However.
When they saw Xu Taiping again, apart from the few cultivators in the know, such as Xiahou You, most cultivators looked at Xu Taiping in the projection with anger, mockery, and disdain.
"Hypocrite!"
"Shameless!"
"A sanctimonious fraud!"
Inside the teahouse, some cultivators even cursed aloud.
In their eyes, Xu Taiping's opportunity and good fortune had been bought with Xuanzhi, Dongfang Yuejian, Abbot Jiaye, and the entire Jiaye Temple.
So much so that even among the Buddhism Disciples who had originally held Xu Taiping in great respect, quite a few now secretly blamed him.
After all, Jiaye Temple had been the Buddhism Disciples' greatest hope of restoring the complete inheritance of Buddha fate.
"The Heavenly Dao truly is unjust! Abbot Jiaye and the others were clearly the ones resisting the Demon Bone and the Yin God all along, yet the one who gained the opportunity to break through two realms in succession is this hypocritical, deceitful, shameless wretch!"
Those words undoubtedly voiced the thoughts of many cultivators in the teahouse.
And so, many cultivators clapped and cheered:
"Well said!"
Amid those cheers, accompanied by a rumbling crash of thunder, lightning like a spiderweb once again crawled across the entire cloud layer.
At this sight, an elderly cultivator in the teahouse immediately said solemnly:
"The tribulation lightning is about to descend."
Hearing this, the previously noisy teahouse abruptly fell deathly silent.
In an instant, every gaze inside the teahouse was fixed on Xu Taiping in the projection.
At that moment, Xu Taiping stood in midair beneath the tribulation clouds.
At a rough visual estimate, he was only a little over two hundred zhang from those tribulation clouds.
Most cultivators who had experienced tribulation lightning were not particularly surprised that Xu Taiping had deliberately approached the tribulation clouds before the lightning descended.