"Since we're ready, shall we head to the floor test?" Hengsheng said.
"Let's go!" Prim cheerfully replied, leading the way toward the massive tower gate.
Standing before the tower, their human-sized bodies felt insignificant. Even the gate alone was enormous—kilometers tall and half as wide. As for the tower itself, it was beyond measure; with his current strength, neither his eyes nor his Divine Sense could fully comprehend its scale.
Hengsheng looked into the gate; nothing could be seen inside, only darkness that gave off a mysterious feeling.
'Perfect,' Hengsheng thought.
"See you outside," Hengsheng said to Prim.
"Mm!" Prim replied, then leaped into the darkness and disappeared.
Hengsheng shook his head. This little girl was full of energy—exactly the kind of person he found hardest to handle.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the tower gate.
…
In the darkness, he saw the system notice appear; it was short and clear.
—Floor 1: The Harsh Wilderness—
Goal: Survive for 180 days
The light returned, and then he found himself in the middle of a wild forest, surrounded by an ocean of trees.
'The Harsh Wilderness…' Hengsheng thought. Without waiting for him to comprehend the situation, danger struck.
His sharpened senses caught a sudden movement behind him. Without hesitation, he leapt forward, narrowly evading an ambush.
"GROWL!!" A thunderous roar split the air as razor-sharp claws shredded the spot where he had stood moments before.
The claws attack missed by a hair's breadth, a tip of his robe snagging and tearing.
Hengsheng rolled to his feet, regaining balance, and turned to face his attacker—a towering, three-meter-tall demonic bear, its crimson eyes gleaming with savage hunger.
The demonic bear didn't give up after its ambush failed; its front paw hit the ground and began to charge at the human.
Hengsheng wasn't panicked and didn't run away; he decided to fight.
He flicked his hand, and then a one-handed battle axe appeared in his grip. In the second, he measures the opponent's strength with both of his eyes and Divine Sense.
The bear was a demonic beast with the strength of the middle stage of Qi Gathering, which was not a problem for Hengsheng.
He dodged its charge with a slight movement before the axe blade cut through the beast's arm, sending it flying through the air.
The demonic bear cried in pain. Its wounds were severe but not enough to take its life. It continued its clumsy three-legged charge into the deep forest as it ran away from him, mistaking him for prey.
Hengsheng let it go, since charging into the unknown forest was not a very wise idea.
He'd better grab where he was first before he ran wild.
Without wasting any time, he immediately began to investigate his surroundings.
Not long after…
"Hm?! This is bad…" Hengsheng murmured.
Even though he was the creator of the Trial Tower, together with the system races that helped him design it, he wasn't all-knowing about the floor details.
The floor details were designed to be random for every challenger—there were more than a billion possible variations—so that challengers would not be able to cheat easily by gathering information from another challenger who had already cleared the floor.
The first floor trial theme was Survival.
As the system notice said, he needed to survive for 180 days. It sounded easy for a cultivator like him, but the trial couldn't be that simple.
Obstacles were present in the trial.
In his case, he found that the Spiritual Qi in the air was poisonous.
He couldn't absorb it to restore his inner Qi or sustain his life force, but what was more serious was that, in this kind of environment, he would become weaker over time.
This meant he had to find food or a clean source of Spiritual Qi to absorb quickly; otherwise, his chances of surviving these six months would decline.
"180-day survival quest… it seems like my luck isn't great today…" Hengsheng murmured while gazing at the forest from above the trees.
He was in a pretty bad mood because of the unlucky random mission assignment on the first floor, which forced him to do the test for 180 days—a long wait. If he had gotten a shorter, time-consuming mission, it would've been better, as he could have challenged the other floors more quickly.
The time he spent here wouldn't affect the world outside, since time flowed differently. On the trial floor, time passed 100 times slower than in the Primordial City and the Heavenly Dao World.
So, 180 days on the floor would only be about 1 day and 19 hours outside.
Hengsheng spent the day gathering information on the surroundings and quickly established a rough plan for 180 days of survival.
