Chapter 257: Chapter 146: Rebirth After the Thunder Tribulation

The gathering in Sanhe Prefecture lasted for a full day and night.

For the remainder of the time, everyone discussed the details of their cooperation and shared some vital intelligence. The item trading session was automatically skipped.

After the gathering ended, Yang Ye was the first to leave. Judging by his more respectful attitude and hurried departure, it was clear he was very satisfied with the meeting.

Monk Le Yuan left next. After exchanging a few private words with Yu Cheng, Yuan Zheng hurriedly went after Monk Le Yuan. It was obvious the two had other business to conduct.

Elder Wu chatted with Yu Cheng for a long time before departing.

Finally, only Wen Yang remained. He and Yu Cheng walked to the center of the bright plaza outside the pavilion. Watching Lin Chen tactfully move away, he said in a low voice, "Once Changqing advances to the Third Realm, we can set many of our plans in motion. With my intelligence from the True Yang Sect and the information he obtained from the Southern Daoist Lineage, we can plot this out properly. We might even be able to secure a spot in the Fourth Realm."

Among the Five Profound Sects, Fire Cultivators have the shortest lifespans, but their advancement is also the least difficult. This is why the True Yang Sect could still become the state religion of the Xia Dynasty even after splitting.

Of course, this "least difficult" only applied to advancements below the Third Realm. Rising above the Third Realm depended on more than just cultivation talent and aptitude.

Yu Cheng Taoist nodded. "Two hundred years of prosperity have led to social stratification everywhere. The conflicts among the lower classes have reached an irreconcilable point. A change of dynasty is imminent, and the world’s fortune will shatter into pieces. If we can pull down a few Lords..."

He paused for half a beat, then smiled. "That is something the entire world would love to see. You and I need not be the vanguards. We only need to guide things along slightly."

Wen Yang nodded. "My thoughts exactly. It doesn’t matter if we succeed or fail. Success means opportunity; failure just means waiting a few more centuries." After speaking, he clasped his fist. "Contact me if anything comes up. I won’t be entering seclusion for the next hundred years."

"Alright!"

Yu Cheng clasped his fist in return and watched Wenyang Taoist leave. After a moment of thought, he looked toward Lin Chen, who was waiting in the distance.

Lin Chen felt the gaze upon him and walked over carefully with his head lowered. He clasped his fist and said, "Senior, what are your instructions?"

"How is Guangxuan’s promotion coming along?"

"Reporting to Senior, Senior Liu Chang said there are no issues. We should see results within ten years," Lin Chen answered cautiously.

"Good!"

Yu Cheng’s figure transformed into a streak of light and disappeared into a nearby cave.

A short while later, he landed on a cliff, gazing in the direction of Jinhuai Prefecture. He took out the divination blocks he carried with him and performed a reading.

...

「Jinhuai Prefecture.」

Deep within the territory of the Six Heart Sect, a hidden Dao Field surrounded by a dense forest was enveloped in a faint, shimmering energy shield. This was Zi Luan’s handiwork. He was currently sitting in meditation at the edge of the forest.

Inside the Dao Field, in the open space south of a bamboo house, stood a twenty-foot-tall altar. The altar bore strong traces of Thunder Technique. This was the Thunder Law Altar Wang Ping had set up to attract the Thunder Tribulation.

In front of the bamboo house, under a cowhide canopy, Wang Ping sat cross-legged on a prayer mat carved from white jade. Yu Lian’s massive body was coiled around the bamboo house. Their divine souls had long since connected to the Inspiration Realm, and their linked Qi Seas caused small Energy Vortexes to form around their bodies.

"HUUUH..."

Wang Ping let out a long breath and took out a blank Talisman that had been fused with a Divine Soul Guide. An irrepressible tension bloomed in his heart.

He frowned, glanced at the silent mountain forest around him, then put the Talisman away and took out his divination blocks to perform a reading.

A Holy Trigram. It was auspicious.

"You’re getting too excited," Yu Lian reminded him.

"I am." Wang Ping looked inward at his condition. His anticipation had caused the Inner Spirit Veins in his limbs and meridians to become unusually active, giving rise to feelings of excitement and nervousness in his consciousness.

"Calm yourself first."

"Alright."

Wang Ping tried to enter a meditative state.

Normally, entering meditation was as simple as eating or drinking for him, but this time, it took him a full Half an Hour to succeed.

But the moment the thought of drawing the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’ arose, excitement flared up in his emotions again.

The feeling was similar to his previous life: the excitement before a date with a new girlfriend, or the thrill of heading off to a university he’d just been accepted to.

For an ordinary person, controlling such emotions might be difficult.

But for a Cultivator, there were ways. Wang Ping opened his eyes, looked at Yu Lian, and said, "In a moment, I will suppress most of my human memories in the Spirit Sea. You will be responsible for stabilizing them. Then, the instant my consciousness finishes drawing the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman,’ you must release them immediately."

This method was the most effective, but it could only be used by someone who had cultivated to the Spirit Body state. Otherwise, one could easily be assimilated by their Spirit Veins.

Yu Lian considered it for a few breaths. Only after confirming she could handle it did she agree, "Alright!"

Upon receiving Yu Lian’s confirmation, Wang Ping no longer hesitated. He immediately transferred the human memories from his divine soul, through his body’s currently powerful spirituality, into the Spirit Sea they shared.

Yu Lian received these human memories and used her own divine soul to seal and suppress them with the utmost speed.

Wang Ping’s rich emotions vanished in an instant, replaced by the detached demeanor of a superior being who was indifferent to all. He swept a non-human gaze over Yu Lian, who immediately felt a sense of unease.

