Hundred Tribulation Lightning

Above the Dragon Valley Small World, the winds and clouds suddenly changed color as boundless tribulation clouds gathered into a swirling vortex.

Di Tian shot diagonally into the high sky, avoiding any residual force from the tribulation waves damaging the Dragon Bone Remains below when he crossed the tribulation.

The closer he drew to the tribulation clouds overhead, the fiercer the astral winds became, like steel blades stabbing straight into his ribs.

These were merely appetizers. The real threat was the pitch-black tribulation clouds above, where tribulation lightning was brewing.

Before long, the lightning tribulation had fully formed. Thunder rumbled as dark clouds blanketed the sky, electric serpents darting through them.

Boom!

In an instant, the first tribulation bolt struck down. Thunder exploded with a deafening roar.

Di Tian met it with his Black Dragon Claw, delivering a sky-shattering strike that scattered the tribulation lightning.

Though he had succeeded with a single blow, his expression remained calm and utterly unruffled.

This was only the first tribulation bolt. Soul beast tribulations were divided into tiers of nine bolts. A Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast faced nine tribulation bolts during its first crossing; afterward came the ferocious beast tribulations, with eighteen bolts, increasing in number each time.

The Nine Hundred Thousand Year Heavenly Tribulation Di Tian had faced last time had contained a chilling total of eighty-one tribulation bolts.

With his experience from crossing the Nine Hundred Thousand Year Heavenly Tribulation before, coupled with his drastically increased strength, dealing with the first eighty-one tribulation bolts was not particularly difficult.

The real problem lay afterward. No soul beast had ever survived a Million Year Heavenly Tribulation, so no one knew how many tribulation bolts would come after the eighty-first. It could be nine, or it could be even more.

In the sky, the violent tribulation clouds seemed to pause for a moment, flickering with dim, ghostly light. Thunder Dragons could vaguely be seen dancing within, twisting and roaring, tinting the originally pitch-black, rampant tribulation lightning with threads of purple.

"Hah!"

Di Tian shouted sharply. Divine light flowed through the corners of his eyes, and his bloodline surged throughout his body like rolling thunder and the tolling of great bells.

His right hand shot out. Its joints rapidly thickened as pitch-black dragon scales spread across it, swiftly transforming it into a Black Dragon Claw.

Facing the tribulation lightning gathering momentum in the sky, black dragon scales spread over his claw as Di Tian reverted to his true form, the Golden Eyed Black Dragon King. His true beast body was several degrees stronger than his humanoid form.

Pitch-black dragon wings unfurled, blotting out the sky like a dark curtain. With a beat of his wings, roaring hurricanes swept forth.

Defying the heavens, he soared upward and collided with the eighty-second tribulation bolt.

"The eighty-third... the eighty-fourth... the... the ninetieth!"

Di Tian counted silently. The hundred-zhang Golden Eyed Black Dragon Body emerged from the ninetieth tribulation bolt, covered in dense wounds. Yet not a trace of fresh flesh was visible; every wound had been charred black by the lightning, some even carbonized.

Before he could catch his breath, purple light blazed from the swirling tribulation clouds overhead. The ninety-first purple tribulation bolt suddenly struck down, landing squarely upon Di Tian's back.

It carved a savage scar more than ten zhang long across his back, white smoke faintly rising from it. The hundred-zhang black dragon body also plummeted a hundred meters through the air before Di Tian endured the agony and beat his dragon wings, finally halting his descent.

"Damn heavenly tribulation, that was truly underhanded!"

Di Tian had expected the Million Year Heavenly Tribulation would not end so easily, but he had not expected this pure-purple tribulation lightning to be so treacherous. The instant it emerged from the tribulation clouds, it had practically ignored physical distance, directly crossing space to strike him.

Knowing that the heavenly tribulation he faced had no consciousness and that cursing it was useless, Di Tian immediately steadied his mind and prepared to stimulate his bloodline into an instant evolution.

As his dragon eyes closed and opened, his gleaming golden pupils transformed into seven colors. Seven-colored radiance spilled from the corners of his eyes like a trailing rainbow stream, extending for hundreds of meters.

