Think the Tribulation Lightning Isn't Strong Enough? This Venerable One Will Let You Taste a Heaven-Opening Divine Thunder

Ten thousand miles away, at Tiandang Mountain, Taixu Temple.

The spiritual energy inside the Stone Chamber had reached a terrifying density—not flowing, but congealing.

Fine grains of spiritual energy hung suspended in midair, visible to the naked eye. Every grain slowly drifted toward the white-clad figure seated on the cushion.

Shen Yichen sat cross-legged.

His posture was exactly the same as the day he emerged from seclusion—one leg resting over the other, a hand on his knee, his back straight but not stiff.

Not a speck of dust clung to his white robes, from collar to cuffs. A plain white jade hairpin held his topknot in place, while a few stray locks at his temples hung perfectly still.

His eyes were half closed.

His breathing was so slow and deep it was almost imperceptible.

He seemed to have merged with heaven and earth, until it was impossible to tell where he ended and Tiandang Mountain began.

But his divine sense was not here.

—or rather, it was not only here.

With a cultivation level half a step from the Great Dao, the range of his divine sense far surpassed anything worldly cultivators could imagine.

Every inch of Douluo Continent, every reef around Sea God Island, even the void beyond the Plane Barrier—all lay within his perception.

Everything that had happened atop the Nine-Story Pagoda in the Asura God Hall, from the gathering of that purple-black orb to the Asura Blade swallowing it whole—he had seen it all, frame by frame, through his divine sense.

The right corner of Shen Yichen's mouth twitched.

Barely.

It wasn't a smile. It was the sort of... indifference one might feel on seeing an ant brandishing a dewdrop as a weapon.

"Make the tribulation lightning stronger?"

The words slipped through his lips, featherlight. They didn't even stir a single grain of spiritual energy in the Stone Chamber.

"How utterly presumptuous."

The second sentence was even softer. It melted into the Stone Chamber's silence, mingling with a century of Daoist aura until the two were indistinguishable.

Asura God.

One of the Divine Realm's supreme war gods, wielder of the Asura Blade, forged from ten thousand years of slaughter, and master of the endless killing intent sealed within the Nine-Story Pagoda—in the eyes of lower-realm cultivators, he was an existence they weren't even worthy of looking up to.

But Shen Yichen was no lower-realm cultivator.

Half a step from the Great Dao.

This realm had no place in the system of understanding that governed Douluo Continent. No one had ever attained it, no records spoke of it, and no one had even imagined it.

Beyond the God King realm.

Only one step away from supreme perfection.

That step was "Red Dust Heart Refining."

It wasn't a lack of cultivation or insufficient magical power. His Dao heart simply needed one last tempering.

And Asura God—

Some mere God King wanted to bring divine punishment down upon his woman?

And at triple strength?

Shen Yichen slowly raised his right hand.

The movement was unbearably slow.

He lifted it from his knee, brought it past his abdomen, and finally stopped at chest height.

His fingers hung loosely spread, his index finger extending slightly forward.

Then—

His fingertip lit up.

A wisp of light. Incredibly fine, finer than a strand of hair.

Purple-gold.

Not purple, not gold, but a third color born where purple and gold intertwined.

Rich, pure, utterly free of impurities.

The wisp seeped out from beneath the skin of his fingertip and hovered an inch above his nail.

There was no sound.

No fluctuation.

Not even the faintest hint of its aura leaked out.

But the Stone Chamber changed.

Cracks appeared in the flagstones beneath the cushion—not spreading from his fingertip, but forming because the flagstones themselves could not withstand the "existence" of that wisp of light and split apart.

The cracks crept outward from beneath the cushion, silent and steady, inch by inch. Within three breaths, the entire floor of the Stone Chamber was webbed with fractures.

Every Daoist pattern still etched into the walls lit up.

The patterns, dim for over a hundred years, were reactivated the instant that wisp of purple-gold light appeared. They didn't slowly brighten; they erupted all at once, bathing the entire Stone Chamber in their radiance.

The space outside the Stone Chamber twisted. The distortion was visible to the naked eye.

In Spirit Crane Valley behind Taixu Temple, the white cranes resting there took flight all at once.

