Within Cedric's personal dimension, he stood in the middle of an open field with his hands behind his back. His back was ramrod straight, and his eyes let out a sharp gleam of focus.
Around him, flashes of light danced. Don't be mistaken; these lights might look pretty, but they're extremely lethal. A small graze from a random one was enough to kill Prime Earth's strongest experts.
In truth, these lights were swords that came out of the sword case. There are at least ninety-nine of these swords flashing around him. Some flew in a predictable pattern, while others were either elusive or just straight-up confusing.
Additionally, each sword carried a unique power with it. Some were wreathed with flames of varying colors and temperatures. There were swords that turned into raindrops with a frightening penetrative power; others swung around and caused a tsunami that could reset civilization to the Stone Age.
There's a sword that looks ordinary but has the weight of a star. There's one that was covered with sharp shards of condensed boulders. One sword crackled with lightning and thunder, and another one was releasing potent life energy, causing the vegetation around it to grow wildly.
To put it simply, each sword that's flying around him represents Cedric's attainments over Planar Laws. All 99 swords are under his perfect control; not a single one would swerve even a milimeter away from his intended route. This shows his sheer mastery over the Sword Immortal Chapter of the Myriad Sword Catalogue.
Sigh...
Letting out a long breath, the swords around them froze in the middle of their movement as if time had stopped. With a single thought, every sword around him returned to its original form and went back to the sword case in an orderly manner.
Casting his gaze to his surroundings, he saw that the environment was already repairing all the damage he had caused just now. He took a step forward, appearing on the spiritual lake to take a brief rest. He unceremoniously discarded all of his clothes and soaked in the lake. He closed his eyes and emptied his thoughts for a bit.
Before ending his rest, he briefly scanned his body, and his cultivation was reflected in his mind's eye.
7 out of 9 Extreme Sun Apertures burned intensely with energy, signifying his firm step on the late stage of the Nine Suns Empyrean Codex. With how much energy he had in his body, he could've kept that previous formation of 99 swords all day long without sweating.
Moving his gaze away from the glaring apertures, he looked closely at his physique. All layers of his skin, every fiber of his muscles and tendons, his bones, and his marrows were all steeped in Baleful Astral Qi.
Despite the energy being dangerous or straight-up lethal for consumption, the Fiend Celestial Scripture took advantage of it and maximized its benefits. Of course, the risks have never been absent, but that's nothing a little caution couldn't prevent. And with Cedric's current achievements, he's just a few steps away from reaching the perfection of this cultivation technique.
That said, the following steps are akin to a steep mountain hike. He would need to accumulate a lot and ensure that his foundations remained extremely stable if he wanted to reach the final stage.
Then, there's the Astral Sovering Sutra, which caused every single part of his body to be steeped in spiritual energy. Honestly, making any further progress in this will take the longest out of his current cultivation techniques because of their steep requirements.
Even with Cedric's current willpower, the induced psychosis he had to endure just to cultivate this technique was frankly maddening. He could only rely on steady accumulation and constant practice to continue cultivating this.
: You have 150 years to complete this task. You can come and go as you wish.
**
Cedric blinks after receiving the message. He dismissed the system alerts and glanced at the flight of stairs, tracing it carefully until he reached the foggy peak.
"So, there's eight more mountains beyond this one?" Cedric wondered to himself. "I'm guessing that the others are taller than this one in front of me."
He then shook his head and took his first step on the flight of stairs. Immediately, he felt something that caused him to raise a brow. He ignored it for now and continued climbing up.
Cedric took a total of 19 steps up the stairs before coming to the first turn of the 20th step. As soon as he got there, a phantom appeared in front of him.
It was a blurry shadow that felt twisted beyond reason. It snarled and reached out to him, intending to tear him apart. Cedric felt a buzz in his head, but it did nothing to disturb him.
He merely raised a finger, sending out a beam of concentrated light, to deal with the mad ghost. It dissipated as soon as it was hit, and Cedric moved along.
"Tsk, I knew it."
He already anticipated that there would be troubles along the way. This was a trial, after all. If things were truly as simple as that, then he'd be disappointed. Not that he'd say this out loud, though.
What he doesn't know is that his actions just now were extremely domineering.
He wasn't the first one to receive this kind of trial. In fact, many had come before him, but none was as relaxed as he was, even at the first section of the staircase.
The sensation he felt as soon as he began climbing was, in truth, a mental disturbance. Typically, it would induce a sharp headache in the challenger, but Cedric barely felt it.
And it was most because of his achievements with the Astral Sovereign Sutra. Compared to the induced psychosis he had to endure when cultivating it, this little mental disturbance was like a breeze of fresh air to him.
All of this, including the fact that this should've been more challenging because Cedric's on the dynmic difficulty of the trial, made his previous actions truly domineering.
If the operators of the trials were to see this, they would've been speechless and doubtful if the settings of his trial were actually correct.
None of this concerns Cedric, though. His focus was on climbing this mountain and reaching the top to see what kind of technique awaited him at the top.