668 Which Checkpoint of the Stairway Tree Were You At When You Were a Blue Flame-Level?

Seeing his remaining 780,000 points, he forced a smile. "The points can be used up terribly easily."

After buying all the stuff he wanted, it was about 8 p.m. He started checking the sword skills that he had just acquired.

The sword skills were encrypted and had been sent to him through his Emperor's Heart Ring after payment had been made.

The Illumination sword skill was the first set projected. Lin Huang spent about 15 minutes watching its tutorial.

Since his Sword Dao was already on level-4, he basically managed to learn the level-3 sword skills after watching the practical part of the sword skill and its tutorial.

It was like a person who had mastered advanced mathematics and was looking back at the syllabus of high school mathematics. They would understand it after studying it once.

It took him another five to six minutes to watch the practicing of the sword skill thrice. However, he did not watch the detailed tutorial.

After about 20 minutes, he started practicing the sword skill in the hotel living room. He practiced thrice after a few minutes. Each time after finishing the practice of his sword skill, he obtained thousands of card pieces. After three rounds, the Skill Card of the first sword skill was formed.

Soon after, a Skill Card was formed in his body after every 20 minutes.

By midnight, Lin Huang had already learned 11 Illumination sword skills. He could sense that there was a slight improvement in his Sword Dao. Obviously, his way of practicing was correct.

The next day, Lin Huang got out of bed early in the morning and logged into the Genius Union world. He started climbing again.

After more than two hours, he finally managed to get through the 49th checkpoint. However, after more than two hours, Lin Huang was stuck on the 50th checkpoint.

He was completely wrapped in a sticky resin at the 50th checkpoint, and he could not get rid of it at all. Attacking was the only way to free himself. He had to slash it by force and make his way through the ditch.

However, the resin was immune to almost all types of energy including Life Power, elemental energy, telekinetic energy, and some of the unusual energies. Only physical attacks could destroy it. Moreover, the resin could move and recover on its own. If the attack were not launched fast enough, the damaged section would recover on its own swiftly.

Some of them teamed up and attempted to attack it. However, as long as there was more than one person who attacked the same part, the defense strength of the resin would be 10 to 100 times stronger.

Lin Huang was most fearful of checkpoints like this. Since he was just a blue flame-level, his physique was incomparable to an immortal-level's.

As the resin was immune to his telekinetic power, the power of the telekinetic weapon would be suppressed when it reached a particular area. Its power would be even weaker than 1/10,000 of its standard power. In fact, it would not affect the resin at all.

After several attempts, not even a crack could be seen on the resin. He had tried many ways such as removing his telekinetic power as he approached the resin, relying on the throwing dagger to attack, and grouping the throwing daggers into a drill to bore a hole in it. He had even summoned the Mighty Ape.

Since there was an audience, Lin Huang did not summon Tyrant or attempt to attack with his sword skills. He then returned to the 46th checkpoint.

Just as he returned to the 46th checkpoint, somebody had started a new thread in the Genius Union forum. The post was about Lin Huang failing the 50th checkpoint.

The people started commenting rapidly, saying that Lin Xie could only rely on the God Crasher. Without the God Crasher, he was trash.

Once the people started criticizing him, many of them followed the trend and commented on him. They commented that it was useless to rely on external support. Only those who were weak would depend on external forces.

Only a few of them supported him as he had gained some new fans since the incident that happened yesterday.

What ended this commotion was Chan Dou's comment.

"For those who say that Lin Xie is weak, I'd like to ask, which checkpoint of the Stairway Tree were you on when you were a blue flame-level?"

The comment struck everybody dumb.

Lin Xie was only on blue flame-level, yet he had already reached the 49th checkpoint. Nobody had ever achieved this in the past. He indeed had the God Crasher. However, could someone get into the 49th checkpoint solely by relying on the God Crashers? Even idiots would know that it was impossible. Aside from some of the checkpoints where the God Crasher would be useful to him when there were the monster attacks, the God Crasher could not assist him at all at the rest of the checkpoints.

