The heavenly tribulation began. This time, it targeted the twelve Heavenly Demon Immortal-Slaying Swords. The first ordeal was still a fire tribulation: fire would overcome metal and melt the swords.
This time, the Nine Heavens Pure Yang True Fire descended. It began at the Mao Hour, yet no Fire Clouds appeared. Instead, the sun in the sky gradually "melted."
Before everyone's eyes, the sun's disk grew smaller and smaller, its outer radiance melting into the surrounding sky. Eventually, the sun vanished altogether. The sky changed from pale yellow to orange, its color deepening until it resembled clouds ablaze at sunset, blanketing more than three hundred li around the Star Lodge Sea.
Within this region, every living creature felt disaster looming. Anything capable of fleeing, whether flying, swimming, moving, or growing, escaped elsewhere for refuge. Even the fish, turtles, shrimp, and crabs in the Star Lodge Sea sought river channels to swim away through. Those that could not escape burrowed into the mud with all their might.
The fiery hue overhead deepened, and the temperature gradually rose. Watching the tribulation clouds with his disciples from inside the cave, Deng Yin sighed. "It has been a long time since I last saw a heavenly tribulation this formidable..."
Once again, he remembered the woman from all those years ago, who had been reduced to ashes beneath a heavenly tribulation for his sake...
The "air pressure" inside the cave abruptly dropped. The fifteen disciples standing behind Deng Yin sensed an aura even more terrifying than the tribulation clouds. Knowing their master was in a foul mood, they all slowly backed away.
The tribulation's aura pressed lower and lower from the sky, like an enormous furnace suspended overhead, roasting everyone beneath it. Every cloud, mist, and trace of water vapor was baked dry.
The disciples