Wu Jing was fraught with treacherous undercurrents and turbulent shifts — yet far removed from the mundane world, at the boundary of the Void Refining realm’s secret land within the dragon vein, the situation was an entirely different matter.
Feng Ya gazed at the golden cocoon of light that tightly enveloped Lang Jiuchuan, his eyes darkening — at once resigned and gratified, but above all heavy with gravity and tension.
This woman had comprehended again.
She was about to advance.
It had not been even five years since she had died in her previous life. Back then, she had just entered Foundation Establishment when the ancient monster had suppressed her atop the imperial mausoleum, using her to channel fortune and merit into his true form and nourish the soul within, enriching the dragon vein in an endless cycle.
Two years spent in the Nine Nether Depths to restore her soul. After returning to the living world — less than two more years. And now she had comprehended the Great Way once more, preparing to endure the tribulation and form her Core.
If she survived this tribulation, her Great Way would be accomplished. She would become, if not the single youngest, then indisputably among the very youngest Core Formation cultivators this realm had ever known — the true Immortal Lang of whom the world had spoken.
If she failed, she would be like Tantai Wuji in his time — cast back down to the mortal plane, her cultivation shattered to nothing.
Feng Ya glanced at the skeletal remains of her previous life’s physical body, laid in a hollow among the stones before her as a kind of grave. Golden light had seeped into the bones and rendered them white as jade. His expression shifted through several changes as he studied them.
He pressed his lips together, shifted his gaze back to Lang Jiuchuan, and murmured quietly: “You had better not die again.”
Once was chance. Twice would be beyond recovery. A savior born of fate was not a being that could be endlessly reborn in cycle after cycle.
Within that bowl-shaped hollow of massive stone, Lang Jiuchuan sat with her legs crossed. The vast, surging energy of the dragon vein rose like warm, flowing water, nourishing her physical body and soul, transforming into threads of spiritual force that clung to the cocoon of light, making the golden radiance denser and more intense by the moment.
Her eyes were closed tight. Both hands were formed into a Daoist seal and rested upon her knees. The aura around her rose and fell like the tide — surging and crashing, on the verge of erupting.
Before her, the bones of her previous life lay undisturbed. The resentment, bitterness, and unresolved fixation that had once clung to every marrow of those bones — born from being suppressed, being betrayed, being abandoned — had, since the shackles had been broken and she had been freed from the imperial mausoleum, completely dissolved into nothing.
The shackles had shattered. Her past life and this life had fused entirely into one. Having awakened to her truest self, her heart of the Way had become luminously clear and free of all obstruction — her resolve to walk the Great Way was unwavering.
Furthermore, not long ago she had neutralized the plague of corpse-poison that had nearly annihilated Da Dan and saved countless living souls — the meritorious force she had accumulated from that deed now also transformed into glimmering golden halos, merging into her soul and meridians, cleansing all impurities and firmly consolidating her foundation of the Way.
Heaven’s favor, earth’s advantage, and human harmony — all three had converged.
She would form her Core, reach the summit, and ask of Heaven the Way.
The moment that resolve crystallized, the spiritual energy churning around Lang Jiuchuan abruptly stalled — and then, with even greater ferocity, rushed inward through her meridians, compressing and condensing, growing smaller and smaller, yet more and more immense in force. When the spiritual energy was driven to its utmost limit, her skin split open and threads of blood seeped through — yet deep within the sea of energy at her lower abdomen, a point of incomparable, blazing golden light suddenly ignited, brimming with infinite life-force and devastating power.
Clang.
A faint sound rang out from the depths of her lower abdomen. That point of golden light detonated, transforming into a smooth and perfect sphere — no larger than a fingertip, utterly translucent, bearing the natural flowing patterns of the Way — a Core, spinning with tremendous speed, churning the sea of energy within her.
Lang Jiuchuan bit down hard on her lower lip, her hands changing seals rapidly as she guided the spiritual energy around her body to protect herself.
