"Th-this lightning... How is this possible?!"
The Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation had left Shen Ni stunned.
The crucial thing was, he had nowhere to run.
This tribulation.
It fixed space-time and locked onto karma.
No matter where the one undergoing the tribulation was or where they went.
As long as even a trace of their Divine Soul remained.
The lightning would not dissipate!
Even if the power sustaining the tribulation ran out, as long as heaven and earth remained, it would gather again!
And continue to strike!
Until heaven and earth were destroyed, or... the one undergoing the tribulation vanished completely!
Without even a trace left to be found.
That was why this tribulation.
Was also called the Stillness Annihilation Lightning Tribulation.
It annihilated everything until nothing remained!
No matter how defying-heaven your revival technique was, you still couldn't escape this tribulation!
"I hate this!"
Shen Ni roared.
He was furious at himself for making the wrong choice, and he also hated Lei Jun.
Just then.
Lei Jun's voice rang out, resounding across the entire Primordial Wilderness!
"With the Heavenly Dao absent, I shall mete out Heaven's punishment! With the Heavenly Dao unseen, I shall drive out the fierce and cleanse the baleful!"
"My name is Lei Jun. Today, I shall become the Heavenly Dao!"
"I shall wield lightning as my sword, destroy the Beast Emperor, purge the baleful energy, and sever the Tribulation Period!"
"Nine-Nine Nirvana, annihilating divine lightning..."
"Fall!"
Before his words had even faded, the lightning struck!
The tribulation, which had long been building, came crashing down in an instant.
Transcending space-time.
And then.
There was only one peal of thunder after another.
Boom!
It continued without end.
Every bolt seemed capable of tearing the world apart.
And the one being torn apart.
Was Shen Ni!
Lightning had a powerful suppressive effect on Fierce Beasts.
Beneath the Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation, even the Beast Emperor was no exception!
His Divine Soul.
Was torn to pieces again and again.
Then.
It gathered back together, again and again.
As if reborn.
At first.
It took only an instant to revive.
By the halfway point of the tribulation, it took much longer.
As the tribulation neared its end.
A long time passed before a dim cluster of black light finally gathered, slowly.
Clearly.
Even with countless true bodies, Shen Ni couldn't revive at will.
During this process.
Something called the "Heart Spirit," or perhaps the "Spiritual Light," was draining away!
It was being consumed!
"The final strike!"
Lei Jun's gaze was cold.
In the Primordial Wilderness.
Nine was the ultimate number.
Seven times seven, forty-nine, made a minor completion.
So.
Eighty-one, nine times nine, made a great completion!
The final strike of a tribulation at great completion contained more terrifying power than the previous eighty strikes combined.
In Shen Ni's current state.
He naturally couldn't withstand it!
Rumble!
When the tribulation struck, it was as if even sound had vanished.
Emptiness, stillness, the void.
It seemed that everything had ceased to exist.
Including the baleful energy.
And the seawater nearby!
For a time.
All that could be seen here was a vast, empty ravine.
Or perhaps another term would fit...
A black hole?
This ravine was formless and empty.
Utterly profound and impossible to fathom.
Even Lei Jun, with his level of cultivation, couldn't see through it!
The sense he sent probing into it.
Was swallowed!
Lei Jun raised an eyebrow.
It was obvious.
A ravine like this hadn't been created by the tribulation.
If even Lei Jun couldn't sense something.
How could the tribulation he unleashed have struck it into existence?
The Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation was powerful.
But not that absurdly powerful.
Most likely.
It had existed naturally all along.
Its devouring nature simply made it impossible to sense.
At once.
Lei Jun grew curious.
But he forced down his curiosity and refrained from investigating for now.
Instead, he searched for traces of Shen Ni.
Whether Shen Ni had perished.
Was crucial.
After a thorough search.
Lei Jun's gaze sharpened as he stared into the void.
He sensed tiny specks of light.
There weren't many, but they were gathering.
These were Shen Ni's Spiritual Light!
So...
Was Shen Ni still alive?
Of course.
Compared to before, the Spiritual Light particles had dwindled countless times over.
In the same amount of time.
Before, they could have nearly taken shape.
And even formed a faint consciousness.
Now, things were different.
It seemed that even gathering together was difficult.
They were only a little way from vanishing completely.
In other words, the situation was this.
Even if Shen Ni wasn't dead.
He was as good as dead.
And this time, reviving would take him much longer.
Long enough that Lei Jun might even have time to investigate the Great Ravine.
"Since that's the case!"
"I'll wait a while!"
Somehow, Lei Jun had a premonition.
This ravine concealed a mystery!
Then.
Lei Jun focused his Divine Sense, illuminating the three dantians within him—upper, middle, and lower—all at once.
At the same time.
Three Strange Phenomena unfolded.
They were the same three Strange Phenomena that had appeared when he broke through.
Past, present, and future.
As well as the World Tree, the Green Lotus, and the Ancient Star Tree!
At this moment.
Lei Jun was truly unleashing all his power.
He had revealed every trump card.
These were methods he hadn't even used when dealing with Shen Ni.
Once the dantian Strange Phenomena appeared.
His Divine Sense instantly solidified, as if it had gained a physical form!
It plunged into the Great Ravine once more.
Though the ravine still devoured it, his Divine Sense could now endure for a while.
Before long.
Just before it was completely dissolved.
Lei Jun pulled it back.