By the time Lin Huang knew that people were commenting on him, the issue had already subsided. He did not care so much about it though. After returning to the Heaven Alliance subdivision, he logged out of the Genius Union.

Since he was stuck and could no longer continue climbing up the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang decided to focus on practicing his sword skills. He did not log into the Genius Union for ten consecutive days.

Under normal circumstances, Lin Huang could master one set of sword skills in about 20 minutes. However, sometimes when the swords skills were somewhat tricky, it would take him twice as long to master the skill. Over the past ten days, Lin Huang had learned about 450 Illumination sword skills, which was about a third of the Illumination sword skills that he had bought.

Lin Huang's sword realm was improving rapidly in the past ten days. At first, he was initially at the beginning stage of Oblivion. He had now proceeded to the middle stage.

Lin Huang planned to practice for 20 consecutive days so that he could learn all the Illumination sword skills. However, he received a video call from Chan Dou early in the morning.

As soon as the video call was answered, Chan Dou asked with a smile, "You haven't logged into the Genius Union for 13 days. What are you up to?"

"Recently, I've been busy practicing my sword skills. I didn't know that it's the end of the month already," Lin Huang replied.

"I'm calling you because it's near the end of the month. A few days later, the Stairway Tree will summarize the rewards to be given out in May. If you're capable of breaking through the 50th checkpoint, try your best to do so. Rewards given to you after you reach the 50th checkpoint or higher are completely different from what you obtain from the 40th to the 49th checkpoint. However, if you can't do so, just ignore what I've said since 90% of them who stay on the 46th checkpoint failed to reach the 50th checkpoint anyway. There aren't any useful strategies for this checkpoint."

"I'll try again when I'm free." Lin Huang nodded. He did not notice that it was now the end of May.

After hanging up, he took a look at the date. It was already May 29. There were two days left until the monthly rewards would be given to them on the first of June.

He hesitated for a moment and soon, he logged into the Genius Union again.

It was still early in the morning at about 7 a.m. Not many people were online.

He then rode on the Mighty Ape and directly climbed up to the 50th checkpoint.

After observing the surroundings and making sure that there was no one else around him, he then took out his ink-tainted battle sword. His sword realm had been fully activated. Even without the use of Life Power, he sliced his sword forward and cut through the resin.

Lin Huang did not expect that a big ditch would form as he attacked. He managed to cut through the resin without any obstacle.

"It's my sword realm!"

Lin Huang could clearly sense that the change because of his sword realm. As his sword penetrated through the resin layer, he felt that it was as easy as cutting through tofu. The resin that was tainted by his sword realm resembled plastic that was being melted by a high temperature as it shriveled up on its own and shrank, creating a path. He knew that not all of the sword realms would work. The effect of his sword realm was apparent because it was incredibly strong.

Since there was a shortcut, Lin Huang did not bother staying there any longer. He thrust his sword forward and formed ditches, paving a route on the resin. In less than five minutes, he had broken through the 50th checkpoint that had been a barrier to more than 10,000 people.

As he reached the 51st checkpoint, he immediately put his battle sword away and summoned Tyrant to get through this checkpoint.

The difficulty level from the 50th checkpoint onwards was much higher. Lin Huang spent precisely five hours to complete the 51st checkpoint. He broke through the 52nd checkpoint just when the sky was turning dark.

Lin Huang spent exactly two days getting through four checkpoints, from the 51st checkpoint to the 54th checkpoint.

Nobody expected that he would reach the humans' foothold on the 55th checkpoint. Even he himself did not expect that to happen.

At every checkpoint above the 50th checkpoint, each level was very challenging, and Lin Huang even felt like giving up. Fortunately, there were no people there, and he could perform his strongest sword realm, summoning Bai and the rest to help him out without any qualms. Even then, he only managed to reach the 55th checkpoint before the sky turned dark.

As he stepped into the 55th checkpoint, Lin Huang immediately looked for a crack on the bark and logged out of the virtual reality.