Chapter 198: Life 70, Age 34, Martial King Peak
Five years after arriving in Earth City, I made my first visit to the Lightning Peak since ascending to Martial King. I was a Peak King, and I was wearing a silver Rank 6 refined robe embroidered with formations of lapis lazuli.
By showing off LiTing’s equipment, I was giving the game away a bit early, but I was worried the Master of the Lightning Peak might have rigged the Trial, so I needed to be prepared to go all out.
Upon entering the Trial, I tried relying on my Profound-Rank wind-based fire seed, but even with its elemental advantage, it lacked the stopping power that it had possessed in the lower-Rank Trials. However, the decreased effectiveness of the fire seed wasn’t enough to stop me. This was a Trial designed for a King, and I was wearing the armor of an Emperor. Nothing was able to hurt me, and nothing could withstand a single strike from my staff.
Not knowing how high the Trial could go, I considered pushing the limits to see what happened, but there was little reason to do so. At stage 159, my lightning affinity broke through to peak four-star. I continued for another 10 stages after that, but there were no additional rewards, so I gave up and didn’t waste my time.
Whoever was watching, the Masters of the Peaks, the Sovereigns, the Saint, they would see this Trial wasn’t a challenge for me. If they cared about knowing how deep I could go, they would offer me a reward. There was no reward, so they didn’t care.
Even I had to admit that was fair. At this point, the only thing this Trial was testing was the quality of my armor and weapon. Spending all the energy that had to be required to run a Trial would be an extremely wasteful way to test that.
Upon exiting, I walked casually to the arch back to Dragon Peak. No one tried to stop me, and I didn’t receive any messages from the Master of the Peak. I had a suspicion that this might have been different if I had shown any weaknesses during the Trial.
However, I didn’t let my guard down. The Master of the Lightning Peak had shown what type of person he was in my last life when he sent gu to invade my soul. I could only assume that he was keeping his powder dry for when I attempted to ascend to Heaven City.
After returning to Earth City, I set about advancing to Martial Emperor. Purchasing enough karmic energy for everyone to advance to Emperor 1 was a bit of a hit to our finances, but while LiTing and I spent our time crafting, the others went out on missions to rack up as many points as they could.