Mo Xiao Ran manipulated his soul power, tearing Mei Xia Ying’s soul out strand by strand and throwing it into the iron tower.
Mei Xia Ying’s soul writhed madly, trying to absorb fresh soul power from its surroundings. Unfortunately, in Mo Xiao Ran’s presence, all spiritual energy and soul power were his to command.
Both were Martial Kings, but their strength was worlds apart.
Mei Xia Ying even began to suspect that, had Zheng Jiao Jiao fought Mo Xiao Ran head-on without being tricked, he might still have lost. Mo Xiao Ran was far too strong. His control over soul power surpassed anything Mei Xia Ying had imagined.
At the point of crisis, with his soul on the verge of being completely exhausted, he condensed one hun and one po into the Soul Pearl he carried. Under cover of his agonized “desperate struggle,” he secretly rolled the pearl away, hoping to return someday through the Soul-Replenishment Method Zheng Jiao Jiao had devised.
When Zheng Jiao Jiao had risked assassinating Cheng He Cheng, he had succeeded but left his soul grievously damaged. After years of recuperation without improvement, he had developed a method of repairing one soul with another.
The conditions for this method were exacting. One could not simply use anyone’s soul. Ordinary soul power was weak and mixed with the memories of its owners. Not only were enormous quantities required, but the chaotic memories could confuse the practitioner’s mind, until he no longer even knew who he was. A master like Zheng Jiao Jiao had waited many years before encountering a desperate Wu Xuan Yin.
But Mei Xia Ying no longer had another choice.
As long as the green hills remained… he could rise again someday…
Unfortunately, the man he faced was Mo Xiao Ran, who never hesitated to kill his own disciples and was even more ruthless about uprooting his enemies.
The Soul Pearl had barely rolled any distance before Mo Xiao Ran pinned it beneath his foot.
Mu Kai Sen hurriedly thrust out a palm. He really did act in haste: the attack missed Mo Xiao Ran entirely, striking the ground just in front of his toes.
Mo Xiao Ran raised his eyes.
Though the face he wore belonged to He Si Yu, Mu Kai Sen saw only Mo Xiao Ran, the murderous demonic martial uncle who killed without blinking. He swallowed involuntarily and slowly took two steps back, watching helplessly as Mo Xiao Ran pressed down and ground the Soul Pearl to powder.
The remnants of Mei Xia Ying’s soul tried to flee with his body, but after losing his three hun souls, his mind no longer functioned as before. Instinct overruled thought, and even his running looked clumsy.
While fleeing himself, Mu Kai Sen could not resist looking back. He saw the bloodstained Oriole’s Cry pierce Mei Xia Ying’s throat. As the sword tip emerged in a brilliant flower of blood, it did not stop. It flew directly toward him.
“Master, run!”
The warning was his final act of filial devotion.
But did the White Tiger King wish to run now?
Yes.
Could he?
No.
The lightning striking the tower’s pinnacle was not particularly fierce yet. Each bolt came after a short interval, as though reminding the person undergoing the tribulation to prepare himself.
After entering the topmost level, the White Tiger King found Mo Xiao Ran standing exactly where he expected, beside the formation eye. Without his soul inside, the body merely stood there, so lifeless that its usually inscrutable face even looked a little foolish.
Was this a trap?
After knowing Mo Xiao Ran for so long, one couldn’t help assuming the worst about anything involving him.
But things were already as bad as they could get. What could possibly be worse?
Perhaps this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If he let it pass, he might regret it even after death, knowing he had not necessarily needed to die.
Finally steeling himself, the White Tiger King stepped inside and struck with his palm.
Even now, he maintained a measure of caution. Instead of actually making contact, he struck through empty air, using the force of his palm to hit Mo Xiao Ran.
The body standing in the tower seemed no more than a soulless walking corpse. It did not acknowledge the intruder or move to evade the attack.
The instant the palm force knocked Mo Xiao Ran’s body backward, the White Tiger King was overcome with an excitement impossible to describe. One thought flashed through his mind: So Mo Xiao Ran is nothing special after all.
He had always commented on his three fellow disciples as an observer precisely because he never once joined their struggle on his own behalf. Mo Xiao Ran ordered him about, Zheng Jiao Jiao exploited him, and the General had ignored him entirely.
They had all been exceptional talents of their generation. How could he have swallowed that humiliation willingly?
Now his chance to reverse his fortunes was right in front of him.
At last, the White Tiger King understood that his decision to help Zheng Jiao Jiao had never come entirely from sober judgment. Beneath it was a secret desire to step out of Mo Xiao Ran’s shadow, to stand on the stage as an independent contender or at least as someone whose role mattered.
He had spent far, far too many years living under an assumed name, clinging to survival.
At this moment, a tiny, shameful spark of excitement even flickered deep within him.
Zheng Jiao Jiao and Wang Yu were dead. Pei Xiong Ji and the others were absent. The General was missing… In the world as it stood, the only person capable of stopping Mo Xiao Ran’s advancement was him. Him alone!
He watched Mo Xiao Ran fall.
Then he watched Mo Xiao Ran reach out and grab his hand. The White Tiger King tried to struggle free, but there was someone behind him as well. Or rather, there was another body.
Had Mu Kai Sen or Fu Xi Yan been present, they might have recognized the face, which bore some resemblance to Fu Xi Yan’s. Once, Mo Xiao Ran had intended to deceive Fu Xi Yan by claiming it was his true appearance.
Unfortunately, Fu Xi Yan had been focused on something else entirely, and that elaborate preparation had come to nothing.
The body blocked the White Tiger King’s retreat, seized his hand, and forced it toward the formation eye.
