Chapter 129
Yet he’d not only done it, he’d surfaced right in front of them.
It broke every rule of cultivation she knew.
Drip.
Something hit the dirt below.
Cecilia came out of the daze.
She raised a hand to her veiled chin.
Cold sweat?
He frightened cold sweat out of me by standing there?
She took several steps backward through the void without deciding to.
Every instinct told her to run, as fast as her techniques could move her.
The pressure was simply too much.
Breathing under it was work.
And he wasn’t even aiming it at her.
If Soren turned that coercion on her deliberately, one pulse would burst her into red mist.
Arcturus’s shock curdled into pure joy.
He’d finally understood what he was looking at.
Soren hadn’t only broken into the Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor realm.
He’d done something worse.
They were standing an enormous distance from the portal Soren had entered the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea through.
An Ancestor Tribulation could ripple a long way.
Its outer edges could not retain this much destructive force at this range.
Which meant Soren had dragged the tribulation across space with him.
Dragged wasn’t the word.
The word was tamed.
Soren had broken the Ancestor Tribulation to heel.
Heavens, what kind of monster is he?
Arcturus’s lips shook, every edge and ridge of his body shook with them.
Ordinary cultivators facing an Ancestor Tribulation spent centuries preparing, defensive formations, protective artifacts, and hoards of top-grade pills.
After all of it, most still went to ash under the lightning.
Soren was giving it orders.
He had the destructive law of heaven trotting at his heel like a dog.
Far past absurd.
Which said the rest, Soren had only just entered Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor, and his combat strength already sat well outside what that tier described, nothing less would let a man domesticate an Ancestor Tribulation.
"Demon Ancestor!" Arcturus dropped to his knees in midair with a theatrical thud and pressed his forehead down.
"This humble one deserves to die!"
"I let the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor escape!"
"It’s my own weakness! I couldn’t even handle one woman!"
"I beg the Demon Ancestor to punish me!"
He wept, snot, tears, the whole production, in front of Soren he threw away every scrap of dignity an Upper-Tier Beast Emperor was supposed to own, and he did it thoroughly.
Soren glanced at him once and looked away.
The old bastard is a master of the craft.
What did surprise him was the panel, on learning he’d broken into Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor, Arcturus had jumped from Obedient and Submissive to Deep Affection and Righteousness.
The routes to conquering Arcturus were simple.
One was elevating his bloodline and his tribe’s.
The other was letting him take part in anything touching the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea, with the tier climbing now, there was an eighty percent chance he’d guessed the Nether Sea was behind that breakthrough.
Which confirmed for him how extraordinary the place was, and lit a fire under his anticipation. That counted as taking part.
Arcturus, meanwhile, was weak with relief, he hadn’t caught Cecilia, but he’d stalled her.
If the Spirit Emperor had escaped and the woman walked away clean on top of it, he wouldn’t have known what to say, whether he’d still get a share would have gone from certainty to coin flip.
Soren had arrived at exactly the right moment, he’d paid a heavy price to hold her here, surely the Demon Ancestor wouldn’t put him down now.
The tribulation kept raging, refinement lightning came down berserk and indiscriminate, black thunder dragons and lightning tigers coiled around the perimeter, closing the region off.
Could Cecilia leave? Walking out meant taking the tribulation’s baptism on the way through, Soren’s tribulation was no standard one, the overwhelming majority of Middle-Tier Ancestors who touched it would die without a body left to bury.
An Upper-Tier Demon Emperor would be ash on contact.
Cecilia appeared to have worked that out, the lazy, teasing manner she’d used on Arcturus was gone.
Soren descended.
Seeing no blame was coming, Arcturus bent at the waist and shuffled in behind him, his face changed fast, furrowed brows smoothed into the smug look of a small-time villain standing behind a very large friend.
He met Cecilia’s eyes.
You little brat.
What did I tell you?
Once Demon Ancestor Soren shows up, you’re dead meat.
Why aren’t you laughing now?
Why aren’t you running?
Why aren’t you throwing needles at the Demon Ancestor?
Didn’t you say your techniques were refined through millions of trials? Absolute confidence, wasn’t it?
Cecilia felt the stare and shot him a look that could strip paint.
Arcturus wasn’t afraid anymore, his courage had gone up a hundredfold, this was what standing behind Soren bought you.
"Catching me won’t be that easy." Cecilia tapped a slender toe against the air and leapt backward.
Then she was gone like a ghost.
"Demon Ancestor! This is what makes her so devilish! I can’t get a fix on her fluctuations or trajectory at all!"
Crimson light burst out of Soren’s eyes.
A strange demonic pattern surfaced inside his left pupil, he swept his gaze across the empty void.
The tribulation lightning moved with his eyes, wherever he looked, the lightning struck, black thunder dragons and lightning tigers crossed and detonated and twisted across the sky, eating space like a collapsing star.
Then came Cecilia’s scream.
Her figure flickered out of illusion into solid form, dragged out of the void inside a second.
The lightning gave her nothing, it tore her apart.
Arcturus stood staring at the blood mist thinning into the air, and it took him a while to find his voice.
"Demon Ancestor, that woman rescued the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor."
"The two of them are definitely up to something."
"And without asking a single question... you..."
"...you just killed her?"
Soren pulled his gaze back, the pattern in his pupil faded and his eye returned to normal.
"That was a clone."
"Threatening it would have accomplished nothing."
"Ah? A c-clone?" Arcturus’s small eyes went round, he blew out a breath hard enough to lift his white goatee, and mortification set in, son of a bitch, I got played and tenderized by a clone that whole time, whatever face an Upper-Tier Beast Emperor had left was gone.