Nine Heavens Thunder Dragon

The Thunder Pool seemed to possess a sentient mind.

Upon hearing Luo Yan's murmur, the lightning within the entire pool surged instantly, with overflowing bolts flickering incessantly.

It was as if it would strike Luo Yan down the very next second.

A few minutes passed.

Dark clouds gathered in the sky, and thunder rumbled, as if the entire world were shrouded in an ancient and solemn ritual.

Luo Yan stood atop the hotel roof, his robes fluttering, his eyes burning like torches.

He stared at the Thunder Pool about to pour down, his face devoid of fear, filled only with endless longing and determination for the impending transformation.

His peripheral vision caught Da Ming and Er Ming leading Xiao Wu and the others away.

Behind them followed a group of people, all of whom had been temporarily staying at the hotel.

Seeing this, Luo Yan stopped being distracted and fixed his gaze directly on the flickering heavenly lightning in the sky.

As the first bolt of lightning tore through the sky, carrying a world-destroying momentum, it headed straight for Luo Yan.

He took a deep breath, his internal spiritual power surging violently, and a faint golden light swirled around his body—this was the Protective True Qi he had condensed.

The lightning and the golden light collided in mid-air, erupting with a dazzling radiance and a deafening roar, as if the space itself were being torn apart.

Fortunately, Luo Yan's strength had jumped directly from the early stage of a Tier 6 Demon Emperor to the perfection stage.

This bolt of heavenly lightning did not break his Protective True Qi.

However, this was merely the beginning.

The subsequent lightning tribulations were more violent than the last, each containing enough power to reshape mountains and rivers.

Luo Yan no longer waited for the lightning to strike; he flew upward, charging straight into the heavenly tribulation.

His figure was agile, like a dragon playing in the water, weaving between the bolts of lightning.

Moreover, he discovered that although the lightning tribulation was grinding down his physical body, because he possessed a lightning-attribute bloodline, the power of the heavenly lightning within it seemed to have other effects on him.

Luo Yan immediately circulated the Azure Heaven Dragon Emperor Art, guiding the power of the heavenly lightning to every part of his body to temper his bones and baptize his soul.

Of course, having heavenly lightning enter one's body was no pleasant matter.

In an instant, Luo Yan's face twisted in pain, but his will remained as firm as a rock.

He knew that this lightning tribulation was both a test and an opportunity; if he could endure this endless baptism, he might break out of his cocoon and achieve a supreme Dao foundation.

When the eighty-first bolt of heavenly lightning began to condense, it was no longer a simple force of electricity, but a terrifying strike fused with the laws of heaven and earth and the will of the universe.

"Damn it, this Douluo Heavenly Dao wants to kill me!"

Feeling the lethal threat emanating from the heavenly lightning, Luo Yan gritted his teeth.

But this was his heavenly tribulation; having already survived the previous eighty bolts, he could not stop now with only this final one remaining.

"All or nothing!"

Luo Yan stopped holding back and transformed directly into his true form.

At this point, he could no longer afford to hide his true form out of fear of exposure; if he failed to pass the tribulation, there would be no one left to cry to.

Following this bloodline evolution, Luo Yan had evolved from a Purple Thunder Flood Dragon into a Nine Heavens Thunder Dragon.

He had become a true pure-blooded dragon.

The Nine Heavens Thunder Dragon's true form was over a hundred feet long, its body covered in scales that shimmered with electric light and thunder patterns.

The dragon head was massive, with a pair of crystal-clear, thundercloud-shaped horns on its forehead, from which tiny arcs of electricity jumped from time to time.

Beneath deep and sharp dragon eyes, dragon whiskers drifted continuously.

Its four limbs were thick and its claws sharp, gleaming with a faint metallic luster; every swipe of its claws could tear the void and summon wind and thunder.

Seemingly due to his lightning-attribute bloodline, lightning flickered in and out of existence all over his body.

Fortunately, Luo Yan had already charged into the dark clouds, so no one in Suotuo City noticed his true form.

