Bao Gu was so stunned she froze on the spot. Only one thought shot through her mind:
“How is that even possible?”
She had just set foot on this green-star world and she was already facing tribulation? Nobody else was getting struck, just her?
She stared blankly up at the heaving mass of black‑violet clouds above her head, eyes full of shock and disbelief.
The people in this place were already bizarre, now even the tribulation was bizarre—black‑purple lightning clouds? And they just started striking at her out of nowhere? She wasn’t cultivating, she hadn’t just broken through, so why was the heavenly tribulation coming for her? It made no sense at all.
Back in seclusion she had indeed made a breakthrough; after stepping past the Nascent Soul stage into Divine Transformation, her Nascent Soul seemed to vanish and she never saw her primordial spirit either. She only felt her divine sense grow much stronger, like she’d stepped into a new realm. After that, her strength kept rising, but that was just from continually fusing with the Xuantian Sword and occasionally having an insight into the Dao. Had her realm really climbed all the way to the point where she needed to cross a tribulation?
Ba, seeing Bao Gu standing there dazedly gawking at the thunderclouds overhead, panicked and shouted,
“Cheap Master, don’t just stand there! That’s a Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation, it’s lethal!”
A Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation, second only to divine punishment itself—and she was spacing out?
Bao Gu couldn’t even remember clearly if she’d ever crossed a tribulation before. She vaguely recalled that after successfully fusing with her artifact, she’d gone through one heavenly tribulation—got zapped a few times and only survived by relying on spirit treasures, miracle pills, and Supreme Monkey Wine, brute‑forcing her way through.
Now she heard Ba say this one was deadly, so she immediately stopped taking it lightly. She raised the Xuantian Sword above her head as a shield, pulled out her gourd of Supreme Monkey Wine and a bottle of Returning‑Life Pills.
Left hand gripping the wine gourd, right hand clutching the pill bottle, she still felt unsafe. So she simply swallowed a handful of Returning‑Life Pills in one go, then tilted back her head and chugged two huge mouthfuls of Supreme Monkey Wine.
Just then she saw, in the violet‑black clouds overhead, a bolt of lightning like a sea‑drake erupting from the depths, lashing straight down at her.
Bao Gu jumped in fright and used her mind to control the Xuantian Sword, sending it slashing up toward the lightning. At the same time she activated her divine ability, her footwork flaring, her body shooting toward the edge of the tribulation cloud at a speed like a fading phantom.
A deafening boom ripped across the sky. Blinding lightning crashed straight down from the purple‑black thunderclouds and slammed into the Xuantian Sword, which was flying up to meet it.
The flash was so intense Bao Gu reflexively squeezed her eyes shut. The suffocating, soul‑crushing pressure of thunder roiled all around her, making her instinctively mobilize every shred of power in her body for protection.
Even so, she still felt a tearing force spear from the top of her head down through the soles of her feet. Her heart thudded with a muffled pain, and a metallic sweetness surged up her throat.
The strike left her dizzy and reeling. Thunder intent pressed in from all directions; every path was sealed by the lightning clouds. She was completely boxed in.
She was not like Yu Mi and Qu Yirou, who were used to being roasted by lightning. She had almost no experience with crossing tribulation. All she knew was that once heavenly tribulation descended, there was no running from it—only taking it head‑on.
How to take it? By getting struck without letting it kill you, that was how!
The destructive aura churning within the purple‑black thunderclouds made her heart pound with terror. The gourd of Supreme Monkey Wine in her arms had even been split open by the lightning, rich fragrance pouring out.
The sight made Bao Gu’s heart ache.
She immediately used a water‑element technique to gather every wisp of escaping wine vapor and water vapor, condensed it, and swallowed it all down in one gulp. Then she grabbed her stock of seventh‑grade Monkey Wine and started guzzling like mad.
Healing pills and Returning‑Life Pills poured into her mouth as if they weren’t refined from rare spirit herbs at all. At the same time, she circulated her cultivation to rapidly repair the injuries across her body.
