The crowd froze when the tribulation unveiled itself in its full glory. What they were witnessing went beyond anyone’s comprehension.
Terrible bolts of heavenly lightning intersected in the sky and formed giant waves. Generally speaking, lightning pouring down like water was already a phenomenon alarming beyond belief. But currently, thunder and lightning was frothing and roiling in the sky and brewing into colossal waves!
“This is terrible, this is awful… He’s going to fail. My soul would be destroyed if this lightning even touched me!” a golden immortal murmured to himself from several hundred kilometers away, floating in fear and trembling in awe of the spectacle.
He wasn’t the only one; even peerless and dao immortals were terrified, as the giant waves of lightning were beyond horrifying. For those who’d never experienced the void realm, a slight brush would be all it’d take to seal their fates.
For their part, the many void realm cultivators who’d been eager to challenge Lu Yun now abandoned the idea in favor of meticulously observing the tribulation instead.
……
“In my opinion, we should wait for the tribulation to pass. It won’t be too late to fight then.” Lu Yun glanced at Wu Tulong, his tone serene. The latter nodded and retracted his spear, then stared at the tribulation with bright eyes, not blinking even once.
As for the others, the presence of Lu Yun standing guard was ample deterrence. This gave the young man enough breathing space to wholeheartedly focus on the tribulation at hand.
Green robes flapping in the wind, his sword blossomed with the radiance of the moon. A resplendent full moon rose behind him, the manifestation of a fearsome combat art from the Primordial Era—a flawless ancient art.
Boom!
The moment the moon appeared, a thousand giant waves rippled forth and neutralized an entire wave of lightning. However, the moon also shook from the impact. Many cracks snaked along its surface, but its integrity remained. The young man heaved a long sigh of relief, his forehead covered in sweat.
“Look, there’s a creature in the sea of lightning!” Someone suddenly pointed up at the ocean of lightning mirroring the East Sea’s waters below.
The sea of lightning had swelled into furious billows dozens of kilometers tall, and a colossal creature floundered amidst the waves. From it, one could sense the aura of a prehistoric beast. Meanwhile, waves of lightning still relentlessly bombarded the young man.
The moon behind him had been dispelled and his sword took to the field instead, materializing as a curtain of moonlight that doggedly resisted the tribulation. The young man’s strength was astonishing! Even when compared to the former ten lords and thirty-six champions, he would be ranked among the very best.
A wave was churned to pieces everytime it crashed into his sword curtain. But the lightning came in endless, relentless waves, and it took only a few moments for the sword curtain to shatter as well. The sword returned to its master’s hand, keening in sorrow.
This result was anticipated, and the young man promptly summoned a formation tower that instantly deployed a giant defensive formation to block the lightning smiting down from the heavens.
Taking advantage of this brief reprieve, the young man hastened to swallow a few pills to recover his energy.
There were ninety-nine waves of lightning in total, and it took everything the young man had to block them all. Heavily injured at the end of this round of exertion, blood dribbled from his mouth and his face was wan. His once elegant green robes were charred ashes, his sword melted by the lightning, and the formation tower now nothing but charred rubble.
But after the ninety-nine waves were spent, the sky still didn’t clear. Rather, a stifling atmosphere spread throughout the land. Even immortals and cultivators as far as fifty kilometers away felt an unbearable oppression.
“The giant beast born amidst the tribulation clouds is about to attack,” Wu Tulong suddenly murmured.
Shocked, Lu Yun looked carefully into the depths of the lightning sea beneath the tribulation clouds. A titanic black creature twisted in it, bolts of fine lightning densely strewn about the surface of its body.
The young man’s gaze remained firm. With the flip of a wrist, a snowflake-like weapon appeared in his hand. Snowflakes drifted in the sky, imbuing his charred green robes and turning it into a brand new snowy garment draped over his body.
“He’s from Witherdew Major’s Xue Clan!” [1] someone exclaimed when he saw the snowflakes and the young man’s transformation.
“No wonder he doesn’t have a senior to protect him… the Xue Clan’s been exterminated!”
All of the immortals in Witherdew Major were dead, punished by a chaos tribulation. The Xue Clan had been a top-tier clan in the major and had had a crippled origin dao holding down the fort. But when even a flawless origin dao immortal like the Witherdew emperor had died, the same went without saying for the Xue immortals.
Now, other than a handful of individuals who’d been away from Witherdew Major on that fateful day, the clan’s immortals had all perished. In other words, the clan itself was no more.
While some cultivators were still alive, including void realm ones, it was far from enough to sustain the existence of a full-fledged clan. This young man was undoubtedly the Xue Clan’s final spark of hope. If he could become a void-ascended immortal, there might be a chance for the clan to be reborn from its ashes!
……
In the sea of lightning, the giant beast’s aura grew with each passing second. Everyone had guessed by now that the final challenge of this heavenly tribulation would be this very beast born from lightning.
Roar!!
A lengthy howl echoed from the sea of lightning as the black beast ponderously swam down from the skies, gradually revealing its appearance. An enormous fish several hundred meters long, its two giant fins gave rise to fearsome lightning gales with each beat, as if fleshy wings. There was also a single gray horn on top of its head that discharged heavenly lightning.
“A kun!” some immortals cried out. “This is a kunpeng, just like the true body of Beigong Yu, the North Sea’s once-Kunpeng King.”
Beigong Yu had once been the North Sea’s foremost monster king. Enveloped by a dense air of blood and violence, he’d killed too many immortals to count. Such a peerless monster king had been a daunting figure for many immortals; therefore, they naturally knew of his true nature.
However, kunpengs possessed two shapes, the kun fish and the peng bird. Beigong Yu had been the one and only kunpeng in the modern age, so next to no one knew of their detailed characteristics. They all thought a kunpeng was merely some kind of giant fish.
“It really is a kun … a thunder kun!” Lu Yun became grave. “But this thunder kun is purely kun shaped, it can’t become a peng bird.”
A thunder kun wasn’t a genuine kunpeng, but a spirit born from thunder and lightning!
……
“Roar!!” A tremendous challenge came from the thunder kun’s mouth as its giant frame twisted in the air, swimming swiftly toward the young man with undulating motions and accompanied by a giant cloud of lightning.
The young man turned solemn, a breeze of snowflakes stirring to life when he suddenly howled in return. At the same time, a full moon slowly rose from the dance of snowflakes.
Snowflakes and the bright moon!
The young man had combined his clan’s trademark combat art with a primordial art, exploding the product now with tremendous force.
“Split!” he shouted furiously. With snowflakes as the hilt and the moon as the blade, he slashed ruthlessly at the giant beast.
1. Xue is the character for snow.
