In a flash.
Several eons passed.
The Small Furnace trembled, as though something had been forged.
Lei Jun suddenly opened his eyes.
His Divine Sense probed inside the furnace.
He wanted to know at the first opportunity what the Wuliang Fierce Shatter had produced.
Lei Jun couldn't help but freeze.
Although he had never seen the thing inside the furnace,
he knew what it was.
It was actually...
"Merit!"
At that moment,
the Wuliang Fierce Shatter had finished refining.
Near the Small Furnace,
golden light, Golden Lotuses, and other Strange Phenomena shimmered.
Just seeing these Strange Phenomena was enough to leave Lei Jun stunned.
He had a guess.
And when he sent his Divine Sense into the furnace and saw what had been refined, his guess was confirmed.
Who could have imagined
that after being refined in the furnace,
the Wuliang Fierce Shatter, something supremely fiendish and evil,
would turn into Merit!
It was astonishing. Even Lei Jun was surprised for a moment.
Then Lei Jun took a wisp of the newly refined Merit
and fed it into the Small Furnace again.
He repeated the same process as before.
Refining Merit!
In a flash,
another seven eons passed.
Boom!
Unlike before, the Small Furnace let out a muffled thud this time.
At a glance,
there were Strange Phenomena, but they seemed to bode ill.
Black mist swirled around it, filling the air with an ominous feeling.
He sent his Divine Sense inside to investigate.
At once,
Lei Jun understood. His face showed an expression of "just as I expected."
He couldn't help commenting,
"Unbelievable!"
"Wuliang baleful energy produces Merit when refined!"
"And refining Merit produces Wuliang baleful energy!"
It was a perfect closed loop!
Still, it wasn't hard to understand.
The World Origin represented creation.
The Wuliang Fierce Shatter represented Destruction.
When creation and Destruction came together, in the end... wouldn't nothing remain? In other words, the Void!
And from the Void, creation and Destruction could arise once more!
Creation made Destruction possible.
Destruction made creation possible.
So,
in essence, Merit and the Wuliang Fierce Shatter were actually the same substance.
They were merely different manifestations of it!
They were opposites,
yet unified with each other.
It accorded with the Principle of Taiji.
By contrast, the Void was Wuji.
Wuji Gives Birth to Taiji!
This was the principle of the Great Dao!
In an instant,
Lei Jun understood.
Everything suddenly became clear.
"Almost anything in the Primordial Wilderness can be solved with Merit!"
"Whether it's alchemy, weapon refining, divining the secrets of Heaven, or even improving one's comprehension of the Laws!"
"It can all be accomplished with Merit!"
"You can even use it to become a Sage!"
"Merit is truly wondrous! No wonder every Innate God wants it so badly—"
"Yet something so wondrous seems to be inexhaustible!"
"Clearly, that doesn't make sense!"
Merit was bestowed by the Heavenly Dao.
But no matter how powerful the Heavenly Dao was, it couldn't just give without receiving anything in return!
Since it bestowed Merit,
that meant
there had to be a source replenishing it!
Lei Jun had never understood where it came from.
Now he understood.
Baleful energy!
Lei Jun couldn't condense baleful energy into the Wuliang Fierce Shatter, but that didn't mean the Heavenly Dao couldn't!
At that moment, Lei Jun had not only seen through the relationship between Merit and baleful energy,
but also understood the nature of the Tribulation Period!
"No wonder the closer a Tribulation Period gets to its end, the more concentrated the baleful energy in the Primordial Wilderness becomes!"
"And once the Tribulation Period ends, the Heavenly Dao bestows a great deal of Merit!"
"And it's almost always like this with every Tribulation Period!"
"It's because the Tribulation Period causes many cultivators to perish. The Merit originally bestowed upon them is released as baleful energy after their deaths!"
"And then this released baleful energy is 'purified'—the Heavenly Dao uses some kind of 'program' to refine it into Merit!"
In a sense, a Tribulation Period was equivalent to...
"Clearing the cache?"
