Even though weathering tribulations had become as routine as eating and drinking for Wei Yuan, the heavenly tribulation before him still left him baffled as to its origin. It seemed more as if the Heavenly Dao was feeling under the weather these past few days, in a foul temper, and had deliberately come to pick a quarrel with him.
Yet Wei Yuan had never feared tribulations much to begin with. Sheltered within the World Refining Grand Array and anchored to the Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain, he had all the less reason to worry.
An immortal clan's ancestral mountain was inherently the ultimate treasure for countering the Immortal Ascension Tribulation. Even the mortals dwelling in the surrounding cities formed part of the defense against the heavenly tribulation.
The tribulation clouds overhead gradually turned bright red, taking on the distinct form of fish scales, as if the entire sky were the body of some colossal beast. Every single scale was ablaze, and suddenly, like a dripping leak, a massive glob of heavenly fire dropped down!
In the blink of an eye, cascades of drifting fire fell like sunset clouds, bathing the entire world in golden red. Wherever the wind blew, fierce flames blazed, fluttering and scattering like red spider lilies. Spirit beasts bolted through the woods, sparks trailing from their tails; roosting crows were startled from their branches, their wings smeared with crimson marks; the rivers surged red, blurring the line between water and sky; crimson clouds collapsed in ruins as the firmament split open in a raging conflagration.
The moment the tribulation stirred, Wei Yuan recognized its true target. It was not aimed at his veneration of the Creation Immortal Venerable, as he had originally thought, but at the unfinished book on karmic luck.
Wei Yuan's original intention in re-establishing the system of karmic luck had merely been his own convenience, with the added benefit of leaving behind a clear, accessible path for posterity. Otherwise, who could possibly understand what the Patriarch had written? Back in those days, even the Three Immortals were merely nominal disciples who failed to catch the Patriarch's eye.
Yet the arrival of this tribulation immediately made Wei Yuan realize that what he had written must be extraordinary—enough to draw down a heavenly tribulation. His spirits lifted, and he prepared to give the book a proper title.
Wei Yuan never weathered tribulations by conventional means, and this time was no exception. Under ordinary circumstances, the tribulations drawn down by authoring canonical treatises were merely mundane thunder-fire heavenly tribulations of limited power and singular form.
Although this was indeed a fire tribulation, it was far from ordinary. Sheets of flowing fire poured down like waterfalls from the Heavenly River, unquenchable and igniting everything in their path; a mere touch meant burning until nothing remained.
Descending from the heavens was the Liusu Celestial Xuanli True Fire, which was far deadlier than ordinary tribulation fire. Moreover, its scope was vast beyond measure—thousands upon tens of thousands of times broader than a standard heavenly tribulation.
The sheet of falling fire covered a staggering expanse of a thousand li in radius. Mortals laboring outside the cities and among the mountains saw only a wash of brilliant red between heaven and earth; before they could even kowtow in prayer, a wave of crimson mist swept over them, instantly reducing them to white cinders. Then, swept by a scorching gust, they disintegrated into nothingness in the blink of an eye.
The forests on the mountains did not merely burn; they detonated directly into balls of raging fire, and then even these mortal flames were incinerated to ash. The birds and beasts within had no hope of escape; without even the time to cry out in grief, they were reduced to pale ashes by the true fire.
Immediately after, the rocks and soil began to glow red. Before the burrowing insects and beasts could understand what was happening, they were already refined away.
Given the terrifying might of this nearly ten-thousand-li tribulation cloud, if the Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain had been a mundane peak, even one ten thousand zhang tall would have been melted flat.
In an instant, the entire Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain caught fire and turned red, the rocks on its surface glowing and softening.
Yet this tribulation was different from those of the past. It had struck so abruptly that there was no time to usher the mortals and cultivators scattered outside into the cities. For a time, countless vengeful souls drifted up from the ancestral mountain, only to be burned into nothingness by the heavenly fire.
Vengeful souls naturally feared fire, and against heavenly fire, they melted before it even touched them.
At this moment, Wei Yuan's divine sense not only encompassed the hundreds of li spanned by the World Refining Grand Array, but had enough leeway to reach across the entire thousand-li radius. Wherever his gaze fell, he immediately saw countless wisps of faint black vapor and purplish-black resentment, yet none of it could struggle in the boundless sea of fire; it burst into tiny sparks and vanished in an instant.
At this sight, the smile on Wei Yuan's face had long vanished. Within his field of view alone, over a hundred thousand mortals and several hundred cultivators had already been reduced to ash.
In particular, many template Dao Foundation cultivators had been active around the ancestral mountain. Having taken on assignments to survey ley lines, redraw maps, and the like—tasks that were meticulous yet normally very safe—they had unexpectedly been met with sudden disaster today, falling in entire squads.
