The upward incline was steady, cold, and relentlessly silent.
Every sixty paces of walking along the invisible outside ramp carried Lin Tao and Tie Shan past another full tier of the Hundred-Floor Demon Trial Pagoda. The outside walls were entirely untextured on their outer faces. Because of that, the two men had an open, cross-sectional view into the inside life of every trial chamber as they strolled past.
At Floor Three, they looked through the see-through wireframe into a chamber filled with waist-deep potion-made mud. Four students from the Iron Bone Pavilion were wading desperately through the mire. Their heavy armor dragged them down while swarms of clockwork bronze leeches dropped from ceiling vents to drain their spiritual blood.
Lin Tao didn’t break stride. He reached into his ox-hide ration pouch, drew out a thick strip of salted beef. Then he chewed on the dried meat with calm, rhythmic jaws.
“Floor Three uses fluid thickness traps,” Lin Tao observed. He pointed through the invisible wall with his half-eaten jerky. “The students are trying to overpower the mud with raw physical strength, which only increases the shear pushback of the potion-made fluid. If they reduced their moving output by fifty percent, they could skim the water’s skin.”
