I quickly followed the surge of disciples, and the instant my foot made contact with the first step of the slope, a crushing pressure descended upon me.
But before I could even register the full weight of it, the Major Shards I carried reacted simultaneously. All five pulsed with energy, creating a protective barrier around my body that neutralized the oppressive force completely.
So this was their true use?
I continued my ascent, and with each step, the pressure started to feel palpable, but it wasn't hindering me yet. Even though I could go faster and even overtake some of the disciples ahead, I stayed at the rear of the pack for the moment.
As we climbed higher, the group naturally began to separate according to individual strength and endurance.
Zhang Feng surged into the lead, his lightning-wreathed form crackling with contained power as he ascended with ease. Close on his heels came Liang Ruxue, her movements fluid and unhurried despite the increasing pressure. Those two maintained positions at the very front, their cultivation bases and comprehension clearly superior to the rest.
Behind them, a substantial gap had formed, separating the leaders from the second tier.
Hua Mingzhu, Yue Lian, and Zhao Wuying formed the next cluster, advancing together though not cooperatively. Each maintained their own pace as they pushed against the mounting resistance.
Further back, Dong Mei ascended alone, isolated both ahead and behind.
And finally, bringing up the absolute rear just ahead of me, were the three Foundation Establishment cultivators I'd brutalized earlier: Meng Ning, Xun Liang, and Yang Dong.
Yang Dong, in particular, looked pathetic. Despite his earlier enthusiastic charge and declarations of ownership, he'd been overtaken by everyone except his two companions and me.
We continued this way for perhaps another ten minutes, steadily gaining altitude. The pressure had intensified considerably, but the Major Shards continued their protective function, keeping me relatively comfortable while those three ahead visibly struggled.
Then, as we reached approximately the five-thousand-foot mark, the natural stone pathway simply ended.
The path terminated at a sheer edge, and beyond it stretched a bridge.
Massive in scale, it spanned a vast chasm that split the mountain. The structure was constructed entirely from some reddish stone that seemed wrong somehow. It didn't reflect light the way normal stone should. Instead, it appeared to absorb illumination. The entire span radiated a dark, oppressive aura that felt qualitatively different from the mountain's general pressure.
The bridge represented the only way forward. On either side, the chasm dropped away into absolute darkness.
So this is the first trial, huh?
"The Bridge of Judgment..." Hua Mingzhu's voice drifted back from ahead, loud enough for everyone to hear. Her tone carried a mixture of recognition and trepidation.
I studied the structure with detachment, cataloging relevant details.
The span extended approximately one thousand meters from end to end. The bridge was wide enough to accommodate all ten of us walking side by side if necessary, perhaps fifteen meters across. But there were no railings of any kind, no safety measures. And more notably, the bridge wasn't solid, with gaps between individual stone segments, revealing the abyss below.
One misstep, and you fall. Given the depth, anyone who falls is likely to die.
And, most peculiar of all... the bridge had no visible means of support. There were no pillars that held the weight, no cables or chains that suspended it from above. It simply existed, defying conventional physics and engineering, held in place by seemingly nothing.
The reddish stone itself seemed to pulse faintly, as though alive.
Zhang Feng was the first to approach the bridge.
Without hesitation, he placed his foot onto the bridge's first stone slab. The moment his sole touched it, he closed his eyes and remained still.
He stood frozen in place, as motionless as a statue.
One by one, the others caught up.
Liang Ruxue stepped forward next, her expression calm but alert. Hua Mingzhu followed with careful steps. Yue Lian's foot hovered for half a breath before she placed it down. Zhao Wuying scoffed quietly and stepped forward as if to prove something. Dong Mei followed soon after, her face cold and unreadable.
Eventually, even Yang Dong, directly ahead of me, swallowed hard and stepped onto the first slab.
Only I remained at the threshold.
By then, Zhang Feng had already taken his second step. His eyes remained closed, but he lifted one foot and took another step forward onto the second segment. Then, he froze again, though this time his face showed visible strain. A thin line of sweat traced down his temple.
