Thunder and lightning fell, submerging the mountain terrain beneath a vast expanse — boundless and without limit. Everyone retreated. This was a tremendous heavenly tribulation, enough to make one’s skin crawl.
The ocean of lightning, terrifying beyond measure, would reduce an entire great mountain to flying ash with the eruption of a single arc!
“This…” The crowd was horrified. With lightning strikes of such magnitude, what inconceivable might would they possess when fully unleashed? If it all came crashing down, this entire immortal land would cease to exist.
Yet this round of lightning tribulation was peculiar. Only occasional arcs of electrical light broke free. Comparatively speaking, it was extremely concentrated — pressing down all at once, burying toward Ye Fan, and would not strike wildly elsewhere.
“This is the most terrifying heavenly tribulation of the Dragon Transformation ascending to the Immortal Platform! Only a few ancient texts in the sacred grounds contain any record of it — outsiders would have no way of knowing!” A Ji Family great cultivator stared with eyes wide open.
“This is not an ordinary heaven-sent punishment. Such an event has occurred only a few times in all of history. Something profoundly mysterious and inexplicable will certainly occur. Every person who has ever undergone this kind of tribulation has been a world-defying genius that heaven itself envied.”
“Boom!”
The ocean of lightning crashed down. The enormous sound split the air, leaving many people’s ear bones in severe pain. Many were knocked tumbling backward with blood pouring from their ears — they simply could not stand their ground.
At the center of that ten-thousand-zhang sea of electricity, Ye Fan was still resisting the death curse. His whole body flickered with divine radiance, the great dragon in his spinal column raising its head and surging upward, spitting out a pearl to transform it into an Immortal Platform — merging with his skull above.
This was the final secret realm — the Immortal Platform!
The great dragon nurtured within the human body rears up, soars upward, ascends to become a platform — entering the final secret realm. Mysterious beyond all mystery.
Though his body was shattered and in ruin, it had been transformed into an eternal light. The dragon leaped up, illuminating all living beings, returning to the primordial source, carrying within it the mystery of creation.
The heavenly tribulation was peculiar. It pressed downward but hesitated to strike — it had not yet attacked. Yet the terrifying divine power grew more and more fearsome, awe-inspiring to the soul.
“What is appearing in that sea of lightning?”
“Boundless palace halls, stretching out in an unbroken chain!”
Everyone was deeply alarmed, all of them stricken with dread. This spectacle was too uncanny — magnificent towers and halls of majestic grandeur rose and sank within that terrifying sea of lightning.
“That is the Ancient Heavenly Court!”
“Inconceivable — did the Ancient Heavenly Court spoken of in primordial legends truly exist? Ten thousand years ago, the Demon Emperor sought to rebuild the Ancient Heavenly Court — could that be related to this?”
——
Everyone was trembling with fear. Within that endless lightning, one ancient structure after another appeared, all of them condensed from arcs of electricity, and were now slowly taking shape — pressing down with a weight that made breathing difficult.
The tribulation had not struck Ye Fan yet — not because there was no danger, but because the time had not yet come. It was still gathering. People believed that when the ultimate descent finally came, it would shatter the earth and split the sky!
At this moment, Ye Fan was still enduring a purgatory-like tempering. His golden blood had nearly dried up, his bones were exposed, his physical body in ruin.
Heaven and earth as the furnace, yin and yang as the fire — intertwining and combining together, truly manifesting as a Yin-Yang Eight Trigrams Furnace!
“How can there truly be a divine furnace? This was born specifically to grind the Holy Body to nothing.”
According to ancient lore, the founding patriarch of the Yin-Yang Sect was the most powerful sage of remote antiquity — undefeatable under all heaven. In his later years, he transformed his own body into a Yin-Yang Divine Furnace, sacrificed the death curse, and ground away a divine being from the outer domains.
Ye Fan endured endless torment without yielding. His will was like iron. In the midst of the death abyss, he was enlightened to the Dao, resisting the death curse, tempering his heart within the Yin-Yang Divine Furnace.
This divine furnace blazed with fierce flames, submerging his body — yet it remained forever unable to grind him away. The two had contended for seven times seven days, and still there was no outcome.
Ye Fan had accumulated to this point, and now summoned his own heavenly tribulation — intending to shatter the deadlock from both inside and outside at once!
This divine furnace seemed as though it had existed since time immemorial — blazing continuously, its imperishable divine light standing between heaven and earth, refining Ye Fan for seven times seven, forty-nine days. The yin and yang energies circulated within — terrible beyond measure.
“Break for me!”
Ye Fan roared. By now, he felt he could wait no longer. The moment to break the situation was at hand — this was the conclusion he had reached after deep deliberation: use the heavenly tribulation to break the death trap.
The great dragon at his back blazed with ten-thousand-zhang radiance, pressing down the divine light of the Yin-Yang Divine Furnace. The true dragon leaped upward, his skull and the dragon’s head merged together — evolving into the Immortal Platform.