Lei Jun thought.
But then he had another thought.
Lei Jun suddenly realized that if he took things a step further,
couldn't he...
"Bestow Sage Positions?"
What was a Sage Position?
A Sage Fruit Position!
If his reasoning was correct,
under the Heavenly Dao, nine was the greatest number.
So there could be no more than nine Sages.
Hongjun was included among them.
And in the entire Primordial Wilderness, only the Heavenly Dao had the ability to appoint Sages.
In other words,
barring unforeseen circumstances, there could only be nine Sages in the Primordial Wilderness.
But now,
Lei Jun suddenly realized that a Sage Position might be equivalent to a "program"!
That meant
he might be able to appoint Sages on his own!
There might be more than nine Sage Fruit Positions in the Primordial Wilderness!
The thought gave Lei Jun quite a fright.
But it wasn't impossible.
"Antivirus Program" activated!
The entire world grew a little clearer!
For a time,
the world gradually became lucid.
With the Fierce Beast Tribulation about to end and the fierce beasts no longer capable of wreaking havoc on the Primordial Wilderness, did this seem to be becoming the new order of things?
Under these circumstances,
a furious roar shook heaven and earth.
It resounded throughout the Primordial Wilderness.
Whether fierce beasts or cultivators who had yet to take human form,
they all heard it clearly.
The roar was terrifying.
It struck fear into the heart.
And just as the words implied, the moment the sound rang out,
the heavens and earth shook!
With just that single roar,
countless stars fell from the Nine Heavens!
But the roar
was also filled with resentment and unwillingness.
Considering the terrifying strength of the one who had roared,
Lei Jun, far away near the Blood Sea, suddenly opened his eyes.
The roar had startled him, too.
He even withdrew the Dharma Gate for refining Shen Ni's True Body Seed.
"Just as I thought!"
"Shen Ni is getting desperate!"
Whoosh!
With a single thought, Lei Jun arrived at Mount Buzhou.
At that moment, he sensed an enormous, pure mass of demonic energy.
"Has a Chaos Demon God been resurrected?"
"After the Godslaying Spear plan 'went bankrupt,' was this what Shen Ni had been plotting all along?"
"One plan failed, so he came up with another!"
"I can only say, it's just like Shen Ni!"
"He's full of dirty tricks!"
Lei Jun shook his head.
He was deeply moved.
Although he'd long known that Shen Ni might still be plotting something,
when the scheme finally unfolded,
Lei Jun was still shocked.
That was aside from the scheme itself.
There was also the matter of the Chaos Demon God that had "revived" just now.
Why the quotation marks?
Because it couldn't be called a true revival.
It had a body, but no Divine Soul.
Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't powerful.
Because...
It had a "pilot"!
Shen Ni was inside!
Besides...
The shell itself was astonishing, too.
So much so that, after inspecting it,
Lei Jun blurted out,
"Is this... a Stitched Monster?!"
With the strength of a Sage,
he couldn't cover the entire Primordial Wilderness with a Thunder Tribulation the way the Heavenly Dao could.
But he could still do so with his Divine Sense.
Of course,
that was also because the Primordial Wilderness was relatively stable now.
Buzhou hadn't fallen,
and was almost entirely undamaged.
It was far more stable than it had been during the Investiture of the Gods.
Roar!
Without warning, Lei Jun summoned his Dharma Body and threw a punch!
Ten Thousand Laws Resonating, Boundless Mysterious Light surging forth,
swirling around the Dharma Body's fist.
"Boom!"
A deafening crash rang out.
Along with the sound of countless worlds shattering came the heavy thud of the Chaos Demon God Shell collapsing!
The power of a single punch—
even a Chaos Demon God had to hit the ground!
"It's you!"
From within the Demon God Body,
Shen Ni let out a startled cry.
His voice was full of gritted teeth.
"You again!"
"Not only have you repeatedly ruined my plans, you even dare come right to my doorstep?"
"But that's fine!"
"Today, I'll see this through to the end!"