"Thunderstorm!"

Luo Yan unleashed his only innate divine ability, and his entire body erupted with brilliant golden light.

Gathering all his power into a single point, a thunderball emerged from his mouth and shot toward the Thunder Pool.

He intended to confront the heavenly lightning head-on.

"BOOM—!"

The thunderball collided with the heavenly lightning, producing a heaven-shaking roar that caused the world to change color.

Although the thunderball blocked most of the heavenly lightning's power, a small portion still struck Luo Yan.

Zzz!

The heavenly lightning exploded against Luo Yan's true form, and flesh and blood flew everywhere.

When the heavenly lightning finally dissipated, Luo Yan was still standing within the dark clouds, his body a mass of mangled flesh, not a single part of the dragon body left intact.

Even one of the dragon horns on his head had been snapped off.

Yet his eyes were even brighter, his entire being radiating an indescribable majesty and divinity.

Awoo!

He slowly opened his dragon maw, and a heavy dragon roar echoed out.

The Nine-Nine Heavenly Tribulation had passed; Luo Yan had not only successfully survived the tribulation but had also achieved an unprecedented breakthrough in the process.

Just then, a nine-colored divine light suddenly descended from the sky, enveloping Luo Yan's massive body.

The wounds all over his dragon form began to heal on their own.

Luo Yan felt as if he had just undergone a bloodline evolution, with warm currents flowing through his entire body.

After a while, the injuries on Luo Yan's body had completely healed, and he had returned to his peak state.

"Whew~~ I never expected this heavenly tribulation to allow me to break through directly from the perfection of a Tier 6 Demon Emperor to the early stage of a Tier 7 Demon Venerable!"

"I wonder if my physical cultivation has broken through as well."

"Starting from the Demon Emperor realm, a heavenly tribulation appears every time one breaks through a major realm. No wonder this tribulation was so fierce; it was the Demon Emperor's tribulation combined with the Demon Venerable's tribulation!"

Luo Yan had by now transformed back into his human form and retracted the aura of his cultivation.

The dark clouds surrounding him were also dissipating, and the blue sky gradually returned to its midday appearance.

"Hah!"

"With this kind of strength, where in the continent can I not go?"

Luo Yan felt the power within himself, the corners of his mouth curling upward slightly.

He was very curious about his current specific status, so he silently thought, "System, open character panel!"

Host: Luo Yan
Race: Nine Heavens Thunder Dragon
Cultivation Realm: Tier 7 Demon Venerable (Early Stage)
Physical Cultivation: Tier 7 Demon Venerable (Mid Stage)
Resentment Points: 30,205,424

"As expected, my physical cultivation also broke through by a small level. If I were cultivating normally, this small level would have taken at least a dozen years. This time, it really was a blessing in disguise!"

However, having consumed a small target's worth of Resentment Points, Luo Yan still felt a bit of heartache.

But thinking of his improvement this time, he didn't feel quite as pained.

After breaking through to the Demon Venerable realm, an inner world had also gestated within Luo Yan's body, with a spatial diameter of over a hundred kilometers.

And this was just the inner world of an early-stage Tier 7 Demon Venerable.

If he cultivated to perfection, the inner world could expand to at least a thousand kilometers.

However, a Demon Venerable's inner world is not stable enough, capable only of containing inanimate objects and unable to allow living beings to reside within.

The cultivation of a Demon Venerable involves constantly expanding and consolidating one's inner world until it can accommodate a law and cultivate the prototype of that law.

Once the prototype of the law is integrated into the inner world, one can break through to become a Demon Saint.

Beyond the gap in cultivation, the most important difference between a Demon Saint and a Demon Venerable is the power of laws.

A Demon Saint possessing the power of laws can easily crush hundreds of Tier 7 peak Demon Venerables.

Withdrawing his thoughts, Luo Yan flashed and vanished from the blue sky.

When he appeared again, he was already back on the roof of the Rose Hotel.