Chapter 90
Everyone froze like stone statues.
"The... the fiend’s breaking through!"
"Heavens! Good heavens! He’s not a demon!"
"Who in their right mind breaks through in the middle of a battle?"
"The fiend’s becoming an Ancestor!"
The crowd clutched their heads and screamed.
The Blood Demon Ancestor’s scalp went numb too, the look he fixed on Soren turned into pure terror.
"Crap! I fell for his trap! This brat’s mental fortitude is terrifying! What audacity!"
Looking back at it, the Blood Demon Ancestor drowned in regret, he never should have opened with his demonic technique, he should have stalled, waited until Neal’s move was fully charged, and struck together.
Against a simultaneous bombardment of ultimate spiritual and demonic techniques, Soren couldn’t possibly have defended.
But he’d overestimated his own attack.
With the Strategy Encyclopedia, Soren knew exactly how much demonic energy he needed to break through, he’d feinted with the sword qi, shattering hundreds of arms while deliberately sparing the precise number he required.
The energy in those remaining arms was the exact amount to breach the Lower-Tier Ancestor Realm, letting them land had made the Blood Demon Ancestor drop his guard, sure his technique had struck home.
Soren seized the window, devoured the energy, assimilated it instantly. Ancestor Realm demonic energy was already high in purity and density.
Unlike absorbing pill or fluid medicine, which had to be painstakingly converted, this skipped the whole step, no slow accumulation, and no compression.
Realizing he’d been baited into unleashing his technique just to hand over the fuel for a breakthrough, the Blood Demon Ancestor drowned in fury.
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
He’d been played like a fiddle.
Soren waved a hand and dispersed the black cyclone.
The profound, mysterious feeling, the boundless power surging through him, left him deeply satisfied, his lips curved on their own.
"I’ve finally broken through to the Ancestor Realm!"
"As expected, it’s a completely different concept from the Emperor Realm, the gap between a Demon Ancestor and a Demon Emperor can’t be described by literal terms like dozens or a hundred times."
"With this, even a Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor is nothing to me!"
He spread his arms, savoring the transformation.
High above, thick dark clouds gathered and shrouded the sky, deafening thunder roared through the layers, as if a lightning qilin coursed through the storm.
The thunder drew closer and closer, carrying the pressure of a collapsing sky.
A dense web of lightning coiled directly above his head, every arc crackling with apocalyptic annihilation.
Soren cracked his eyes to a slit, cast a disdainful glance at the web, and shut them again, he treated the coming tribulation as thin air.
Staring up into the storm, the Blood Demon Ancestor’s dimmed eyes suddenly blazed.
"The Ancestor Tribulation! Hahaha!"
"The heavens are helping me! The heavens are truly helping me!"
At the words, the crowd shuddered, faces twisting.
Legend held that crossing from Emperor to Ancestor called down a terrifying phenomenon, the Lightning-Refining Body Cleansing, better known as the Ancestor Tribulation.
Surviving it was a narrow escape from certain death, success under three in ten.
Of ten Upper-Tier Emperors attempting the step, seven or eight were turned to ash under the heavenly lightning.
Every soul who breached the Ancestor Realm and lived was, without exception, the chosen among the chosen.
The Blood Demon Ancestor knew exactly how terrible the Lightning-Refining was.
A stroll through the depths of hell.
Survive it and you still lost a layer of skin.
Overcome it and your body underwent an astonishing metamorphosis, combat strength climbing higher.
But anyone who underestimated it already had a foot through the gate of failure.
Even the most confident needed absolute isolation from interference, distracted for a split second, and the odds of failure multiplied.
Overjoyed, he shouted to Neal. "The tribulation’s arriving! The lightning’s about to refine his Ancestor body!"
"Attack him with everything, don’t hold back! Once Soren’s distracted, the lightning swallows him and turns him to ash! Once he dies, the tribulation vanishes with him, we survive this!"
Neal gave an absent nod, brows furrowed, silent, no one knew what was turning in his mind.
The refining lightning writhed, looking ready to crash down the next instant.
"Scram!"
The single word burst from Soren’s lips, his demonic might and domineering aura erupted, violently shaking the region.
Ten thousand miles of airspace froze under his absolute authority.
The lightning qilin coursing through the clouds let out a low whine, completely cowed by Soren’s roar, it shrank back, not daring to show its head again.
One point of his dual swords toward the horizon, and the dark clouds scattered and vanished.
The Blood Demon Ancestor stared dumbfounded at the retreating thunder, mind blank.
Soren had scared off the Ancestor Tribulation with a single word.
In all the recorded history of the Azure Spirit World, this had never happened.
The tribulation was impartial.
Race, lineage, all equal beneath the wrath of heaven.
No one simply ignored it.
An immutable law since immemorial times.
How could someone issue a command to the heavenly tribulation?
Did this mean Soren’s Ancestor might had already grown so overwhelming he could dictate when heavenly phenomena came and went? That if he got serious, he could summon and dismiss anomalies like combat techniques to drive off his enemies?
The Blood Demon Ancestor’s mouth twitched, struggling for words, before he could speak, he heard the deafening roar of three overlapping dragon cries behind him, and Neal’s furious bellow.
"Dragon-Piercing Strike!"
A dull, catastrophic force slammed into the Blood Demon Ancestor’s back, caught completely off guard, he lost control and was blasted out of the air, plummeting toward the earth.
He detonated alongside three sky-shattering spiritual dragons shaped like piercing arrows.
The abrupt turn left everyone lost.
Neal had just used his ultimate move to sneak-attack the Blood Demon Ancestor? Shouldn’t it have been aimed at Soren?
The arm gripping the halberd trembled slightly.
Neal’s eyes went dark and calculating, hiding a ruthless decisiveness, he retracted the halberd, wrapped his voice in spiritual energy, and sent a mental transmission straight to Soren.
"Why don’t we each take a step back? What do you say?"
"Soren, save me some face here, after this is over, I can give you a collection of supreme treasures as compensation for today’s misunderstanding."
"There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests, but I believe as long as our interests align, we can be friends."