Chapter 300: Peng Kai’s Nascent Soul Tribulation
The smoke parted, and a figure stepped forward, Peng Bo.
It was his own son, the very son whose reckless actions had catalyzed the entire catastrophe, and whom Peng Kai had ultimately executed with his own hands to satisfy his twisted, desperate ambitions.
There was no head sitting above the boy’s neck, instead, the jagged, severed stump of his throat leaked a slow, spectral trail of black fog.
The boy walked forward casually, holding his own severed head by the hair in his pale hand.
The head’s jaw hung slack, but its phantom eyes remained wide, burning with a hellish luminescence as they stared right into Peng Kai’s fracturing soul.
"Why, Father?" the severed head whimpered, the words echoing unnaturally from the palm of the boy’s hand, dripping with a child’s profound betrayal.
"You cut me down yourself. You murdered your own flesh and blood in anger, yet you still lost everything. Was my life worthless?"
Panic, cold and suffocating, seized Peng Kai’s throat like an iron vise.
He stumbled backward into the ash, his hands clawing frantically at his ears as his knees trembled so violently they nearly buckled beneath him.
The sheer, macabre horror of his own sins standing before him shattered the last of his mental defenses.
"You... you were the reason this happened!" he howled into the burning void, his voice breaking into a ragged, high-pitched scream of terrifying fear and defensive rage.
"Your sheer stupidity brought ruin to our gates! You brought the tragedy upon the Peng Clan! I had to clean your mess! I was angry at that time!!!"
"And look what it bought you," a broken sob echoed from the shadows.
Peng Kai froze, his heart dropping into an abyss of despair.
Emerging from the gloom was his wife, Li Qiu. She was draped in tattered silks, collapsed on her knees at the side, her face pale and drenched in endless tears.
She looked at him with absolute, hollow pity.
"You killed our son, Kai," she wept, her voice a fragile whisper that cut through his defensive rage like a dagger.
"You traded your family for greed, and now you are nothing but a starving beast dying in the dark. You have no home left to save."
"No... No! Li Qiu, look at me! I am achieving the Nascent Soul! I will bring us back!" Peng Kai cried out, his eyes wide, bulging with a manic, terrified desperation.
He lunged forward to grasp her, but his hands slipped right through her spectral frame.
The weight of his guilt, the absolute terror of his loneliness, and the realization of his unforgivable sins tightened around his psyche like a noose.
His breathing turned into shallow, erratic gasps as he fell to his knees in the illusion, completely broken by his own past.
Outside the illusion, the physical toll was catastrophic.
The dark red energy wrapping around his physical body began to violently backfire.
His meridians swelled to the bursting point, the unstable energy thrashing wildly inside him, threatening to explode his physical shell into a mist of bloody gore if he stayed trapped in his mind for even a second longer.
Outside the illusion, Shen Yu, sensed the sudden, erratic drop in Peng Kai’s aura.
His red eyes narrowed.
He knew the trash was failing to conquer his own mind.
Stepping forward, Shen Yu injected a powerful, soul-piercing killing intent into his deep, booming voice, which resonated directly within the Peng Kai’s fracturing mind like a divine thunderclap.
"Open your eyes, you pathetic dog!" Shen Yu roared into the illusion.
"The dead are already ash. Your vengeance lies ahead, not behind. If you let a mere memory break you, you don’t deserve the right to take revenge on the Golden Cauldron Union. Wake up and claim your blade!"
The absolute, crushing authority in Shen Yu’s voice shattered the illusion to pieces.
Peng Kai violently gasped, his eyes snapping open as he was forcibly ripped out of the Heart Demon.
The realization of his near-death experience sent a cold sweat down his back, but his mind was now completely focused, the fusion inside his dantian locking perfectly into place.
Suddenly, the ambient temperature in the cavern dropped.
A heavy, terrifying pressure descended from the heavens, passing straight through the bedrock of the ruins.
The air crackled with purple sparks.
The Nascent Soul Tribulation had arrived.
Sensing the impending lightning storm that would surely alert every powerful cultivator within a hundred miles, Shen Yu frowned slightly.
With a quick flick of his wrist, he pulled out a handful of high-tier, glowing concealment talismans from his storage ring, which he had bought in Thousand Waves City.
He tossed them into the air, instantly forming a hidden isolation barrier around the ruin to suppress the massive energy fluctuations.
BOOM!
The first bolt of tribulation lightning pierced straight through the ceiling of the cavern, striking Peng Kai directly on his bare shoulders.
The blinding white light burned his flesh, but the newly integrated Earth-Tremor Vajra Bear blood roared to life in his veins.
His muscles bulged impossibly, the primal, unyielding strength of the Tier 4 beast reinforcing his skeletal structure to endure the brutal impact.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
As successive bolts rained down, Peng Kai stopped resisting out of fear.
Instead, he let out a savage, beast-like roar, fully unleashing his corrupt demonic powers.
Dark, miasmic Qi erupted from his body, forming a shadowy shield that actively devoured the heavenly lightning, converting the destructive energy into raw fuel to temper his newly born Nascent Soul.
With every strike he absorbed, his physical frame underwent a terrifying transformation.
His height rapidly shot up, stretching until he stood a towering 7 feet tall.
His shoulders grew impossibly broad, his chest expanding into a thick, armored wall of muscle covered in dark, bestial fur.
His face distorted into a brutal, demonic countenance, a living embodiment of an abyssal monster.
After the final, devastating ninth bolt struck, the tribulation clouds outside finally dissipated. The cavern fell into a heavy, ringing silence.
The towering, monstrous form of Peng Kai stood perfectly still amidst the swirling remnants of the tribulation smoke.
Instead of immediately celebrating, he sank back down into the lotus position, crossing his massive legs as he focused entirely on stabilizing his volatile new realm.
-x-
A/N:
Let’s fucking go! We officially just crossed the 300-Chapter mark! 🥳✨
It feels amazing to look back and see how far this novel has come. I’m incredibly grateful that I stuck with it, and this journey has been a blast thanks to all of you. We’ve still got plenty of story left to tell, so let’s keep it moving!
A massive, heartfelt thank you to every single one of you who has supported me, voted, and read all the way to this point. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Enjoy the milestone Chapter, and happy reading!