Chapter 7: The Steps That Judge Souls
The Arena of Ten Thousand Steps rose in the center of Qingyun City like a blade thrust into the earth by an angry god.
Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine steps of black tribulation iron climbed a perfectly square mountain. Each step was exactly one chi high, one zhang wide, and carved with arrays older than most sects. Mortal bones would shatter on the first. Ordinary geniuses bled by the thousandth. Only those who reached the platform at the top were allowed to register for the true joint examination.
Fifteen days remained until the four sects opened their gates.
Today was only the appetizer.
At dawn the plaza beneath the steps was already a sea of bodies: thirty thousand hopefuls from minor clans sent as sacrifices, rogue cultivators who had sold everything for one chance, and a handful of true heaven's-chosen in silks so fine they glowed.
Lin Qiu arrived alone.
No Su Clan escort. No flying sword. Just the same patched cloak, bare feet, hair still damp from the spirit spring.
The crowd parted for him the way water parts for a thrown spear.
Whispers followed.
"That's the boy who rode a thundercloud through the eastern gate…"
"They say he subdued a fourth-grade roc with one hand…"
"Look at his eyes—demon or immortal, you decide…"
Lin Qiu ignored them. He walked straight to the registration desk manned by outer disciples of the four sects.
A bored Burning Skyreach disciple in crimson robes glanced up.
"Name and affiliation."
"Lin Qiu. Independent."
The disciple's brush paused. "Bone age?"
"Twelve. Almost thirteen."
Snickers rippled through the nearby crowd.
The record for a twelve-year-old was the 4,732nd step, set fifty years ago by the current Holy Son of Blood Flame Valley.
The disciple stamped the jade tablet without comment and tossed it back.
"Begin when the gong sounds. Die quietly."
Lin Qiu caught the tablet and walked to the foot of the mountain.
Ten thousand steps.
Ten thousand judgments.
The first step tested bone age and blood vitality.
The thousandth tested spiritual roots.
The three-thousandth tested willpower.
The seven-thousandth tested killing intent.
Beyond that… no one under Foundation Establishment had ever returned to speak of it.
A massive bronze gong hung from chains thicker than a man's waist. An elder from Violet Heaven Palace—silver hair, purple robes, late Core Formation aura like a sleeping storm—struck it once.
The sound cracked across the city.
Thirty thousand people surged forward.
Lin Qiu did not run.
He simply stepped onto the first stair.
Nothing happened.
No pressure. No pain. Just cool black iron under his bare soles.
He took the second step. The third.
By the hundredth step he was still walking at the pace of a morning stroll. The tribulation iron didn't even warm.
Behind him, the mountain had already bled. A boy in green robes vomited blood on the 87th step and tumbled down, bones broken. A girl with twin swords made it to 312 before her spiritual roots were judged "inferior" and the step ejected her like trash.
Lin Qiu kept walking.
At the thousandth step the arrays woke fully.
A pressure like the sky falling crushed downward. Spiritual roots were dragged out for inspection the way a butcher pulls entrails.
Most candidates collapsed here, meridians rupturing.
Lin Qiu felt the arrays reach into his dantian—and recoil.
The violet star spun lazily. The newborn silver star beside it pulsed once, cold and disdainful.
The pressure shattered like glass against dragon scales.
Lin Qiu didn't even slow.
2,000 steps.
3,000 steps.
Now the steps began to show illusions—loved ones dying, greatest fears, deepest shames.
Lin Qiu saw Cloud's Rest burning. Grandmother crucified Grandmother. Su Ling's throat opened by the bandit's saber.
The visions were perfect. They even smelled of blood and smoke.
He walked through them as if they were mist.
Because he had already lived the worst the world could do to someone powerless.
Everything else was just noise.
At the 4,000th step the mountain finally grew angry.
The iron turned molten hot. Winds of blade intent screamed. Gravity tripled, quadrupled.
Candidates ahead of him—true geniuses who had flown past the early steps—began to falter.
Lin Qiu's cloak burned away in violet flames and regrew from threads of lightning. His skin glowed. Every footfall left a nine-petaled lightning flower seared into the iron that faded only slowly.