"First, I'll slaughter the Sage, then destroy the heavens!"
"Yaaah!"
A furious roar rang out.
The Demon God Body blazed with light.
Especially at the places where its body parts were joined—
countless Dharma Gates burst forth from them.
Shen Ni had roused all his True Body Seeds, unleashing his strongest attack.
In an instant,
countless Strange Phenomena intertwined.
Divine Flames, Extreme Cold, crashing thunder, raging winds, and more.
Besides these natural phenomena,
there were also things that transcended the material world—
such as Killing Intent.
Each of these Strange Phenomena represented a Chaos Demon God's Dharma Gate.
And on top of that, there was the incomparably powerful Demon God Body!
The Demon God Body lunged forward, its attack almost like a divine ability!
Its might shook the heavens!
It had the power to destroy heaven and earth!
Unfortunately...
There was a gulf between heaven and earth.
The "heaven" that was Lei Jun
was an insurmountable chasm for this body!
The Strange Phenomena were powerful.
The body was strong, too.
But Lei Jun could withstand them head-on!
"Come on!"
Lei Jun laughed heartily,
feeling exhilarated.
Ever since he took form, he'd never had a truly evenly matched fight.
He took a single step forward.
At once,
heaven and earth shook, and the South Sea churned.
Then,
the Demon God Shell—which had only just risen to its feet and displayed a taste of its might—was knocked down again by Lei Jun's punch.
What's more,
every punch from the Dharma Body carried the might of Heaven.
It also carried the power unique to Lei Jun.
"Rend!"
Lei Jun shouted.
With enough power to split open the heavens,
he tore the arm right off!
In an instant!
Countless True Body Seeds fell.
At a thought from Lei Jun,
the Small World within him opened, taking in those True Bodies along with the arm!
After a quick appraisal,
that single arm contained tens of thousands of Shen Ni's True Bodies!
Absurdly many!
At the rate he'd been working before, just these True Bodies would keep Lei Jun refining until the Tribulation Period ended!
That showed just how many times more efficient this was!
And besides—
who said the Chaos Demon God Shell had only one arm?
Especially when it was a "Stitched Monster"?
One glance was enough.
It was simply indescribable.
"This thing has over a thousand arms!"
"It's got plenty of legs, too!"
"Dozens of heads as well!"
"And then there's that enormous body..."
"This trip was more than worth it!"
In that moment,
Lei Jun dismembered the Chaos Demon God Body!
And the Dharma Body had torn it apart entirely with brute force that shook heaven and earth!
Every part he ripped off
was collected by Lei Jun.
Before long,
little remained of the Demon God Body.
Shen Ni, hidden within it,
was exposed as well.
His eyes were filled with unwillingness and Destruction.
He stared at Lei Jun,
his gaze full of hatred.
At that moment,
Lei Jun's Dharma Body remained intact.
He suddenly spoke.
"Beast Emperor Shen Ni!"
"The Fierce Beast Tribulation must end! The next era does not belong to you!"
"If you insist on forcing the Tribulation Period to continue,"
"then I'll send you on your way!"
"I'll help you meet Dao's Fall!"
Suddenly, boundless changes swept through heaven and earth, as if some great terror were about to descend.
Lei Jun gave a soft shout.
It was the Heavenly Sound,
and seemed like the Dao Sound as well.
"Thunder Come!"
In an instant,
the Nine Heavens underwent a world-shaking change, and the Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation descended!
At that moment,
Lei Jun's expression was impassive, his Dharma Body transformed into the heavens!
Layer upon layer of thunderclouds
gathered across Lei Jun's sky
in an instant!
From six-nine to nine-nine,
the Thunder Tribulation shifted from purple to black, then from black back to purple.
The Nine-Nine Nirvana Thunder Tribulation
was the purest purple,
without a trace of any other color.
It was as if...
even the other colors had been annihilated by the thunderclouds!
It was formed entirely from Purple Qi!
This was Lei Jun's original color!
Before you continue