According to the statistics Cha Ming had read, everyone had a fifty-percent chance of overcoming the transcendence ordeal. The odds might seem high, but considering that the man had successfully carved his core despite the five-to-one odds against him and not died, one could forgive the heavens for being merciful.
The man rose up from his meditative position and raised his sword, which crackled in the dark depths of the ocean. He was surrounded by the nascent domain projected by his core that also extended onto the blade of his sword. The clouds responded by sending a dragon of lightning onto the man. It was the weakest of lightning, white lightning, but the dragon was far thicker than any Cha Ming and Huxian had faced before.
Cha Ming’s eyes narrowed as the man’s power erupted and slashed through the lightning as though slashing through reality itself. He had no doubt that this slash could kill him instantly. The first dragon was eliminated effortlessly, and the clouds rumbled and accumulated lightning for the next strike. This time, the lightning was red.
White, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Six rounds were defeated with very little effort on the cultivator’s part. Then the clouds shifted and went from black to gray. Violet and gold mixed and formed another, stronger dragon. The sheer power the lightning dragon contained eclipsed anything Cha Ming could generate. It resembled a living being that existed on a higher plane of existence.
As the violet-gold lightning bore down on the man, he finally made his first serious move. His sword glowed, and he sent a giant gold projection against the lightning dragon. His domain fought against it, and the plane shook as they collided. Black and gray cracks appeared all around them until finally, reality began to break apart. It was time.
Most of them hadn’t come to see him transcend. Instead, they’d come due to the cracks generated by the battle. The spatial fragments created during each transcendent’s ordeal were priceless. Cha Ming jumped into the air along with several others. They unleashed their techniques with mild reservation, aiming to injure each other rather than maim or kill. It wasn’t that Cha Ming didn’t want to kill Zhou Li and his ilk, but that the consequences of breaking Haijing’s peace were far too great.
As he flew, he scooped up several spatial fragments and stored them in his Clear Sky World. The others also had treasures capable of collecting these tears in space-time. They collected the smaller fragments casually, leaving the smallest to fall to the weaker cultivators below. Those would be forged into normal spatial treasures like bags of holding and storage rings, assuming they were stable or large enough.
The real prizes were mid-sized or large fragments. Those had uses beyond simple storage treasures and were extremely valuable. Cha Ming winked to Huxian and his friends, who’d apparently grown a level in his absence. The high-grade beasts fought aggressively against competing demons in their section. Apparently, fighting to the death among demons wasn’t seen as a big deal to either Haijing’s rulers or the beasts themselves. Cha Ming managed to retrieve seven mid-size fragments during the exchange. Larger pieces had yet to fall.
The cultivators beneath the clouds panted as they fought, accumulating energy for the next strike. The clouds seemed to pulse as they also recovered. This wasn’t a judgment against the cultivators, but a test along with an implicit threat. The test was to see whether the cultivator was worthy of the power he wielded, while the threat was very straightforward: If the plane wanted to, it could end him. Remaining on the plane was a privilege, not a right.
The man wiped the blood off his mouth, and the eighth lightning dragon began to form. This one wasn’t violet gold but pitch black. Both the audience and the man felt pure dread as it accumulated in the gray clouds. It was blacker than the deepest night, blacker than the deepest pit in the ocean. It was destruction itself, and even light couldn’t coexist with it.
The bolt shot down, and the cultivator let loose. Thousands of metallic blades rose up to fight against the heavens. They crumbled into motes of qi as the lightning broke through them, but not without slowing down. The technique was imbued with the man’s domain, so each blow caused further fissures in space. This time, three large chunks flew down amidst the cultivators. One toward the demons, one toward the nobles, and one toward Haijing Academy. Their positions had been chosen with this distribution in mind.
Cha Ming pushed off the ocean waves and whirled his staff. A white line of creation formed a barrier that repelled a few oncoming cultivators. He reduced the drag around himself while using his qi to propel himself toward the fragment. A few loose blades and techniques flew his way, but he deflected them with his staff just in time to see a flaming black dragon flying toward his face.
He threw up a hasty combat formation that doused the unexpected sin flames, only to find that his limbs had been bound in black chains. He broke the chains apart with brute strength and banished the black smoke around him, only to see Zhou Li pocketing the void fragment. The man smirked but said nothing. Cha Ming glared at him, then looked to the man in the clearing, who was now covered in blood from head to toe. His sword, evidently a half-step transcendent treasure, was cracked.
I wonder if he’ll make it, Cha Ming thought. It would all come down to the last confrontation. Though he wasn’t interested in the rest of the tribulation, this stage greatly interested him. Unlike the lightning tribulation he’d faced, this one had a special bolt. A gray one.
All the power in the