The White Tiger King twisted his wrist and slipped free, then kicked at Mo Xiao Ran’s real body. Mo Xiao Ran thrust both hands out, and they exchanged more than twenty moves in an instant. The White Tiger King initially held a slight advantage, but could not withstand two attackers taking turns ambushing him.
Was Mo Xiao Ran controlling three bodies all by himself?
The White Tiger King had no idea how he managed it. All he knew was that his situation was dire, and Mu Kai Sen’s desperate warning no longer mattered.
Even if he wanted to flee, he was caught between attackers with no road left open.
The longer this continued, the slimmer his chances of escape.
Seeing that neither the front nor the rear offered an escape, the White Tiger King gritted his teeth and leaped for the roof, thrusting his hands upward. Even as they touched the top of the tower, his eyes remained fixed on the route below.
He wasn’t a fool. Of course he knew he couldn’t easily push open the tower’s roof. It was a feint, intended to lure both Mo Xiao Rans away and open an escape route.
Sure enough.
One Mo Xiao Ran remained where he was, but the other leaped after him.
Because he had anticipated it, the White Tiger King merely tapped the ceiling with his palm and used the rebound to shoot toward the window. Just as he was about to leap out, a hand belonging to “He Si Yu” pressed against his head and shoved him back inside.
…
One plus one plus one.
There were now three Mo Xiao Rans inside the tower.
The White Tiger King looked up, his heart turning to ice.
* * *
After placing the White Tiger King’s true essence in the formation eye, Mo Xiao Ran finally managed to restart the Great Soul-Locking Pagoda.
He returned to his original body and set He Si Yu’s body and the other body aside. Then he began silently counting the lightning bolts. According to the records passed down through generations of the No-Return Sect, a Golden Core lightning tribulation consisted of six times six, or thirty-six bolts.
The first thirty were trials of hardship, designed purely to test the cultivator’s physical endurance and will. The final six were tribulations of blessing. Their arrival meant the candidate had survived the trial and could receive the reward.
The first five blessings would refine the true essence into a smooth, round, golden and gleaming core. The last would connect that Golden Core to the meridians, allowing its owner to truly advance to the Golden Core stage.
Lightning tribulations generally favored righteous cultivators and treated demonic ones harshly, so demonic cultivators usually found ways to avoid the first thirty strikes and receive only the final six. But long ago, a powerful cultivator had hated the No-Return Sect so deeply that, before ascending, he sent out his flying sword to wipe out every member. During his ascension, he made an oath with Heaven and Earth: so long as the No-Return Sect existed, no Golden Core cultivator would ever appear.
Before the cultivator ascended, a fragment of the soul of the sect’s last surviving disciple happened to evade the sword’s pursuit. It transformed into a Soul Seal, found an inheritor, and gradually brought the No-Return Sect back to life. The oath took effect, and from then on nobody in the world could advance to Golden Core.
As the ages passed, this legend became increasingly distorted. Many No-Return Sect disciples came to believe they had to sacrifice the sect’s own followers to restore the lightning tribulation. This was the reason the sect recruited so many believers only to persecute them. Mo Xiao Ran once believed a sacrifice was necessary too, but he intended to sacrifice the sect master, not ordinary disciples. Unfortunately, Zheng Jiao Jiao disrupted his plans. Later, after entering the Heaven-and-Earth Mirror and consulting ancient records and secret texts, he pieced together fragments of information, mixed in a little guessing, and finally reconstructed the truth.
The key was the Soul Seal.
Mo Xiao Ran stood inside the tower, his hands stained with blood, listening to lightning striking the pagoda.
Twenty-seven…
All these years…
Twenty-eight…
He had exhausted his ingenuity and poured everything he had into his schemes…
Twenty-nine…
At last he had reached this point.
Thirty!
Mo Xiao Ran’s figure flickered, and he appeared atop the tower to welcome the thirty-first bolt, the first tribulation of blessing.
Lightning struck. Mo Xiao Ran, utterly unprepared for pain, felt his entire body go numb and blood churn in his chest. He opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood.
This… wasn’t right!
* * *
When Jin Yuan Xiu first spotted that other thundercloud, it was still some distance from Haojing. It had followed Pei Yuan Jin little by little toward the city. By now, he was in an extremely sorry state.
His clothes were in tatters. He had long since activated the Extreme Yang Sacred Body, yet the lightning was still battering him black and blue.
This tribulation was nothing like the one he had encountered before. If he had possessed Mo Xiao Ran’s memories, he would have known that some of the previous lightning had been a blessing rather than a hardship.
The lightning tribulation was one of Heaven and Earth’s laws. Even an immortal’s oath could not completely suppress it. Thus, cultivators at peak Foundation Establishment could summon lightning but not a complete tribulation. The resulting bolts were a chaotic mess, as though the heavens could not decide whether they were supposed to strike at all, which number they had reached, or what should come next.
Now that the Soul Seal had been sacrificed and the immortal’s oath lifted, the lightning could finally strike as intended. But having been pent up for so long, it burst forth like water released from a dam, behaving nothing like the rules prescribed.
Pei Yuan Jin had already endured the thirty-seventh bolt, and it was still a trial of hardship.
Even the Extreme Yang Sacred Body was on the verge of being shattered.
And just then…
The sky blazed. The descending lightning was suddenly threaded with purple light, its force seemingly equal to the previous thirty-seven bolts combined. Even Pei Yuan Jin, who believed in moving forever forward, couldn’t help changing expression.
Before he could raise the Crimson Dragon King, the sword flew up of its own accord to meet the lightning.
Sword light and thunder clashed in the air with a deafening crash. When the bolt vanished and the Crimson Dragon King fell to the ground, a crack ran along its blade.
His bonded sword had cracked.
Pei Yuan Jin lowered his head and coughed up blood.