Chapter 80
Chapter 80: I Will Keep Going
“What a nuisance. And I still have to smile at them for now.”
Jiang Yun Jiang lifted a hand and rubbed between her brows.
Ji Fei Guang was, after all, one of the most outstanding disciples of the One Yuan Sect in this generation. The sect valued him highly, and his prospects were bright.
And yet she had already decided. Ling Jiang’s inheritance would be hers. The moment she obtained the legacy of a late Third Realm cultivator, she would soar.
Ji Fei Guang aside, even Shao Heng—the outer sect disciple who had reached late First Realm spiritual power in less than a year—could be crushed if Jiang Yun Jiang chose to do it.
But Jiang Yun Jiang always sought stability. Even with absolute confidence, she still counted the price of failure.
If she wanted to destroy the Heart-Link Bracelet, she had to plan it carefully. The wretched bangle had to “accidentally” break.
She sighed, swept every trace of emotion from her face, and poured spiritual power into the bracelet.
The five Heart-Link Bracelets were linked as one. The moment hers resonated, the other four answered at once.
The Ji siblings were already close to breaking free of the illusion. The bracelet’s resonance gave them the final push, and they woke in an instant.
Jiang Yun Jiang’s gaze flicked to Meng Ling Zhi and Feng Shao Hu. Both were still trapped, expressions slack, bodies tense as if battling something only they could see. Ji Fei Guang was watching her.
Jiang Yun Jiang frowned, stepped forward, and sent more power into the bracelet until the connection rang like a struck bell. Only then did the man and woman finally jolt awake.
Feng Shao Hu caught the others staring at him. His face flushed red, and he didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes.
Meng Ling Zhi forced a smile, still dazed. “Thank you, Junior Sister Jiang, for your help.”
“It’s nothing,” Jiang Yun Jiang said softly.
The five gathered together. After a quiet exhale, Ji Fei Guang said, “Seventy-two layers of illusion, and we’ve only cleared thirteen. We really have your Heart-Bewitching Eye to thank, Junior Sister Jiang.”
Jiang Yun Jiang smiled gently. “Senior Brother, you’re too polite. We’re traveling side by side, so it’s only right.”
Ji Xuan Yin’s jaw tightened, unwilling. But she still adjusted her expression and offered a curt thanks.
No one lingered. They stepped forward together—and the world folded.
A bridge over a sea of blood. An oil-cauldron hell. A battlefield slick with slaughter. A beautiful naked man smiling like a knife.
Layer after layer, the illusions grew stranger, less like scenes and more like living dream-realms. Every figure looked real enough to breathe. Every detail was sharp enough to cut.
Shao Heng felt the strangeness rising without end.
Something unseen tugged at her. Her memories smeared at the edges, her awareness scattering like ash on wind. The fakes led her through one scene after another, and no matter how she fought, she couldn’t shake them.
Only her spiritual sense held.
It was naturally strong—tenacious—and the Spirit-Refining Art had tempered it until it could cling to a final thread of clarity. That thread kept her from sinking completely into the stories the illusions wanted her to live.
She didn’t know how long she wandered.
When she finally broke one layer, she realized she was gripping a longsword and driving it through anyone who blocked her path. Bodies lay everywhere, warm and heavy under her boots. She stepped over them, tore the dream apart—
—and only then did her mind snap clean.
“The forty-eighth layer.”
Shao Heng gulped air, forcing her heart to steady.
“This Ling Long Illusion Realm is twisted. Now it’s making me play someone else—living out her fate. Tragic, glorious, ordinary…”
She glanced down at her hands as if they might not belong to her.
“If my mind sinks inside it… then who am I? Shao Heng, or the person in the illusion?”
For a cultivator, losing the certainty of self was disaster.
If you couldn’t confirm who you were, how could you question heaven and earth? How could you cultivate the Great Dao?
If you couldn’t recognize yourself, your Dao heart had nowhere to stand. Without that anchor, there was no chance of forging an immortal foundation and advancing to the Fourth Realm.
Even if talent and resources were piled high enough to force a breakthrough…
With an unstable Dao heart, when tribulation lightning descended, it would strike you down on the spot—body and soul erased.
Shao Heng thought it through to the end, and still felt not the slightest urge to retreat.
She had chosen to come to this inheritance ground on the moon. The decision had already been made.
If she retreated now because of danger, wouldn’t that betray her true heart? Wouldn’t that become another knot in her thoughts—another crack in her Dao heart?
Before she could hesitate, the instant she shattered the illusion, a surge of power swept her up and flung her into the next layer.
A wolf-girl in the mountains. The treasured young lady of a marquis manor. A consort who smiled sweetly as a nation burned.
Several more layers passed, and Shao Heng finally understood: the illusions were being shaped, bit by bit, from her own memories.