The Core was formed. The heavenly tribulation arrived at once.
Crack. Boom.
The first bolt of tribulation lightning — thick as an infant’s arm, blazing with blinding light, carrying within it a pure will of annihilation — burst through the cloud layer and came crashing directly down.
The radiance was so searing it was impossible to keep one’s eyes open. Feng Ya, standing not far away, was struck by the impact of that annihilating will and trembled through his whole body. He was an outsider in this world, and existed only by borrowing a vessel — the destructive will showed him no mercy.
He had no choice but to step back further, drawing on the fortune-energy and vital force dwelling in the skeletal remains to shield his original soul, converting that will into power and merging it into his own soul.
An opportunity, once arrived, cannot be allowed to slip away. One who truly dares to calculate — such a person can turn even a heavenly tribulation to their advantage.
As was true of him. As was true of Lang Jiuchuan.
Lang Jiuchuan brought forth all of her spiritual instruments and released the Xiaojiu Pagoda from within her soul, surrounding herself with them all, letting them share in bearing the might of the tribulation lightning — using the ordeal to temper them.
And far away within the depths of the imperial palace, Tantai Wuji seemed to sense something. He leapt up onto a rooftop in stunned disbelief and looked westward, his gaze cold and fixed — expression caught between frenzied excitement and terror.
That aura, that spiritual presence — he knew it all too well.
It had to be her. It could only be her.
Tantai Wuji’s eyes filled with a dense, ink-black current that swirled like something plunging into demonic corruption. He stood fixed, staring toward that direction for one long moment — then plunged back down into the palace halls, summoning attendants, issuing commands. One blood-soaked order after another flew out of the palace and radiated across every corner of Da Dan.
The hunt was on, and only the stronger party would claim the prize.
Wave after wave of tribulation lightning fell, while all the cultivators in the distance silently kept count. Each bolt was more savage than the last. Lang Jiuchuan neither dodged nor retreated. Drawing on the power of the Core she had just formed, she sent a torrent of pure golden radiance — suffused with unyielding will and the pure force of her accumulated merit — shooting up from her fingertips to meet the heavenly thunder.
I seek to reach the summit and ask of Heaven the Way — not even Heaven itself shall stop me.
Her resolve utterly enraged the tribulation. Heavier and more violent than anything before it, a bolt of purple celestial lightning came crashing down with a thunderous roar, and the lightning engulfed her completely, swallowing her from sight.
Feng Ya’s chest clenched. Blood seeped from his lips. He fixed his gaze upon that blaze of light, searching desperately for any sign that the person at its center was still whole.
Lang Jiuchuan’s physical body — her bones and flesh — had been shattering and reforming over and over again throughout the tribulation. Only the Core spinning furiously within her lower abdomen had never once crumbled. Instead it was pulling the destructive annihilating force of the thunder into itself, using the power of the heavenly tribulation to temper the Core and grind its foundation into something supreme — making it blaze ever more brilliantly with golden radiance, ever more resilient and unyielding — and then feeding that refined strength back into her body.
Boom.
The final heavenly thunder descended — a divine bolt that reverberated through the nine heavens, enough to shake a soul to its core. Lang Jiuchuan coughed up a mouthful of her purest spiritual blood, which fell upon the dragon vein beneath her and drew its vital energy surging skyward. Above her head, it coalesced into the faint luminous shadow of a golden dragon, coiling around her body, roaring — wrapping her entire essence and unyielding will of the Way together and drawing that thunder-force entirely into the Core.
Lang Jiuchuan burst through the heart of the lightning and stood suspended in the empty air, glowing softly. One hand rose slightly — in her palm rested a Core, brilliant and radiant, its patterns of the Way arising naturally from within. Then she closed her fingers gently around it, and it sank back into her lower abdomen, settling permanently as the foundation of that sea of energy.
The Great Way of the Core — achieved.