Each step requires... what? Overcoming something? Proving something?
I stopped just before the bridge's entrance, studying that first ominous stone step. The reddish surface seemed to pulse with that same dark, evaluative awareness I'd sensed earlier.
As I stared at the bridge, I felt as though the bridge stared back.
The Bridge of Judgment, indeed.
I didn't hesitate any longer. I lifted my right foot and stepped forward.
My right foot connected with the stone. My left followed immediately.
And without any transition, without even a moment to register the change—
My vision turned completely black.
...
When sight returned, my surroundings had transformed entirely.
Everything was white. Sterile, clinical white. Walls, floors, ceiling, everything was uniformly colorless and harshly lit by fluorescent lighting that left no shadows anywhere.
It was the complete opposite of the environment I had grown accustomed to.
This was the White Room.
Slowly, I began to walk. For the first time in my memories of this place, I moved freely, unchained by schedules or instructors' commands. My feet carried me forward through corridors I knew by heart, though I'd never willingly chosen to walk them before.
As I progressed, figures began to appear.
Children. Dozens of them. Faces I'd long since discarded from my memory, deemed irrelevant and unnecessary. Yet here they manifested with perfect clarity.
As I continued walking, the children's faces twisted. Their expressions became hostile. Mouths opened in silent accusations before finding voice.
Then the instructors appeared. Adults in white coats, carrying clipboards and wearing expressions of professional detachment that gradually morphed into hatred. Pure, undiluted hatred directed entirely at me.
"You!" A child's voice erupted from my left as I passed. His face contorted with rage. "Because of you, we dropped out! Because you existed, the rest of us failed!"
He didn't attack me. None of them did, but his voice carried genuine venom, sounding clearly in the sterile hallways.
Then others joined in. Different children, but all were saying variations of the same thing.
Even the instructors began shouting, their professional facades crumbling to reveal the resentment they'd apparently harbored all along.
I continued walking, my pace never changing.
The path took me through the entire facility. Past the swimming pool where we'd been tested for endurance. Through the sleeping quarters where children collapsed from exhaustion every night. Past the training rooms where we'd fought each other under clinical observation.
Finally, I arrived in front of a classroom.
There, standing among the other children but somehow separate from them, was a familiar figure.
A girl with blonde hair.
The moment she spotted me, her expression, which had been one of empty despair, turned hateful.
"It's YOU!" Her voice cracked as she screamed, the sound raw and broken. "Why didn't you help me?! Why did you ignore me?! Why did you just turn away when I—"
She cut herself off, choking on whatever words came next. Then she continued with renewed fury.
"Just die! Die, die, die, die, DIE!"
I walked past her without breaking stride. Her screams followed me down the corridor until distance muted them to nothing.
The scenery shifted abruptly.
Now I stood in the villa where I'd lived after leaving the White Room—that brief interlude of supposed "normal" life before ANHS.
More insults rained down. More hatred.
I continued walking, and another shift happened.
Now I was at Advanced Nurturing High School.
The familiar campus grounds and dormitory buildings appeared in front of me. Despite it not being long ago, standing here in person, it somehow felt nostalgic.
But something was very different.
The sky above was that same sterile white from the White Room, as though the two environments had merged. Students passed by in clusters, their conversations audible but distorted, echoing strangely.
Then, ahead of me, I saw my former classmates.
The instant I spotted them, they spotted me in return.
Horikita Suzune stood at the front of the group. For a brief second, surprise flickered across her face before it then hardened into something cold and accusatory.
Behind her, Hirata Yosuke's usually gentle expression was distorted with disappointment
The rest of the class stood behind them. And similar transformation surged through the other students.
Karuizawa Kei's expression was the most complex of all. Multiple emotions competed for dominance across her features. Hurt, anger, confusion, and betrayal. All layered together in her trembling gaze.
"You used us." Horikita's voice cut through the silence with surgical precision, each word sharp as a blade. "I thought... I actually believed we were friends. But every conversation, every interaction, every moment we shared... it was all just manipulation to you, wasn't it? A mere chore. We were simply tools in your hands. And when you were done with us, you abandoned us without a second thought!"