Fortunately, his gaze did not linger on her for long. In a flash, he summoned the blank Talisman fused with the ’Divine Soul Guide’ and, under Yu Lian’s watchful eyes, decisively followed his instincts to draw the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’ from his mind onto the blank Talisman.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, but it made Yu Lian’s heart pound with fear. The very instant the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’ was complete, she released Wang Ping’s human memories.

Receiving his human memories, Wang Ping was stunned for a moment. As their memories were already linked, he almost instinctively absorbed the newly drawn ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’ into his divine soul. Then, he took out the Talisman that sealed Si Ran’s Primordial Spirit and summoned it.

When Si Ran saw Wang Ping, he immediately shrieked hysterically, "Junior, I have a heaven-shaking secret! If you just..."

But before he could finish his words, Wang Ping’s left hand, filled with Wood Spirit Qi, crushed him.

At the same time, Wang Ping, whose divine soul had absorbed the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’, felt as if his soul could connect to the great power between heaven and earth, allowing him to command the life, death, and annihilation of all things.

Before he had time to rejoice, he felt his divine soul being locked onto by something.

"BOOM!"

Without any warning, a bolt of lightning appeared out of thin air in the cloudless sky. It struck the Protective Shield above the Dao Field, strangely passed through it, and fell directly toward the top of Wang Ping’s head.

Just as the lightning was about to strike Wang Ping’s head, the nearby Thunder Law Altar suddenly erupted with a purple light, drawing the bolt toward it.

"CRACKLE!"

In the end, the lightning bolt struck the ground nearby, making contact with the ground Array and sending hundreds of sparks flying.

’This feeling...’

Wang Ping looked up at the sky. He found that his divine soul couldn’t control the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’. He immediately followed the instructions on the glowing screen panel, manifesting his divine soul and connecting it with the Inspiration Realm.

At that moment, with Wang Ping’s divine soul at the center, visible Wood Spirit Qi materialized in an area dozens of miles wide and stretching all the way up to the clouds.

From a distance, it looked as if a fractured Different Dimension Space had appeared in this world. Within this space, all things continuously withered and were reborn. This was especially true for the mountain forests around the Dao Field, where the dense, ancient trees grew wildly in a bizarre fashion, reaching the end of their lives in the blink of an eye, only to rapidly revive from the earth once more.

"BOOM!"

This thunderclap was deafening. The sound caused the very earth to tremble as it spread. It was followed by a sky full of lightning, completely blanketing the dozens of miles covered by the Wood Spirit Qi.

The instant the Wood Spirit Qi came into contact with the lightning, all sorts of strange sounds emerged—like the grinding of metal, the booming of war drums, and the roaring of fierce ghosts. A powerful shockwave spread out across the land, instantly engulfing the entire Six Heart Sect’s encampment before rapidly expanding to the surrounding areas, reaching Jinhuai Prefecture City in the blink of an eye.

At the Daoist Scripture Hall, several Cultivators came out one after another, gazing at the rare spectacle.

"Is Daoist Changqing ascending to the Third Realm?"

A sudden voice cut through the howling wind. Although it was quiet, no one in the Daoist Scripture Hall was an ordinary person. The next moment, everyone reacted—some with envy, some with jealousy, while others’ faces changed drastically.

Then, a Protective Shield spread out from the Daoist Scripture Hall’s pavilion, quickly enveloping the entire city and shielding mortals from the gale that was too powerful for them to witness directly.

It was Yunshan who had acted. He was currently the only Patrol Envoy stationed at the Daoist Scripture Hall in Jinhuai Prefecture.

The areas not protected by the shield suffered a disaster. This was especially true for the common folk; the shockwave destroyed over seventy percent of the crops in their fields, and some poorly constructed houses collapsed.

At the critical moment, Zi Luan intervened to block most of the shockwave. Otherwise, an exorbitant compensation would have awaited Wang Ping.

After the shockwave passed, the lightning pierced through the sky filled with Wood Spirit Qi.

Wang Ping remained extremely calm in the face of the descending lightning. He formed a hand seal for a Spell, activating the Thunder Law Altar while simultaneously manifesting the ’Purgatory Banner’.

The Casting Rules set in motion by the Thunder Law Altar drew away most of the falling lightning. The few bolts that did fall toward Wang Ping’s head were attracted to the small fragment of his divine soul consciousness within the prison space created by the ’Purgatory Banner’.

’This Thunder Tribulation... without any preparation, it would be truly hard to survive!’

Yu Lian gazed around, her heart fluttering with fear. The once-dense forest around them had been turned into a patch of scorched earth, and the mountain supporting the forest had been sheared in half.

The Thunder Tribulation ended, and quiet returned. It didn’t descend continuously in eighty-one or forty-nine waves, as stories in novels often described.

The Thunder Tribulation also brought a benefit: it at least suppressed the uncontrollable ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’. The chaotic Wood Spirit Qi between heaven and earth calmed down. Wang Ping’s inspiration-filled physical body opened its eyes, quickly surveyed its surroundings, and then projected its consciousness back into its divine soul to absorb Spiritual Energy using the ’Heaven-Reaching Talisman’ and forge a Primordial Spirit Body.

During this process, the surrounding scorched earth slowly came back to life as the Wood Spirit Qi materialized once more. The tender shoots of new plants broke through the charred soil.

One day later, the scorched earth had turned into a grassland. Wang Ping’s divine soul had become transparent and visible. The dense Wood Spirit Qi, channeled by the Six Heart Sect’s great Array, connected heaven and earth, forming beautiful auroras that made the mortals nearby kneel in devout worship.