?
Half an hour later.
Liu Yang severed the head of the final Tier-6 zombie.
At the same moment, fresh text materialized on the Testing Stele.
"Congratulations! You have cleared Stage 100! The Heaven Ranking trial has ended. You have secured 1st place on the Heaven Ranking. Reward acquired: Dark Cloak."
Liu Yang blinked.
"Huh? That's it? I was just getting warmed up!"
To be completely honest, even after fighting all the way through Stage 100, Liu Yang hadn't encountered a shred of actual difficulty. If anything, the deeper he went, the more pumped up he felt.
Receiving the notification that the trial was already over left him feeling thoroughly unsatisfied.
After all, while normal awakening users sat at a meager two times human baseline stats, Liu Yang was sitting on a staggering 16.5-multiplier. Dimensional suppression on that scale made a trial like this feel like child's play.
He quickly opened his interface to inspect the reward.
[Dark Cloak: Grants temporary flight. Duration: 5 minutes. Cooldown: 1 hour. Flight speed equals twice your movement speed.]
When he saw the description, Liu Yang was genuinely surprised.
"A simple cloak actually gives flight? Holy crap, that's sick! As expected of the first-place reward for the Heaven Ranking!"
Flight was every man's dream.
Stepping onto thin air and soaring through the sky-that was the domain of gods and immortals!
And now, a single piece of gear gave him that exact capability. It was ridiculously cool.
Of course, given that his current ground speed was already 16.5 times the human baseline, flying might not actually boost his combat effectiveness all that much. But to Liu Yang, combat stats were temporary; looking awesome was forever.
Who cared how much practical utility it offered? It looked badass, and that was all that mattered.
To complement the Dark Cloak, Liu Yang reached into his Dark Space and pulled out some clothes he had looted from the supermarket. He selected a sharp, black outfit, fastened the Dark Cloak around his shoulders, and instantly looked like a solitary, high-cold rogue warrior.
Looking down at his stylish gear, Liu Yang nodded in deep approval.
'I need to find a chance to take a walk in the sky and show off in front of a crowd soon. Otherwise, wouldn't this flight ability be completely wasted?'
With that thought, Liu Yang stepped out of the stele's trial realm.
The next second, he materialized back in the real world directly outside the monument.
Scarface Mouse, White Fox, and the rest were still waiting where he had left them.
Seeing Liu Yang emerge so soon, White Fox gasped in utter disbelief. "So fast?!"
Back when she had attempted the Yellow Ranking trial, she had fought inside for three full days just to push her way through Stage 12!
Why had it taken her so long?
Because an ability user's mental energy was strictly limited. Every time you cleared a stage using your special ability, your mental energy suffered severe depletion.
You had to wait until your mental reserves were fully restored before daring to trigger the next level. Otherwise, if you entered a stage without access to your ability, defeat was absolute.
Almost every challenger relied on that exact grind-and-rest tactic.
Since candidates could choose when to advance to the next stage, the system gave them all the time they needed to recover physical stamina and mental energy.
Of course, if a challenger was fully rested and still couldn't clear the next stage, it meant they had hit the absolute ceiling of their potential.
Yet Liu Yang had only been inside for half an hour.
Didn't that mean he hadn't taken a single second to rest or restore his mental energy?
If Liu Yang knew what was going through White Fox's head, he would have scoffed with utter disdain. 'Use abilities for a trashy trial like this? Why would I need to rest when I didn't spend a single point of mental energy?'
While White Fox was still reeling from shock, Scarface Mouse suddenly shouted, "Holy shit! Boss Liu Yang's name isn't even on the Mysterious Ranking! Did the boss clear out too fast and fail to make the board at all?"
Hearing this, White Fox immediately shifted her gaze to the Earth Ranking, scanning the names at top speed.
While half an hour was barely enough time for a normal ability user to get past Stage 1, Liu Yang was a monster. The chances were slim, but what if he had somehow made it onto the Earth Ranking?
Yet, as White Fox scanned from Rank 1,000 all the way up to Rank 1, she found no trace of Liu Yang's name.
A flicker of disappointment flashed across her eyes.
'I knew it...'
Even for someone as absurdly strong as Liu Yang, clearing in just thirty minutes wasn't enough time to score a placement.
He had probably burned through all his mental energy on the very first stage and decided to abort the run early.
White Fox felt a pang of regret.
If only she had warned him beforehand! She should have told him that he could rest between stages to recharge his mental reserves instead of just giving up.
As White Fox was lamenting the wasted attempt, Wang Feifei's ecstatic voice cut through the silence.
"Hey! Look! Look at the very top of the Heaven Ranking!"
White Fox and Scarface Mouse instantly whipped their eyes toward the highest tier-the legendary Heaven Ranking. The moment their eyes hit the top spot, both of them froze as if struck by lightning.
On every list, the first-place entry was rendered dozens of times larger than any other name, blazing with blinding, brilliant golden light.
And right at the absolute peak of the Heaven Ranking, blazing like a golden sun, were two simple characters:
Liu Yang.
White Fox went completely rigid.
'This... how is this possible?!'
In thirty minutes... he had taken 1st place on the Heaven Ranking?!
It was beyond comprehension!
Every single ability user in the survivor base had attempted the Testing Stele.
After their trials, they had gathered and shared intelligence. From those discussions, they knew that while each challenger faced personalized trials, the difficulty scaled relative to individual strength-meaning the challenge was equally brutal for everyone.
The stele adjusted the trial to test every user's absolute limit.
On average, it took an hour just to get through Stage 1, while Stage 2 often took upwards of two hours. The higher the stage, the harder it became, and the longer each fight dragged out.
At the higher levels, a challenger might not even finish a single stage in a full day!
Yet Liu Yang had taken just half an hour to conquer the entire monument and claim the 1st place spot on the Heaven Ranking.
What kind of monster was he?!
Just how terrifying was his ability to pull off an impossible miracle like this?
White Fox couldn't fathom it.
As an ability user who had personally endured the brutal strain of the Testing Stele, she understood better than anyone how astronomically difficult it was to reach the Heaven Ranking-let alone top it.
Yet Liu Yang had casually done it in thirty minutes.
Did that mean other top contenders reached 1st place because their strength matched the Heaven Ranking... while Liu Yang only stopped at 1st place because the stele didn't have a higher ranking to give him?
If a God Ranking existed above it, would he have casually topped that too if he just felt like spending a few extra minutes?
After all, thirty minutes was nowhere near Liu Yang's limit!
Which meant... even the ancient Testing Stele was incapable of probing the true depths of Liu Yang's power.
Realizing this, White Fox looked at Liu Yang with an expression reserved for a divine deity.
This man wasn't human.
Calling him a god wasn't an exaggeration at all.