One bolt of lightning tribulation finished. Another came crashing down on her head without pause.
Bao Gu hurriedly recalled the Xuantian Sword, planted it over her head again, and ducked under it, frantically drinking Monkey Wine and popping pills as she hid beneath the blade.
Most of the power of the heavenly tribulation was blocked by the Xuantian Sword. She only got clipped by the shockwaves, but even just the aftershocks made her spit blood again and again. Wounds riddled her body, several times splitting her skin and flesh wide open, her internal organs on the verge of getting cooked to cinders.
Fortunately, she held her protective energy tight around herself and had a mountain of rare medicines continuously restoring her vitality.
The commotion of crossing a heavenly tribulation was always enormous, and this exceptionally rare Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation was even more shocking. Everyone in the area was roused.
Countless cultivators sent their divine sense sweeping toward this place. Some even rushed over in person to see who was undergoing tribulation.
Then, one after another, they were all dumbfounded.
No one had ever seen someone cross tribulation like this before—using their life‑bound artifact as a shield over their head to block the lightning while they huddled underneath, manically shoveling healing pills into their mouth?
There were indeed people who used their life‑bound artifact to block the lightning. But if you only used your life‑bound artifact to take the hits while you stayed curled up underneath it, the usual result was that the tribulation shattered your artifact with a single blow.
Heavenly tribulation power was scaled to the cultivator’s own power. If you relied only on your life‑bound artifact, that was equivalent to using only half your full strength to resist lightning that required your entire being to confront it.
Never mind Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation—under those conditions you couldn’t even get through an ordinary tribulation, much less this great tribulation variant.
Normally, anyone capable of drawing a Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation down was either someone utterly defying the heavens, or a slaughterer with such a mountain of blood karma that they’d surpassed even a blood‑calamity.
Ba watched Bao Gu crossing tribulation so “easily,” needing only to bury her head and eat to ride out this Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation. She was so jealous she practically wanted to pounce over, snatch the War God Sword, and run.
Even if that War God Sword had once been knocked down a realm and had yet to recover, it had already fused with god‑blood and undergone the refinement of a king‑weapon turned immortal artifact. Even without exerting its full world‑breaking might, its sheer toughness made blocking this level of heavenly tribulation feel like child’s play.
After a long while, Bao Gu finally felt the sky clear. The mass of oppressive purple‑black thunderclouds overhead gradually dissipated.
But the fabled torrent of rich, pure life force and heavenly tribulation energy that was supposed to descend after surviving tribulation did not appear.
She stared blankly up at the sky, utterly confused. The tribulation had come out of nowhere and now vanished just as inexplicably.
Lowering her head to look at herself, she saw her clothes were blasted to shreds, burned into tatters clinging to her body. She herself was basically a naked lump of blackened charcoal.
She hurriedly pulled a cloak from her storage and wrapped it tightly around herself, then looked around in a daze. With a sweep of her divine sense, she sent a voice transmission to the countless cultivators who were probing her from afar.
“Are heavenly tribulations in your world always this random?”
Different place, different tribulation?
Ba sauntered over to her side and asked,
“What’s so random about it?”
She looked Bao Gu up and down, lips jutting out, clearly displeased.
Bao Gu said,
“It came out of nowhere, and then it vanished out of nowhere. It didn’t even give me any benefit for finishing the tribulation! I heard that after passing a tribulation, your realm improves, then you get washed clean by heavenly power and receive a huge surge of vitality to help you remold your body…”
She had been zapped to the brink of death, drained all her Supreme Monkey Wine, and chewed through every last Returning‑Life Pill—but her realm hadn’t gone up in the slightest. She hadn’t gotten a single advantage.
She’d taken those lightning strikes for nothing!
Even if she’d come from another world to this one and the heavens wanted to smack her down with an opening volley, why was it that all three hundred thousand other cultivators here didn’t get struck, and only she did?
Bao Gu was usually calm, but at this moment she was nothing but indignant.
