I merely gave it a little push

At the center of the heavenly tribulation, Wang Hao appeared far more at ease than anyone else.

The Thunder Abyss Demon Suppression Tower spun rapidly above his head, with all eight of its gates wide open. From the first level, white lightning serpents; from the second, orange lightning pythons; from the third, yellow lightning flood dragons; from the fourth, green lightning dragons; from the fifth, cyan lightning qilin; from the sixth, blue lightning kun; from the seventh, purple lightning roc; and from the eighth, white lightning phoenixes.

All eight types of thunder beasts flew out of the tower and assembled into a grand thunder formation in the sky. The nine-colored heavenly lightning struck into the formation, where each thunder beast devoured the corresponding color of lightning energy, which was then absorbed and refined by the tower’s rune patterns. Finally, it was transformed into pure lightning-based spiritual power to nourish Wang Hao.

The ninth gate of the Thunder Abyss Demon Suppression Tower began to widen from a crack, opening visibly before everyone’s eyes. This meant that the tower was devouring the lightning of the ninth stage—the Martial God stage—to temper itself. The more it devoured, the larger the eighth gate grew, and once it was fully open, the thunder beast from the ninth level—a purple lightning dragon—could deliver a full-force strike at the peak of the Martial God realm. Even further, the attic above began to tremble—that was the legendary power of heavenly lightning that rivaled the limits of martial cultivation.

Wang Hao sat cross-legged beneath the thunder formation, eyes slightly closed, hands forming a mysterious hand seal. After breaking through to the Martial God realm, his body was undergoing earth-shaking changes.

The liquid true qi within his dantian had completely transformed into a solid core, a golden crystal the size of a fist, its surface densely covered with intricate runic patterns. This was the Martial God Foundation, the root of his future cultivation.

Every additional rune on the Martial God Foundation deepened his mastery over the laws of heaven and earth. At that moment, nine runes had already formed on his foundation—representing gold, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, lightning, darkness, and light.

Each of the nine elements occupied one rune, making this the most perfect and rarest type of foundation. Legend said that the first generation of Martial Gods who founded the Kunlun Conference ten thousand years ago had also possessed such nine-rune foundations.

Besides the nine elemental runes, two faint, nearly visible phantom runes were beginning to coalesce. These two phantom runes were distinct from the nine elemental realms—they were far more profound entities: one was the rune of Life, the other of Destruction.

The laws of life and death—these were forces rumored to exist beyond the peak of martial cultivation. If these two phantom runes successfully formed, his foundation would surpass the nine-rune level and reach an unprecedented eleven runes.

The new Son of Heaven Sword floated beside him, its blood-red patterns growing even more intense. The sword’s spirit spoke into his mind: “Tyrant, you’ve gone too far this time. Even I can feel the terror of this heavenly tribulation—its source is elevating my own level. By the time the tribulation ends, my ranking will jump at least two hundred places.”

Wang Hao replied with a smile in his mind: “Help guard me. I want to use this opportunity to stabilize all the runes on my foundation. Let those eight old bastards get struck by lightning for a while first. When they’ve had enough, I’ll get up and clean up the mess.”

The third, fourth, and fifth bolts of heavenly lightning struck consecutively.

Each bolt was stronger than the one before, and the intervals between them grew shorter and shorter. The lightning emitted from the tribulation vortex was no longer sequential but had become a continuous column of nine-colored light, turning Heavenly Void Peak into a thunderous hell.

Eleven of the seventy-two subsidiary peaks had already collapsed. A thousand-yard-long crack had appeared on the Kunlun Mountain range’s main ridge, accompanied by a deep rumbling from within the mountain, as if it might rupture at any moment.

Patriarch Chiyan managed to crawl out of his lava lake once before the fifth heavenly bolt slammed him back into it. This time, he couldn’t get up again, because at the bottom of the lake he spotted something—a fist-sized black stone, covered in dense runic patterns, radiating the same aura as the heavenly tribulation vortex.

Lightning-attracting stones.

He understood instantly. Wang Hao had set up a lightning-attracting formation on Heavenly Void Peak thirty days earlier, and these stones formed the array foundation.

