After the forty-nine days of tribulation lightning passed, the skies over every region of the Nine Provinces Continent in the Azure Realm visibly began to clear.
At the same time, all manner of rumors about the tribulation spread in different places. Cultivators had the wildest imaginations, especially those with time on their hands, who embellished the forty-nine-day lightning tribulation into countless versions.
Some said an immortal artifact that should never have existed in this world had emerged. Others said a cave abode left behind by a mighty expert from the primordial era had appeared. Some claimed a mighty heretical cultivator on the Spiritflight Continent had committed an atrocity that enraged the Heavenly Dao, bringing down punitive lightning, while others said the Heaven-Connecting Path had opened and this was the tribulation lightning of a mighty expert ascending.
In short, every inconceivable version and every outrageous conjecture existed. Some even said the Azure Realm was about to be destroyed, and the lightning tribulation was punishment from the Heavenly Dao.
Those were a few of the versions Su Jiu had heard while resting in cities along her flight from the Azure Tide Sect.
At that moment, Su Jiu sat in a teahouse in a city on the border between the Azure Mist Continent and the Evil Spiritflight Continent, listening to the other patrons discussing the Spiritflight Continent...
"The Spiritflight Continent might not have been the largest before, but it wasn't much smaller than the Azure Mist Continent or the Vast Heaven Continent. But now... tsk, tsk, what a disaster."
"After a single lightning tribulation, not only have most of the Spiritflight Continent's sects scattered, but half its original land has turned into ocean. Just what did they do to provoke the wrath of heaven and man, for heavenly thunder to blast a continent