Ba rolled her eyes so hard they almost flipped out of her head. She didn’t even want to talk to Bao Gu.
Was this tribulation really Bao Gu’s own?
It was the War God Sword’s tribulation!
Hadn’t Bao Gu seen how the War God Sword had been greedily absorbing the lightning? Didn’t she notice the faint Purple‑Cloud aura now clinging to the sword’s edge? The additional Dao patterns etched along its blade? And all that copious vitality—hadn’t the Xuantian Sword sucked it up completely?
You fused with this sword, cultivate while hugging it every day, constantly drawing its power into yourself to raise your realm, and you still don’t understand?
Ba felt her cheap master could be infuriatingly excessive at times.
Your cultivation already reached the tribulation realm—what’s so wrong with taking a bit of heavenly lightning?
It was clearly just an ordinary lightning tribulation. But you had to go and sacrifice a half‑emperor‑grade upper‑realm super king artifact, forcibly elevating that heavenly thunder to Purple‑Cloud Lightning Tribulation. Then you refused to use your own power to face the lightning and instead chewed through my rations.
How often do you refine Returning‑Life Pills? How many do you produce in a single batch?
You just scarfed down fourteen bottles in one go!
My monthly ration is two pills. Two! You just ate a hundred and forty in one sitting—that’s seventy months of my food!
A cultivator wearing battle armor forged of bright red gold strode over to Bao Gu, cupped his hands, and said,
“May I ask, young lady, under which branch of the War King Clan’s immortals do you serve?”
War King Clan?!
Bao Gu thought she’d misheard. She gave this cultivator a once‑over. He was only about a head taller than she was, his appearance around twenty, his aura tightly restrained so she couldn’t gauge his exact cultivation. She only faintly sensed a current of sword intent moving across him, along with hints of the five‑element spiritual energies.
What shocked her most was that his speech—aside from a slight difference in pronunciation—was practically the same language as her own.
She asked,
“Did you just say War King Clan? The War King Clan that cultivates artifact‑fusion techniques?”
Had she heard wrong?
Another woman walked over, dressed in magnificent robes, her bearing noble and elegant. She gave Bao Gu a bright smile as her gaze swept over her from head to toe.
“If you don’t mind, young lady, why not come to my place and change into some proper clothes before we sit down and talk slowly?”
She smiled.
“My surname is Xuan, single given name Yi.”
Bao Gu nodded slightly and thanked her. Then she turned her head toward Ba.
“Qingying, this really isn’t the Upper Realm? If it isn’t, why is there a War King Clan here?”
The young man’s mouth fell slightly open. He stared at Bao Gu in astonishment.
Xuan Yi’s lips still held a faint smile, but a glimmer of surprise flashed through her eyes.
Ba gave Bao Gu a very speechless look.
“This is the Wilds Realm. What’s so strange about the War King Clan having a Dao lineage here? Otherwise, where do you think the War King clansmen who ascended to the Upper Realm came from? Popped out of the void on their own?”
She was still heartbroken over her rations and in no mood to be gentle with Bao Gu.
What annoyed her most was that Bao Gu had learned the War King Clan’s highest‑level techniques and obtained one of the extremely rare War God Swords, yet knew practically nothing about how many Dao lineages the War King Clan had. Ba, whose spiritual intelligence had supposedly been damaged, actually knew more about them than her own master did.
Bao Gu’s eyes turned, and she asked Ba,
“You know this place?”
Ba snorted.
“I heard Father mention it.”
She pursed her lips and stared accusingly at Bao Gu.
“You just ate all of my rations!”
Her eyes narrowed in resentment. The food issue really was intolerable.
“And you… you also finished off the Supreme Monkey Wine!”
Bao Gu let out an awkward little sound.
“Uh… it was a matter of life and death. Sorry. I’ll open a furnace and refine more for you later.”
She offered Xuan Yi an apologetic smile.
“Sorry to trouble you.”
