The white jade stairs coiled upward through nine layers of ghostly cloud banks. It carried Yan Zixuan beyond the howling storms of the lower chambers into a realm of deep, breathless quiet.
Behind him, the transitional trials of Floors 91 through 98 had melted into distant memory. Armed with the slipstream blessing of the Golden-Winged Roc and hardened by his last ascent with the vanguard party, he had navigated the shifting gravity bridges and the hall of mirror phantoms with steady, unrushed care. His breath was quiet, his heartbeat as calm as the surface of a deep forest water tank. He didn’t rush his strides. Every step across the pale stone was taken with the deliberate mindfulness of a monk sweeping autumn leaves.
When his leather boots crossed the threshold archway of Floor 99, the air changed fully.
There was no sound of faster-than-sound wind shears, no rumbling magma channels, and no crackle of high-sky thunder. The harsh scent of ozone was replaced by the clean, damp fragrance of moss, sweet wild jasmine. Then he freshly cut emerald bamboo.
Before him stretched a sun-dappled clearing surrounded by towering groves of feather-leaved bamboo. Sunlight filtered through the green canopy in long, glowing pillars of pale amber light, lighting up a murmuring mountain brook that chuckled over smooth river pebbles. The water was so pure that one could count the tiny silver minnows swimming among the quartz sands below.