“Boom!”
The golden figurine seated before his brow quickly returned to its place. The two merged into one. He had successfully ascended to the final secret realm of the human body!
At the same moment, the heavenly punishment truly activated and erupted in full force. The sea of electricity submerged him.
All manner of divine lights, boundless purple skies, the Great Derivation Divine Thunder, the Five Elements Primal Lightning, the Nine Tribulations Thunder-Bolts… endless and inexhaustible, all of them striking down at once!
This was a boiling ocean, a world belonging to the punishment of heaven — who knows how many kinds of tribulation lightning descended together, each one more terrifying than the last.
Breaking through a major secret realm summoned a great heavenly tribulation many times more terrifying than anything before. A tribulation like this would leave a Sacred Lord dying in bitter defeat.
Yet Ye Fan was enduring it stubbornly, gritting his teeth and holding on with his dried-up body — guiding the heavenly lightning of the Lord of Heaven into his own body to purify his flesh and his sea of consciousness. All of this, just to dissolve the death curse.
Who knows how many kinds of lightning Ye Fan guided into his body, purifying his physical form in full — eternal light flickering, boundless arcs of electricity dancing. This was a world-shaking great calamity.
“Pfft!”
Golden blood flew in all directions. Ye Fan’s already devastated body was pounded with a thousand holes and a hundred wounds. Formidable as his flesh was, for it to be in such a state — one could well imagine just how frightening these thunderbolts truly were.
“Crack!”
His bones were shattered by the blasts. Jagged white bone fragments jutted out through his flesh — extremely gory and terrifying. Yet he did not make a single groan, and still guided the electricity into his body.
At the same time, the golden figurine at his brow — which had merged with his physical body upon entering the Immortal Platform secret realm — reemerged. It sat cross-legged in the void, opened its mouth and inhaled, and the lightning cascading across the sky came down and was entirely absorbed inside it.
The golden figurine was like a bottomless abyss — blazing electricity came crashing in from all four directions, but like a river flowing into the sea, every last bit of it was absorbed within.
Physical body and spiritual consciousness were both purified together, bathed in the light of the Lord of Heaven, blazing with a blinding radiance.
This was a terrifying and awe-inspiring display of power. Both the Holy Body’s flesh and spiritual consciousness were nearly shattered to pieces — one could easily imagine what fate any other person would meet in bearing this.
“Clang!”
A great resounding boom. The heaven-and-earth bronze furnace was struck apart. The yin-yang divine light scattered in all directions — at last, the effect of summoning the heavenly tribulation had manifested. The Yin-Yang Death Curse was struck with a devastating blow.
What carries the heaviest yang energy in this world? Lightning, naturally — it can shatter all dark spirits and grind away all dark and shadowy forces. And death curses belong to that same category.
This was the approach Ye Fan had deliberated upon and judged feasible — using it to break the deadlock. At this moment, it proved highly effective, absolutely capable of severing and destroying the death curse.
Wave after wave of lightning descended. The various tribulations erupted in succession, utterly submerging the void.
With one final tremendous boom, the area around Ye Fan became radiant and clear. The Yin-Yang Divine Furnace was shattered and vanished completely — the power of the death curse was destroyed, annihilated beneath the heavenly tribulation.
But the price was enormous. Ye Fan had not drawn the lightning into himself — he himself had nearly been blasted apart. More than a hundred bones were broken, he was left barely retaining human form, and even the golden figurine was nearly shattered to pieces, on the verge of destruction.
He had no choice but to do so. Only by fully opening himself could he sever every last trace of the death curse’s power — otherwise, remnants would remain and bring future calamity.
“Little Ye Fan…” Behind him, Ji Ziyue, Pang Bo, Li Heishui and the others cried out in alarm.
Ye Fan’s eyes snapped open. Now, at last, he could resist on his own terms. Without hesitation, he swallowed all three fragments of the immortal pellet he had obtained from the ancient dragon lair of the Qinling Mountains in a single gulp.
“Boom!”
Dazzling divine radiance soared to the heavens, submerging him in an instant. His bones throughout his body shifted and crackled, one after another, as his flesh rapidly swelled with renewed vitality — like a rebirth from within.
The undying immortal pellet had been nurtured within the body of the Third Generation Source Heaven Master for seventy thousand years, absorbing the original essence of the great dragon of the Qinling Mountains and seizing the creative power of the Lord of Heaven. A complete, whole pellet could allow a person to prove the Dao.
These were only three percent worth of fragments — yet even that was considerable beyond measure. They were more than sufficient to bring the dead back to life and restore white bone with flesh. Ye Fan’s injured body recovered swiftly, and even the wounds to his spiritual consciousness healed in kind.
Moreover, at this point he had begun resisting the heavenly tribulation, and the harm he sustained was reduced to its lowest point.
“Wonderful!” Pang Bo and the others cheered.
