While the warmth from within Alex’s body did nothing to stop the pressure outside itself, it did help him feel unbothered internally. His mind wasn’t as clouded anymore and his body felt vigorous with energy.

The state Alex was in was a weird one. It was something he had always known he could use, but it only came up as a reaction to being under distress, so he could never test it out on his own.

He took a moment to understand his current situation. While he felt relief, nothing had actually changed on the outside. The weight was still there, the difficulty was the same.

It was only his mental and physical state that had changed which allowed him to continue this climb without feeling totally destroyed while doing so.

Alex found movement to be rather difficult in this state. His body seemed to think that he wasn’t being pressured anymore because he moved. As soon as he moved and it was gone, it would immediately come back, realizing that the issue had not been solved.

As Alex took a few steps, his body began getting used to the situation. Even though he moved, it no longer disappeared and reappeared as suddenly. Alex’s steps were very slow. It wasn’t just because of his current state but also the weight of it all. Even with him using all he could out of his Intent and Dao to cancel out the weight that was on his body, he was still being overpowered by the energy outside, adding tremendous weight onto him.

He tried to remove more and more and continued taking one step after another.

The more steps he took, the heavier everything got. He did his best to ignore it, but that ended up being impossible. There was no ignoring this burden on him at the moment.

All he could do was accept it and move on. Alex didn’t realize when he had entered the final 100 steps. By the time he had realized where he had come to, he had made it quite far into it. He noticed the people who were expectantly waiting for him but did not look at them fully as he did not want to distract himself from them.

He was showing off something he hadn’t wanted to until now, and he did not want to think about all the questions that he would be asked soon enough. He wanted to have nothing to do with his future problems.

That was for the future of him. The current him just needed to get to the last step.

Alex moved onward bit by bit, his spiritual energy running severely low. There wasn’t much left within him. But then again, there weren’t many steps left to climb either.

All that remained now were the final 10 steps.

The weight by now had reached close to a hundred thousand tons. Such a weight was something that no Immortal should be able to carry, even if they were both body cultivators and Qi cultivators.

At best, they would reach 19000 steps. To cross the last 1000 steps, one needed to use their Intent. Perhaps, Alex was even cheating by using his Dao and his constitution.

Not that he cared. All he cared about at the moment were the 2 other tickets he was going to receive within the next minute.

He took one step and the weight on him increased. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to take the next step.

He took another step and then another step. His legs trembled at this point, even his body’s inner warmth doing little now.

He forced himself to take another step.

The people around the peak watched as Alex took one step after another. His face was beet red by now, veins seemingly ready to burst at any moment. His entire body was damp with sweat and the weight he felt seemed to be ready to crush him at any time.

The Elders stood ready with medallions, ready to place them on him when they needed to. However, to their greatest surprise yet, they didn’t need it at all.

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Alex took one step, and then another. And after a long wait, he took the final step, crossing all 20 thousand steps of the First Mountain.

As soon as he arrived at the final step, every single bit of burden he felt vanished at once, his Intent now crashing out on nothing. It spread around at the people near him, but the Elders managed to stop it from attacking the examinees.

Alex finally let go of everything and a wave of weakness crashed onto him. The Sect Master soundlessly arrived next to Alex, grabbing him by his shoulders, not letting him fall. “You did well, child. You can rest now.”

Alex didn’t answer, taking that moment to rest. Prime Alchemist Liang stepped up next, bringing out a pill. “Here, eat this.”

He fed Alex the pill, and Alex swallowed it, with no strength to care what the pill was. The pill entered his stomach and began dissolving to release its energy.

A soothing cool wave of energy flowed into his mind, helping him recover his spiritual energy. The headache that Alex hadn’t even realized he had was gone by this point, giving him another sense of relief.

He stood up straight now and looked at the elders. He took a deep breath and bowed. “Thank you for looking after me, Elders,” he said.

The many elders gestured away the thanks, saying it was nothing.

“Are you feeling okay now?” the Alchemist asked.

“Much better, thanks to you, Elder Liang,” Alex said.

“Think of it as a reward for what you have managed to do today,” the man said. “Truly incredible.”

Alex smiled and turned to look at the Sect Master who still held him up. “Sect Master, now that I’ve climbed the entire mountain, I will get 5 tickets, right? Those were the conditions you set up.”

The Sect Master laughed out loud. “Yes, yes. Whatever you want,” he said. “I will give you all the tickets. You deserve it.”