Once again, Wei Yuan felt the malice of the Heavenly Dao: If I can't deal with you, can I not deal with the people around you? Can I not handle mere templates?
Within a hundred li of the center of the Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain, the forests and vegetation had all been burned away by heavenly fire, leaving only numerous palaces with inherent defensive formations struggling to hold on. But within this perimeter, the World Refining Grand Array resisted and suppressed the assault, significantly reducing the heavenly fire's power so that it could only scorch the earth and stone rather than melt them.
The several major cities in the surrounding area had also activated their defensive formations to resist bitterly. Fortunately, these formations were originally connected to the ancestral mountain. In the years since Qingming took over, it had naturally overhauled the grand array; the formation cores had long been changed from expensive spiritual materials to core energy stations, complete with backup stations.
With numerous template Dao Foundation cultivators inside the cities, all energy stations were powered on simultaneously, accompanied by many newly added temporary power-supplying arrays. This multiplied the defensive arrays' power, barely staving off the heavenly fire.
Standing at the array's core, Wei Yuan issued his orders with a mere flicker of divine sense. Countless template Dao Foundation cultivators dashed out from their quarters, rushed into the grand array, and took their designated posts. The surplus waited outside the formation, standing by for contingencies.
Wei Yuan waited patiently until every cultivator was in position. Only then did he snort and appear atop the summit of the ancestral mountain, looking up at the tribulation clouds.
This time, the sky was covered entirely in fish-scale tribulation clouds, without a tribulation eye or an eye of heaven opening. Wei Yuan's expression darkened further; being unable to strike back at a Heavenly Eye soured his mood considerably.
Waiting no longer, he willed his Dao power to surge, and his reserve plummeted rapidly. Every cultivator within the array showed strained expressions, but they all gritted their teeth and held firm.
A strange humming arose from deep within the Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain, echoing through the peaks and canyons.
The top of the main peak suddenly bulged, as if some gargantuan creature were trying to burrow out from below. Then, with a terrifying sonic boom, countless rocks and earth erupted a hundred zhang into the sky, followed by a pillar of light over ten zhang thick blasting from underground, shooting straight into the vault of heaven and slamming violently into the tribulation clouds!
The pillar of light pierced into the tribulation clouds, climbing ever higher. But the clouds were far from a thin layer; even after the array's world-refining beam of slaughter punched through a thousand zhang, it still had not broken through entirely.
Here, the advantage of Wei Yuan controlling the grand array came to the fore. With another thought, he made subtle adjustments to the World Refining Grand Array's operation, infusing it with the power of the Pure Land Grotto-Heaven.
A tinge of gold suddenly infused the originally pure-white pillar of slaughter, instantly doubling the rate at which it dissolved the tribulation clouds! With its consumption spiking, the tribulation cloud shifted noticeably; vast swathes of its central section eroded and melted away, while surrounding clouds continuously gathered to fill the void.
Seeing how swiftly the world-refining light of slaughter dissolved the tribulation clouds, Wei Yuan was quite pleased. A smile had just begun to touch his lips when it abruptly froze. Within the beam of slaughter, the silhouettes of five Buddhist monks clearly emerged—some chanting sutras, some laboring, some journeying afar, each bearing a different countenance.
Wei Yuan silently cursed, though he did not call out the King Buddha by name. He was not sure whether cursing the King Buddha was effectively cursing himself. Cursing himself mattered little, but the King Buddha had just received a strand of his karmic luck; he would not want to curse it into dispersal.
By now, the inexhaustible stream of world-refining light of slaughter had clearly shaken the heavenly tribulation. Yet Wei Yuan did not stop there. The peaks throughout the ancestral mountain blazed with brilliant radiance as one Four Symbols Timing Grand Array after another was fully manned and activated.
With a wave of Wei Yuan's divine sense, streaks of white light rose from the formations, coalescing into a Black Tortoise hundreds of zhang long that roared and charged into the tribulation clouds!
Plunging into the clouds, the Black Tortoise reared its head with all its might and slammed down forcefully, unleashing a ring of dark light that blasted apart several li of tribulation clouds! Although the clouds reassembled in the blink of an eye, the shockwaves were plainly visible.
This region lay in the north, blanketed in ice and snow, so Wei Yuan chose the Northern Black Tortoise as the primary offensive manifestation of the Four Symbols Arrays. Although this True Fire heavenly tribulation severed the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth with ten thousand li of tribulation clouds, the grand arrays drew upon the power of the ley lines, allowing the Northern Black Tortoise to exert visibly greater might than the other three divine beasts.
Following the first array-manifested Black Tortoise smashing into the clouds, one after another surged into the sky. Between heaven and earth, it looked as though divine beasts were roaming free!
