Chapter 790
On this day, the mana within Lu Qing’s body finally reached its limit, and he sensed the chance to break through.
He didn’t hesitate. He directly drew upon that faint, unseen aura of calamity.
In an instant, a vast torrent of tribulation qi and death energy surged forth and swallowed him whole.
Luckily, the underground cave Lu Qing had chosen for seclusion was deep enough, and he had arranged formations in advance.
Otherwise, just this enormous tribulation aura alone would have drawn the attention of who knew how many experts.
Within the boundless tribulation qi and death energy, Lu Qing stood unmoving.
Already a six-tribulation Nascent Soul cultivator, he was incomparably familiar with Nascent Soul tribulations.
Though the seventh Nascent Soul tribulation was far more terrifying than the ones before, Lu Qing could still steady his mind and remain unmoved.
Even tribulations formed by the manifestation of laws failed to shake his Dao Heart.
This Nascent Soul tribulation lasted seven days. Lu Qing passed through it safely and smoothly, successfully breaking through to seven tribulations and truly stepping into the late-stage Nascent Soul realm.
“At last, I’ve reached the seven-tribulation realm.”
Lu Qing clenched his fist, feeling the surging power within him that could overturn mountains and seas, a satisfied look on his face.
The Nascent Soul realm has nine tribulations in total. Every three tribulations is a threshold, and after crossing it, one’s strength undergoes a clear transformation.
Now that he had successfully stepped into seven tribulations, his strength had surged yet again.
But even after breaking through, Lu Qing did not immediately leave seclusion.
After relaxing his mind a little, he began a new round of closed-door cultivation.
Although reaching seven tribulations raised the quality of his mana to a higher level, high-grade spirit stones still helped him greatly.
So Lu Qing had no intention of letting this opportunity for rapid growth slip away.
The stronger he was now, the greater his certainty in what he needed to do next.
Time flowed on, and the days passed one after another.
Lu Qing cultivated with all his strength in the underground cave, ignoring worldly affairs.
But above ground, the Holy Assembly was beginning to sit still no longer.
Five years had passed. Aside from appearing once in Zhou Tian City, that fiend had never shown itself again.
No matter how they mobilized their informants and searched, they couldn’t find even the slightest trace.
They even posted bounty missions within Netherworld Palace, yet still received no information.
It was as if, after breaking Zhou Tian City, the fiend had left the Great World of Tianyuan again, vanishing without a shadow.
But the Holy Assembly knew that was impossible. Given the fiend’s cunning, it would never stop after taking only one Zhou Tian City.
Behind it, there must be an even greater conspiracy brewing.
“Lei Tian, how is it? Have you found the fiend’s trail?”
Within a curtain of light, a figure covered in fur and bearing a lion’s head asked.
“No.” Lei Tian, a majestic middle-aged man wearing a robe of lightning, shook his head. “That fiend is exceptionally sly, and it also obtained the Gongshu Clan’s treasury accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years. By now, it’s probably hiding somewhere, digesting those treasures. What about your demon race—have you found anything?”
“No.” The lion-headed figure also shook its head. “We had the White Flood Dragon King travel the world, yet it couldn’t sense the bloodline fluctuations of its descendant. Perhaps the fiend is keeping that wretch close this time, or perhaps it used some secret method or rare treasure to isolate the bloodline resonance between the two.”
“Nothing on your side either…”
Hearing that, Lei Tian’s heart sank.
Although he had expected this result, truly hearing it still left him disappointed.
For some reason, the harder it was to find the fiend’s whereabouts, the stronger his bad premonition became.
It was as if a shadow hung over his mind, growing heavier and heavier.
The lion-headed figure seemed to share the same feeling.
After a moment of silence, it suddenly said, “Lei Tian, I don’t think we can keep being this passive. The fiend is in the dark, and we are in the light. If we keep guarding, we will eventually slip. We must pursue actively.”
“We can’t even find the fiend’s tracks. How can we launch an active offensive?” Lei Tian asked, puzzled.
“Didn’t your Holy Assembly capture some cultivators connected to it? By your account, that fiend seems the protective type. In that case, use those cultivators to force it out,” the lion-headed figure suggested.
Lei Tian’s fingers twitched. This suggestion had actually been discussed within the Holy Assembly back then.
But because some elders opposed it, they ultimately failed to pass that plan.
Now that the lion-headed figure brought it up again, Lei Tian fell into contemplation.
After a while, he finally said, “Our Holy Assembly must discuss this matter.”