The Dragon God Core within him trembled at the same time, erupting with incomparably dazzling nine-colored brilliance and drawing forth the scant yet pure Dragon God True Blood hidden deep within Di Tian's bloodline.

"Roar—Roar—"

Bursting out from the cocoon of seven-colored flowing light, his former Golden Eyed Black Dragon Body vanished. In its place was a seven-colored divine dragon stretching a hundred zhang in length.

Its appearance was no different from that of the Dragon God, once a God King. Covered in seven-colored scales, it was essentially a scaled-down Dragon God.

Having evolved into the Dragon God Body, Di Tian's aura grew more than severalfold stronger. Sacred energy surged into the heavens.

Using the Dragon God Claw, which he had cultivated to perfection, he fiercely struck the ninety-second tribulation bolt and shattered it. Then, riding the momentum, he rose toward the tribulation clouds that were birthing the lightning and attacked them.

In truth, Di Tian did not want to be this aggressive. If possible, he would have preferred to proceed steadily and fight with caution.

Unfortunately, reality gave him no choice. It only forced a fate upon him.

Many soul beasts and soul masters possessed abilities that stimulated bloodline evolution, but without exception, they all shared one flaw: instability. They were difficult to maintain for long, and Di Tian was no exception.

Therefore, he had to shatter the tribulation lightning and tribulation clouds as quickly as possible while his strength was explosively enhanced.

Under his proactive, all-out assault, both the tribulation clouds and the seven-colored light around the Dragon God Body dimmed by a degree.

The tribulation clouds collapsed, transforming into the hundredth tribulation bolt, which erupted with profound purple intent!

"Huff... huff..."

Di Tian gulped down dragon breath. "This should be the last one, right?"

His gaze settled on the hundredth deep-purple lightning tribulation, and his expression became grave to the extreme. This was not merely divine-level power—it could even obliterate the weakest divine body in a single strike.

A trace of memory surfaced in his mind. He remembered! The Million Year Heavenly Tribulation of soul beasts was actually identical to the Hundred Tribulation Lightning used by the Divine Realm to punish evil gods in the past! Evil gods guilty of grave crimes would have the divine rings above their heads stripped away by the God Kings, be deprived of their godhood, and be left with only their divine bodies, bound upon the Divine Punishment Platform.

They would "enjoy" the slow death of the Hundred Tribulation Lightning. Only from the first purple divine thunderbolt onward would it possess the power to completely destroy a divine body, allowing the sinful god to slowly meet their end beneath the torment of one divine thunderbolt after another, shrouded in the terror of death.

He vaguely remembered that if a sinful god endured the Hundred Tribulation Lightning without dying, there would be a second stage afterward... but this was no time to dwell on old memories.

Di Tian forced himself to unleash the final brilliance of the Dragon God Body. Both hands simultaneously used the Dragon God Claw—Twin Dragons Open the Sky! A pair of Dragon God Claws struck from both sides, tearing apart with all their might. With that sudden exertion, the seven-colored radiance around his body nearly faded to nothing.

Yet it was precisely this fierce burst of force that tore the hundredth tribulation bolt, which had nearly become a heaven-reaching purple lightning serpent, into two halves, scattering it into nothingness.

Di Tian also fell out of the Dragon God Body state. The Dragon God Bloodline that had been boiling within him returned to stillness, while the black giant dragon hovered high in the sky.

The dark clouds dispersed, but the anticipated clear skies and bright sun did not arrive.

At that moment, Di Tian's golden dragon eyes blurred. Strange colors illuminated the surrounding space, energy storms swept through the area, and heaven and earth changed hue.

At the same time, the hazy memories in his mind were redrawn with clarity by this sight.

If a sinful god luckily survived the Hundred Tribulation Lightning, it would trigger the second stage of divine punishment: the Earth Fire Wind Water Four Extremes Four Tribulations, a five-day ordeal of tempering.

Having had their divine ring removed and their godhood stripped away, sinful gods could not recover themselves at all. All they had left was a divine body riddled with holes by the Hundred Tribulation Lightning. Even if they survived by chance, they certainly could not withstand the tempering of the Earth Fire Wind Water Four Extremes Four Tribulations.