The Authority to Seize Heaven's Punishment and Slay Heaven

The sky over northern Mingdu suddenly sank, and the daylight was instantly swallowed clean.

Dark clouds surged in from every direction, gathering like countless black steeds fleeing in panic, layer upon layer. They pressed heavily over the rolling mountains, and the whole earth seemed tightly wrapped in a black cloth soaked in ink. Even the outlines of distant peaks were submerged in dim shadows, blurred beyond recognition.

Wandering lightning hid deep within the dark clouds. Silvery-white arcs silently tore through the heavy cloud layers, flashing briefly and turning the peaks and wilderness deathly pale, leaving every outline stiff as a paper cutout.

The instant the lightning faded, low, muffled thunder rolled across the sky. The rumbles overlapped one after another, echoing back and forth through the valleys without dispersing.

A violent wind abruptly rose, bending every tree in the city. Pedestrians stopped one after another in the streets and looked up at the strange phenomenon overhead.

Inside the War God Hall, Vast Sea Douluo Chen Xinjie sat behind a broad desk, holding a freshly delivered military report.

Thunder exploded outside the window, blast after blast, making the glass panes hum. Ripples spread across the surface of the tea in the cup on his desk.

The first time the thunder sounded, he knew it was Yin Hongye.

The only person in the Federation who got struck by lightning was Yin Hongye. In any case, he always made it through safely, holding that red lotus over his head.

Sometimes it even gave off golden light. The most absurd part was that it somehow gave people a bizarre sense of holiness.

When others broke through to Limit Douluo and condensed a Soul Core, it was accompanied by heavenly omens. Why did this guy's cultivation always involve getting struck by lightning?

Chen Xinjie set down his pen and took a sip of tea.

"Prepare the car."

He told the adjutant at the door, "We're going to the northern outskirts."

At that moment, Qian Renxue had already condensed her first Soul Core and was normally exploring the path toward a Yin-Yang Complementary Second Soul Core. Of course, with her physical constitution, she was destined to fail.

Then she heard faint thunder, briefly emerged from the haze of her closed-door cultivation, and looked toward the sky. It also reminded the ferocious beasts from twenty thousand years ago of the terror of being ruled by heavenly lightning.

Di Tian looked at the terrifying lightning tribulation and could not help shouting, "What soul beast of the future is undergoing tribulation here?!"

Meanwhile, the instigator of this lightning tribulation, Yin Hongye, was sitting in the basement. He tilted his head up at the thunderclouds pressing ever lower above him. He had been waiting for quite a while.

The lightning had been striking for some time already.

He was getting a little impatient.

"When other people break through to Limit Douluo, who doesn't get countless rays of rosy light and streams of auspicious energy?"

"What about me?! My martial soul comes with the Path of Fire, the Path of Blood, and the Path of Slaughter. Why is my entrance so pathetic?!"

"I just get struck by lightning!"

Under normal circumstances, Tang Hao would not have targeted Yin Hongye for no reason. But after Halosa, Yin Hongye had directly taken the position of Child of Fortune.

He had to make room for his grandson.

The most fatal issue was that Yin Hongye possessed an immortal body. Neither his flesh nor his soul had any flaw of life or death.

As long as he did not die, the vast fortune gathered around him could not circulate in the slightest, nor could it be stripped away.

And that was only the unconscious action of his martial soul. As for the other thing that had been taken, Tang Hao, this half-baked fellow, had not noticed it at all.

The Douluo fortune totaled ten measures, yet Yin Hongye alone occupied twelve. The people of the world owed him two measures.

Yin Hongye fell silent for half a second, then raised a middle finger at the sky and politely asked, "If you've got the ability, strike this young master dead. I'd like to see how long you can keep it up."

The sky answered him with a lightning pillar as thick as a water barrel, but it still failed to blast through the ground.

The heavens responded with anger. In truth, its true body had been affected.

"Rumble—!!!"

A deathly white lightning pillar as thick as a vat crashed down, tearing through the clouds as it slammed toward the earth. The violent lightning shockwave overturned the entire forest.

Yet even beneath repeated bombardment, it still could not reach Yin Hongye.

