I Was Called A Demon

Active Core – the fourth realm of planar cultivation.

In the Eastern Continent, attaining this realm required passing the two tribulations, and then the Display of Excellence, in order to prove to the heavens that the cultivator is worthy of this power.

However, no description of lightning falling from the sky could ever compare to the real thing, not even after Bianca had witnessed the previous realm’s tribulation firsthand. Compared to that, the storm clouds in the sky seemed endlessly more vast, the power building within far more intense, and the moment the first bolt of lightning fell…

It was massive, seeming to eclipse the sky as it crashed down towards her, the heavy rumble of thunder shaking the earth. She hadn’t fought a greater foe than this so far, so she focused, allowing the colder, more ruthless side of her to dominate in this moment.

She faced the first bolt with her Dominion’s Light, slashing up twice to form a cross of crackling crimson. It barely flew for a metre before colliding with the lightning, the two forces clashing and exploding in a vast shockwave that caused the very stone beneath her to crack – and it was only the first wave.

Slashing away at the second left her with even less time, the might of the lightning making her ears ring, but she pushed on, bringing out all the strength she could to oppose the next wave.

At some point around the second and fourth waves, she instinctively manifested her cock, her energy becoming slightly more powerful thank to it, the edge allowing her to pierce the subsequent waves of lightning crashing down on her.

The sixth round only barely broke up before striking her, the energy from it flooding her body. Her whole body seemed to shake and tremble from the electricity, but the Demonic Tyrant allowed her to keep her body moving and slashing, stabbing and doing anything and everything that she needed to do to survive.

The seventh somehow endured even past the dozen strikes she had somehow executed, her arms hurting as all of her muscles were forced past their limits. It crashed into her, all of the energy flooding into her body and rampaging around her meridians, an immense degree of pain shooting through her.

If not for the immense durability of her body, she would’ve probably suffered a lot more than that – and if she had kept anything beyond the Weave on her, it would’ve definitely burned away in that moment. Still, the lightning barrage was utterly unrelenting, the light of the seventh barely fading before she was hit by the eighth, the thunderclap alone making the whole mountain shake with its sheer, immense intensity.

She was barely able to move for the ninth, just barely enduring the one prior, so she could only raise her empty hand enough to manifest the Abyssal Shield, black smoke manifesting around her just as the last bolt of lightning struck.

It shattered the barrier, the lightning seeming to burn her flesh and scar her skin with distinct marks. Her vision flashed and her consciousness seemed to disappear for a moment, but when she came to she was relatively unharmed, and the storm clouds above stopped rumbling so aggressively. Her body quickly recovered, the pain subsiding and her energy recovering, even getting amplified, but her ordeal was far from over.

The fourth realm required two tribulations, after all, and while the beginning of her breakthrough occurred with the first one, her energy being forcefully compressed and refined, a step away from reaching the standard of the fourth realm, she had yet to form her core. For that, she needed to surpass the bloodline tribulation.

As the kitsune had explained, and Huang Su affirmed, if the cultivator was cultivating an elemental technique, they would be faced with the opposing element. Fire cultivators would be opposed by a water-type cultivation, wood with metal, and so on.

However, those that didn’t have a specific element, like Bianca, they would instead be challenged by their very bloodline, something that she… frankly, couldn’t quite understand. All she knew was that she was warned not to let her guard down, as the bloodline tribulation could be far less predictable than the typical lightning tribulations.

There was just one question she didn’t get to ask, as Xue Yaling and Huang Su had been together at the time, and that was whether her otherworldly status would have any effect. In theory, if her body worked as though it wasn’t from this world, could there even be a bloodline for her to be challenged by? The only issue was that, if she recalled correctly, her body had changed when she arrived in the Planar Continents.

Certain aspects of her physique had changed, there was the fact that she had a dantian and meridians, and was able to cultivate like anyone else.

If those factors changed, then there was no reason for her to not end up with some kind of bloodline, as well – the only question at that point would be the nature of the challenge she would face, and whether she would have the strength to actually overcome it.

Her answer came soon enough. The storm clouds above almost seemed to ripple, the spot above her thinning as the surrounding clouds grew thicker and lowered even further, until the exact point above her parted just enough for light to seep through. A single thin ray landed on the ground before her, and in that spot a crimson fluid suddenly seeped out from the gaps in the bricks, quickly spreading out more and more as it also slowly rose.

From a pool about a metre in diameter, a figure arose, the blood coalescing into a solid figure that reached Bianca’s height, a slimmer feminine shape that had only the vaguest of features upon its naked form.