“I really don’t know what you’re hesitating for. They’re just Golden Core cultivators. If they die, they die—what’s there to pity? Lei Tian, think it through. That fiend is an anomaly. If you wait until it finishes digesting all the Gongshu Clan’s treasures, then no one will be able to control it.”
The lion-headed figure snorted coldly, and then its image vanished as it proactively shut down the communication formation.
Only Lei Tian remained where he stood, lost in thought.
…
Rumble, rumble…
In the underground cave, endless death energy and tribulation qi spread around Lu Qing, interwoven with streaks of law-formed tribulation lightning. It looked utterly terrifying.
“Big Brother broke through again,” Xiao Yan murmured as she watched.
She had a feeling that after reaching the Nascent Soul realm, her brother’s cultivation speed had instead become faster and faster.
How long had he even been in seclusion in this underground cave? And he had already undergone a second tribulation.
“It’s normal. That’s how Ah Qing is every time he goes into seclusion,” Xiao Li said, looking completely used to it.
It couldn’t be helped. It had followed by Lu Qing’s side the longest, and it had witnessed far too many scenes like this.
“I wonder how much Big Brother’s strength will grow after this Nascent Soul tribulation.”
Xiao Yan recalled the scene when Lu Qing cleaved open Zhou Tian City with a single sword.
Back then, her brother was already that terrifying. Now he had passed two more Nascent Soul tribulations—his strength would surely leap again.
Then she thought of herself. These past years in seclusion, she hadn’t progressed as outrageously as her brother.
But nourished by incomparably rich spiritual resonance, she had still broken through a small level. She was now at the Eighth Transformation of the Golden Core Realm.
Even the ninth transformation was no longer that far away.
Xiao Yan finally understood why, back then, Xiao Li and Wuxing—despite being spirit beasts—cultivated faster than she did as a human.
The cultivation environment of the Great World of Tianyuan was simply too good. The spiritual qi was too abundant.
She even felt that, even if she didn’t cultivate daily, her realm would still steadily rise just from her technique’s automatic circulation.
Boom!
With another muffled explosion, new changes occurred on Lu Qing’s side.
All that surrounded him—whether death energy, tribulation qi, or law lightning—turned into a vortex, and he swallowed it all down.
When everything returned to calm, the Great Dao Might hanging above Lu Qing suddenly shifted, and an ocean of energy poured out from the endless void, engulfing him.
Lu Qing accepted it without refusal as well, circulating his technique to absorb it all and convert it into his own foundation and accumulation.
“Ah Qing succeeded in his tribulation,” Xiao Li said at once, seeing this familiar scene.
As the final wisp of strange energy was swallowed and refined, Lu Qing slowly opened his eyes.
At once, Xiao Yan and the others all trembled.
They felt that within Lu Qing’s eyes, there seemed to be endless mysteries of heaven, earth, and the cosmos—so profound that their minds were about to be drawn into them.
Fortunately, that phenomenon flashed only for an instant. Lu Qing quickly restrained it, and everyone’s minds regained clarity.
Lu Qing didn’t notice their abnormal reactions. Having succeeded in the tribulation, he focused his mind on the changes within his body.
More precisely, on his life-bound artifact: the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd.
After stepping into the eight-tribulation realm, his strength naturally rose yet again.
But what surprised Lu Qing most was the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd’s change.
Through these two Nascent Soul tribulations, the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd had refined and absorbed a great deal of tribulation qi again.
Now, within it, a source mass emanating tribulation aura was brewing, as if something was about to be born from within.
Lu Qing could sense that once whatever inside that source mass truly formed, it would be the moment the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd advanced into an upper-grade spiritual artifact.
“From the looks of it, when I undergo the ninth tribulation, the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd should be just about ready to transform,” Lu Qing thought, feeling the aura within the gourd and understanding a little more.
At once, anticipation rose in him.
Even among treasures, a life-bound artifact and an artifact refined and controlled by ordinary means were very different.
Because it is bound to a cultivator’s very life, a life-bound artifact can often unleash might that surpasses ordinary artifacts by more than a little.
An upper-grade spiritual artifact-level life-bound treasure, in the hands of a great expert like Lu Qing, could even display power comparable to a top-grade spiritual artifact.
Of course, beyond raw might, what Lu Qing valued more was the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd’s potential.
From the artifact-refining legacy left by the Immortal Palace, Lu Qing knew that for a spiritual artifact to advance into a Dao artifact was extremely difficult.
Far more difficult than a cultivator achieving the Dao-Integration realm.
Yet from the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd, he could see a sliver of that possibility.
