Chapter 2533: Chapter 114: I’ve Come—Where Are You? (Part 2)
Yet "there is a flaw in Heavenly Will"; only a great calamity can erase it.
The Nine Tribulations Method is the wearing down of the Heavenly Dao’s "malice", confronting Heavenly Will nine times, facing tribulation head-on. But each tribulation is a nine-deaths-one-life ordeal.
Who can be sure that after passing through the brink of life and death nine times, they can still grasp that elusive sliver of vitality?
So although he had long since conceived this approach, he had always shelved this method and never intended to use it. A man only lives once; when there is a choice, of course he must choose the more secure path.
Until now...
With the Church of Lifeless announcing its destruction, his painstaking efforts were ruined in an instant, and his road to attaining the Dao was already cut off.
The exposure of the matter of replacing Lei Zhanqian would certainly make all the great top powers under heaven scrutinize their own geniuses more closely. In other words, if he wished to replicate Lei Zhanqian’s trajectory, it was now nigh impossible.
As things stand today, unless he intends to hide forever, to cower in the gutters and never show his face again, watching only from the darkness as Jiang Wang climbs step by step...
How could he possibly be willing to stop?
In that case, he might as well, in such a desperate situation, directly initiate the Nine Tribulations!
The Nine Tribulations Method is nine rounds of nine-deaths-one-life, a grand gamble.
If he fails, all is forfeit.
Once he succeeds, from then on the hidden danger in his Holy Body will be entirely dispelled; the path of Yan Dao will be broad and smooth!
Today is the first tribulation.
Heavenly Will pertains to the mysterious and subtle; he cannot interfere too much, otherwise the tribulation may no longer count as a "tribulation".
It is not a matter of gathering a group of people to besiege and kill himself and calling that "creating" a tribulation. There must be truly unfathomable danger, a genuine crisis of life and death.
When he gave the winged ghost the opportunity, he himself did not know what sort of lineup that God Descending genius of Jinguo would bring. Would he, like that shameless fat man, directly invite a True Man to accompany him?
Even faced with a True Man, he would not necessarily have no chance to escape. If the other side could even invite a True Monarch, if to hunt down a cult leader whose cultivation was only temporarily at the God Descending Realm they had to invite a Taoist Heavenly Master to accompany them, then his fate was simply thus decreed.
He would treat it as a death tribulation and face it!
After such a bout of slaughter in the shadowy Underground Palace, those minor sect God Descending cultivators were lacking in methods; aside from two who were particularly vicious, most were hardly worth mentioning. Yet the genius of Jinguo was worthy of the name; at the brink of life and death he inflicted tremendous damage on him.
But only when Lu Yan suddenly appeared did he realize that this was the full shape of the first tribulation!
Lu Yan was also a part of this killing tribulation.
Once he had the chance, Lu Yan would by no means mind killing him.
Just as he was familiar with Lu Yan, these past years Lu Yan had certainly never relaxed his observation of him.
Once single-handedly propping up the Bone Tao, then these years following the expansion of the Church of Lifeless, waging war east and west, slaughtering countless foes.
Lu Yan, who knew Zhang Linchuan well, who knew the Bai Gu secret technique, the Unborn Mysterious Art, the Hidden Thunder Ban Method, and who in these years had who knows how much preparation in secret... now that he was already heavily wounded, was not so easy to deal with.
Thus his great talk of attaining the Dao through killing, his great talk of slaughtering tens of millions, was all merely for the sake of ultimately sending out the secret technique and letting Lu Yan leave.
Now, as he spat out this chunk of bloody organ, what he felt was a kind of ease, as if his whole being were remolding.
Though at such a level of cultivation, wounds to the flesh body were already extremely difficult to mend.
Yet the pain of the original body could be entirely scattered by the joy of the Spirit.
The first tribulation had already been passed!
And through this he had gained a deeper understanding of the "Celestial Tribulation"; from here on he would better know how to trigger it, how to respond.
Besides this, the reason he slaughtered so grandly at Yanyun Mountain, choosing to make the scene of his first tribulation so huge, was indeed to send Jiang Wang a signal—
Since you said you would not share sun and moon with me, now that I have come here, where are you?
He very much looked forward to Jiang Wang coming to find him, and incidentally completing one of the tribulations in his Nine Tribulations.
In the unseen he felt that that would be a very important step.
He fully believed it would be an extremely dangerous battle, and he also fully believed that he would obtain the final victory.
Chen Pu said, "A hundred tribulations of life and death, never once turning back"; he was eager to see where he could reach after nine tribulations.
Carefully folding up the bloodstained handkerchief, he calmly walked out of the Underground Palace, leaving those utterly lifeless chunks of flesh behind him.
The overly dazzling sunlight made him somewhat unaccustomed, yet he instead planted his feet, lifting his head to gaze directly at the sun hanging in the sky.
Scorching sun and blazing radiance—how could they not shine upon me?
After looking like this for a while, the corners of his mouth curled into a smile.
He had already decided on his next destination.
The battle here in the Underground Palace would soon spread; Dan Country and Song Country, both bordering Yanyun Mountain, would certainly be heavily guarded...
He decided to go sport himself in Wei Country.
Wu Xun, Great General of Wei, was one of the famous generals under heaven. He had the power to kill him, the stratagem to kill him, and he would certainly not lack the resolve to kill him.
Such a heroic figure was very suitable to preside over his second life-and-death tribulation.
...
...
A smile, a soft laugh, a peal of laughter.
A smile like a blossom, blooming within the copper mirror.
This smile was somewhat unreal; the woman dressing before the mirror carefully adjusted it for a while longer before it finally gained a few shades of naturalness.
A smile to topple states and cities.
"Where has Jiang Wang reached?" she asked, without turning her head.
The maid behind her merely stared distantly at the copper mirror, entranced by what she saw; only at the sound of the question did she come back to herself: "He passed the Star Moon Plain not long ago."
"So fast? It seems his killing intent is truly firm this time."
Ye Laner, the first beauty of Great Chu, rose from before the dressing mirror and turned around.
That resplendent, incomparably gorgeous long dress suddenly seemed to dim in color.
So-called shaming a hundred flowers, so-called the bright moon hiding its face.
A Person in the Painting had stepped into the human world.