The positions of the eight Martial Gods and Demon Gods precisely matched the nodes of the formation. The heavenly tribulation struck every one of them so accurately not because it could identify targets, but because Wang Hao had calculated all their positions in advance, anchoring them within the lightning strike zone with his formation.

“That cunning little bastard!” Patriarch Chiyan cursed ten thousand times in his heart but could not utter a single word—his mouth had gone numb from the lightning.

When the sixth heavenly bolt struck, Jiang Canghai’s bronze ancient mirror could no longer bear it. A piercing crack split the mirror’s surface, the spirit artifact let out a mournful cry, and it automatically flew back into his dantian to recover. Without the mirror’s protection, Jiang Canghai could only endure the lightning with his physical body. Each strike sent him stumbling back, leaving blackened, scorched footprints on the ground.

Jiang Cangyun’s suppression law crumbled before the sixth heavenly bolt. The suppression domain he had set shattered like broken mirrors, and the backlash injured his already damaged soul once more. He coughed up a spray of golden blood—the life essence of a Martial God, each mouthful representing at least fifty years of lost lifespan.

Among the five Demon Gods, Madam White Feather was the first to collapse. Under the seventh heavenly bolt, a white lightning ray struck her squarely. The blast sent her tumbling across the ground, finally landing at the edge of Heavenly Void Peak, half her body dangling over a bottomless abyss. Her consciousness was fading, and she could only rely on primal instinct to cling to the rockface.

The withered elder’s poison-insect shield had been reduced to ash during the sixth heavenly bolt, so he met the seventh with only his body. His true form was a three-thousand-year-old venom scorpion, with a carapace boasting the second-strongest defense among all Demon Gods. But even the shell of the Ten Thousand Venom Scorpion was no more than a slightly thicker piece of paper before the heavenly tribulation. His carapace cracked, peeled, and blackened, revealing the dark green flesh beneath. His hunched body curled into a tight ball as lightning poured over him, like a bug crushed underfoot.

The Cyan-skinned Kui Bull still stood upright. He had not moved a step since the fourth heavenly bolt. He simply lowered his head, enduring each lightning strike in the most primitive way. His hide had been scorched black as charcoal, and the impact of the thunder made his bones crack audibly—yet he remained standing.

This was the stubbornness of the Kui Bull clan: they could die, but they could not fall. There was no expression on his rough face, only a pair of blood-red eyes blazing in the storm of lightning. Those eyes held no fear—only a primal, unyielding defiance.

The red-clothed youth’s speed meant nothing against the seventh heavenly bolt. The bolt’s range was too vast for him to escape no matter how he dodged. Caught in the thunder glow on his back, he spun and crashed into the ground, carving a series of deep pits, and finally becoming embedded in a half-molten boulder, completely immobilized.

One-third of Holy King Canglong’s dragon scales had been torn off by the seventh heavenly tribulation. The dark green scales were ripped open, scorched, and blasted away by the thunder, revealing the bright red dragon hide beneath. The blood seeping from the corner of his mouth had shifted from dark green to a deeper crimson—a sign that his primal essence had been wounded. Yet his vertical pupils remained sharp, fixed on the figure seated cross-legged at the very heart of the tribulation storm.

“He’s using the heavenly tribulation to temper his foundation,” Holy King Canglong said, his voice hoarse and low. “Every one of us has been made a lightning rod for him. He’s absorbing the thunder to refine himself.”

But even though he saw through Wang Hao’s scheme, he was powerless to stop it. He could barely manage to defend himself—how could he muster the strength to attack Wang Hao? Even more alarming, the black pagoda above Wang Hao’s head was growing more terrifying by the moment—the eighth level’s gate stood two-thirds open, and the thunderous force sealed within made even Holy King Canglong, a great demon who had lived for three thousand years, shudder. If the eighth level fully opened and unleashed a strike at the peak of the Martial God realm, no one present—whether Martial God or Demon God—would walk away unscathed.

“It’s a trap.” Holy King Canglong gritted out the words, the hardest admission in his three-thousand-year career as a great demon. “An outright trap from beginning to end.”

When the eighth heavenly tribulation came crashing down, the Celestial Peak could no longer hold.