If this life-bound artifact could keep transforming like this, then perhaps, on the day he reached the Dao-Integration realm, he truly might possess a Dao artifact-level life-bound treasure.
Lu Qing still yearned greatly for Dao artifacts.
Just look at the Void Flying Boat: it was merely one of the 108 sub-vessels of the Dao artifact Flying Immortal Vessel, and its might hadn’t even fully recovered, yet its ability to traverse the void was already something even Dao-Integration experts could only gaze at from afar.
If it were a complete Dao artifact, how terrifying would it be?
Let alone a life-bound Dao artifact.
Lu Qing had a feeling that as long as he let the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd continue growing, it would inevitably become one of his strongest trump cards.
Aside from the Yin-Yang Five Elements Gourd, the Divine Soul Talisman held in the other hand of his Nascent Soul infant had also undergone no small change.
This cultivation method inherited from his hometown world’s Divine Rune Sect had long since been refined by Lu Qing, pushing out the old and bringing in the new, until it reached an extremely high level.
The runes and secret patterns on the Divine Soul Talisman had become so complex that even a Nascent Soul realm formation grandmaster would grow dizzy just from a single glance.
The present Divine Soul Talisman could not only guard the space of the brow acupoint, it also possessed formidable killing power, able to erase an enemy’s divine soul without leaving a trace.
Only, Lu Qing had never used it to suppress and kill an enemy, so even he wasn’t sure what level its might had truly reached.
After carefully sensing the changes in his strength, Lu Qing finally, with satisfaction, turned his attention to what was in front of him.
Seeing Xiao Yan and Xiao Li and the others staring at him with wide, eager eyes, he couldn’t help but smile.
“What is it? Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Ah Qing, your aura just now was so scary—like a real immortal!” Xiao Li was the first to speak.
Xiao Yan and Wuxing and the others nodded repeatedly.
At the instant Lu Qing opened his eyes, they had all felt as if their minds were about to be lost.
“How could it be that exaggerated? It’s just that I’ve only just finished the tribulation, and there was still a trace of Great Dao aura on me. That’s all—it gave your minds a bit of a shock,” Lu Qing said, immediately understanding.
“Big Brother, you’re already at eight tribulations now. Are you going to keep cultivating in seclusion and charge straight for the ninth tribulation in one go?” Xiao Yan asked.
Lu Qing was about to answer when his mind suddenly stirred, and his brows knit slightly.
“Ah Qing, what’s wrong?” Xiao Li asked at once, noticing the change in his expression.
“I’m having a Spiritual Resonance. Let me deduce it and see,” Lu Qing said.
Ever since he exchanged for the technique of divination at Tianji Tower and fused it with his own understanding—deducing and creating the Myriad Worlds Deduction Technique—Lu Qing had gained extremely deep attainment in the path of deduction.
He could even, from time to time, sense people or events in the future that were related to him.
Just now, a sudden Spiritual Resonance arose in him, as if something connected to him was about to happen.
Yet that feeling wasn’t particularly intense, which left him a little puzzled.
At once, Lu Qing condensed an illusory space. Countless stars began to flow within it.
Following the Spiritual Resonance in his heart, Lu Qing continuously deduced.
In the end, within the illusory space, a notice posted on a city wall appeared.
The moment he saw the contents on the notice clearly, Lu Qing immediately understood what was going on.
“So that’s it. You want to use the lives of Daoist Wubao and Ye Qingzhu and the others to force me to show myself. You think highly of me, huh—thinking I’m the kind of person who values loyalty and righteousness?” Lu Qing said, looking at the notice in the illusory space, his gaze turning cold.
On the notice, it was written that Daoist Wubao and Ye Qingzhu and the others had colluded with the fiend, were abandoned by the human race, and would be executed one year later—destroyed in both body and soul, with their divine souls annihilated, as a warning to others.
“These old bastards of the Holy Assembly are really shameless and despicable—to even do something like this!” Xiao Li cursed.
“Big Brother, what are you going to do?” Xiao Yan asked worriedly, looking at Lu Qing.
She could also see it clearly: the so-called Holy Assembly was using the lives of Big Brother’s friends to force him to appear.
Since they had resorted to such methods, they had surely laid down a net of heaven and earth.
If Big Brother truly went, wouldn’t that be walking straight into a trap?
But Xiao Yan also understood that with Big Brother’s temperament, it would be impossible to make him not go.
Sure enough, hearing Xiao Yan’s question, Lu Qing chuckled softly.
“Of course I’m going to meet them. They’ve racked their brains to see me—if I don’t go, wouldn’t I disappoint them too much.”
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