Alex felt as though the weight of the entire world was on his shoulders. In reality, the weight was closer to 3 thousand tons, but he was at his capacity and didn’t think he could continue any further.

He looked ahead of him and barely anyone was there any longer. Only a few cultivators still struggled ahead, while the majority of them already gave up.

Alex was halfway in between 13 thousand and 14 thousand steps, with a third of the way still up ahead of him. Alas, this was the most he could go.

He could continue on much longer, but only if he dared to use his body to ignore the aura pressuring him so much.

Alex did not dare to do so at the moment. It wasn’t just to hide what his body could do from others. It was also so he didn’t feel a moment of relief. The moment he stopped struggling and the weight returned, he knew he was going to get folded onto the ground.

He took a few deep breaths, taking another step. Whether he liked it or not, this was also fantastic training. Especially in terms of body cultivation, this was an incredible time that he couldn’t just miss out on.

That was one of the reasons he hadn’t given up just yet. He wanted to take as long as he could here and improve his body with the help of the aura around him.

Alex took another step and the weight increased some more. He gritted his teeth and grunted while taking another step.

He stopped at that step, bearing all the pressure on top of him, refusing to buckle under the pressure.

‘I will stand!’ Alex told himself. ‘I will fight this pressure. I won’t give up!’

A stubbornness had formed inside of him, not wanting to lose to the pressure whatsoever. He took another step and then another. He started believing in himself more and more. He started believing that he could do it.

He started believing and what he believed slowly became true.

Alex willed the pressure around him to lessen and it did. It was a tiny amount, but it was something he noticed. It was as if a few tons of weight had been stripped off all of a sudden.

Surprise filled him at first and then confusion. ‘What happened?’ he thought. The weight returned quickly, pressuring him once again.

Clearly, something had happened.

‘Where did the weight go?’ Alex wondered. He took a deep breath and retraced his steps just then. He told himself he could go on further and that the pressure could not do anything to him.

It worked again. A bit of the pressure relieved, allowed Alex to take another step.

‘It worked!’ Alex thought. ‘Did it work because I willed it to happen?’

Soon enough, he came to realize what it was. Intent. His Intent on the fact that the pressure would lessen did lessen the pressure.

Just because he intended for something to happen, it happened. Intent was an incredible thing

Alex took a deep breath and let out his intent in full. He could not be stopped. The pressure did not affect him. He could go on further.

With his Intent focused on just these things, half the pressure around him disappeared around him at once.

He fought back a lot of the pressure with just his Intent, allowing his body and Qi to have an easier time with the remaining. Now that he felt much better, Alex began climbing higher and higher.

* * * * * *

Up at the peak of the mountain, people looked down at the remaining people who were still climbing the mountain, giving it their all. A total of 20 or so people remained still, and of them, everyone had their eyes on Alex

After all, he was the only one there with the weakest cultivation base, and yet he had made it this far up.

Lan Douhan had already been surprised when he saw Alex pass the 13 thousand steps mark. Even when he first joined the sect nearly 2 thousand years ago, he had only managed to make it up to the 14 thousand steps as a late Immortal Origin realm cultivator.

And somehow, while being in the very first step of his Immortal journey, Alex had reached nearly the same steps as his.

When Alex suddenly sped up and crossed over 500 steps in less than 10 minutes, Lan Douhan’s mind could not understand what was happening.

He was not the only one surprised. Many of the other people gasped when they noticed that. They began questioning what he had done to gain such momentum.

“Elder Shang, is he…” Lan Douhan looked at the old woman whose eyes looked as though it was sparkling brightly.

“He’s using his Intent,” the woman said softly. “Was it on accident or does he know?”

Intent mattered quite a bit for the lower realms, but not as much. Even in the Immortal realm, Intent truly only mattered around the Immortal Transcendent realm, or when using Dao or performing some high-intensity tasks.

But in the higher realms, it could be said to be the only thing that was the most important. Some would even argue as much as to say that Intent was much more important than Qi itself.

Very few people knew the true importance of Intent. The old woman was not one of the people that knew it at all. Even so, from what she knew, she could already see just how important it was.

After all, with enough Intent, one could fight the heavens itself. Fighting off a bit of aura was nothing at all.

Still, seeing how Alex could do so with his pitiful amount of Spiritual energy quite surprised the old woman.

‘Where did he improve his Intent to such a degree?’ she wondered. She could never imagine that Alex had trained his Intent while learning the Sword Domain in a place where Godkiller’s Intent ran wild.

‘Hmm?’ the old woman noticed something. ‘Oh, crap!’ * * * * * * *

Alex walked one step after another, climbing up the mountain. He quickly reached 14 thousand steps and continued climbing. With his Intent bearing most of the burden, he could let his body continue going up and up.

Alex focused everything on fighting the aura that surrounded him, with barely any focus remaining on climbing at all. That was a monotonous task that he now did without even thinking.

Alex had been bearing so much burden that he didn’t even realize that he was being hurt in more than just one way right now.

Because he had been using his Intent to bear so much of the pressure, he had grown a headache that he didn’t even realize he had. As he continued, his spiritual energy continued depleting, which he simply didn’t have enough of his attention to realize.

The pain in his mind was no different than the pain in his body at the moment, which had been going on for the past half a day.

When Alex finally did realize what was going on, it was already too late. When his spiritual energy ended, his Intent could no longer sustain the pressure he had been keeping at bay, so everything he had been ignoring came crashing down on his body at once.

Alex lost consciousness.