“How many floors does this Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower has?” Ning Cheng asked; at the same time, he also quite admired this Xiao Yu. This fellow had the guts to erase his cultivation, something that a person without a certain amount of courage would never even think.
Ziche Jun replied, “The Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower has a total of 81 floors, the Lagless Celestial River Tower has 64 floors, while the Eternal Starry Sky Tower has 49 floors. No matter which of the three towers you choose, no one has managed to climb to the top.”
Ning Cheng looked towards the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower, “Brother Ziche, the female cultivator I asked you to look into, who you said had entered the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower a few days ago, she hasn’t come out yet, right?”
“Yes, you are not planning to go into the Celestial Scryer Tower to look for her, are you? I need to remind you that you might not necessarily get to meet her even if you go in. In my opinion, it would be better for you to wait here.” Ziche Jun immediately guessed Ning Cheng’s thoughts.
Ning Cheng was just about to speak when he heard someone shouting next to him, “Someone new is rushing into the top hundred…..”
Ning Cheng and Ziche Jun’s gaze immediately swerved towards the top hundred names highlighted in gold over the display in front of the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower that they had seen previously. Looking at it now, they immediately noticed a new name rushing upwards, the 100th name then changed to Cen Fei.
Behind Cen Fei’s name appeared the words ‘Striking Order Starry Skies’ Bright South Celestial River’ followed by the words ‘Position: 51st floor, Time: Just entered”.
Because he had seen the previous top hundred list a few moments ago, Ning Cheng knew that the last 100th place belonged to a Bian Zhe, who had climbed up to the 50th floor, while spending two days on the 50th floor. Now that Cen Fei reached the 51st floor, he naturally squeezed out Bian Zhe out of the top hundred. Moreover, this Cen Fei had just entered the top hundred, if he could stay longer on the 51st floor, his ranking would also continue to rise.
“My goodness, this is the first person from our Striking Order Starry Skies to climb to the top hundred.” Ziche Jun, on seeing Cen Fei’s name, felt amazed.
Ning Cheng asked a casual question from the side, “Who had the highest ranking from our Striking Order Starry Skies before this?”
Ziche Jun also gave a calm reply, “His name was Yu Xiasi. However, the highest ranking he achieved in the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower was the 932nd rank. Moreover, he has long since advanced to the Celestial River Realm, but I have not seen his name appear in the rankings of the Lagless Celestial River Tower.”
Ziche Jun did not wait for Ning Cheng to speak up and continued, “Brother Wanderer, I have to finish a few things. I will figure out a way to obtain an entry jade card for you. Once I finish my work, I will come back here to see how many floors I can climb.”
Ning Cheng also thanked him and spoke, “Brother Ziche can do as he pleases. I will wait here for now. If you have any good news, please do share it with me immediately.”
“Rest assured.” After Ziche Jun finished, he hurried out of the Culmination Public Square. In any case, seeing Cen Fei rush into the top one hundred of the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower had ignited a fire within him. Moreover, he also came from Striking Order Starry Skies to participate in the finals.
Watching Ziche Jun leave, Ning Cheng also did not delay things anymore and immediately entered the fog surrounding the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower.
Stepping into the fog, a transparent entrance appeared in front of Ning Cheng, except that this entrance was tightly shut. In front of this entrance was a tall jade monolith; Ning Cheng was just thinking of how to enter through this closed gate when another cultivator came in.
He walked directly past Ning Cheng, arrived in front of the jade monolith, and wrote down his name and his background. Immediately following that, the tightly shut entrance opened. Ning Cheng tried to use his Spiritual Consciousness to sweep in but found that it could not enter at all.
The cultivator, who recorded his name, quickly entered the gate and the door silently closed behind him.
Ning Cheng then walked to the front of the jade monolith. After hesitating for a while, he wrote down Wanderer on the jade monolith, followed by ‘Jiangzhou’[1] for the background. He anyway was a wanderer from Earth; therefore, there was nothing wrong with writing that down.