After all, she was only a First Realm cultivator. She had seen too little of the cultivation world. So far, none of the “masters” in these stories had been cultivators. They were mortal women who lived less than a century, trapped in fortunes and misfortunes that ended with the turning of seasons.
When the illusion let her taste wealth and honor, every detail was meticulous, flawless. When it pushed her into poverty—a farming wife with cracked hands and an empty pot—the seams showed. The world blurred where her own experience ran out.
It was trying to build a complete false world while smearing her memory and understanding, so she could truly feel rage, pride, humiliation, betrayal…
There was only one way out.
Remember herself.
Time lost meaning. Shao Heng didn’t know how many deaths she’d lived, how many lives she’d worn like borrowed clothes.
At last, she broke another illusion. Her mind cleared for one brief heartbeat, and she nearly swayed with exhaustion.
“This is the seventy-first.”
“One last layer.”
The pull came again. She braced for another borrowed life.
Instead, the world opened into a stairway of clouds—step after step climbing into mist. Each stair bore a number carved in ancient seal script. When Shao Heng lifted her gaze, the top was hidden, swallowed by white.
With her eyesight, she could only make out the far-off number on one step: 39,842.
A voice drifted to her ears.
It was neither male nor female, neither pleased nor angry.
It sounded just like the Divine Voice from back then.
“Climb to the top of the 180,000-step cloud stairway. You may not linger on any step for more than thirty breaths.”
Shao Heng tried to draw on spiritual power. Her qi sea was empty. She couldn’t even sense the yellow sprout. Her mind was drained to the bone—
—and the moment the voice fell silent, a pale hourglass appeared at her side.
The sand within began to fall.
She watched for a heartbeat and understood. When the hourglass emptied, thirty breaths would be gone.
No choice at all. The trial had already begun.
“This is supposed to be an illusion,” she muttered. “Then why do these steps feel… real?”
Doubt sparked—but the last grains were already sliding away. Shao Heng stepped onto the first stair.
She suspected not everyone faced this cloud stairway in the seventy-second layer. Otherwise, the jade token Ji Xuan Yin had given her would have mentioned it.
Or perhaps the token was incomplete.
Either way, there was only one path: forward. Step after step.
She couldn’t pause longer than thirty breaths between steps, but Shao Heng didn’t wait for the final moment to move.
Breaking through trial after trial had brought her invisible benefits. She could tell her spiritual sense had been honed, her mind forced sharper, her will stripped bare and reforged.
She could even pretend that meant something—pretend it laid a thin layer of snow over the fire in her chest.
But she never forgot what she truly wanted.
Ling Jiang’s inheritance.
Forty-seven people had entered the inheritance ground together. One slow step meant every step afterward was slow. Fall behind by a fraction, and a hundred outcomes could bloom—and none of them would belong to her.
Even so, without spiritual power to circulate and ease her body, the climb became torture.
By step 13,000, she ached everywhere. Her legs felt packed with lead.
She wanted to move the instant the sand fell, but her body pleaded, strange and stubborn: Wait a little. Just a little longer.
It was as if her flesh had grown a will of its own, fighting her mind for control.
“It’s fine,” a voice murmured inside her—like her, yet not her. “You’ve already cleared seventy-one layers. In the One Yuan Sect’s hundreds of trials, only four people have ever cleared the Ling Long Illusion Realm and reached the Inheritance Spirit’s test. With your talent, with your temperament, who here could compare to you?”
The pain deepened. Her steps slowed. Time blurred until the only thing that anchored her was the occasional carved number flashing beneath her feet.
Shao Heng finally reached step 73,817.
Her body was at its limit. Her mind scattered like loose threads. The chattering voice finally shifted, turning coaxing—almost kind.
“Wait a little. What does it matter if you don’t get Ling Jiang’s inheritance?”
“You know better than anyone how strong your talent is. Even a High-Grade Aptitude disciple with inner sect resources needs two full years to reach late First Realm. But you did it in the outer sect in less than a year—none of them can compare.”
“So what if they get the inheritance? At most they’ll swagger for a while. You’ll surpass them.”
“It’s fine. Even if you stop here, it doesn’t matter.”
Shao Heng burst out laughing.
“So you’ve finally run out of tricks,” she said, breathless. “Now the blade shows.”
“This is what the last layer is, isn’t it? I don’t need to play anyone else. You’re trying to shake my will.”
Illusion. Illusion!
Everything here was false.
She’d been wondering why the final layer was a cloud stairway at all. Now she understood.
Her body ached beyond endurance—but when she decided to move, her foot still stepped forward, steady and sure.
“Just as I thought.”
The pain was false. The exhaustion was false. Every protest her body threw at her was woven from spellwork and malice.
As long as she could think—Step—she would still move.
Shao Heng lifted her head.
The cloud stairway stretched into nothing, more than a hundred thousand steps still ahead. One glance was enough to make her stomach hollow, to make the road feel hopeless.
She bared her teeth in a grin that was almost feral.
“But I’ll keep walking.”