensuring his shoe soles did not step on even a tiny corner of the other's luxurious yet filthy garment scattered on the cold stone steps.

Then, he lifted his foot.

That foot, wearing a worn-out cloth shoe and stained with the fine dust of the Heavenly Ladder, stepped steadily onto the 594th step—a step Mo Wuxin had exhausted two hours and all his strength trying to reach, yet failed.

"Tap."

The sound of the foot landing was actually very light. So light that in the whistling gale, it could almost be ignored.

But to Mo Wuxin, this faint sound felt like a ten-thousand-jun giant hammer, carrying incomparable weight and coldness, slamming fiercely and unadornedly against his fragile eardrums!

Immediately following was the second step, heavier and colder, slamming directly onto his heart, which was pounding wildly and on the verge of exploding!

The 595th step.

The 600th step.

That small, silent, straight back, in Mo Wuxin's completely blurred vision—repeatedly soaked by salty sweat and some other hotter, more humiliating liquid—stepped, step by step, steadily across the threshold of the 600th step, which had blocked him so tightly, which he had regarded as an insurmountable wall of despair, and which he had viewed as the mark of his lifelong shame.

Then, without the slightest pause, without the slightest backward glance, he went straight into the denser mist of Dao essence above, which seemed capable of swallowing all light, and disappeared.

Mo Wuxin's head could no longer support that heavy weight, a mixture of physical pain and mental shock. It fell powerlessly and heavily back down, his forehead hitting the cold, hard, temperatureless blue jade steps with a "bang."

The sharp pain from his forehead was far less than the horror, bewilderment, and bone-chilling cold that made his teeth chatter—the turmoil in his heart that threatened to tear apart and swallow his entire Soul.

That back...

That gaze, calm to the point of emptiness, yet seemingly containing a boundless deep sea...

Those footsteps, terrifyingly steady, as if they could tread upon and break through all obstacles...

Was he...

Still the same piece of trash he once knew—the one he could trample and humiliate at will, the one he could banish to the Graveyard of Ancestral Sins like discarded garbage, leaving him to fend for himself?

An unprecedented question, one that made his Soul tremble, freeze, and despair, coiled tightly around his mind like a thorny poisonous vine crawling out from the deepest depths of Hell, tightening with every moment.

It brought only suffocating pain and a huge, lingering shadow of fear.

The 6000th step, the 7000th step, the 8000th step...

The Heavenly Ladder was endless, reaching straight into the clouds, as if it truly led to that untouchable Realm beyond the heavens.

At this height, looking down, the figures below had long blurred into black dots like ants; looking up, the legendary top of the ten-thousand steps remained hidden in the vast mist, with no end in sight.

The climb at this moment had long surpassed competition in the worldly sense, transforming into a direct confrontation with the will of the Heavenly Dao—every step was heart-stopping, every step was a new Realm.

Those top Prodigies, truly entrusted with high hopes by the myriad races, had already left the common masses far behind, their backs blurred into the higher clouds and mist.

Their battlefield was no longer a difference of a hundred steps, but a contest of a thousand steps—every step they took refreshed the limits reachable by their peers, and each one brought them an inch closer to that legendary supreme Realm.

Brilliant spiritual light poured down like a galaxy, flowing around them; majestic blood energy was like a furnace reflecting the sky, scorching the surrounding Void Realm; profound Dao essence intertwined and wrapped around them, forming an invisible domain that contended with the power of heaven and earth on the Heavenly Ladder.

These powers supported them as they climbed upward at a shocking speed—this was the accumulation of decades of hard cultivation, the condensation of countless Opportunities, and even more, it was their innate talent, bursting forth with brilliant light under extreme pressure.

The 1000th step, the 2000th step, the 3000th step...

The numbers flashed by beneath their feet, but the price of the climb was also rising sharply.

The Heavenly Ladder grew steeper, the Dao pressure became more terrifying, and every inch of space seemed filled with heavy liquid mercury; every time they lifted a leg, it required several times the strength it had before.