The tightly shut entrance opened once again, causing Ning Cheng to feel slightly happy and immediately stepped inside.
Just before he entered through the gate, a golden light streaked past him, and the person who came before him got thrown out the door, indicating that fellow’s failure.
Ning Cheng glanced at the fellow once before taking a step forward and entering. His foot had not yet descended when a powerful pressure descended. This pressure had appeared suddenly, which almost pushed Ning Cheng out the door.
Ning Cheng immediately circulated his Celestial Essence to counteract this pressure, quickly mitigating it and allowing his foot to reach the ground.
Quite powerful, Ning Cheng thought after entering the first floor. It would have been humiliating if he ended up thrown out even before he stepped on to the first floor.
After standing still for a few moments, Ning Cheng carefully released his Celestial River Domain. He had never come to the Celestial Scryer Tower; as such, he had no idea about the dangers in this place.
After patiently scanning for a few breaths, Ning Cheng found that the first floor of the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower had no other danger apart from that abrupt pressure. Even if one was at the Celestial Novice Realm, as long as they could block the pressure, they could quickly gain a foothold on this floor.
The first floor of the Celestial Scryer Tower looked like a small aisle, surrounded by relatively sparse boulders, with a cyan-coloured path winding down the middle and stretching all the way into the distance.
This level of pressure did not affect Ning Cheng much; therefore, once Ning Cheng adapted to the sudden increase in pressure, he quickened his pace and passed through the cyan-coloured path before arriving in front of a stone door.
This door had the words ‘Celestial Scryer Tower: Second Floor’ written over it. Seeing that, Ning Cheng showed a smile and thought, this was too simple. He ended up reaching the entrance to the Celestial Scryer Tower’s Second Floor with relative ease.
He reached out his hand to push open the door to the second floor. Just when his hand was about to touch the gate, a roar sounded out, and a starry skies’ wolf-like beast suddenly appeared right outside the entrance.
Ning Cheng had no time to retract his hand when the starry skies’ beast opened its mouth and chomped down. At this moment, Ning Cheng’s hand suddenly made an axe-like motion and shot out an axe shadow, accompanied by a small clump of Celestial River Flame.
A sharp howl sounded, and the starry skies’ wolf-like beast suddenly disintegrated into ashes under Ning Cheng’s flame. At the same moment that the starry skies’ wolf-like creature disappeared, the entrance to the second floor finally opened.
This time, Ning Cheng prepared himself thoroughly, and his Celestial River Domain stretched out around him. Therefore, even though the second floor’s pressure turned out a lot higher compared to the first floor, because of Ning Cheng’s readiness, he managed to mitigate it quickly using his Celestial River Domain.
……
Ning Cheng’s powerful Spiritual Consciousness and formidable Celestial River Domain allowed him to climb up all the way up to the 18th floor.
If this was really the case with the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower, then despite the increase of pressure and the increased strength of the starry skies’ beasts on each successive floor, Ning Cheng felt that it might not be too difficult to rush to the 70th floor with his current strength.
Ning Cheng stepped on to the 19th floor on the same assumption, while spreading out his Celestial River Domain even before stepping in. Even if this layer had radically increased pressure, Ning Cheng felt confident that he could counteract it with his already-deployed Celestial River Domain.
However, what surprised Ning Cheng was that his Celestial River Domain did not encounter any obstruction this time, which meant that the 19th floor did not have any pressure, unlike the ones below it.
What happened? Ning Cheng had just thought of those words when a burst of murderous intent washed over him. The next moment, a seemingly endless amount of starry skies’ blade lights surrounded him, mixed in with dense killing intent.
Even if Ning Cheng fully deployed his Celestial River Domain, a few of these starry skies’ blade lights still managed to cut through Ning Cheng’s Celestial River Domain at a certain angle. Seeing that, Ning Cheng immediately brought out the Everlasting Blue Thunder City.