The next day, he began to move through the forest, finding something to fill his stomach, collecting herbs, and crafting tools.
He did everything he could think of; as the creator, he was not willing to fail on the first floor and lose one of his three chances to challenge stupidly.
If he did fail, that would be a shame on many levels.
The days passed as Hengsheng survived all the obstacles the floor threw at him—whether powerful demon beasts, poisonous plants, wild traps, or even the extreme cold nights.
He survived all of them with his strength and wisdom, barely.
In the past day, he successfully found food and water, but he had yet to find a source of Spiritual Qi, which was a critical concern since his strength continued to decline over time.
By the 30th day, his cultivation realm began to become unstable due to the lack of Spiritual Qi in the system.
This forced him to seal his remaining Qi, not wasting it on anything else, only using it for critical moments of survival.
Life became difficult.
Without his Qi, his body was slightly stronger than that of an average human. Surviving in this forest with such a weak body was a challenge.
But in the end, heaven had not abandoned him.
On the 60th day, he finally found what he was looking for.
He found the hidden tomb of a nameless cultivator in the middle of the forest. It was a large underground tomb, inside, filled with traps and various mechanisms that prevented intruders from entering the deepest chamber.
Of course, they couldn't stop him. Unleashing his Qi, he brutally made his way to the end.
When he reached the deepest chamber, where the cultivator's corpse lay in the coffin, he spotted a space ring on the corpse's finger.
Inside the ring, he found a pile of spirit stones and Qi Pills.
This discovery would last him a long time. If he used them efficiently, he could survive until the trial ended.
However, his goal wasn't just to survive but to achieve the highest possible result. He would not hide somewhere safe, waiting for the countdown to end.
He would conquer the first floor!
Time passed.
With the resources he had, his strength was at its peak. He wandered the forest, finding hidden sites like the nameless tomb one after another, slaying the beasts that obstructed his way without mercy.
Before he knew it…
[DING!]
[Congratulations, you have completed the mission.]
[Survive for 180 days] [Complete]
—[Floor 1 Cleared]—
Evaluation:
Total Score: 34,100
Grade: SS
Rewards Obtained:
—3,410 Tower Points.
—Colorless Exp Stone x100
—Red Exp Stone x10
—Random Pill Ticket [Epic] x1
—Martial Technique Choice Ticket [Epic] x1
—Title: The Survival, Level 1 — Permanently increases Danger Sense, Survival Instinct, and Innate Luck by 1%.
*Rewards have been added to your inventory.
[Ding!]
[Return to the Primordial City] / [Challenge the Floor 2]
"Challenge the Floor 2…" Hengsheng murmured.
…
Hengsheng's consciousness returned to the experimental chamber in the Tower World. Blue, who had been waiting in the chamber, immediately approached to welcome him back.
"Are you satisfied with the test, Master?" Blue asked.
"I do… but let's improve it a little more before we proceed with the ceremony tomorrow," Hengsheng replied.
"What kind of improvement do you wish for, Master?" Blue asked.
"The trial itself—let's narrow the floor themes and storylines to better suit the cultivation world's culture, like changing the Goblin in the tutorial into a Demonic Cult, or the Titan Spirit on the fifth floor into a Fiend God Will—something along those lines."
"…Otherwise, they will have no clue what the trial is about," Hengsheng said.
"Got it, Master. I will do my best," Blue said.
"I'm leaving this to you," Hengsheng said.
Then his gaze turned to his side; he found Prim still inside the test. He thought she would be mad if she didn't see him when she was done. Hengsheng decided he would make it up to her later.
After that, he left the System World and returned to the real world.
"Infinite System Points…" Hengsheng murmured with excitement, thinking about what would follow after the Trial Tower was launched.
After the test, he was certain that the chance of the Heavenly Dao accepting the tower was high.
That was because the Trial Tower was an excellent tool to turn an ordinary cultivator into a big, bad cultivator, which provided a bigger talent pool for the Heavenly Dao's world.
Moreover, if talented cultivators had the chance to challenge the Tower, they would become even more exceptional.
Why would the Heavenly Dao ever reject such an amazing tool?