He had no choice. If he didn't retrieve it now, his Divine Sense would disappear inside again.
Wouldn't all that effort have been for nothing?
He had to get his Divine Sense back to learn what was inside!
His Divine Sense returned.
Lei Jun began to analyze what he had sensed.
Soon.
He grasped the general idea.
He understood a little more.
"All the Profound Qi in heaven and earth gathers here!"
"Yet no matter how much gathers, this place neither increases nor decreases in the slightest. Nothing changes. It's like a bottomless ravine!"
"It has no bottom. Its name is Gui Xu!"
Gui Xu!
Gui meant to return.
Xu meant ruins.
But the name Gui Xu couldn't be understood as returning to ruins.
It meant...
All the "ruins" returned to this place.
What kind of Profound Qi could be called "ruins"?
Qi that had been transformed by cultivators!
For example, cultivators who practiced the Fire Method.
They could refine spiritual energy into fire-aspected spiritual energy!
To increase its power.
Or to speed up their cultivation.
But fire-aspected spiritual energy wasn't useful to every cultivator.
To some, it was even poisonous!
Yet no matter when,
the dominant kind of spiritual energy in the world was still unaligned spiritual energy.
No matter how many Tribulation Periods passed,
it was always the same.
Did that mean no cultivators transformed spiritual energy?
Of course not.
It meant someone was doing a good deed.
No one had that much kindness.
And even if someone did,
they couldn't keep it up.
The one truly transforming spiritual energy was Gui Xu!
If the Six Paths of Reincarnation were the cycle of living beings—or of things with consciousness, Spiritual Light, and the like—
then this place
was where Profound Qi went to be reborn!
That included...
Shattering Qi!
In an instant,
Lei Jun understood.
"No wonder I couldn't figure out where the Purified Shattering Qi went!"
"It was all here!"
"And it was precisely because it could 'recycle' things that it could turn Shattering Qi into merit!"
"So that's how it is!"
As for why Lei Jun had struck it into view with a single Thunder Tribulation...
Though Gui Xu was currently in the South Sea,
if the battlefield had been in the East Sea or anywhere else in the Primordial Wilderness,
it would have been struck into view all the same!
To be precise,
Gui Xu was everywhere.
Divine thunder had no effect on it, either.
The only reason it had appeared
was that the Thunder Tribulation had annihilated the time and space surrounding it, revealing its true form!
Just as Lei Jun was thinking this,
the faint Spiritual Light finally changed.
At that moment, Shen Ni
couldn't be called alive. He simply hadn't died completely yet.
A trace of faint consciousness remained.
It seemed he had something to say?
Lei Jun sensed a ripple of consciousness from that faint Spiritual Light.
After thinking it over,
Lei Jun didn't strike again.
With a wave of his hand, he dispersed the thunderclouds gathering overhead.
Against a Beast Emperor as feeble as this,
there was no need for a Thunder Tribulation.
As for whether this was some kind of trap...
Lei Jun had to say,
if he could still be outmaneuvered by Shen Ni in his current state,
then all his years of cultivation had been for nothing.
Lei Jun wanted to hear what a Beast Emperor, the protagonist of a Tribulation Period, would say before his body and Dao vanished.
Would it be, "When a man is about to die, his words are good"?
Or would it all be "trash talk"?
If it was the latter,
then Lei Jun would simply destroy him.
If it was the former...
Perhaps he could hear him out?
In this situation,
Lei Jun waited patiently.
Before long,
Shen Ni's consciousness fully took shape. It was faint, but
he could speak.
His very first words surprised Lei Jun.
"You won! But this seat hasn't lost!"
"Not lost?"
Lei Jun furrowed his brow.
Given Shen Ni's temperament, he wouldn't say something meaningless.
If he said this,
then it couldn't be baseless.
Could it be...
that this guy really had some scheme up his sleeve?
At that moment,
Shen Ni spoke again.
"What I sought was not to Prove the Dao."
"I sought to destroy the Primordial Wilderness!"
"So even if I die, how can you call that failure?"
"As long as the Primordial Wilderness is destroyed after my death, and the Heavenly Dao is destroyed as well, then even if I die ten thousand times, it will have been worth it!"
"Dare you say the Primordial Wilderness will endure forever from now on?"
After hearing this,
Lei Jun's brow furrowed even deeper.
Somehow,
he seemed to understand what Shen Ni was getting at.
Would the Primordial Wilderness really endure forever?
Not necessarily.
First of all, as time went by—
or, to put it another way, as more Tribulation Periods passed—the Primordial Wilderness was indeed growing weaker.
Though the Fierce Beast Tribulation was only happening now,
one could already see what lay at the end.
The End of Dharma Immeasurable Calamity!
Could this calamity have something to do with Shen Ni?
Lei Jun couldn't help wondering.
Or perhaps Shen Ni had done something during this Tribulation Period, and the effects had been magnified without limit over the long passage of time!
That possibility couldn't be ruled out.
Seeing Lei Jun fall silent, Shen Ni didn't mind.
He continued speaking to himself.
But what he said next
seemed unrelated to what he'd said before at first,
yet it was hard not to pay attention.
"I once comprehended a Dao. It had no form, yet it was everywhere, present in every place!"
"No one was beyond its influence!"
"That included this world!"
Shen Ni didn't keep them in suspense.
"This Dao is called Destruction!"
Before you continue