Chapter 22: Nine Tribulation Lightning and Fire Origin
Wei Shiyan dismissed all distractions. His gaze lingered upon the embryonic realm which he had long since decided to call his vault. He looked at it with immense satisfaction, and deep inside his soul space, he could sense the four boundless soul rings pulsing with mysterious power. Each ring radiated a different profound resonance, as if confirming that his path was indeed the right one.
For the longest time, Wei Shiyan had always wondered why his soul was so vastly different from others. He could not place a finger on the reason, nor could he accurately measure just how strong his soul truly was. It was as if he had been walking in a fog where the depth of his own existence could not be fully understood.
Still, questions aside, he was not one to idle forever in contemplation. With a single determined thought, Wei Shiyan willed himself to leave his soul space.
Immediately, before his very eyes, a sturdy and vibrant holographic void gate appeared. Unlike the unstable flickering shadow he had used before, this gate brimmed with vitality. It radiated life, light, and solidity, connecting his soul space to the outside world in a majestic and seamless manner.
Without hesitation, he stepped through.
Seconds later, Wei Shiyan's figure emerged outside, hovering effortlessly in midair. His intention was simple—he wanted to feel the freshness of the outside world, to take in a deep breath of crisp natural air that would soothe his chest after being locked away in cultivation.
But what greeted him was not freshness.
Instead, the very moment he inhaled, an oppressive wave of scorching heat struck his face with brutal intensity. His lungs were seared as if he had just breathed in flames themselves. Wei Shiyan's expression darkened instantly, his brows furrowing as he coughed out harshly. The air itself was like molten lava, every breath enough to ignite mortal lungs.
Disturbed, his sharp eyes darted around. His first instinct was to wonder if the void gate had malfunctioned—had it somehow dragged him to the wrong location? Could it be that instead of stepping into the outside world, he had accidentally appeared within a volcanic underground or perhaps some corner of hell itself?
The thought gnawed at him.
Wei Shiyan narrowed his gaze and began to scan his surroundings more carefully.
At first glance, what stretched before him was a nightmare incarnate. The very heavens and earth had been overturned. He nearly mistook the place for hell itself, for the atmosphere alone reeked of destruction, despair, and death.
He froze. His body stiffened.
His lips trembled as his eyes widened, and before he knew it, words slipped from his mouth in disbelief:
"Holy shit… i-is that… that…?"
Wei Shiyan stammered like a man who had just seen the impossible. He was truly stunned, rooted in place by the sheer magnitude of devastation sprawled endlessly before him.
Where once had stood the Misty Fog Mountain, there was nothing but ruin. The lush spiritual land that had stretched across thousands of miles, rich in herbs and filled with mystique, was utterly annihilated. The ground was shattered into jagged scars of blackened earth, while volcanoes erupted ceaselessly, vomiting fire into the sky. Above them, sparks of lightning descended relentlessly, each bolt so vicious that even immortals would not dare withstand them.
These were not ordinary strikes.
These bolts were the manifestation of Nine Tribulation Lightning, divine punishment capable of burning mortals and immortals alike to utter ash. Lightning that commanded both respect and dread—an existence that only the truly mad or the truly monstrous would dare face directly.
Everywhere, rivers of molten fire churned, carving across the land with a roar like the screams of fallen gods. Valleys split apart endlessly, forming gorges so deep that one could not even glimpse the bottom. They seemed to pierce through the very core of the world, drilling into unfathomable abysses that gave the illusion of reaching beyond the earth into the depths of space itself.
It was destruction made absolute.
Wei Shiyan's heart pounded, not with fear, but with an almost surreal disbelief.
"Could it be… does the Heavenly Dao take me as such a threat… that it would unleash this level of catastrophe?" he whispered to himself.
The weight of the thought bore heavily on him. He gazed at the endless calamity, and for a fleeting instant, the cries of millions of lost lives flashed through his imagination. Living and non all swallowed whole by this endless calamity.
But his expression did not twist with guilt.
Wei Shiyan was no saint. Neither was he a gentleman who would shed tears for those he did not know. Compassion had never been a virtue he clung to. He was not heartless—but he was pragmatic, and in this pragmatic world, survival and ascension mattered far more than the sentiment of fleeting mortals.
"Life or death," he muttered, his voice calm, "should one be blamed, then let blame fall on the Heavenly Dao itself."
As the words left his lips, he fell into sudden silence.
For a long moment, it was as though he had been struck by some powerful realization. His chest heaved once… twice… and then suddenly, without warning, his lips curled upward.
Then he laughed.
It began as a small chuckle, but quickly spiraled into unrestrained madness.
"Hahahahahahahaha!"
His uproarious laughter echoed into the ruined heavens, reverberating across the desolate valleys and rivers of flame. He lifted his head, his wild gaze filled with unyielding fire as he roared at the void above.
"Heavenly Dao!" Wei Shiyan shouted shamelessly, his voice booming with both mockery and exhilaration. "Thank you! What a considerate foe you are! What a grand adversary you have proven yourself to be!"
He pointed upward with utter arrogance, eyes gleaming like sharpened blades.
"Nine Tribulation Lightning and Fire Origin…" He grinned, his straight face exuding madness and pride in equal measure. "What greater gift could I ever ask for?"
His laughter roared once more, shaking the ruined land like a defiant god reveling in the face of heavenly wrath.
But deep within the rumbling clouds above, the lightning stirred restlessly, as though insulted by his arrogance. Flames surged higher from the abyss below, and the world seemed to tremble as if the catastrophe itself were awakening anew in response to his provocation.
And then—
A colossal bolt of tribulation lightning, thicker than a mount
ain and roaring like an endless dragon, began to descend directly toward him.