Despite that, the way it suddenly entered a fighting stance, arms raised and fists at the ready, radiated sheer killing intent. It was as though the being was her greatest nemesis, someone that had desired to see her death for a millennium, and now had the chance to make it happen… which it obviously wasn’t, but regardless, she knew she couldn’t just ignore it, or take the situation lightly.

She only had a moment to focus before the being moved, crossing the gap between them in an instant and performing a palm strike, aimed straight for her heart. The moment was only sufficient for her to raise a weak Abyssal Shield, but the moment the two forces collided, she realised that it was going to be more complicated than just a straight up fight.

The instant that her barrier was struck – and shattered in an instant – she felt something within her… distort? It was a peculiar sensation, one she could only barely comprehend, but her instincts told her that it was both good and not.

The figure struck out again, and this time she was able to reply with a slash, her sword meeting with the hand congealed out of blood. Again, a bizarre sensation coiled within her, and her strike proved to be no match for the figure’s strength. The being’s fist easily forced her blade aside and followed up with another palm strike, which missed by a miniscule margin as she used Tormentor’s Strides to escape.

She only had the time to release a heavy exhale before the being moved as well, practically appearing before her with a leg raised, a kick being thrown out before she had the chance to react. It struck her belly, launching her several steps back and knocking all the air out of her lungs, though the worst was the sensation that spread out throughout her body the instant she was hit – the same kind of twisting and distorting that she had experienced before, yet now it was purely the negative aspect of the sensation.

Although she couldn’t figure out what it was, she could tell that simply taking the hit was wrong – not what the trial entailed.

‘… Is it the case that the tribulation is essentially testing me, tempering me? As long as I’m able to repel its strikes to some extent, it will do… something, and eventually push me forward to the next realm?’ she determined, standing up straight even as the previous hit left her with intense pain in her belly, “Alright then, come at me!”

The blood being acted no differently than before, charging in with a rapid motion before throwing out a punch – as though it only had the three types of strikes to choose between – that was so fast she barely had the time to respond.

Still, she conjured her barrier before it hit, and paid attention to the way it moved. There was a clear pattern to the way it preceded each kind of strike, a minor difference in its motions, so if she could grasp all three, she wouldn’t have to react at the last moment. It would just become a matter of having the barrier concentrated in the right spot.

So, as it moved, again and again, performing those basic strikes, she slowly learned. There was a faint shift in the blood being’s foot when it was going to do a kick, the palm strike began before it closed the gap, and it would close a hand into a fist almost a whole second before it would charge.

She was forced to endure quite a few hits before she truly caught on, but once she did, each strike became almost easy to block – and the more effectively she did so, the less unpleasant the odd feeling got. In fact, the moment that she perfectly blocked one of the hits, she felt only the positive aspect, as though her body was purely benefitting from this, growing stronger.

It was quite monotonous, but she wasn’t about to complain. Having to do the same thing over and over certainly beat getting hit in the chest and stomach repeatedly – she got rather close to vomiting before she figured out the pattern, and weirdly, after being punched and kicked so many times, the pain seemed like less of an issue.

After what felt like a thousandth strike, she noticed that the figure made of blood had started to thin out, more and more blood seeming to seep away until the current figure was barely more than a set of lines.

One more hit, and it would’ve certainly faded, and yet it didn’t follow up with its typical routine. Instead, it paused for a moment, then flickered out of existence – only for a dozen beings to manifest all at once, at different sides around her, each performing a different move as they were about to strike. All of her learning and preparation went straight out of the proverbial window as she dropped to one knee and raised her hand, manifesting the Abyssal Shield around herself.

Only a moment later, the smoke was shattered as all of the blood entities hit her at once, punches and palm strikes and kicks impacting upon her – and being absorbed in that one moment, all of the blood vanishing while her body suddenly felt full, empowered.

At once, her state was pushed to the brink, the fourth realm a hair’s width away, but instead of the breakthrough, she found everything around her simply disappear, even her body seeming to fade away.

Darkness overwhelmed her, and then lights, as numerous as stars, appeared before her. They were so numerous she could never possibly count them all, but she could tell that they were arrayed vertically, a small number at the very top and bottom, but a more even spread throughout the absolutely immense pillar of lights.

It took a moment for her to realise exactly what she was looking at, as she suddenly had a flood of ideas and concepts pour into her mind, each one seemingly linked to one of those stars.

Each was far, far too vague for her to understand them, but she had heard of this exact phenomenon in relation to the Display of Excellence, or specifically the Heavenly Gallery that it sends the cultivator to. From the looks of it, this was that same Gallery, and the lights before her were the countless accomplishments that all cultivators that had gone before her left behind. At the bottom must’ve been the contributions of least value, and at the peak were those that could shake the world if they were ever made public.