5,000 steps.
6,000.
The crowd at the base had gone completely silent.
Even the sect elders on their floating platforms leaned forward.
At the 7,333rd step the world changed.
The stairs vanished. Lin Qiu stood in a void of perfect darkness.
Nine tribulation lightning dragons, each one peak Core Formation strength, materialized around him.
The mountain's final common test: survive nine breaths against nine dragons.
Most who reached this far died here.
Lin Qiu looked at the dragons and felt the Heart in his chest laugh with delight.
He cracked his neck.
"Nine?" he asked the darkness. "How cute."
He took one step forward.
The dragons lunged.
Lin Qiu opened his arms.
"Thunder Monarch Art: Third Form — Myriad Tribulations Welcome."
The violet star and silver star spun in opposite directions. Yin and yang thunder fused into a perfect sphere of annihilation around him.
The nine dragons slammed into the sphere—and were devoured.
Swallowed whole. Converted. Returned to the source.
Nine breaths?
He did it in one.
The void shattered.
Lin Qiu stood on the 7,334th step as if nothing had happened. His hair had grown longer, streaked with silver like moonlight on stormclouds. The nine-petaled sigil on his chest now had four petals burning white-hot.
The mountain trembled.
For the first time in recorded history, the tribulation iron began to sing—a low, mournful note of surrender.
Lin Qiu kept climbing.
8,000 steps.
9,000.
Now there were no more candidates ahead or behind. Only him and the summit.
At the 9,999th step the world held its breath.
A final illusion appeared—not of fear, but of desire.
A throne of violet lightning floating above a sea of kneeling immortals. Countless beauties. Infinite power. The chance to make every bully who ever spat on him lick the ground.
All he had to do was kneel once to the mountain. Acknowledge it as greater.
Lin Qiu looked at the throne.
Then he looked at the final step.
And laughed.
"I've swallowed a Thunder Monarch's heart," he said to the illusion. "Did you really think I'd bend for a staircase?"
He took the last step.
The throne shattered.
The summit platform was empty except for a single stone tablet and four elders—one from each great sect—waiting with expressions ranging from greed to outright terror.
The Violet Heaven Palace elder, the same silver-haired man who had struck the gong, stared at Lin Qiu like a starving man staring at a feast.
"Name," he demanded, voice shaking.
"Lin Qiu."
"Bone age?"
"Twelve."
The elder's aura exploded outward, late Core Formation pressure that would have crushed a normal genius to jelly.
It slid off Lin Qiu like rain off jade.
The elder swallowed.
"On behalf of Violet Heaven Palace… we invite you to enter the sect as a core disciple directly. Skip all further tests. Name your price."
The Burning Skyreach elder hissed. "Shameless old ghost! The boy hasn't even—"
Lin Qiu raised one hand.
Every elder shut up.
"I will take the joint examination in fifteen days," he said calmly. "All of it. Every trial. Every tribulation. I will not enter any sect that does not earn the right to teach me."
He looked at the Violet Heaven elder and smiled with too many teeth.
"Tell Lei Wujing to prepare the Nine Tribulations Pagoda properly this time.
I intend to break it."
Then he turned and walked back down the mountain the same way he came—slowly, barefoot, leaving smoking footprints of violet lightning that took hours to fade.
Behind him the stone tablet at the summit, which had recorded names for ten thousand years, cracked from top to bottom.
A new line burned itself into the broken surface, glowing imperial violet:
1st place: Lin Qiu — 9,999 steps
Time: one incense stick of incense
Comment: The mountain kneels.
Far away in Violet Heaven Palace, Sect Leader Lei Wujing opened his eyes in secluded cultivation.
Lightning shaped like a nine-petaled flower bloomed across his chamber ceiling.
He began to laugh, wild and delighted and just a little bit afraid.
"The little monster has come," he whispered to the storm. "Let the heavens tremble."
Fifteen days.
Lin Qiu walked out of the arena gates into the noon light.
The entire city bowed as he passed—not because anyone ordered them to, but because the pressure leaking from his skin made their souls want to.
He didn't notice.
He was already thinking about lunch.
To be continued…