While those in the opposing camp, each and every one, were filled with bitter disappointment — their expressions dark and sunken. This outcome was unacceptable.
A sound rang out — the harmonious cry of a dragon and phoenix entwined. Around Ye Fan, divine phoenixes soared, true dragons coiled, and kylin gazed up at the sky. One immortal spirit after another appeared, each one more dazzling than the last.
The essence energy of the ten directions flowed in like water, and the immortal light within the lightning tribulation descended in sheets, all converging upon his body, repairing his wounds.
Ye Fan’s body recovered rapidly. It swelled and filled out; his flesh shimmered with a crystalline luster; his broken bones rejoined; his body shone like seven-colored glazed glass.
This was the wonder of the undying immortal pellet — bringing the dead back to life and restoring white bone with flesh, right then and there, with immediate effect. He surged with power all at once, and no trace of devastation remained.
In the end, amid blazing lightning and rolling thunder, a figure like a war god stood crystallized in the void — black hair streaming, his entire body radiant with treasured brilliance, brilliant and magnificent.
Ye Fan had ascended to the peak. His physical body and spiritual consciousness fully healed, every movement of his hands and feet now carried boundless combat power. He could feel the power of the Immortal Platform.
And it was precisely at this moment that the true danger arrived. Within that sea of lightning, ancient structures rose and sank. From within those magnificent palace halls resembling the Ancient Heavenly Court, human-shaped living beings began to walk out.
“Human-shaped lightning!”
“The legendary human-shaped lightning!”
In the distance, the crowd cried out in shock. From ancient times to the present, the number of people who had summoned this kind of lightning could be counted on one’s fingers — and all of them had ultimately become world-defying existences. Even the ancient texts only recorded them vaguely.
“Boom!”
A human-shaped being charged forward. Above its head hung an eternal sacred furnace, firelight swaying — descending like a divine being, mysterious beyond all reckoning.
“Good heavens — human-shaped lightning, and it even has weapons? Made of condensed electrical arcs…”
The people changed color, utterly unable to comprehend.
The human-shaped lightning was pure white as jade throughout — supremely sacred and radiant. Yet that sacred furnace was crimson, like a supreme sacred vessel cast from phoenix-blood crimson gold belonging to an ancient great Emperor — dazzlingly magnificent.
“White lightning forms the body, crimson lightning forms the furnace — is this… formed spontaneously by heaven itself? I refuse to believe it!” Pang Bo cried out loudly.
All of this defied understanding, beyond what people could imagine.
“Did the Ancient Heavenly Court truly exist in primordial times? Or perhaps it exists in some other form, maintained by divine beings — is it possible it continues to exist in another manner?!” A living fossil’s heart was shaken deeply.
Ye Fan sacrificed the Myriad Things Mother Qi Cauldron to resist the attack, and at the same time, to allow it to undergo the tribulation and interweave the Dao’s principles.
“Boom!”
It was no different from combat against a real person. The eternal sacred furnace — seemingly cast from phoenix-blood crimson gold — possessed boundless power, and could actually release the principles of the Dao. That human-shaped lightning being could also wield sacred power.
“This…” Even Ye Fan’s heart was violently shaken. How could this be? He was utterly astonished.
This was a terrifying confrontation. On the surface, Ye Fan was resisting the punishment of heaven — but in reality, he was enduring a life-and-death battle. His opponent’s strength was extremely peculiar: it always matched his exactly, equal in power, making the fight correspondingly brutal and ferocious.
“Fight then — let this be the sacrifice to my sacred cauldron!”
Ye Fan dimly perceived something, yet still pressed forward without hesitation, using the Myriad Things Mother Qi Cauldron to withstand the assault. He fought the human-shaped lightning head-on, trading blows with that sacred furnace.
Who knows how much time had passed when another human-shaped lightning being descended from the Ancient Heavenly Court. Above its head, an ancient mirror hung and sank — condensed from the void itself.
“It looks so much like our family’s Void Mirror — what in the world is going on?!” Even Ji Ziyue’s beautiful large eyes were rounded in astonishment.
As he fought, Ye Fan mulled it over in his heart. Why would the Ancient Heavenly Court within the sea of lightning send down such bizarre human-shaped lightning — with weapons so lifelike, even capable of releasing Dao principles?
In the end, he battled for half a day, covered in wounds, nearly annihilated — fighting consecutively against two human-shaped lightning beings in an incomparably brutal exchange.
“That shape resembling a sacred furnace cast from phoenix-blood crimson gold — how is it like the Eternal Universe Furnace? And that ancient mirror so similar to the Void Mirror — why would this be?” Ye Fan’s heart pounded furiously.
“The Ancient Heavenly Court within the sea of lightning is so terrifying — what secrets lie within it?!” He was drenched in blood, fighting his way upward — gazing toward the Ancient Heavenly Court, wanting to see what truly lay inside.