"You never cared about any of us," Hirata added, his voice carrying genuine anguish that would have moved most people. "All that talk about working together, about helping the class succeed, about building something meaningful... they were just words. Empty words from an empty person pretending to be human."
More voices erupted around me. The accusations multiplied, insults and condemnations raining down from all directions as even more students materialized. Not just classmates now, but students from other classes, even other years.
Then, faculty members began appearing. Chabashira-sensei, her expression colder than I'd ever seen it in life. Hoshinomiya-sensei, her usual playful demeanor replaced with something venomous. Even teachers whom I'd barely seen manifested to join the rounds of accusation.
Each one was expressing hatred. Each one declaring that I'd ruined something precious, destroyed something irreplaceable, and violated some unspoken trust that I'd never actually agreed to honor.
How tediously predictable.
This is starting to bore me.
These scenes felt designed to provoke guilt, regret, and some emotional response that would validate their accusations.
But as I walked through the crowd, and as their shouts grew louder, more desperate, I felt nothing change within me.
It was as if these insults weren't rained against me but at someone else, and I was just a spectator of this.
The moment those white walls had first appeared, the instant that first accusation had been hurled, I'd understood exactly what the Bridge of Judgment tested.
Not physical strength. Not comprehension. Not even cultivation or combat ability.
It tests the weight of one's past. The accumulated burden of choices made and consequences inflicted. The sum total of one's sins, real or perceived.
It shows you everyone you've hurt, everyone who 'hates' you, and everyone whose life was damaged by your existence.
And then it measures whether that weight crushes you. Whether the judgment of others can break your spirit and mind. Whether guilt and regret can shatter your resolve and leave you paralyzed, unable to advance.
For inexperienced and young cultivators, or those with a weak mind, this would be devastating. The accumulated resentment of everyone they've harmed throughout their cultivation journey, all manifested at once...
It would destroy them.
I reached Karuizawa's position. She stood directly in my path, refusing to move aside.
"Say something," she demanded, her voice cracking slightly. "Anything. Just... prove that some part of you actually cared. That it wasn't all—"
I walked past her.
Engaging would serve no purpose. These were projections, constructs created by whatever mechanism powered this trial. They weren't real people. They possessed no genuine consciousness nor authentic emotions.
And even if they were real, even if these were somehow the genuine thoughts and feelings of people I'd known—
My answer would be exactly the same.
I made choices based on available information and desired outcomes. Some of those choices resulted in harm to others. That was inevitable. The alternative would have been making different choices that hurt different people or pursuing different outcomes that I judged less valuable.
Regret implied believing that superior alternatives had existed. That, with perfect information and flawless execution, all harm could have been avoided while still achieving the same results.
But that was a comforting lie that people told themselves to feel better about their own compromises.
Every path through life left casualties in its wake. Damage inflicted, either through action or inaction. The only meaningful question was: which casualties were you willing to accept in pursuit of which goals?
I had answered that question long ago. Multiple times, in fact. In the White Room. Again, during my time at ANHS. And multiple times now in this cultivation world.
The answer had never changed.
I accept the casualties my choices create. I don't particularly enjoy causing harm, but I don't lose sleep over it either. Effectiveness and results matter. The feelings of those negatively impacted... don't.
The ANHS scene began to dissolve. The shouting voices faded to echoes, then to silence.
I found myself in darkness once more, but only briefly.
The darkness gave way to a new scenery.
Now I stood in an open space beside a small stream, surrounded by trees. Grass beneath my feet. Bird calls in the distance. The scent of earth and growing things. And most notably, the familiar darkness and sights of shadows in my surroundings.
This was the place outside the village where I trained.
And more specifically...
My gaze was fixed on one particular location. It was the place where I buried that uncle and nephew pair.
The moment that thought crystallized, two figures materialized directly in front of me.
Two translucent figures rose from the earth with expressions of profound hatred.