With Ba as a bodyguard, Bao Gu had no fear of anyone harboring ill intentions toward her. She followed the woman openly to a palatial compound more imposing and luxurious than any imperial palace.
Above the towering gateway that looked like a massive ceremonial arch hung a plaque carved with runes that read “War King Manor.”
The guards at the entrance to War King Manor were at least at the Void Tearing stage. When they saw Xuan Yi, they all bent one knee and bowed their heads in salute with great respect.
The young man in red‑gold armor stayed close by Xuan Yi’s side the whole time, stealing glances at Bao Gu now and then. He didn’t speak, but from his expression alone Bao Gu could tell the two of them were exchanging thoughts via divine sense.
Bao Gu spread her own divine sense outward, only to find it blocked by a formation. She couldn’t probe beyond the inner courtyards.
Curiosity about this place was burning in her chest. Walking into War King Manor, she felt very much like a country bumpkin entering a grand city.
It wasn’t that she’d never seen splendor before—she’d been inside the imperial palace of Yue Kingdom—but compared to War King Manor, the Yue palace looked instantly shabby.
Xuan Yi led Bao Gu into a palace hall built in the middle of a broad lake, water on all four sides. She instructed a maidservant to take Bao Gu to bathe and change.
Bao Gu merely used a body‑cleansing technique to strip away the grime, then changed into a fresh outfit and followed the maid to the reception hall.
There she found Ba already seated, idly propping her chin on her hand, her face full of grievance as she stared at Bao Gu. Her eyes immediately lit up again, the way someone’s might on seeing a freshly delivered meal.
Xuan Yi had someone serve Bao Gu tea, then smiled and said,
“I haven’t yet asked how we should address you, young lady.”
Bao Gu said,
“My surname is Bao. Single given name Gu.”
The moment she said this, both Xuan Yi and the red‑gold‑armored man sitting opposite her stiffened, looking at Bao Gu in clear surprise.
Xuan Yi then asked,
“And may I ask your honored master is…?”
“Xuantian.”
Xuan Yi and the young man were both startled yet again. Xuan Yi cast the man a very curious look.
The young man rubbed his nose.
“Young lady, in all of War King Manor, I’m the only one named Xuan Tian. There isn’t a second.”
He added with a hint of playful humor,
“And I don’t recall ever taking you as a disciple. Besides, from what I can sense, you’re already at the tribulation‑crossing realm. I’m only mid‑stage Void Tearing—no way I could be your master.”
This time it was Bao Gu’s turn to freeze.
“What? My cultivation is at the tribulation‑crossing realm?!”
Ba slapped a hand over her face.
Inwardly she howled, “Am I allowed to sever our master‑disciple relationship?”
Xuan Yi couldn’t keep up the polite façade any longer and asked bluntly,
“May I ask where exactly you came from, young lady?”
Bao Gu thought, “How am I supposed to answer that?”
Seeing how troubled Bao Gu looked, Xuan Yi continued,
“I can tell at a glance your sword is clearly a direct‑line blade of our War King Clan. I’d wager the techniques you cultivate are also from the clan’s main lineage.”
She smiled lightly.
“My surname is Xuan. You should know what the name ‘Xuan’ represents within the War King Clan, yes?”
Bao Gu pressed a hand to her forehead.
“To be honest with you, Miss Xuan, I actually picked this sword up.”
“One day I got lost and wandered up a mountain. I saw a ruined site there, and stuck in the middle of the ruins was this sword I’m carrying now. Bones were piled all around it. I wanted to turn around and leave, but some old ghost calling himself Xuantian jumped out and stopped me.
“Later, I just… pulled the sword out in one go. Then that old ghost disappeared, and the sword ended up bound to me.”
Xuan Yi: “…”
Xuan Tian: “…”
Ba: “…”
After a few moments of silence, Xuan Yi quietly asked,
“And where, exactly, did you pick this sword up?”
Bao Gu said,
“The Xuantian Sect.”
Xuan Yi: “…”
Xuan Tian: “…”
