Su Ji Was Killed by Lightning Again

After Su Jiu left,

Su Ji stretched lazily, his joints cracking like popping firecrackers.

Just kidding.

What spiritual energy going out of control, forcing a breakthrough to Foundation Establishment?

In his eyes, it was the simplest trial he'd ever encountered.

His spiritual energy would grow too vast and explode his body in a month?

Then he'd just cultivate for twenty-five days instead.

No, leaving five days was still too risky.

Better to stop and rest once he reached the ninth layer of Qi Refining.

Su Ji wasn’t in a hurry—what difference did ten or fifteen days make?

If he lay down to sleep, it wasn’t like spiritual energy would sprout legs and force its way into him.

For most mediocre cultivators, the journey from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment took at least a decade.

Realizing this, Su Ji’s mood lifted.

With a clear conscience, he climbed onto the soft bed still carrying the faint scent of the girl’s perfume and sat cross-legged.

The dazzling pile of high-grade spirit stones on the table was unceremoniously heaped around him.

Thick, pure spiritual energy washed over him, invigorating his mind.

With his junior sister away, wasn’t this place as good as his own?

That shabby wooden hut assigned to outer disciples had long since grated on his nerves.

Weren’t they bound to share the same quilt sooner or later anyway?

…

Seven days passed in the blink of an eye.

With the reckless expenditure of an ocean of high-grade spirit stones, Su Ji’s cultivation had steadily climbed to the peak of the eighth layer of Qi Refining. By tomorrow, he’d likely reach the ninth.

This speed was anything but slow.

Su Ji opened his eyes and halted his cultivation.

The cooldown for [Fate’s Glimpse] had ended once more.

With a thought, he returned to that gray-white world woven from countless threads.

Just as expected.

The black-red thread symbolizing his death calamity during Foundation Establishment still hung there, unchanged from seven days ago, not a hair’s breadth different.

Su Ji studied the thread with a strange sense of bewilderment.

What was this?

Could he really die from his own stupidity twice?

Driven by this suspicion, Su Ji’s consciousness reached out toward the thread.

And gave it a sharp tug.

The gray-white world shattered before his eyes.

…

This time, there was no violent surge of spiritual energy at the start.

He sat cross-legged on Su Jiu’s bed, refreshed and at ease, his spiritual energy perfectly balanced—neither lacking nor excessive—reaching the flawless state of the ninth layer of Qi Refining.

The legendary Great Perfection of Qi Refining.

“Creak—”

The door swung open.

Su Jiu appeared at the threshold.

She still looked somewhat travel-worn, but the joy in her eyes was unmistakable.

“Senior Brother, I’m back! I gathered all the materials!”

“Mission accomplished!”

She handed over a storage ring.

Everything was perfect.

The scene shifted.

Following Su Jiu’s instructions, Su Ji arranged all the materials and officially began his Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment.

The process went smoother than he could’ve imagined.

Spiritual energy liquefied, his soul sharpened like a blade, and guided by the will of the Heavenly Dao, the three merged into one.

The vortex of spiritual energy in his dantian spun and compressed at an unprecedented speed, forming the flawless foundation of his path.

Success!

The thought had barely formed in Su Ji’s mind when—

Disaster struck.

“BOOM—!”

A deafening thunderclap shook the heavens and earth.

Above, the sky had darkened without warning, the roiling black clouds a hundred times more terrifying than before.

This wasn’t tribulation lightning—it was an ocean of pitch-black thunder, surging with annihilation.

Then, without giving anyone time to react—

A pair of violet lightning eyes flickered across the heavens.

In the next instant, hundreds of purple-black tribulation bolts, thick as barrels, rained down like a storm, indiscriminately blanketing the entire mountain peak of the Love-Longing Sect.

This wasn’t a heavenly tribulation.

This was divine punishment!

The defensive formations Su Jiu had meticulously laid out were torn apart like paper under the thunder’s wrath.

Her expression froze forever.

Amid the endless lightning, Su Jiu’s figure, the courtyard, even the entire Love-Longing Sect—vanished into ashes in an instant.

At the heart of the calamity, Su Ji’s fate was even more gruesome.

Without even time to scream, his nearly formed perfect foundation was obliterated by the thunder’s fury.

Centered on the Love-Longing Sect, the land for a hundred li was reduced to scorched ruins, the blackened craters still crackling with lingering lightning.

…

Su Ji’s eyes snapped open, his back drenched in cold sweat.

He sat motionless on the bed, stunned.

This time, there was no suffocating sensation of death—just sheer absurdity.

What kind of destructive power was that?

Even a Nascent Soul cultivator wouldn’t survive that!

His earlier assumption had been wrong.

The root of this calamity wasn’t whether he’d recklessly expand his cultivation.

It was that the act of establishing his foundation itself would provoke the Heavenly Dao’s execution!

In truth, both times, he’d died under the thunder’s judgment.

The real challenge was surviving the tribulation.

Perhaps the Heavenly Dao had already marked him.

But bound by its own rules,

It needed a justified reason to erase him.

How was he supposed to fight this?

“Struggling against heaven—endless fun”?

Then just stay at Qi Refining forever?

The moment this thought surfaced, Su Ji crushed it.

Impossible.

A Qi Refining cultivator’s lifespan was limited, and their strength too feeble. In this world where lives were as cheap as grass, he’d be dead sooner or later.

Su Ji climbed off the bed and paced the room.

Half an incense stick’s time later,

He stopped, remembering a place.

The Scripture Pavilion.

He’d completed enough missions to afford entry with his contribution points.

It wasn’t like he could just flail around blindly without Su Jiu to guide him.

Decision made, Su Ji wasted no time.

He threw on his outer disciple robes and strode out.

…

The Scripture Pavilion was as quiet as ever.

The same unkempt old man lounged in his rocking chair by the entrance, eyes shut in feigned sleep.

Su Ji respectfully presented his identity token and contribution points.

The old man didn’t even lift an eyelid, just waved impatiently.

“Go in. First-floor scriptures, read whatever you like.”

Su Ji didn’t mind, stepping inside without hesitation.

He ignored the mainstream cultivation manuals on display.

Instead, he headed straight for the corner, where a pile of neglected miscellaneous texts gathered dust.

Chronicles of Great Xia

Records of the Bizarre

Sect Gossip

Romantic Escapades

My Junior Sister’s Crush

Unofficial History of Great Xia

Su Ji picked up the thickest volume, Chronicles of Great Xia, blew off the dust, and turned to the first page.

Time slipped by unnoticed.

Su Ji lost himself in the sea of texts, flipping through one book after another.

His eyes darted across the pages, absorbing information at a frightening pace.

Yet, by the time afternoon faded into evening, after scouring every history-related text in the corner,

His expression only darkened further.

Records of heavenly tribulation were pitifully scarce.

Only one fact stood out:

After a cataclysm a hundred thousand years ago, the laws of Great Xia had twisted—heavenly tribulations no longer descended, capping cultivation at the Golden Core stage.

And Golden Core cultivators, at best, lived five hundred years.

A hundred millennia was enough for mountains to crumble and seas to dry. Even Golden Core experts would’ve cycled through two hundred generations.

The truth of that ancient calamity?

Lost to time’s relentless flow.

It became a blank page in history, unknown to all.

Now, trouble had arrived.