Crossing the Heavenly Tribulation

It was nothing more than a single glance.

Yet to Wu Lingxiao, it was both the deadliest poison in the world and the sweetest immortal nectar.

An indescribable ecstasy and flush of color instantly erupted across her ashen, haggard face.

Her body shook violently with overwhelming excitement. Even the dried-up origin of her Dao body was squeezed for one final trace of strength by that morbid fervor.

“Hubby looked at me... He’s grateful to me... I have a place in his heart!”

Wu Lingxiao wept and laughed like a woman utterly mad, desperately maintaining the formation. “It was worth it... It was all worth it! So long as I can help my husband, I’d willingly let them drain every last drop of my blood, every fragment of my soul!”

With an abundant replenishment of spiritual power, Ye Xuan no longer needed to divide his attention.

He abruptly shut his eyes, formed hand seals with both hands, and roared with the authority of a divine decree:

“Six Paths, return to one—shatter!”

A terrifying aura beyond description exploded from within Ye Xuan’s body.

The invisible barrier separating the Integration Realm from the Tribulation Transcendence Realm, battered by the violent force of eight hundred million top-grade spirit stones and crushed beneath the Six Paths of Reincarnation, finally gave a cracking sound under the unbearable strain.

“Crack...”

With that final, crisp fracture, a supreme pressure belonging to a Tribulation Transcendence cultivator burst forth like an ancient primordial beast awakening from its slumber, soaring into the heavens in an instant!

It pierced through the ten-thousand-year Netherstone of the cultivation chamber, tore through layer after layer of formations, and shot straight into the Ninth Heaven!

The skies above the Sword God Palace had been clear only moments ago, but now they darkened at an unimaginable speed.

Spiritual energy from tens of thousands of miles around seemed seized by some dreadful attraction, madly converging above the Sword God Palace.

Layer upon layer of black tribulation clouds hung overhead like an inverted sea of ink, blotting out the sun and sky. Within them, countless bolts of violet divine lightning as thick as water barrels churned and roared like enraged purple dragons, radiating an apocalyptic pressure that threatened to erase this entire world.

Throughout the Sword God Palace, countless disciples and elders were crushed beneath the heavenly might, unable even to raise their heads. Some felt their legs go weak and collapsed to their knees, staring at the sky in horror.

“W-what kind of terrifying lightning tribulation is this?”

“Who is breaking through here?”

Inside the Sword God Palace’s main hall, lanterns and colorful decorations filled the space, creating an atmosphere of joyous celebration.

At the center of the hall, Sword Sovereign Ye Jiuhuang, dressed in a bridal gown, was discussing the details of the wedding with several Supreme Elders. Her beauty was unparalleled, while a sharp and aloof air she could not conceal lingered between her brows.

But the moment she sensed the world-destroying aura of the tribulation clouds, the movement of her hand abruptly halted.

She suddenly looked up. Her beautiful eyes seemed to pierce through the roof of the great hall and gaze directly upon the lightning tribulation above the Nine Heavens.

In those eyes, once cold and stern, there now erupted a morbid fervor and overwhelming excitement.

“It’s my husband!”

Ye Jiuhuang trembled all over with excitement. Her voice carried irrepressible pride and infatuation as she cried out to everyone in the hall, “It’s my husband! He’s about to break through to the Tribulation Transcendence Realm! Hahaha! As expected of the man I, Ye Jiuhuang, chose—such heavenly might, such talent, truly unmatched in all ages!”

She abruptly drew the longsword at her side, its sword aura shooting straight into the heavens. “Postpone the wedding! Activate the Sword God Palace’s highest-level defensive formation at once! If anyone dares come within half a step of the cultivation chamber and disturb my husband’s tribulation, I will exterminate their entire clan!”

Ye Xuan himself blasted open the ceiling of the cultivation chamber.

Clad in black robes that snapped in the wind, he resembled an undefeated god of war as he defied the heavens and shot directly into the vast sea of tribulation clouds.

“Mere heavenly lightning dares stand in my way?”

Ye Xuan stood tall in the void and threw back his head with a wild laugh. His flawless Dao Body erupted with dazzling divine radiance amid the lightning—impervious to all techniques, untouched by all evil.

