And so, Li Wen, who had just caused a massive stir in the Enlightenment Tower but was now moving as slow as a snail, once again became the focus of everyone’s attention.
Countless gazes, filled with curiosity and scrutiny, focused on his unhurried figure.
Thanks to his previous achievement of ranking second on the Enlightenment Tower’s overall leaderboard, no one dared to look down on Li Wen in the slightest, despite his current slowness.
Li Wen paid no mind to the gazes or the people ahead of him.
He wasn’t deliberately stalling.
Rather, he had keenly perceived that the sense of loneliness pervading these Solitary Stairs, though so faint as to be almost negligible, seemed to truly contain a trace of essential power capable of honing one’s will.
’Since I’m not in a hurry, and this tempering seems genuinely beneficial—no matter how small the benefit—I’m not willing to miss it.’
So, he maintained a steady rhythm, climbing upward one step at a time, focused and calm.
Time flowed by in silence.
The tens of millions of contestants quickly separated into tiers.
The first-tier group at the very front had already advanced with unstoppable momentum, climbing over ten thousand steps.
At such extreme heights, their figures resembled tiny points of light clinging to a giant pyramid.
Astonishingly, Ling Xuzi, who had taken first place in the Enlightenment Tower, was now displaying a terrifying mental fortitude on the will-testing Solitary Stairs that perfectly matched his talent.
He wasn’t taking a hundred steps at a time like some of the "flyers."
Instead, every step was as precise and steady as if it had been measured, his speed constant and astonishing.
He was firmly positioned at the very front of the first tier, an unshakable anchor.
However, several other top geniuses from the Enlightenment Tower’s top ten, such as Time Shadow of the Holy Land of Time and Illusory of the Mimeng Dynasty, were not ranked at the very top on the stairs. Though still among the frontrunners, their brilliance seemed overshadowed by some new faces.
Many of those charging ahead in the first tier were, in fact, individuals whose performance in the Enlightenment Tower rankings had been unremarkable, some even considered merely middle-of-the-pack.
Among them was that brawny, axe-wielding man who, at the very beginning, had been full of ambition and declared that willpower was the one true path to victory.
This seemed to prove his point: on the battlefield of willpower, talent wasn’t everything.
Compared to these figures who moved like lightning, Li Wen’s speed seemed exceptionally mediocre.
He was neither in the lowest tier at the back nor had he broken into the front ranks; he was firmly situated in the middle of the massive pack of contestants, neither rising nor falling.
Among the one thousand contestants from the Alka Empire, the most outstanding performer was still Blood Slaughter Barton.
This fiend, who had clawed his way out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, exuded an aura of rock-solid tenacity.
Every step he took was heavy and powerful.
He was firmly entrenched in the middle of the first tier, carrying the banner for the Alka Empire.
「Meanwhile, in the Virtual Cosmos.」
The trillions of spectator spaces, which spanned the entire known Star Domain, had long been drowned in a tsunami of sound.
Countless spectators cheered wildly, rooting for their empires and the contestants they supported.
In the Alka Empire’s exclusive viewing area, the atmosphere was even more scorching, like a furnace.
Countless pairs of eyes were glued to the light screen displaying the real-time rankings on the stairs, searching for two names: Barton and Li Wen.
"Barton! Attaboy! Go! I knew it! I knew the Solitary Stairs would be your home turf!"
A middle-aged man, his face flushed with excitement, waved his fists, spittle flying everywhere. "He crawled his way out of a pile of corpses, experienced the cruelest despair and slaughter! His will is absolutely indestructible!
This is the stage where he can truly shine!"
"That’s right! Blood Slaughter Barton will definitely break into the top hundred! He’ll bring glory to our Alka!" the people nearby chimed in, their faces brimming with pride and anticipation.
Barton’s stable performance in the first tier greatly boosted the confidence of the Alka spectators.
As for Li Wen, however, the discussions were more varied.
"The God of Slaughter, Li Wen... His rank is still in the middle? Isn’t that a little slow?" someone asked with a hint of worry, looking at Li Wen’s lackluster ranking.
"What do you know!" someone immediately retorted, their tone filled with absolute trust in Li Wen.
"Don’t forget the Enlightenment Tower! Who had any faith in him at the beginning? And in the end? He took second place on the overall leaderboard!
The ways of the great God of Slaughter are not for us mortals to speculate on. He definitely has his own plan!"
"Right! Maybe this is all part of his strategy for the Solitary Stairs! Just like how he was cultivating in the Enlightenment Tower, he’s using these stairs to temper himself! He’s building a strong foundation to unleash his power later!"
"Exactly! Good things come to those who wait. Lord Li Wen is being steady and careful; he’ll definitely catch up later! He and Lord Barton are the twin stars of our Alka!"
Despite some disagreement about Li Wen’s current ranking, the spectators of the Alka Empire held absolute confidence and fervent hope for both Barton and Li Wen.
Barton’s fierce tenacity made their blood boil with excitement, while Li Wen’s inscrutable nature sparked their boundless imagination.
...
「In the blink of an eye, half a day had passed like sand through an hourglass.」
The brutal elimination rate on the Solitary Stairs was far beyond anything seen in the Enlightenment Tower.
In just that short half-day, the figures of over five million contestants had vanished from the towering staircase.
All that remained on the vast stairs were increasingly sparse figures, each with an ever more condensed aura.
At this moment, the elites of the first tier finally reached the hundred-thousandth step—a major watershed.
At this point, everyone’s pace had inevitably grown heavy and sluggish.
The nonchalant ease with which they once crossed several steps in a single bound was long gone.
Even the most supreme geniuses were now like common mountain climbers, laboriously moving upward, pausing with every single step.
Every step they took seemed to consume an immense amount of mental energy just to resist the all-pervasive erosion of that lonely will.