1644 The Celestial Peak

When Alex was requested to get ready to leave, it was still 2 hours past midnight. He took no time to be ready and within 15 minutes, everyone was gathered outside on the streets where few people still walked and most of the shops were closed.

The moon was out, glimmering like a pale sphere of silver with a piece missing on the side. The spotless moon was otherwise beautiful in the open night.

"Perfect!" King Wan said as he looked to the sky. "No clouds today, so the views will be better than we could've hoped for. You should consider yourself lucky, Your Majesty. It's not every day that we see such a cloudless night."

Alex nodded but said nothing.

"Did we have to leave this early?" Yao Ning asked with a slightly annoyed look on her face. "It's still the middle of the night. When does the sun rise anyway? 5 in the morning?" she asked.

"Today it will rise some 20 minutes past 5 in the morning," one of the subordinates next to the King answered her question.

"So, we still have 3 hours. Isn't this a bit too early?" she asked. "I can see the peak right there. Even if it is the tallest mountain in the world, would it take us more than 20 minutes to fly up there?" 

"Senior Yao," the King began speaking. "The Celestial Peak does appear close for us, but it is not so. And we cannot fly all the way up to the peak. We will have to walk a quarter of the way to the peak, which is why we need to leave as soon as possible."

"We cannot fly all the way up there?" Alex asked. "Why?"

The King was about to answer when one of his counselors, a man in a bright purple robe answered. "If you do not know about this, it will be better if you experience this yourself," he said.

The King quickly nodded. "Right, it will be better for you to experience it yourself," he said.

Alex gave a doubtful look but said nothing.

"Should we leave then?" Liang Shufen asked impatiently.

"Yes, we should," the King said and was about to turn around to lead when he seemed to remember something and looked back. "Oh right, I should warn you about something before we leave."

His gaze turned toward the two elders instead of Alex when he spoke again. "If either of you seniors has a Yin-based cultivation or has some Yin constitution, it would be better if you prepared yourself. No one has been harmed just yet because of it, but… they are weakened a lot when they go to the Celestial Peak and take some days to recover themselves."

Alex frowned when he heard that. Neither Yao Ning nor Liang Shufen had a cultivation base with Yin being any vital part of it, but he did. His body constantly created Yin and if something happened to Yin while he was up there, it would be bad.

It would be especially bad if the Yin backfired on the people, and he was an especially dangerous variant of Yin, one that was most likely comparable to Immortal Qi.

"What's so bad about Yin?" Alex asked the man.

"Well, it's like…" the King tried to think of ways to explain. "It's like quenching a red hot iron rod in cold water. The suddenness of what happens makes a woman, and sometimes a man weak afterward."

"Quenching an iron rod?" Alex frowned a little. "Is is the coldness at the top of the Celestial Peak?"

The Celestial Peak could even now be seen without any snow, but anyone who knew about heights knew that the higher you went, the colder it got. The Ebony mountain ranges weren't known for being snow mountains, but at the height that the Celestial Peak was, it very well might as well have been a snow mountain. 

Only, because the Peak was so high, even clouds did not reach the top. The celestial peak looked like a sword thrust out of the ground, reaching for the heavens.

"His Majesty spoke wrong," one of the Counselors said. "What he meant to say is the exact opposite. Instead of a red hot iron to water, it would be like pouring drops of water into a red hot iron."

"Ah, right, my bad," the King said swiftly. "I wasn't trying to make a comparison to Yin and Yang when I said that, but with hot and cold, I should have realized. it is exactly this way."

"Yin and Yang," Alex appeared surprised at that. Drops of water to a red hot iron. He understood what they were trying to say. "Is there a lot of Yang at the top of the Celestial Peak?"

That sounded ridiculous. How could a place so cold possibly have enough Yang to cause a person with Yin to have problems? Or was he wrong in considering this place to be cold in the first place?

"If you do not have to worry about your Yin being stripped away for a few days, we should be moving," the King said. "The rest you should experience on your own and find out. Having me tell you everything here will not be much fun."

Alex thought for a bit and nodded. As long as the problem with Yin was only for a few days, he would be fine. In the first place, the only thing Yin had to do with him was his Undying Physique and that was only to improve it.

There was nothing for him to worry about.

They set off immediately, the group of nearly 10 flying toward the Celestial peak.

As they flew, the mountain got closer and closer to them, but even after flying for nearly 15 minutes, they weren't at its feet. They had thought the mountain was close, close enough to reach the peak in a matter of a few minutes, but now they realized how mistaken they were.

The mountain was the tallest mountain they had ever seen, but that was still while they were far away. Nearly half an hour later when they were finally at its feet they realized just how tall the mountain was.

Like look at a cliff wall, the mountain stood tall and erect for thousands and thousands of meters into the sky. Even as he tried to, Alex failed to see the very peak from where he stood. His head was fully tilted back and even with that, it was hard to see the peak that slanted just beyond what was visible from here.

"The mountains surrounding the Celestial Peak are tall by nature, with over 15 kilometers of vertical height, but the Celestial Peak itself stands nearly 22 kilometers tall," the King explained.

Alex gulped at the height. 22 kilometers tall. What the hell sort of height was that?

Even when flying through the sky within the clouds in large ships that crossed continents, the height was never over 10 kilometers, if that. And the height of the Celestial Peak was more than double that.

"There are exactly 5 peaks in the Celestial Peak, each at a lower height, but the one people refer to when they say Celestial Peak is usually the one that is at the very top, the one we will be going for today," the King said. "The lower peaks are for weaker cultivators to claim, so we should have no worries about reaching the top. Although you will still struggle a little even as strong as you are."

Both Yao Ning and Liang Shufen's faces had paled at the height of the mountain. They seemed to both fear something and realize something at the same time, but they didn't bother telling Alex.

From what he thought he saw, what they realized was supposed to be something obvious. Although what it could be, Alex couldn't see.

It was probably a realization that came with age and experience, and Alex didn't have very much of that just yet. He was going to get one today it seemed.

"Let us climb," he said.

With a nod from the Ebony king, they all started flying.

The mountain known as the Celestial Peak was nearly 7 kilometers wide at the widest part, and while sparse trees covered it at the feet, after about the 4 kilometer range, no tree or wildlife could be seen.

Alex could see paths along the top, made by both mortals and cultivators who dared to climb the thing. While most flew, there were still many that climbed on foot.

The mountain itself was full of giant rocks that studded out of the ground, along with winding paths created through years of rain and wind.

Around 7 kilometers, Alex felt the slight lack of air resistance that was always there when they flew and at 9, it was almost nothing. Flying was simple right now and they continued flying upward.

However, when he reached 12 kilometers, the resistance returned. It didn't return immediately, but it was there and it was getting stronger.

When he crossed the 13 kilometers, it was stronger, and at 15 it was now stronger than when flying normally. And unlike regular air resistance, he couldn't even work around it with his technique.

At this point, he understood that there was no regular resistance. His Qi was failing to push him upward. It was still doing a good enough job for now, but at some point, he understood that it would become impossible for him to continue flying.

It was at 17 kilometers when it happened, and that was when they all landed on the side of the mountain, with the remaining climbing to be done on foot.