Then the stone platform released another beam of yellow light, scanning Cui Jiuyang once, and the character for "merit" began filling with color a little faster.
Cui Jiuyang understood then that the stone platform was actually scanning the merit he had accumulated.
That left him nothing to feel uneasy about. He had traveled the world, and leaving everything else aside, he had prevented a spiritual vein from exploding and sinking the Divine Land Beyond the Pass, and had resisted the Asura's descent in Southern Heaven. Those two deeds alone carried enough merit to fashion a Golden Body.
Sure enough, the two characters for "merit and virtue" soon turned bright red. The stone platform instantly blazed with light, and the streams of mystic light shooting from his body formed a staircase slanting upward behind it.
Cui Jiuyang shook his head with a smile. The Heavenly Court certainly knew how to get fancy. Presumably, anyone without enough merit would find themselves in danger.
He climbed the staircase of merit. A bank of mist drifted past, and he stepped onto another stretch of level ground. The stone platform of merit had vanished behind him.
Just as Cui Jiuyang looked around to see what trial awaited him here, tribulation clouds began gathering overhead.
Sensing the dense aura of lightning in the sky, he smiled helplessly. "Seriously? Again? Didn't you already strike me once back at the East Sea? Though perhaps something went wrong, since you took it back in the end."
Strangely enough, as Cui Jiuyang complained, the Heavenly Tribulation seemed to actually understand him. Thunder rumbled a few times before falling silent, and before long, the tribulation clouds dispersed entirely.
A staircase wreathed in violet lightning appeared behind the tribulation clouds.
Cui Jiuyang was somewhat speechless now. For everyone else, surviving a Heavenly