“Great Luo Boundless Sword Qi—cleave!”

With two fingers formed into a sword, the vast, oceanic true essence of Ye Xuan’s Tribulation Transcendence realm burst forth. A brilliant sword qi stretching ten thousand zhang, as though it could split the very firmament in two, slashed fiercely toward the first Violet Heaven Divine Lightning bolt descending from above!

There was no suspense whatsoever. The divine lightning, sufficient to reduce an ordinary Body Integration cultivator to ashes, was like a fragile block of tofu before Ye Xuan’s Great Luo Boundless Sword Qi. It was cleaved apart in an instant, dissolving into a rain of lightning that scattered between heaven and earth.

Then came the second bolt, the third...

All manner of terrifying heavenly lightning—dreaded by cultivators everywhere, each one a brush with death—the Five Elements Annihilation Divine Lightning, the Grand Void Yin-Yang Tribulation Radiance, and even a wisp of Chaotic Violet Lightning...

Before Ye Xuan, they were utterly insignificant.

He did not even need to use a magical treasure. Relying solely on the overwhelming might of his flawless Dao Body and the razor-sharp edge of his Great Luo Boundless Sword Qi, he treated the heavenly tribulation as little more than a plaything, crushing it with ease.

Yet just as the ninety-ninth—and final—bolt of heavenly lightning was extinguished by Ye Xuan’s sword, at the very instant the tribulation clouds were about to disperse and the laws of heaven and earth were about to bestow their blessings upon him—

A sudden change occurred!

At the heart of the shattered tribulation clouds, no heavenly nectar descended. Instead, an extraordinarily strange dark-red spatial rift split open, emanating an ancient, desolate aura.

Within that rift, there was no spiritual energy, no Heavenly Dao—only a deathly stillness that made one’s very soul tremble.

Ye Xuan’s gaze happened to sweep across the rift. In that instant, his entire body froze as if struck by lightning.

His consciousness was ripped away by an irresistible force and forcibly dragged into an unknowable, indescribable realm of horror.

Before Ye Xuan unfolded an apocalyptic vision so dreadful that even he—a man of schemes spanning ten thousand lifetimes, whose heart was cold and hard as iron—felt his scalp prickle and his courage shatter.

It was a world that had completely collapsed, broken into countless fragments.

The river of stars was burning. Countless stars fell in showers, like clay pellets crushed in the hands of a child.

Heaven and earth were destroyed; the galaxy lay in ruins!

And at the heart of that shattered starry expanse, Ye Xuan saw an unbelievable sight.

Countless indescribable beings, each radiating an aura of supreme majesty, were locked in a frenzied battle!

Dao Ancestors!

They were supreme Dao Ancestors, beings who stood above even Immortal Emperors—masters of an entire complete Great Dao, eternal as heaven and earth, shining alongside the sun and moon.

And yet, at this moment, these Dao Ancestors were like beasts that had lost all reason. They had gone completely mad.

Their true forms had all manifested. Each was like a blazing sun magnified billions of times over, towering hundreds of millions of zhang high!

With every gesture, they unleashed collisions of the Great Dao—cycles of worlds being born and extinguished.

The true form of the Flame Dao Ancestor blazed with an endless inferno capable of burning the heavens and boiling the seas. With a single palm strike, she turned tens of thousands of worlds into a sea of fire and nothingness.

The Yin-Yang Dao Ancestor moved both hands, shaping the twin energies of yin and yang into a vast millstone that ground away all things, tearing the void apart. Then there were the Thunder Ancestor, the Ice Ancestor...

Without exception, every one of them was a woman of peerless grace and beauty, lovely enough to topple kingdoms and cities.

Yet now, their exquisite faces held nothing but twisted madness, consuming jealousy, and murderous hatred that would not rest beneath the same sky. Each collision between them hastened the destruction of this realm by another measure.

And at the heart of that devastation, upon a floating continent of glazed crystal already riddled with cracks and ruin—

A handsome man knelt there helplessly.

The instant he saw the man’s face clearly, Ye Xuan’s pupils contracted to the size of needlepoints.