"T-tonight?!" Yan Chuan wondered if his ears were playing tricks on him.
Advancing to the Soul Formation stage—was that something one could just do on a whim whenever they felt like it?
He had already prepared himself to spend the next twenty years attempting to reach the Soul Formation stage.
Even setting that aside, advancing to the Soul Formation stage required enduring a lightning tribulation. One had to prepare countless contingencies; there was no room for the slightest carelessness.
Helping someone break through to the Soul Formation stage—especially someone already at half-step Soul Formation—was quite simple for Lu Yang. In the end, it was merely a matter of a single medicinal pill.
When immortal sect disciples cultivated, they placed the greatest value on the foundation of their own realm, relying on pills as supplements at most.
Pills were, after all, external aids. Power acquired through reliance on external things was prone to flaws and harmful to future cultivation.
Yan Chuan was different. For a rogue cultivator like him, reaching the Nascent Soul stage was already a stroke of extraordinary fortune. In his journey to the Nascent Soul stage, who knew how many different cultivation methods he had switched between? This had left his internal Qi impure and chaotic, making it difficult to raise his realm any further.
Taking a pill, on the contrary, would help purify and smooth out his Qi.
"Senior Brother Lu, you have a pill that helps people break through to the Soul Formation stage?" Tao Yaoye asked. If they were back at Alchemy Peak, one could easily pull out handfuls of such pills, but this was the East Sea. Who would carry pills they couldn't even use when traveling far from home?
"As it happens, I do."
Lu Yang rummaged through his identity jade token several times and produced a bottle of pills.
When the perfectly round pill rolled out, Yan Chuan's eyes went completely wide.
"A S-Spirit Concentration Pill?!"
This was an invaluable, highly coveted pill. He had seen it twice at auctions, and both times it had fetched astronomical prices. On one of those occasions, the winning bidder had even been a disciple from Yingzhou Island.
If even disciples of Yingzhou Island had to acquire Spirit Concentration Pills from the outside world, it was obvious how precious they were.
This Spirit Concentration Pill had come from when Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou visited the Demon Domain. At the time, Third Senior Sister had not brought a welcome gift, so she took the two of them to loot the legacy of a certain Suanni. She had slain that Suanni when she first arrived in the Demon Domain, and among its treasures was a Spirit Concentration Pill.
Lu Yang had never seen what a Soul Formation lightning tribulation looked like, so this was the perfect opportunity to broaden his horizons.
"Keeping it is useless to me anyway. Hero Yan, it's yours." Lu Yang casually tossed the Spirit Concentration Pill to Yan Chuan as if he were throwing a piece of candy.
Hero Yan caught the Spirit Concentration Pill with both hands, treasuring it beyond words.
"B-but I haven't prepared to face the lightning tribulation yet." The hope of advancing to the Soul Formation stage was right in his hands, but Yan Chuan knew his own limits. He was merely an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator; without proper preparation, the chances of being struck dead by the tribulation lightning were exceedingly high.
"Oh right, lightning tribulations can actually strike people to death," Lu Yang remarked, only now recalling a fact he had overlooked for a long time.
Lu Yang mentally reviewed everyone he knew and finally thought of an example. "Speaking of which, the only person I know who died from tribulation lightning was Qin Haoran."
Had Qin Haoran not been struck dead, Li Haoran wouldn't exist today.
"Fairy, do you have any ideas?" After pondering for a good while, Lu Yang decided to consult the ever-resourceful Immortal Fairy.
"The most important thing when facing a lightning tribulation is confidence. As long as you have enough confidence, the tribulation is just a formality."
"Really? Is that actually a thing?" Lu Yang wondered why he had never heard of such a theory before.
"At the very least, that's how this immortal always got through lightning tribulations, and it was the same for the Immortal Ascension Tribulation."
Lu Yang: "..."
Did that have anything to do with confidence? Wasn't it just because you were overwhelmingly strong, Fairy?
If he shared this method with Hero Yan, wouldn't Hero Yan just get struck dead by the lightning tribulation full of confidence?
Since the fairy couldn't be counted on, he could only rely on himself.
"Junior Brother Li, you have the most experience. Do you have any suggestions?"
Li Haoran thought for a moment and said, "Facing a tribulation depends first and foremost on oneself. If an outsider helps, it will only increase the power of the tribulation lightning. Therefore, when Hero Yan faces his lightning tribulation, we cannot intervene."
Chapter 804