Tribulation Transcendence

The Heavenly Tribulation was coming.

The Ice Empress knew it herself.

She sprinted wildly toward the south, each step stamping a deep pit into the ice surface. Emerald light spread out from the bottom of the pits, melting the surrounding snow into water before freezing it back into ice.

She needed to be far enough away from the Snow Empress so that the aftermath of the Tribulation could not reach this place.

The Snow Empress's closed-door cultivation was at its most critical stage, and it could not tolerate the slightest disturbance.

The Ice Bear King stood up.

His massive body blocked the front of the Snow Empress's ice chamber. His ice-blue eyes gazed in the direction the Ice Empress had gone, and two heavy puffs of white mist blew from his nostrils.

He turned his head to look at Zhang Lan, saying in a muffled voice,

"The four-hundred-thousand-year Tribulation is more than twice as fierce as the three-hundred-thousand-year one."

"Still, she can withstand it."

Zhang Lan did not speak.

He stood on the ice rock, his gravitational perception fully unfurled to track the Ice Empress's direction.

That streak of emerald light grew smaller and smaller on the white ice fields of the Far North, finally stopping in an open area several miles away.

The heavens changed.

The originally grayish-white dome of the sky began to darken from the south. Dark clouds churned and converged at a speed visible to the naked eye, pressing down over the expanse of the ice field so low that it felt as if one could touch it by reaching out.

Muffled thunder rolled in the depths of the cloud layer, and purple lightning flashed back and forth within the belly of the clouds. With every flash, the Soul Power in the air trembled once.

Then the first bolt of lightning fell.

That bolt of lightning was as thick as a house, tinged with white amidst the purple. It cleaved straight down from the center of the sky, striking the location where the Ice Empress was.

The moment the lightning light exploded, the entire ice field was dyed a ghastly white, and Zhang Lan's Gravity Dome was shoved twice by the shockwave.

Immediately following came the second, the third, and the fourth.

Each bolt of lightning was thicker than the last, faster than the last, and so dense that there was almost no gap. Purple lightning snakes slithered wildly across the ice field, plowing one charred gulley after another into the ground.

The Ice Bear King turned his head back, covering his ears with his two front paws.

That thunder was too loud; even a Soul Beast of his caliber found it shocking.

The lightning tribulation lasted for about half a quarter of an hour.

When the final bolt of lightning fell, the entire vault of heaven was swallowed by purple light.

Within Zhang Lan's gravitational perception, the Ice Empress's aura contracted sharply at the center of the thunder tribulation, then abruptly expanded outward.

That emerald-green light burst forth from the very center of the thunder tribulation, blooming like a flower amidst a storm. Wherever the emerald light passed, the residual lightning arcs were frozen into tiny fragments without exception, drifting away in the wind.

Then the emerald light retracted.

The dark clouds in the sky split open a seam in the middle, and sunlight leaked down from the gap to shine upon the ice field.

The Ice Empress stood in the center of the charred deep pit left behind by the thunder tribulation. Her long emerald dress was torn in a few places, and there was a shallow bloody scratch on her face, but the Soul Power surrounding her body was more than twice as dense as it had been before her closed-door cultivation.

Her aura was heavy and steady, like an iceberg sinking into the ocean floor-calm on the surface, with an invisible, massive volume beneath.

Four hundred thousand years.

The Ice Empress lowered her head to look at her own hands, clenched her fists, and then raised her head, sweeping back toward the ice cliff side.

When she landed, the tips of her toes touched down, her figure as light as a leaf. With a flutter of her long emerald dress, she stood steadily before Zhang Lan.

The bloody scratch on her face was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye, disappearing within the span of a few breaths.

"Not bad."

She shook her head, a trace of unconcealable satisfaction in her tone,

"I didn't disgrace the Three Heavenly Kings of the Far North."

The Ice Bear King let out a hum, which counted as agreement.

Before Zhang Lan had time to speak, a strange noise came from the Snow Empress's ice chamber behind him.