Dozens of spirit cranes beat their wings and soared into the sky, circling the mouth of the valley three times as they cried out sharply—not in fear, but because they had sensed a power that had no place in this world.

The branches and leaves of the ancient trees shook violently in the windless air.

The stream in the mountain ravine flowed backward for six feet.

The Cloud Sea around the main peak surged, its calm white expanse churning into a swift whirlpool.

And all this came from just one wisp of light.

The purple-gold Divine Thunder, fine as a strand of hair, on his fingertip.

Shen Yichen looked down at his fingertip.

Something joined the indifference in his eyes—not seriousness, but boredom.

How much effort had Asura God spent? Gathering divine power, channeling it into the Asura Blade, and raising the original tribulation lightning to three times its strength.

The entire Asura God Hall had trembled with a buzzing hum, and even the Divine Official standing guard had stepped back.

While he—

One finger. One wisp of light.

No exertion, no urging it into action, not the slightest sense of ceremony.

It seeped from his fingertip as naturally as a breath.

"When you bring down your divine punishment and tribulation lightning,"

Shen Yichen's index finger tilted slightly, and the purple-gold Divine Thunder turned with it, tracing a tiny arc in the air.

Where the arc passed, space split open—not a large tear, just a crack as thick as a chopstick. But beyond it lay the void outside the Plane Barrier.

Black, cold, endless void.

Torn open with casual ease by a wisp of thunder.

"I'll return the favor with a Heaven-Opening Divine Thunder."

After holding open for one breath, the spatial rift healed on its own.

The Plane Barrier's power of restoration was immense, but the mark it left behind was clear: a faint, almost imperceptible purple-gold scar embedded in the void above the Stone Chamber.

Shen Yichen raised his eyelid.

He glanced at the scar without the slightest reaction.

A divine thunder forged from centuries of killing intent stored in the Asura Blade—compared with the Heaven-Opening Divine Thunder of the Celestial Master Sect?

Asura God probably didn't know one thing: the Celestial Master Sect's thunder arts weren't cultivated after birth. They were bestowed by heaven and earth.

The thunderbolt that split the first ray of light from the primordial chaos was called "Heaven-Opening."

An innate thunder art, the root of the Dao.

Every acquired thunder technique was a lesser art before it.

Including Asura Divine Thunder.

"I'd like to see—"

Shen Yichen withdrew his finger.

The wisp of purple-gold Divine Thunder lingered at his fingertip for one last instant, then vanished without a sound.

The Stone Chamber fell silent again. The cracks remained in the floor, and the reawakened Daoist patterns still glowed on the walls, but the pressure that had made heaven and earth change color had vanished completely.

Gone without a trace.

His control was so perfect it beggared belief.

"Whether your Asura Divine Thunder is stronger—"

Shen Yichen closed his eyes again. His hand returned to his knee, his posture not a hair different from before.

"—or my Heaven-Opening Divine Thunder comes out on top."

He drew out the final syllables just a little, with a laziness no one else could ever imitate.

It wasn't a taunt.

Taunting was something equals did to each other.

This was an echo from upstream to downstream.

Three words, tossed off by an existence half a step from the Great Dao to a God King-level Asura God—

It didn't matter.

The Stone Chamber sank into utter silence.

Shen Yichen's breathing grew deep and steady once more, the rise and fall of his chest barely perceptible.

He merged with heaven and earth again, resonating with the spiritual veins of Tiandang Mountain and matching the rhythm of the firmament.

Outside Taixu Temple.

The sky was clear for ten thousand miles.

Sunlight poured down from above the main peak, passed through the leaves of ancient trees, and scattered flecks of light across the flagstone path.

The white cranes of Spirit Crane Valley returned to their nests, the stream flowed normally again, and the Cloud Sea settled.

Everything was exactly as it had been before.

But—

High above Tiandang Mountain, far, far up in the depths of the clouds—so high that it lay beyond the reach of the naked eye—

Lightning flickered.

Not lightning as people knew it.

A flash of lightning struck and faded. This did not.

Purple-gold light shone and dimmed between gaps in the clouds, shone and dimmed again, its rhythm slow and steady.