The Human and Epicseek Kings were gone, and the Imagination King and Miao were fighting in an unknown part of the void. Meanwhile, Lu Yun’s competition with the Alchemist King was nearing its climax.
The Alchemist King’s cultivation level and strength far eclipsed Lu Yun’s. Though his supplemental phenomenon couldn’t deploy a combat art like the young man’s could, it was still uncommonly ferocious.
This kind of phenomenon was a combination of supplemental dao, mental strength, and Hongmeng qi. It provided the basis of battle between supplemental kings. Their battles were extremely dangerous as the slightest misstep would, at best, result in one crippled through the destruction of their supplemental dao, and at worst, doomed for all eternity when one’s soul flew apart.
The two split their attention between refining pills and directing their phenomenon to attack each other. As aggressive as the Alchemist King’s was and despite the superior strength it was bringing to bear, it couldn’t rise to the level of deploying combat arts that Lu Yun’s was capable of.
“How is this possible, how is this possible?!” Alchemist started howling within his heart. He sent his phenomenon forward in frenzied action, trying to pressure Lu Yun into a mistake. His own fingers still flew rapidly through pill seals without missing a beat.
The Alchemist King’s length of experience showed. He was almost immortal since there was no order of time in the Hongmeng. That was more than enough time to temper one’s supplemental dao and raise one’s power.
If rounded down, the ending digits of the Alchemist King’s cultivation tenure would be greater than Lu Yun’s age—an age that included Lu Yun’s past self in the mythological realm. The Alchemist King’s accumulated experience wasn’t something that Lu Yun could measure up to.
On the other hand, Lu Yun possessed the Tome of Life and Death and a level greater than the Alchemist King’s—the fourth realm! Just this alone elevated him a hundred times over the Alchemist King!
Lu Yun was taking everything into stride even now; the Alchemist King’s phenomenon didn’t exert the slightest pressure over him. Not even the clashes between the various heavyweights earlier had impacted him.
In fact, he’d surreptitiously incorporated his supplemental dao into the Alchemist King’s through the blows of their phenomena. His opponent’s supplemental dao was indeed much stronger than Lu Yun’s and his grasp of pill dao much higher. The gap between the two of them couldn’t be surmounted by time.
Meanwhile, Lu Yun benefited from being at a vastly more sophisticated level than the Alchemist King. He could draw on the other’s supplemental dao without giving anything away and derive inferences to excel beyond the source.
His movements gradually became more skillful and unpredictable. They carried a hint of the Alchemist King at first, but Lu Yun slowly expunged Alchemist’s flaws and weaknesses from his methods and retained only the essence.
To discard the dross and keep the core.
“What?! He’s stealing from my pill dao!” Being a wily old fox, Alchemist quickly understood what was taking place when he saw the changes in Lu Yun’s motions. He’d kept a close eye on the young man throughout the refinement process.
“Hmph, how dare that Immortal King blatantly copy me like this?!” Alchemist shook with anger when he discovered that he’d inadvertently become his enemy’s teacher. There was nothing he could do about it now as his refinement had reached a critical point. The slightest deviation would mark the failure of his efforts.
He acted with decisiveness that was worthy of his reputation. Destroying his phenomenon, he incorporated it into his cauldron and enhanced his pills with it.
“So what if you’ve learned from my supplemental dao? I gleaned a bit of the secret of combat arts through yours! That is an incredible realm of profoundness, so the tiny bit of experience you leeched off me doesn’t matter.” A smile appeared on his face; he’d plainly gained much more than Lu Yun had.
However, he’d overlooked one detail. Lu Yun’s realm was vast and he sorely needed the reflections of distilled experience to support it. Though Alchemist had pried into a bit of what Lu Yun grasped, the little bit he saw was completely inconsequential to the Immortal King.
Lu Yun had easily gained the essence of a lifetime’s worth of experience and traded forgettable skills for it, whereas Alchemist had expended almost all of his energy to digest just a little bit of Lu Yun’s realm. It was more a loss than a gain.
Rumble!
Thunderclouds blew into the skies and a pill tribulation was upon them. Lu Yun and the Alchemist King had completed their pills at the same time; both cauldrons reached the level of summoning a pill tribulation!
Their tribulations were one entity and one combined tribulation. The doubled might covered half of Multitude City with heavy clouds.
How big was Multitude City?
Bigger than all of the first realm and unending without end. A tribulation that covered half of the city was supremely terrifying!
Countless kings lifted their heads and considered the purple-black tribulation clouds with awe. This was a pill tribulation and not a cultivation tribulation. As encompassing as a pill tribulation might be, it wouldn’t drag in innocents, so there was no need for them to worry.
“Immortal King!” Alchemist suddenly called out. “Use your lightning rod on just your pill tribulation, don’t touch mine!”
Though the two tribulations were melded into one, they would still fork into two bolts of lightning to separately attack the two cauldrons.
“Whether a heavenly or pill tribulation, they’re all a result of karmic retribution! When you employ cheap tricks to evade a tribulation, that karmic repercussion remains inside the pill. Whoever takes it will suffer the consequences and be struck with a tribulation in the future!
“Cultivators who use lightning rods to avoid heavenly tribulations are the same! You can run from the tribulation, but you can’t hide from the repercussions. You will suffer that judgment one day and be doomed beyond salvation!” Alchemist took advantage of the tribulation to attack Lu Yun and tarnish his reputation through the lightning rods.
His words had an immediate effect since many cultivators watching the competition, or their descendants, had used Lu Yun’s lightning rods to pass through a tribulation unscathed. According to the Alchemist King, hadn’t they just postponed their tribulation? It would return with a devastating fury when the time was right!
“Alchemist King, you’re just a king of pill dao. No, you don’t even count as one since the Hongmeng Tower gave you the title of ‘Alchemist’ and not ‘Pill’ King.” Lu Yun met the accusation head on. “You say my lightning rod is a cheap trick to avoid a heavenly tribulation, but do you understand refining treasures? Do you understand heavenly tribulations? Do you understand karma?”
“I have roamed the land for a hundred million years and naturally know more than you!” sneered the Alchemist King as he took out a formation disk and set it up around his pill cauldron. The Wild Formation King had given it to him to endure the unusually strong tribulation.
“Karma and tribulations are inescapably intertwined with each other. If you don’t use heavenly lightning to negate the karma found within each cultivator or pill, the disaster it brings in the future will be even more horrifying! Young thing, you are too short-sighted!” Alchemist smirked.
Rumble!
The pill tribulation arrived and crashed down on their cauldrons.
