Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Spending some time walking around the tenth floor to see if there was something he might have missed at first glance, it didn’t take long for him to conclude that the tenth floor was indeed just a place for resting like the panel created by the tower had described to him.

Even if there was something hidden on the tenth floor that would result in completing some kind of hidden challenge like the one, he had ended up completing when he altered the ninth floor, he felt like it would be better to leave something like that for the disciples to discover. Especially so considering that it would undoubtedly take some time to find whatever might be hidden considering his divine sense hadn’t been able to pick up anything unusual.

Swish~

With that in mind, he didn’t linger around the tenth floor waiting for someone else to show up and soon enough ascended the spiral staircase leading up to the eleventh floor of the tower. Feeling curious about how strong the enemies he would face on the eleventh floor would be after the strength of the demon beasts on the ninth floor increased following his unintentional alteration of the ninth floor.

[Welcome to the Eleventh Floor]

[Current Floor: 11]

[Task 1: Kill 50 Domain Lord Realm Demon Beasts]

[Task 2: Kill 20 Fourth Stage Domain Lord Realm Demon Beasts or Above]

[Task 3: Kill 5 Seventh Stage Domain Lord Realm Demon Beast or Above]

[Task 4: Kill 1 Ninth Stage Domain Lord Realm Demon Beast]

[Reward: 2500 Ascension Coin, The Passage to the Twelfth Floor reveals itself]

Stepping onto the eleventh floor of the tower, Xuan Hao was somewhat taken aback by the wall of text that came flying at him, as from a glance, there were far more tasks compared to what he had been used to.

Although, after a second glance, he quickly realized that all the tasks essentially boiled down to the same conclusion. Killing demon beasts. Simple enough under normal circumstances, but… Having to hunt down so many Domain Lord Realm demon beasts was by no means easy to accomplish and made it somewhat understandable why even the tower seemed to recommend teamwork from this point onwards.

The difficulty might be changed and require one to hunt down more demon beasts, but it would still be easier to accomplish the goal by having someone else to rely on. After all, Domain Lord Realm demon beasts were already difficult to tackle alone, let alone the fact that the tasks for the eleventh floor required one to kill so many Domain Lord Realm demon beasts. Even including one at the Ninth Stage of the Domain Lord Realm or Peak of the Domain Lord Realm.

Reaching that level, the physical body of a demon beast would have already far surpassed what most people in the Domain Lord Realm could handle, as even if they did reach the Peak of the Domain Lord Realm themselves, they might not be able to break through the powerful physical body of a demon beast specialized in defense no matter how much they attacked it.

Essentially, the eleventh floor of the tower seemed close to impossible for anyone below the Peak of the Domain Lord Realm to complete, something that might have something to do with him altering and incidentally increasing the difficulty of the ninth floor.

For him, the jump in difficulty didn’t matter yet, as he could still breeze through the tower relying on his powerful cultivation base, but anyone other than himself would begin struggling from the ninth floor onwards, as the strength of the floors would increase exponentially.

By the twelfth floor, Xuan Hao had a feeling that the strength involved would reach the Soul Ascension Realm, while the fifteenth or maybe even fourteenth floor would involve the Dao Seed Realm. Meaning that there was a very real chance that he would encounter a floor with demon beasts at the Profound Immortal Realm or Celestial Immortal Realm before reaching the twentieth floor of the tower.

This realization alone made him even more eager to see just how far up this tower went, while at the same time also wondering if the rewards provided by the tower might give him something useful for his current cultivation after he began clearing floors for the Celestial Immortal Realm or Profound Immortal Realm.

If the tower really did end up providing something useful to him, he might end up spending longer than he had originally anticipated inside the tower. Not just that, but if what he wanted was too expensive and he didn’t have enough ascension coins and couldn’t advance to the next floor, he might end up joining everyone else in slowly farming ascension coins by taking on far lower paying tasks on an already completed floor…

Shaking his head as he thought about this to himself, Xuan Hao soon enough threw these thoughts to the back of his mind for now as he focused his attention on his surroundings that were far from idyllic environment of the tenth floor or the ninth floor before he had… Altered it…

All around him there were swamps, swamps and more swamps. The entire eleventh floor of the tower was essentially one giant swamp that was filled to the brim with not just countless demon beasts, but also countless poisonous insects that would prove a challenge even to someone in the Domain Lord Realm.

However, the most dangerous part was not the poisonous insects or the demon beasts lurking anywhere from the treetops or below the muddy water, but instead the fact that just standing in the swamp slowly drained away his spiritual qi.

Negligible as this effect seemed on the surface with the natural recovery speed of any cultivator strong enough to step onto the eleventh floor of the tower, it would still be troublesome to deal with when one was locked in battle and couldn’t focus part of their attention towards dealing with this slowly draining parasite.

And over time, the battle would end up in the favor of the native demon beasts.

Along with the fact that the tasks given for the floor were all about hunting down demon beasts, Xuan hao could understand that the eleventh floor would be difficult to pass through for any of the sect’s Domain Lord Realm Elders before they broke through to the Soul Ascensio Realm.

After all, outside of the tasks for the eleventh floor being tedious, there was also the fact that the tasks would refresh whenever one left the tower. Any progress made erased in an instant. Meaning that for a Domain Lord Realm- or even Soul Ascension Realm elder wanted to pass through the eleventh floor of the tower, they would have to set aside a large amount of time to complete the task.

The only positive he noticed was that ascension realm coins offered for completing the tasks had been significantly increased compared to the ninth floor, a potential second advantage to the enemies he had to deal with, becoming stronger.

Something only, he might consider positive given how many of the sect’s elders would inevitably find themselves trapped on the tenth floor of the tower. Unable to advance past the eleventh floor of the tower in the future.

The thought of this alone gave rise to a slight smile, as he soon enough found himself drifting through the eleventh floor of the tower. Easily finding and taking care of the demon beasts required for completing the tasks and advancing towards the twelfth floor.

The reason why he didn’t use his palm attack again was rather simple, he didn’t want to increase the strength of the eleventh floor to the Soul Ascension Realm by accident and make it impossible for anyone below the Soul Ascension Realm to pass through the eleventh floor of the tower in the future.

In the end, after a little over ten minutes of wandering around the swamp picking off any demon beast unlucky enough to come his way, Xuan Hao smoothly completed the four assigned tasks and found himself ascending the spiral staircase leading to the twelfth floor of the tower. Feeling a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any floor boss around for him to face off like in the past.

[Welcome to the Twelfth Floor]

[Current Floor: 12]

[Task: Survive Nine Tribulations]

[Reward: 10.000 Ascension Coin, The Passage to the Thirteenth Floor reveals itself]

However, this disappointment disappeared the second he stepped onto the twelfth floor of the tower and found himself faced with a new and unique path that required him to survive nine tribulations.

What these tribulations were, he had no idea but couldn’t help feeling a bit excited. Wondering if it might be possible to use these tribulations to temper his physical body in any way, as he had heard about some exceptional individuals using their lightning tribulations to temper their physical bodies and wanted to try it for himself to see how useful it was for him to do something similar…