Rumble—!
Early winter, year 27,400 of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty.
That morning, the vast territory of Qingzhou, spanning millions of miles, did not greet the familiar light of dawn.
In its place came a terrifying manifestation of heaven and earth that sent shivers through the souls of Qingzhou's billions of living beings, countless birds and beasts, and even mighty immortal cultivators.
Had a mighty cultivator stood above the highest heavens and looked down, they would have discovered, to their horror, that Qingzhou's sky had been divided into two starkly distinct layers.
At the very summit of the firmament lay the heavenly dao tribulation clouds, black as ink and so heavy they seemed capable of crushing this entire realm. Within those clouds, there was none of the flashing lightning or rolling thunder of an ordinary storm. Only a fathomlessly deep, purple-black lightning slurry churned silently in their depths.
It was the "supreme thunder punishment" belonging solely to the laws of the Heavenly Dao. From above the Nine Heavens, it gazed coldly down upon the mortal world, as though searching for the monstrous prodigy who sought to defy heaven, rewrite his fate, and form an unsurpassed golden core.
Beneath those pitch-black tribulation clouds, ten thousand zhang above the ground, stretched another boundless spectacle, blazing with the brilliance of the sun.
It was a golden sea of clouds extending for untold tens of thousands of miles. Within it, the ancient chants of ancestral worship, the clash of armored cavalry, and the majestic manifestations of Great Zhou's successive Human Emperors faintly intertwined and flickered. This was the ultimate foundation of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty's ten-thousand-year rule over the Divine Land—the [great zhou national fortune golden clouds].
The heavenly dao tribulation clouds governed punishment; the national fortune golden clouds governed reward.
The two