Fang, the bandit who'd suffered at my hand during our first meeting. And his uncle, the Qi Condensation cultivator who'd attempted to avenge his nephew's humiliation. This altercation resulted in both their deaths at my hand.
And now they stood before me, their ghostly forms radiating accusation.
Before either ghostly figure could open their mouths to speak, I turned my gaze upward toward the empty, white sky above.
"Haven't you seen enough of this farce?" I asked the void.
For a brief moment, nothing happened.
But then, reality shattered.
The sky fractured like glass struck by an invisible hammer. Cracks spread in geometric patterns, spiderwebbing across the heavens with sharp, crystalline sounds. The scenery around me was all split apart along similar fracture lines.
The uncle and nephew vanished mid-manifestation, their forms dissolving into fragments that fell away into nothingness.
Everything collapsed inward, the broken pieces of false reality tumbling into an abyss that had suddenly opened beneath the illusion's foundation.
What replaced it was absolute darkness.
This was not the darkness of night. This was true darkness. I couldn't perceive even my own body. It was so profound that it almost felt tangible, pressing against my skin like a physical substance.
"How peculiar, human child."
A voice emerged from the void. It was emotionless, appearing neither male nor female, carrying no inflection or warmth. I couldn't determine its source. The sound seemed to originate from everywhere simultaneously, yet from no specific direction.
"You're the first in countless years who wasn't fazed in the slightest by this trial." The voice continued with that same flat affect. "Even more remarkable—this trial is constructed specifically so that participants should not even be capable of recognizing it as illusory. The formations are designed to bypass conscious awareness entirely, to make the experience feel absolutely real. Yet you saw through it almost immediately."
I remained silent, processing this new information.
So my mind wasn't deceived at all? Not even initially?
That was... unexpected. I'd assumed some part of my subconscious had been fooled, that my recognition of the trial's artificial nature had come from analytical deduction and not from immediate perception.
But if this entity spoke truthfully, then my mind had rejected the illusion from the very beginning. Refused to accept the constructed reality as genuine despite the formation's design.
Why?
The voice didn't speak again for several long moments.
Then—
"...Ho?"
For the first time, there was a faint shift in its tone.
"Your Dao Heart seems... complete, yet simultaneously incomplete. How peculiar. How strange." The voice sounded almost fascinated now, as though examining something that defied its understanding. "This shouldn't be possible. A Dao Heart exists in one state or another—formed or unformed, clear or clouded. But yours is somehow both finished and unfinished at once."
It paused for a moment.
"You've achieved clarity about certain fundamental truths. Your convictions regarding those truths are unshakeable... that portion of your Dao Heart is as solid as ancient stone. But simultaneously, you have no comprehension of your ultimate path. No vision of what you're cultivating toward. That portion remains formless, undefined, still waiting to take shape."
"A Dao Heart," the voice continued, its tone returning to that same detached calm, "is, at its core, a heart aligned toward the Dao. It is the conviction a cultivator clings to above all else, the one truth they are willing to pursue, even at the cost of everything."
It paused, as if allowing the weight of its words to settle.
"There is no right or wrong Dao. Each cultivator walks their own path. But once that initial desire crystallizes into an eternal pursuit, it cannot be altered. At that moment... the Dao Heart is complete. Any doubt thereafter leads to heart demons and the erosion of self."
"And yet... you appear to lack that burning desire, that defining obsession, and still, part of your Dao Heart registers as complete. Under normal circumstances, without a clear path ahead, without a concrete goal or all-consuming purpose, one's Dao Heart should remain unformed. Two contradictory states should not coexist simultaneously."
"It's as though you've constructed the foundation and walls of a magnificent structure with absolute precision and masterful craftsmanship, yet you haven't determined what purpose that structure serves. You've built something technically flawless, but without deciding whether it's meant to be a fortress, a palace, or a prison."
"Most cultivators at your stage of cultivation, especially those so young, would have been severely tested by this trial," the voice continued. "Even without complete Dao Hearts, they still carry uncertainties that can be exploited. Their uncertainties would have been identified and exploited mercilessly. Their doubts would have been magnified a thousandfold. Their unresolved guilt would have been weaponized against them until their very spirit shattered like glass beneath a hammer."