The sheer number of grand arrays and the fury of their bombardment instantly silenced countless wills throughout the Immortal Heaven and across the Void.
A single Four Symbols Timing Grand Array comprised three thousand six hundred Dao Foundation cultivators, and Wei Yuan had deployed seventy-two such arrays in one breath! At every moment, dozens of Black Tortoises roared as they charged into the tribulation clouds, obliterating several or even a dozen li of clouds at a time!
Compounded by the unceasing light of slaughter from the World Refining Grand Array, the entire cloud canopy churned violently, unable to maintain its orderly fish-scale form. The falling heavenly fire grew erratic and patchy, thin in some places and dense in others.
This continued for an entire incense stick of time. The seventy-two Four Symbols Timing Grand Arrays launched nearly a thousand Black Tortoises, blowing the clouds in the sky full of holes.
High in the vault of heaven, several consciousnesses were conversing cryptically.
"Why must he bother? Heavenly tribulations have a set measure. Once endured, they pass. Counterattacking the heavens—how foolish."
"Perhaps he wishes to save some mortals."
"Heh, such expenditures could sustain millions of mortals. The gains hardly justify the cost."
"He gained success in his youth and has always been arrogant. Now he has reached the age where he challenges Heaven and Earth, heh!"
Right at that moment, countless venomous serpents suddenly manifested in the void, crawling across the sky and land in unspeakable horror!
Then, an exquisite hand reached out from the void. Around the wrist was a bracelet engraved with serpent patterns. The grotesque spectacle of myriad slithering snakes had been triggered by this very Snake God Bracelet.
The consciousnesses that had just been conferring vanished instantly, retreating who knew where.
Zhu Yan strode out unceremoniously, taking a stroll across the Void Sky before sneering, "A pair of ignorant fools! Just because you lot can't do it doesn't mean others can't. When my Palace of Grand Beginning fights a heavenly tribulation, we have our reasons! It's merely a tribulation—if we say we'll shatter it, we shatter it!"
Just then, an ethereal voice drifted from every direction: "Bah! Shattering a heavenly tribulation? Did your Palace of Grand Beginning create this heaven and earth? Boasting aside, your Palace of Grand Beginning acts with such overweening arrogance—it truly was a mistake to ever let you have three immortals!"
Zhu Yan's expression chilled. "What if it was? I've only just ascended to immortality. If you can't stand it, come kill me!"
The immortal snorted, clearly incensed, but disdained bickering with Zhu Yan. Zhu Yan's cunning was well-known throughout the realm. For instance, a few years ago, a hot-tempered Liao Clan immortal, unable to stomach the provocation, had struck out in fury—only to find that the Zhu Yan walking the Void Sky was merely an avatar, while his true body lay in ambush nearby.
That Liao Clan immortal had slain Zhu Yan's avatar in one blow, but took a direct hit from an immortal treasure in return, damaging his immortal foundation so severely that several centuries would barely suffice to nurse it back to health.
Only then did everyone realize that Zhu Yan possessed a divine ability for avatars. The avatars produced by this art were so exquisite that one could not distinguish them from his true body at all. With the Liao Clan immortal serving as a cautionary tale, no one was willing to make a move against Zhu Yan swaggering through the Immortal Heaven anymore. Even if they succeeded, they would only destroy an avatar, and most immortals could not withstand the self-detonation of an immortal treasure.
While words were still being exchanged high in the Immortal Heaven, the outcome of the heavenly tribulation in the mortal realm had already been decided.
Under the full-force bombardment of dozens of Four Symbols Timing Grand Arrays and the grinding assault of the world-refining light of slaughter, the tribulation clouds could hold out no longer. With a tremendous boom, they shattered apart, transforming into ten thousand li of crimson sunset glow—a crimson sky spanning the horizon!
The immortal and Zhu Yan, who had still been bickering, fell silent together. One had merely been boasting and hadn't expected it to actually come true; the other had assumed the first was bluffing, only to find he was not.
Looking down at the balls of true fire still burning across the world below and the fish-scale tribulation clouds gradually dispersing, both the immortal and Zhu Yan felt a twinge of anticlimax. Finding the whole affair rather pointless, they went their separate ways.
Watching the scattered tribulation clouds across the sky, Wei Yuan felt the resentment accumulated in his chest over the years swept clean. He let out three long laughs that shook the land for a thousand li: "Accursed Heaven! You have your day too?"
A moment later, the Dao Foundation cultivators in the arrays below finally learned from the dharma idol cultivators overseeing the Four Symbols that the heavenly tribulation had truly been shattered!
All at once, thunderous cheers erupted across the ancestral mountain. The spirits of these several hundred thousand templates shifted at once, and their karmic luck quietly underwent a subtle change.
Chapter 1200