Tower of Heaven

The 12th Floor to the 19th Floor was an intermediary area of the tower that separated the cumulative trials of the 10th and the 20th Floors.

Atlas' first impression as he moved through them wasn't the best.

They were easy trials, after all.

He finished the 12th Floor's trial without much effort, merely taking a few weeks to do it since it became harder to find beasts after a certain point.

The 13th Floor had a similar trial, but the environment was different. Rather than a forest, Atlas found himself in the ruins of what was once a great city.

The beasts he fought were not beasts either. On this floor, they were humanoid mutants that lacked any semblance of sentience.

They charged as a pack and used numbers to overcome their enemies. Naturally, their strategy didn't work on Atlas.

After he understood their strengths and weaknesses, it was easier than scamming a newbie Ascender to take them down.

Next came the 14th Floor. This floor, along with the 15th Floor, varied from the ones before it.

Rather than killing beasts, the task now was to herd them.

As if to turn Ascenders into farmers, they were made to domesticate, raise, and breed a pack of beasts into livestock that could be used for a variety of purposes.

It was strange from the start, and it didn't get more normal even after one had experienced it.

Especially since the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Floor trials returned to the same concept of killing beasts and clearing areas.

Whatever the case was, one thing remained consistent.

The trials were too easy.

Atlas was able to finish all of them by the time six months had passed since he left the 11th Floor.

Moreover, he'd done it without a single breakthrough. Before anything else, Atlas focused on clearing the trials so he wouldn't have to worry about them later.

And that was when he returned to the 12th Floor.

Six months had gone down the drain to clear these useless trials, but it wasn't all for naught.

Atlas had explored the environments of these floors several times by now, and because of that, he knew the absolute best training locations and opportunities that each floor provided.

He currently had several breakthroughs to make.

In the Mortal Realms, body cultivation was far simpler than energy cultivation.

The realms didn't need much explanation outside of their names, and progressing between them also wasn't nuanced at all.

There were really only two caveats to body cultivation.

Pain and price.

Every level of body cultivation was to free one's physical form from the shackles of humanity. It was a long process consisting of the constant destruction and reconstruction of the body to bring it closer to perfection.

Along with the dubious amounts of training necessary to prepare one's body to enter the next stage, dubious amounts of training were needed to improve mentality as well.

After all, the true physical pain of body cultivation was unbearable from the lowest level, and the pain only scaled with realm.

The instant a cultivator gave up because of the pain, their journey down the body cultivation path was over.

Even lives could be lost at times.

Atlas didn't remember much about his past life, but he was sure that he wasn't a stranger to pain.

However, as his pain tolerance in this body was still abysmal, he couldn't just jump into body cultivation.

The necessary resources for strengthening the body were costly.

Luckily, Atlas had the Formation Spark. With the information in his mind, he could create his own mixture of medicines and herbs to reach his goals.

The raw materials were cheaper than the combined products, after all.

However, Atlas was in a precarious situation. Considering that he was a fugitive who Heaven's Gate was searching for, he couldn't necessarily run around spending money.

If his expenses became too large, the forces above would begin to question where his money came from.

That would be far too big of a problem for Atlas to want any part in.

He needed to stop for a moment and simply train to bring his body to where it needed to be.

The 12th-19th Floors housed their own trials, sure, but they were not the main purpose for these intermediaries.

No, these eight floors were an extension of the tutorial.

This was the perfect place for a cultivator to develop the appropriate power necessary to confidently climb the tower.

It was a shame that not many were using it for this purpose, but that was better for Atlas.

'I can monopolize the opportunities that I find.'

And he could do it without breaking a sweat.

That was Atlas' original plan when he started his training.

But all of that changed after a while.

Six months turned into a year. A year turned into two, and by the time those two became five, Atlas was already finding other ways to make use of his time.

That urge first came to him after two years in the first group of intermediary floors.

He was on the 13th Floor training his body when he first started to take notice of the other Ascenders around him.

Where he easily maneuvered through difficult situations, they found themselves stuck. Where he found natural solutions, they encountered roadblocks.

It had to be remembered. Atlas…wasn't all that talented.

He definitely had his advantages, and the Heavenly Unification Law gave his body more potential with every breakthrough he made, but that didn't change his starting point.

The current Atlas, who was still in the Warrior Realms, did not have enough talent to be matched with people like Artemia.

The only reason he could keep up with them was due to the wealth of knowledge stored in his mind.

If he wasn't a reincarnated expert, would he have been just like them?

Perhaps it was pity that drove him. Perhaps it was boredom or the desire for some change in his lifestyle. It might have even been a move made out of sheer desire for the spotlight.

Whatever the case, Atlas took long breaks from his training, sometimes lasting a few months at a time.

He would enter the 12th Floor, disguised and nameless, and incomprehensibly, he would help those who struggled.

He saved some who were almost swallowed by the jaws of death, he aided in the hunting of monsters for those who didn't have the capacity to kill on their own, and most importantly…

He taught them.

Without bias, without judgement, he taught those who were willing to learn.

He helped them understand how to tame Spiritual Energy and control qi. He showed them where they were wrong and how to correct their mistakes.

And gradually, those people who couldn't fend for themselves transformed into proper cultivators.

It was incredibly rewarding to watch.

But Atlas wasn't doing it to get recognized. Despite his visits to the outside increasing in frequency, he never revealed his name, his appearance, or even his voice.

His mysterious visage had received several titles from the Ascenders who'd heard his rumor and listened to his teachings.

To Atlas, it was just a pastime as he worked hard to improve his own cultivation.

But to those he helped, he was like an angel, a true Divine who gave them a second chance at life.

The Guide. That was what they called him.

Its simplicity was only a testament to the position he held in their hearts.

However, the man who'd earned himself such a title…

…didn't know a single thing about the implications of his casual actions.