The contrast between the disgraced grandmasters in the courtyard and the five youths on the upper stairs couldn’t have been starker.
While Grand Elder Song Yun was still using a third fluffy towel to scrub stubborn swamp peat from his eyebrows in the Recovery Pavilion, Team Vanguard was steadily climbing the dark rock spiral stairs between the sixty-first and sixty-ninth floors.
They didn’t rush. After every five floors, they paused at the chosen safety alcoves carved into the tower’s load-bearing spine. They drank clear mountain spring water from bamboo canteens, adjusted the leather buckles of their armor, checked the edge of their blades. Then they discussed the tactical settings of the terrain ahead. They had learned the bitter lesson of the lower tiers: the Pagoda didn’t reward blind haste or arrogant destructive force. It tested whether five human hearts could beat as a single, harmonious organism under extreme spiritual pressure.
When they stepped onto the wide black glass landing outside Floor 70, however, even Yan Zixuan’s steady footsteps faltered for a fraction of an instant.
The air here was not merely warm. It was alive with scorching, dry heat that seemed to bake the marrow inside their bones. A single drop of sweat dripped from Liu Tao’s nose and vanished into a heard hiss of white steam three inches before reaching the floor. The air rippled in waves of shimmering heat refraction, distorting the huge sky bronze doors standing before them until the engraved runes looked like writhing golden serpents.