The sound was very soft, like ice sheets slowly cracking apart in the deepest reaches, fine and dense.

Zhang Lan turned back to look. The snow surrounding the ice chamber had completely melted away at some point, exposing the black frozen soil beneath.

A thin layer of watery sheen flowed across the surface of the frozen soil-water that had seeped down after the snow melted, spreading outward in all directions with the ice chamber as the center.

Then the ice chamber cracked open.

There was no explosion, no pressure wave.

That ice chamber forged from Ultimate Ice began from the top, slowly blooming like a flower. The ice petals drooped toward the surrounding area, exposing the Snow Empress sitting cross-legged inside.

She sat there, her hands placed over her knees, a ball of light the size of a fist rotating within her palms.

That light cluster was composed of two streams of light, blue and red. The two lights intertwined and overlapped, forming a perfect loop.

The powers of ice and fire no longer collided, but rather complemented each other and brought out the best in one another.

Yin-Yang Complementary Dual Soul Cores.

The Snow Empress opened her eyes.

Within that pair of pupils that had always been as cold as frost, a very faint brilliance was flowing at this moment.

She slowly stood up, her white long dress dragging across the damp frozen soil yet remaining unblemished.

She walked out of the ruins of the ice chamber, raised her head to glance at that patch of tribulation clouds in the south that had just dispersed, and then withdrew her gaze, letting it fall upon the rotating cluster of light in her own palm.

"Done."

She said.

There were only two words, but the Ice Empress heard what was pressed beneath those two words.

Tens of thousands of years of bottlenecks, three years of torment, and Soul Cores on the verge of collapse countless times-at this very moment, all of it had its reward.

Just as Zhang Lan wanted to speak, the heavens changed again.

This time it came even faster than before.

Dark clouds converged from all directions, more than twice as thick as when the Ice Empress underwent her Tribulation, pressing down so low that they almost adhered to the surface of the ice field.

The cloud layer was no longer purple, but rather a deeper, heavier dark blue-so blue it was nearly black.

Thunder rolled within the belly of the clouds, but the sound was too muffled to sound like thunder, instead resembling something turning over in the deep recesses of the cloud layer.

The Ice Bear King abruptly stood up, his limbs taut, his ice-blue bear eyes fixed dead on the dome of heaven.

His instincts told him that this Heavenly Tribulation was completely not on the same magnitude as the one just now.

"Xue'er."

The Ice Empress's voice grew tight.

The Snow Empress raised her head to look at the sky, her white long hair drifting backward in the progressively intensifying cold wind.

Her expression was calm, even carrying a trace of relief. She had waited for this Heavenly Tribulation for too long-so long that she no longer feared it.

" Fall back further."

She said.

The Ice Empress did not hesitate. Grabbing Zhang Lan's arm with one hand and seizing the fur on the back of the Ice Bear King's neck with the other, a flash of emerald light later, the three of them were already a hundred zhang away.

The Ice Bear King was yanked so hard he staggered and almost fell, but he dared not utter a sound. He steadied himself and continued staring at the distant Snow Empress.

The first bolt of lightning fell.

That lightning was black.

A pillar of lightning as pitch-black as ink pierced straight down from the cloud layer, smashing onto the crown of the Snow Empress's head.

The Snow Empress raised her hand, the blue and white light cluster in her palm meeting it head-on. The black lightning slammed into the light cluster, exploding a sky full of black lightning snakes.

The ground collapsed by several feet in that instant, the frozen soil blasted away to expose the layer of Dark Ice underneath that remained unfrozen for ten thousand years.

The Snow Empress's figure was pressed downward by a sinking weight from the black lightning, but her waist remained straight throughout, and the cluster of light in her palm did not scatter.

The second, the third, the fourth.

The black lightning smashed down one after another-each bolt thicker than the last, each one fiercer than the last.

The Snow Empress's figure grew smaller and smaller amid the black lightning, but the blue and white light surrounding her body not only did not weaken, but instead grew ever brighter.