Thunder Control Array, Heavenly Tribulation Arrives

On a desolate mountain more than two hundred li north of Mingdu, several figures stood together.

Gu Yue Na, Di Tian, Bi Ji, and Bear Lord stood there, their gazes fixed on Yun Ze and following his every movement.

"Miss, do you know what the Young Master is doing?" Di Tian could not help asking.

Gu Yue Na revealed a thoughtful expression and said uncertainly, "He seems to be inscribing some kind of formation."

Yun Ze used his finger to draw upon the ground. Soul Power gathered at his fingertip, causing the lines he traced to contain energy.

After drawing several lines, he would drive a conical piece of metal into the ground. Then, using it as a starting point, he would continue drawing before driving in another piece of metal.

He repeated this process over and over. The lines he drew each time were different, but when gathered together, they formed some kind of complex pattern.

Drawing these lines consumed a great deal of Soul Power. Yun Ze had already sat cross-legged four times to recover his Soul Power. He had been drawing from morning until afternoon, yet he still had not finished.

As she watched the gradually forming pattern, Gu Yue Na began to feel dizzy and quickly looked away, her face filled with shock.

It was not just her. Even the stronger Di Tian, Bi Ji, and Bear Lord felt dizzy whenever they focused on the pattern.

These patterns were too strange. Whenever they stared at them, their minds unconsciously tried to trace them out, leaving them drowsy and with splitting headaches.

"The formation is almost complete. Stop looking at it, or you may faint directly because you cannot comprehend its mysteries," Yun Ze's voice rang out.

Hearing this, they hurriedly looked elsewhere, no longer daring to look at the lines. Their hearts were filled with shock.

It was hard to imagine that simply looking at a pattern could make them drowsy. It was utterly unbelievable.

Yun Ze clapped his hands. A circular formation made up of dozens of curved lines and more than ten conical metal pieces was complete.

He walked to the center of the circle and removed the conical metal piece in the middle. The lines that had been glowing with flames immediately dimmed, as though they had lost their energy supply.

Yun Ze looked at them and said, "You can look at the ground now. Just be careful not to step on the lines."

They tried looking at the pattern on the ground and found that the dizziness from before was indeed gone. They found it exceedingly miraculous.

"Yun Ze, what exactly is this thing you drew?" Gu Yue Na asked curiously as she approached.

"It's just a simple Thunder Control Array. It'll be useful in a while," Yun Ze explained with a smile.

"Control lightning?" Gu Yue Na was not the only one confused. Di Tian and the others were equally puzzled—and somewhat afraid.

They had an instinctive fear of lightning. They had been frightened by the lightning of heavenly tribulations before.

"You'll know once the pill is finished," Yun Ze said, not intending to explain further. He took out the pill furnace and began preparing to refine pills.

He heated the pill furnace. Once it reached a certain temperature, he added part of the medicinal ingredients and sealed the furnace to refine them. More than twenty minutes later, he added more ingredients. When Yun Ze's Soul Power was exhausted, Di Tian began pouring his own Soul Power into Yun Ze's body to keep the flames burning without interruption. Refining the Hundred Year Longevity Pill was considerably more difficult than refining the Transformation Pill, but that was only relative. To Yun Ze, it was not difficult at all. It merely took longer and required more effort. The success rate was the same—one hundred percent. Yun Ze's Soul Power was exhausted and replenished, then exhausted again, repeating in an endless cycle. The process continued without interruption for four full days. During that time, Yun Ze refined pills while instructing Bi Ji in Pill Refining, multitasking without the slightest disorder.

Yun Ze was not flustered, but Bi Ji was somewhat panicked while refining pills. Several times, Yun Ze's timely reminders were all that prevented an explosion.

Of course, while Bi Ji was inexperienced, with Yun Ze's guidance, she succeeded on her first attempt.

It was not because Bi Ji possessed extraordinary talent for Pill Refining, but because Yun Ze's instructions were too detailed. He was practically teaching her hand over hand. It would have been strange if she failed.

After refining a few times, Bi Ji became much more familiar with the process. She was no longer as frantic as she had been at the beginning and could be considered to have learned the basics.

At around eight in the evening on the fourth day, a clap of thunder shattered the night's silence. Gu Yue Na, Di Tian, and the others were startled by the thunder. Feeling the imposing pressure descending from the heavens, they looked up. The sky had already changed. Fine threads of lightning densely filled the black night that had once been dotted with stars. The air nearby became extremely stifling and oppressive. Danger was approaching.

"Why has a heavenly tribulation appeared?" Di Tian cried out. He had experienced this pressure several times and knew it all too well. Bi Ji, Bear Lord, and the others all revealed shocked expressions, along with confusion. They too could not understand why a heavenly tribulation had suddenly appeared. "This heavenly tribulation seems rather weak. It is even weaker than when I crossed my Hundred Thousand Year tribulation," Bi Ji said with some relief. Fortunately, it was not very powerful. Di Tian and Bear Lord also sensed that the heavenly tribulation was not strong and both breathed sighs of relief. Compared to Di Tian and the others, Gu Yue Na was the calmest. She quickly regained her composure, looked at the formation on the ground, and could not help recalling the Thunder Control Array Yun Ze had mentioned earlier. Could he have predicted that a heavenly tribulation would arrive? Gu Yue Na murmured. Di Tian, Bi Ji, and Bear Lord all had excellent hearing. Even though she spoke softly, they heard her and looked uncertainly at Yun Ze, who sat cross-legged there. "Could this heavenly tribulation have been drawn here by the Young Master?" Bi Ji boldly guessed. The others all felt that was possible.

Yun Ze was not startled by the thunder. He continued refining pills calmly, merely changing from using both hands to inject flames to using one hand. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the formation, he used his right hand to return the conical metal piece he had removed to its original place. With one hand forming a seal, he activated the formation.

Starting from that point, flames lit up along the lines one after another. Within seconds, every line in the formation was fully illuminated, and the Thunder Control Array was activated. Boom! The formation erupted with a powerful suction force, drawing in the surrounding heaven and earth Soul Power at an unimaginable speed. It drew in the Soul Power within several li of the area, and the Soul Power around the formation became terrifyingly dense. It rapidly transformed from a gaseous state into liquid, forming a hemispherical barrier. Viscous liquid flowed across its surface, dotted with tiny vortices. Whether it was Gu Yue Na or Di Tian and the others, all were shocked by this sight. This formation was actually so powerful? After activating the formation, Yun Ze calmly took out piece after piece of forged Spiritual Metal from his storage ring.

There were fifteen pieces in all, of varying sizes and shapes for the shoulders, legs, waist, chest, back, and other areas. Only their color was uniform: fiery red, with flames burning across their surfaces. The appearance of the metal caused the surrounding temperature to surge. The ground was scorched black by the flames, while the air above the metal distorted slightly. "Di Tian, help me lift these pieces of metal with Soul Power and spread them apart inside there," Yun Ze said, pointing at the Soul Power barrier above.