“Ka-Ka-Ka-Ka……” Intensive sounds of collisions rang out from the surface of the Everlasting Blue Thunder City, causing Ning Cheng to break out in cold sweat. If not for the Everlasting Blue Thunder City, he would have definitely suffered some significant injuries.
The first wave of attacks had not ended yet when the second wave of assaults descended. It was then followed by a sudden increase in invisible pressure, almost twice in strength compared to the 18th floor, which had suddenly manifested around Ning Cheng. It forced Ning Cheng to take a few steps back and almost lean against the stone door.
“Quite insidious.” Ning Cheng murmured to himself in shock and quickly walked a few steps forward.
Fortunately, the attacks of this 19th floor were not very powerful, although they were dense. In addition to the sudden application of pressure as a sneak attack, Ning Cheng did not find it too challenging to deal with it.
After walking through the 19th floor, Ning Cheng started to gain a clearer understanding of this Celestial Scryer Tower. From the looks of it, this Celestial Scryer Tower seemed to behave like a conscious entity and was always ready to sneak attack those who tried to enter the tower. More accurately, it had only one purpose, and that was to bombard the people inside constantly.
After the 20th floor, the attacks started to increase in strength once again. In addition to the blade lights, a few spacial collapses also showed up along with many fireballs, and low-level killing formation attacks. As for the attacking demonic beasts, their numbers also grew significantly; however, these demonic beasts were only Celestial Essence constructs, which dispersed after he destroyed them.
Ning Cheng’s Celestial River Domain, along with his Treasured Thunder Spear, plus the Blue Thunder City made him almost invincible. As long as he remained cautious, especially against those sudden increases in pressure, he would not end up thrown out of the tower.
As he rushed forward, Ning Cheng alternated between the Traceless Spear and the Nothingness Flame Patterned Spear, allowing Ning Cheng to feel that his spear intent had almost reached the verge of a breakthrough. Moreover, as more and more attacks started to slip through his Celestial River Domain, it also allowed Ning Cheng to understand that his domain has still not reached perfection.
“Boom!” Ning Cheng slew another starry skies’ demonic beast and reached the 40th floor of the Nine-by-Nine Celestial Scryer Tower.
Ning Cheng, who had long since prepared himself to resist everything that came his way, found this floor in complete silence. It neither contained any blade lights rushing towards him nor any of sign of that sudden increase in pressure.
Ning Cheng carefully took a step forward and suddenly found his consciousness blurring before becoming clear again. Immediately after that, he saw a person standing in front of him.
“Muwan…..” Ning Cheng almost called out those two characters when he recalled what Tian Muwan had said to him, “Still calling me by my name? Call me ‘Miss Tian’…..”
Tian Muwan quietly looked at Ning Cheng, her face calm; however, her eyes betrayed her sadness.
“Tian Muwan……” Ning Cheng finally added another character.
Tian Muwan looked at Ning Cheng in stunned silence, “Thank you for remembering that my surname is Tian.”
They once again turned silent. After a relatively long time, Tian Muwan suddenly lost her calm and rushed towards Ning Cheng before stopping front of him and starting to bawl, “Why are you doing this to me? Did you ever like me? When you came back, you did not even ask if I was okay. Why? Or are you still going to act so arrogant? I guess you are a big man now, so why should you care about me, a little woman? I was excited when I got to see you again, but you seemed to look at me as if you were looking at a pebble on the street. Did you ever think of asking me about my grievances? Ning Xiaocheng……”
……
Feral Brook Mountain, located along the southern part of the Yuan district; since the insect wave ended a few years ago, even fewer people came to this region. In a thatched hut over the Feral Brook Mountain, a pretty-looking woman suddenly stood up in tears and muttered, “Why did I see you? Why was it so clear? Ning Xiaocheng…….”
[1] Jiangzhou here refers to the Jiangzhou district of Changzhou City, Guangxi, China. The place where Ning Cheng came from.