Naturally, she tried to look up only at those distant ideas, to perhaps glean a little from them and pursue them on her own, but she hardly got more than a second to look before her position suddenly changed, as though something lifted her and dragged her right into the middle of the stars.

All of a sudden, she was surrounded by them, the countless concepts and accomplishments nearly drowning her in their radiance, plenty on all sides so that she couldn’t even attempt to look away from them. More importantly, she couldn’t exactly spare the time to be giving herself a break, for she had a very important task – to leave behind something of her own.

This… was hard. She had contemplated for quite some time already, and it didn’t take her long to test out every single idea she had come up with. Presenting a concept came intuitively, but not a single one evoked even the slightest response from the Heavenly Gallery.

At that point, she was left with nothing. The major flaw in her cultivation, in her progression through the realms, was that she didn’t need to refine anything on her own, to realise anything or to comprehend much beyond basic physical movements – and those were clearly not meeting the minimum requirements of the Display of Excellence.

If anyone was to have an easy time in here, Xue Yaling and Jia Bo Xun would definitely would. Those two were genuine innovators, bright minds that were able to develop all kinds of incredible skills in their own ways – the kitsune’s Yin Soul Yang Root, her disciple’s new half-archetype growing off of her original Crystal skillset. Meanwhile, she had… nothing. And as though in response to that fact sinking in, her presence in the Heavenly Gallery also began to drop, going lower and lower.

The further down she went, the more potent the feeling of discomfort, starting as a strange unease and rapidly escalating to actual pain. It was as though the sheer pressure of all of those accomplishments, all those glowing achievements, started to be applied to her, weighing her down, almost crushing her consciousness.

From the moment she had entered, she had felt the power of the fourth realm within her, but as she sank to the lowest levels, she distinctly felt it ebbing away.

‘Wait, does a failure here mean that I can’t progress? Does that mean the tribulations were pointless? No, no, I can’t fail here, I can’t just… what the fuck!’ she panicked, but her pointless flailing – mental flailing, her body didn’t seem to be present in this place – did nothing to stop her descent, the crushing pressure that threatened to knock her out.

Soon enough, she was sinking below even the lowest of the stars, her vision starting to fade as the power of the fourth realm slipped away…

Then, she suddenly saw it manifest – the horned, blazing skull that she had seen before, that had manifested during one of her breakthroughs. It appeared behind her, jaw open, soaring forth and seemingly consuming her.

At once, the pressure faded, and the darkness of the Heavenly Gallery faded as well, leaving her in the real world, on the ground that had shattered from the lightning bolts. She found herself sitting on the ground, her bare ass resting on the stone, her whole body feeling… weak.

While she could distinctly perceive the core surrounding her dantian, and knew instinctively that she could externalise solid energy, both looked as though they were the bare minimum. The core was faint, nearly transparent, almost seeming to flicker and sputter as she gazed upon it with her spiritual perception, and when she released her energy, she could only reach the minimum threshold for solid energy.

‘I didn’t fail… but I didn’t truly pass, either. That skull… the Demonic Tyrant? If only it had showed up before I had fallen so far,’ she exhaled, her whole body feeling heavy.

It didn’t seem like she was injured in any way, but the difference between what she should’ve had, and where she ended up… it must have been vast enough to make everything feel wrong. Though, as she looked upon herself, she realised her skin had lightened once more, all pigment fading from it completely.

Similarly, when she checked herself out with spiritual perception, she noticed that her eyes became an even more potent crimson, and the roots of her hair also became pure white. She couldn’t be sure without testing it, but it felt as though her skin had toughened by a significant extent, an order of magnitude above what she had before – though her strength grew little, as was typical for her Demonic Form, so it could hardly offset the loss of a proper fourth realm.

For a while, she couldn’t bring herself to move, even as the storm clouds in the sky slowly returned to normal, rain falling down from above as they slowly started to spread out.

The thing to wake her up was the perception of Xue Yaling approaching the peak of the Reaper’s Grave, though she only barely managed to stand up straight before the kitsune arrived. With a single glance, she noticed that something was wrong.

“Not the look I’d expect from a success… but that’s a fourth realm aura around you. Ancients, what did you manage this time?”

“Ugh… I fucked up.”

“Yeah, I guessed. Display of Excellence, right?”

“Mhm,” Bianca’s shoulders dropped, “I thought I’d have something ready, but… clearly, I had nothing at all.”

“But you passed anyway?”

“Only vaguely. The Demonic Tyrant saved me, I… I think. It was a weird fiery skull, fuck if I know what it actually is.”

“… You’re not a dumb woman, Bianca, so I think that what you need is just some… motivation. Ever heard of cock cages?”