The voice paused, contemplative.
"Those rare few who have somehow forged complete Dao Hearts at young ages, through trauma, through extraordinary experiences, through circumstances that forced premature solidification—they typically have stronger hearts precisely because of that adversity. Their convictions are tested steel. But you..."
The voice trailed off, clearly struggling to articulate what it was observing.
"You possess no guilt that can be exploited. There are no doubts regarding past actions that can be magnified into crippling hesitation. There are no unresolved regrets that can serve as leverage against your resolve. The portions of your Dao Heart that are complete have turned into something utterly impervious to this trial's established methods of attack. And the portions that remain incomplete aren't weaknesses waiting to be exploited. Instead, they are unfilled potential, territory waiting to be claimed and defined."
The voice was becoming increasingly abstract, its explanations spiraling into concepts I couldn't fully grasp. I understood the basic idea of a Dao Heart. But this went beyond my current comprehension.
In my previous understanding, it had seemed like little more than an extreme obsession dressed up in philosophical language. A cultivator's driving motivation that was given mystical significance.
But this entity's analysis suggested something far more complex. The Dao Heart apparently wasn't just a psychological state but something tangible that could be examined and evaluated. It could be both a strength and a weakness depending on the circumstances.
"What exactly are you trying to tell me?" I asked directly.
"That you are deeply, fundamentally broken."
There was no mockery nor hostility.
"But you are broken in a manner that has paradoxically rendered certain aspects of your being completely unbreakable. You've accepted your own nature so totally, so comprehensively, that external judgment cannot penetrate those accepted elements. You've integrated your flaws so thoroughly into your very foundation that they've ceased being weaknesses and instead function as structural supports."
"Tell me, human child—do you even desire to reach the summit? Or are you climbing simply because the path exists and others are walking it?"
An unexpected question.
I considered the question carefully, turning it over in my mind to examine it from multiple angles before formulating a response.
"The Core positioned at the summit represents considerable power," I said slowly. "Power, by its nature, is instrumentally useful. Therefore, claiming that power serves a concrete purpose."
"But you don't want it," the voice observed with absolute certainty. "Not in the manner the others want it. They hunger for that Core with every fiber of their being. They need it on some fundamental level, whether they consciously acknowledge that need or not." A pause. "You, on the other hand, simply recognize its utility. The way one might recognize that a sharp knife is useful for cutting, without developing any particular attachment to knives themselves."
"Is there a meaningful difference?"
"Perhaps not in the outcome. The knife cuts the same regardless of whether you love it or merely use it. But in fundamental nature? The difference is absolute." The voice seemed to consider something. "One path leads to obsession. The other leads to... wherever you're going. Which may be nowhere at all."
Silence followed. Then, after a moment, I spoke again.
"If I eventually find a path... a purpose...would it conflict with what already exists? Once I identify a genuine reason to pursue further advancement... won't that conflict with the portions of my Dao Heart that are already established? Won't the new foundation clash with the old structure?"
The answer came without hesitation.
"That depends entirely on you."
"The Dao cannot be taught. It can only be comprehended."
With those words, the absolute darkness simply ceased.
One moment, I stood in an infinite void, the next, I was standing on solid stone.
I blinked, momentarily disoriented by the sudden shift.
Solid ground extended ahead of me. The mountain path resumed its upward climb toward the distant summit. And when I turned to look behind...
There was the bridge, stretching back across that vast chasm.
I'd crossed it completely. The entire thousand-meter span. Without consciously taking a single step.
How dramatic.
***
A/N: Well, hello, hello everyone! I have finally left my seclusion!
I hope you have liked this chapter. The topic of Dao Heart will be elaborated on in more detail in future chapters, but I hope this initial introduction was clear enough. If you have read some xianxia/xuanhuan novels before, you should be familiar with the concept.
Anyway, the next chapter shall be released tomorrow.
See you!