The giant stair sword began shifting in a way that made it look like the stairs were moving on their own. As this was happening, the endless staircase they were on began rumbling and shaking. Small rocks started to fall from above them, landing on top of their heads and shoulders. Bing tried lifting his shield and placing it above their heads to protect against the falling debris but it seems it was unneeded.

“Don’t worry! I have everything under control!” Ying shouted.

“Are you sure!?” Bing’s fat couldn’t stop shaking along with the shaking of the staircase.

  Jie held on to Shang’s back with one hand and had her sword ready to protect herself in her other hand. Shang held a talisman in between his fingers, ready to activate them at a moment's notice. Bing and the other had no choice but to believe in Ying’s words because they had no reason to think that she would lie about something like this! The stairs below them started to move from their original positions.

  Previously when they ventured down the dark staircase, it was shaped into a downward spiral. But whatever Ying was doing was somehow controlling the steps themselves. They struggled to balance themselves as the stairs split itself from the rock pillar it was twisting around. Looking down, they could only see darkness below them. Both Bing and Jie shook in fright once they realized that wherever these steps led to definitely wasn’t a normal place.

  Shang crouched on his floating stair and grabbed one of the falling rocks from above. Taking a deep breath, he tossed the rock down below and placed his ear over the edge of his platform. One second, two seconds, three seconds... Even after 10 seconds had passed, he still couldn’t hear the sound of the rock he threw landing.

“Do not fall!” He quickly warned.

“Wasn’t planning on it, but thanks anyway!” Bing did everything he could to lighten his body and stay completely still on his floating platform.

  He was a big person and with all the width he had, if he made the slightest movement, his floating stair could tilt one way and send him sliding off down below. While he was confident in the toughness of his body, he wasn’t crazy enough to think he could survive a fall from this height. Bing couldn't hear any of the pebbles falling from above landing below. It was pretty obvious to say that they were pretty damn high up!

“Ying! How long is this going to take?!” Jie politely shouted, standing as still as a stone sculpture.

  Ying’s eyes were currently closed as she was doing her best to concentrate on controlling the staircase to make a pathway down below for them and making sure her friends didn’t fall to their deaths. Qi control wasn’t something she specialized in and it turns out controlling this spirit tool in the form of an infinite staircase took a lot of damn qi control to properly use! Hao Gang even had to step in to support her in controlling the Infinite Staircase but it still wasn’t enough to fully connect all of the stairs together to reach the bottom.

“Damn it!” Ying cursed.

  Now that Hao Gang has swallowed a piece of the spirit tool, Ying could no longer use her fire qi as long as she held him in her hand. Normally when her anger flares up, she would erupt in flames but now that she was utilizing a very unique type of qi something else happened instead. A small piece of a staircase grew on top of her stair sword. There were originally four steps going upward on her blade but now there were five.

  Feeling this change happen to her sword gave Ying an idea... Instead of trying to stupidly control each individual step of this Infinite Staircase, she could just make her own steps by feeding her qi into Hao Gang. But Ying knew she couldn’t just stop controlling the staircase yet. Bing, Jie, and Shang were still floating in the air. So, Ying infused a large amount of qi into Hao Gang.

  Several steps grew from the tip of her unusual stair blade. Ying pointed her sword downward so that it created a path to the bottom.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Jump over!” Ying yelled to them.

“Are you sure about this...?” Bing nervously rubbed the back of his head.

“Be a man and jump already!” Ying shouted in response.

  Jie, Shang, and Bing all leaped off of their platforms together. Each of them landed on Ying’s sword and it wobbled from their combined weight. The veins on Ying’s arms revealed themselves as she put more strength into her arms to hold them all up and continue building steps to reach the bottom with. Now that they were all on her sword, she didn’t have to bother controlling her qi so carefully. Ying no longer held herself back as she infused most of her qi into the Infinite Staircase Greatsword. Hundreds of steps grew from the tip of the blade in seconds, extending into the deep darkness below.

“Bing! Qi Recovery Cake! Feed me!” Ying ordered.

  Bing wasted no time in doing as she asked. He took out a piece of the cake from his storage ring, used his finger to open up Ying’s mouth, and placed it on her tongue.

“Sorry about this!” Bing apologized as he was feeding her.

  Ying couldn’t repress her inner desires despite this life-or-death situation they were going through right now. When Bing’s finger touched her lip and he was about to place the cake into her mouth, her tongue gently licked at his fingers before he removed his fingers and left the cake in her mouth.

  Heat rushed to her face as she thought how shameful her actions were. Ying was really glad that it was dark in here or everyone would be able to see how badly she was blushing. She quickly chewed the cake as she tried taking her mind off of licking Bing’s fingers like a pervert. He wasn’t saying anything, so he must have just thought it was an accident, right?

‘This must be pretty serious if she needed me to feed her...’ Was Bing’s only thoughts before he mindlessly licked his finger of the cake icing left on his finger.

‘You fat idiot! What are you doing!?’ If Ying’s face was red before, now it was a deep burning flame.

  A floating step bashed itself into Bing’s head.

“Ow! Be careful!” Bing rubbed his head, assuming it was only a mistake on Ying’s part.

“Don’t rush me!” Ying barked back at the perverted fat idiot. There’s no way he licked his fingers because she licked his, right? It couldn’t be...

“Hey Zhai, do you have a spell that could help her recover her qi faster?” Bing asked.

“I do but it seems like it would be unnecessary.” Shang replied.

“Huh? What do you mean?” Bing was a body cultivator. He couldn’t sense qi signatures as well as qi cultivators.

“The amount of qi that she is using isn’t increasing or decreasing. If she was running low on energy, her qi would be slowly or quickly falling. So, I assume that cake you fed her is doing its job properly.” Shang explained.

“So, I guess we wait now, huh?” Jie took a seat on the stairs and took a deep breath.

“I’ll get us down eventually. Just wait a bit.” Ying told them.

  And wait they did. It took around three hours before Ying’s staircase extended far down enough to reach the bottom. Every ten minutes, Ying had to feed another piece of the stairs to Hao. The transformation only lasted for ten minutes. Luckily for Ying, there was no resting period before Hao could transform again. Otherwise, they might have been trapped here forever.

  Once their path to the bottom was finally completed, they rushed down the steps as fast as possible. They wasted so much time making a way to the bottom, who knows how long they had to loot before the second portion of the test was over. Upon making it to the bottom, they were greeted by blinding gold, weapons, and all sorts of shiny objects, an altar with a bluish-white flame floating over it, and a skeleton draped in luxurious robes sitting on a throne with a brown book in his lap.

“I call the Mystic Flame!” Ying didn’t give anyone the chance to react as she shot forward with great speed and grabbed at the floating fireball.

“Well, it's not like anyone else has an affinity for fire here...” Bing rolled his eyes as he headed toward the left gold pile. Specifically keeping his distance from the flame

  Jiajia forcefully kept him away from the flame. Her touch was cold like ice but even so, he could feel her claws trembling in fear as she held him. She put on a tough face but he could tell whatever that flame was, terrified her to her core. It even made him a bit uneasy for some reason. His arm broke out in goosebumps and sweat dripped from his skin just by making eye contact with the flame.

“I’ll try my luck with the skeleton...” Shang walked towards the throne.

“I’ll see what's in this pile then.” Jie took the right gold pile.

“Huhuhuhu... So, you wish to take my treasure, is that it?” A disembodied voice playfully laughed from above them.