Yin Hongye finally ran out of patience. He had confirmed that if he did not get struck by lightning, he would not be able to avoid this calamity.

"Why is Tang Hao targeting me so hard? It's not like I went and killed your grandson. If I'd known, I would've tied up Tang Wulin and held him over my head instead."

He rose and brushed the dust from his clothes, too lazy to keep hiding in the basement and passively enduring it. He slowly walked out from underground, standing upon an open highland in the mountains and facing the world-destroying thunderclouds crushing the peaks.

The instant he stepped out of the ground, towering blood-colored flames erupted from the crown of his head, burning away the surrounding chill of lightning.

A massive twelve-petaled red lotus slowly formed and bloomed above him.

Its petals were crimson as blood, black karmic patterns flowing along their fiery edges. At the heart of the lotus burned world-destroying karmic fire that could reduce causality itself to ashes.

Strands of blood-colored Dao aura descended, condensing into a perfectly round barrier of laws that shut out all the lightning pouring down from the sky.

Crackle! Crackle!

Countless tiny lightning arcs smashed against the red lotus petals. The powerful heavenly lightning could not even pierce a single layer of petals, and the raging electric light was instantly melted away by karmic fire, dispersing into the wind as the most basic spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

Beneath the thunderclouds that covered the sky, the youth stood tall and solitary.

The next instant, two entirely different swords condensed out of thin air in his palms.

Yin Hongye raised his eyes. There was not the slightest reverence for heaven and earth in them, only arrogance that looked down upon all the heavens.

Both swords slashed at the thunderclouds overhead at the same time!

"Hummm—!!!"

A heaven-shaking sword cry pierced through the rolling thunder.

An incomparably brilliant blood-colored sword light shot into the sky and violently collided with the blinding lightning pouring down.

A long, sharp, crescent-shaped sword mark broke through the sea of light, spanning heaven and earth as it precisely split the massive lightning pillar pouring down upon him in two from top to bottom.

Violent lightning exploded to both sides, turning into countless stray electric serpents that scattered everywhere.

Yet the sword force did not weaken in the slightest. Its immense power charged straight into the nine heavens, its edge brutally crashing into the churning, murky thunderclouds.

With a deafening tear, the heavy thunderclouds blanketing the sky were split vertically by a single sword. The black clouds rolled and collapsed to either side, revealing the vast, cold sky beyond them.

Heaven and earth fell briefly silent.

Then, a massive crack running through heaven and earth was forcibly torn open by the sword's edge. The dense clouds surged, piled up, and collapsed wildly to the left and right like silk ripped apart by immense force, leaving a straight, long gap in the middle.

Daylight, long obscured by dark clouds, poured down through that crack. Strands of clear golden radiance pierced the darkness and descended upon the world.

The two contrasting scenes of light and darkness brought an overwhelming shock. On both sides were violent, black thunderclouds; in the middle was a clear, distant blue sky bathed in warm sunlight.

Golden sunlight fell upon Yin Hongye like swords, making the red lotus around him appear even more vivid and lending him an incongruous yet intimidating sacredness.

"Bzzzt, crackle... bzzzt, crackle..."

Even though the main lightning pillar and the thunderclouds filling the sky had been split apart by one sword, the endless scattered lightning still refused to retreat.

Countless tiny, violent streams of purple-silver lightning broke free from the clouds like parasitic maggots, attempting to burrow into Yin Hongye's body and disperse the nearly boundless, heaven-defying fortune he possessed.

But the sword light did not stop. It slashed toward the source of Tang Hao's origin.

Where there was life, there was death. Yin Hongye's killing intent carried the power to sever vitality itself, seizing the authority of Heaven's punishment to slay Heaven!

Beyond the heavenly curtain, the Star Dou Forest was deathly silent.

Xiong Jun stood dumbfounded, Myriad Demon King's vines hung frozen in midair, Red King let out a low sound, and Bi Ji wore a blank expression.

Di Tian stared at the sword mark that had split the clouds. After a long while, he said with deep feeling, "There's an operation like this? Lightning tribulations can be scattered apart too? But Yin Hongye shouldn't be a soul beast, so why is he being struck by lightning?!"

But no one answered him.