The Kunlun Stele let out a deafening crack. Three devastating fissures ran through the ninety-nine-foot-tall monolith, and the four characters “Kunlun Discourse” carved into its face were completely erased by the lightning.

The Kunlun Stele, erected by the Martial Gods ten thousand years ago, shattered into four massive chunks that tumbled into the pool of molten lava, sending up splashes of golden-red waves. At the moment the ancient characters broke apart, an ethereal sigh echoed across the Celestial Summit—the last remnant of Martial God will lingering in the stone for ten millennia had finally dissipated, witnessing the end.

The shockwave from the stele’s collapse knocked down the few remaining super-level beings who could still stand. Jiang Canghai and Jiang Cangyun both fell to the ground; the Scarlet Flame Patriarch sank into the lava, unable to resurface. Among the five Demon Gods, Holy King Canglong alone struggled to remain upright, while the other four had already lost all combat capability.

Holy King Canglong dropped to one knee, his right dragon claw driven deep into the stone to keep from collapsing. Only half his scales clung to his body. His chest heaved violently, each breath exhaling a plume of bloody steam. He lifted his head to gaze at the growing tribulation vortex swirling in the sky, and for the first time, a hint of genuine fear flickered in his vertical pupils.

If the eighth tribulation was already this formidable, what would the ninth be like?

It was at that moment that Wang Hao opened his eyes.

The golden ring that once circled his pupils had burned into pure gold, and two clumps of nine-colored flames blazed in the depths of his irises—the mark of a Martial God: the Wayfire. A Martial God who possessed Wayfire had truly crossed the threshold into the peak of martial arts.

He rose slowly to his feet. The Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda above him let out a long, resonant hum. With that, the tower’s final gate swung open. The Thunder Beast sealed within the pagoda was not a serpent, not a python, not a flood dragon, not a true dragon, not a unicorn, not a Kun fish, not a Peng bird, not a phoenix—it was a man.

A humanoid phantom forged entirely from white thunder-light, its face indistinct, yet the overwhelming pressure it radiated was unmistakable. It was an existence that surpassed all the earlier Thunder Beasts—the true hidden card of the Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda: the Thunder Emperor’s Phantom.

Wang Hao emerged from the lava pool. The golden dragons embroidered on his imperial robe had been refined by the thunder into something even more brilliant, each dragon seeming to come alive, slithering and coiling across the fabric while breathing arcs of lightning. He walked up to Holy King Canglong, looked down at the dragon demon who knelt on one knee, and the same infuriating grin crossed his face.

“Holy King Canglong, I just counted—you all sent eight heavenly tribulations at me. There’s one left, the strongest one. Think you can take it?”

Holy King Canglong lifted his head. In his vertical pupils, the storm vortex of the ninth tribulation was still gathering. It had not yet struck, but its pressure alone had already caused all seventy-two subsidiary peaks around the Celestial Summit to collapse. A fracture along the main spine of the Kunlun mountain range was spreading visibly. The entire mountain quaked under the ninth tribulation’s crushing presence.

“Wang Hao,” said Holy King Canglong, his voice as rough as grinding sand and stone. “You planned this from the beginning. You knew the tribulation would come today, so you set up a lightning-drawing formation and withdrew your armies in advance. You deliberately led us all to the Celestial Summit, just to have the heavenly tribulation cripple every one of us.”

Wang Hao smiled. He didn’t deny it.

“Holy King Canglong, you’re right. But you’re wrong about one thing—I didn’t lure you here. You came of your own free will. If you hadn’t all joined forces to surround and kill me today, you wouldn’t be standing on the nodes of my lightning-draw array, and you wouldn’t have been blasted like this by the tribulation. Simply put, your own greed and murderous intent did you in. I just gave things a little push.”

He paused, then added, “Though I suppose that push was a bit harsh.”

Holy King Canglong stared at him. His gaze was a tangled mess of emotions—rage, murderous intent, wariness, and a hint of something unspoken, bordering on respect. This man, barely in his twenties, had achieved the rank of Martial God on his very first day, and in that instant, he had battered eight veteran super-level experts to pieces. Someone like this, if he were not killed today, would surely become the most terrifying force in all the world in the days to come.

“What do you plan to do now?” asked Holy King Canglong.