Chapter 258: Consequences
RUMBLE
The Heaven Eyes stared at Cao Mao and Zhao Bao. Yet, they neither attacked them nor gave them their deserved Heaven Tribulation, Demonic Tribulation, or Hell Tribulation.
They simply observed them from a distance.
VHOOM
While Cao Mao and the Heaven Eyes have been competing in a staring contest, changes occurred with Zhao Bao's transparent soul. It shrank to a human-sized, and the body gained color.
One of the Heaven Eyes descended and stopped in front of Zhao Bao. Then, it transformed into a Buddha statue.
"You have done well, Zhao Bao. Our Lord has seen your actions, and he approves of your advancement. I, Zhao Liang, your senior, shall assist you!"
This world guardian revealed himself as Zhao Bao's senior, who was also an apostle of OG-Buddha.
The statue extended its golden hand and transferred its light element Qi toward Zhao Bao.
The monk accepted the Qi and used it as a foundation of his new soul body. His soul dantian was instantly strengthened and completed its form.
The old monk's appearance changed. After absorbing the light element Qi, Zhao Bao's soul body regressed to a young adult. However, he was still bald.
Orange robes and a kasaya manifested as the statue had created them. The clothes, made from 1st-grade soul stone fibers, covered Zhao Bao's new body.
When the light dimmed, Zhao Bao and his senior had already finished the transformation. Aside from his physical age, nothing seemed to have changed. However, every onlooker could no longer sense Zhao Bao's Qi and aura as it had become something else.
The ascension had been completed. Zhao Bao was only a couple steps away from reaching the realm of immortals.
Zhao Bao no longer needed to cultivate yin or yang essence. Instead, he could start manipulating heaven and earth energy in the mortal world at will, which could distort laws of physic or element Qi. Moreover, all his attacks could damage his opponents' souls, which was difficult to heal.
Unless other 8th-stage cultivators or immortals from other regions came to Aves Continent, Zhao Bao was now an unofficial strongest person on the continent!
The Buddha statue had completed its task by assisting his junior and warding off all nasty apostles or world guardians from interfering with Zhao Bao's breakthrough. Yet, he didn't leave. He stayed behind as five other heaven eyes were still glancing at his junior.
As long as the Buddha's apostle was here, no Heaven Eye dared to offend Zhao Bao. As such, they turned their attention to Cao Mao, who was supposed to receive Hell Tribulation next.
Five Heaven Eyes encircled Cao Mao. Each of them summoned tribulation cloud, filled with five basic elemental Qi – Water, Wind, Wood, Lightning, and Earth.
One of them directly transmitted their voice to Cao Mao's mind.
'You, who has cultivated an unauthorized system and bloodline, shall receive a heaven punishment for possessing such sinful abilities beyond the world's limits. However, due to the world's laws and your current cultivation base, we cannot use advanced elements to punish you.'
Cao Mao raised his eyebrows, surprised. These guardians were more lenient than he had thought.
'In addition, considering that you have just contributed a lot by defeating the orc warchief and saved humanity from the calamity, your good deed outweighs your sin. Therefore, we shall not punish you by giving you a tribulation. However…'
One of the eyes seemed to be sneering.
'We shall give you a blessing instead. Here's the deal. Among us five, we govern a different basic element power. You may choose to receive a blessing from one of us, and the one that you have chosen will hold the responsibility of giving you the basic elemental power! You may condense another element crystal with our help.'
"Huh?"
Cao Mao squinted his eyebrows. The offer was too good to be true.
However, Cao Mao was trained by his system sponsor. As the latter had been lying and manipulating the former for a long time, Cao Mao had developed trust issues.
He didn't believe in the Heaven Eye.
"Can I not choose any? Can you leave me alone?"
The Heaven Eye, who seemed to be the leader of this group, repositioned himself in front of Cao Mao. He looked into the latter's eyes.
'We have lowered ourselves for you. Junior, you should give us some face and choose one. Offending immortals is not a wise decision.'
"…"
The eye's action was suspicious. Cao Mao believed that the guardian or whatever the guys behind these eyes might be trying to use a loophole in the world laws that Cao Mao didn't know.
As such, he decided to choose an element that he had already mastered, "Give me a lightning blessing, then."
'Very well. That's your choice!'
All five eyes curved up into a sneer. Their tribulation clouds suddenly changed color, turning from black to red.
Before Cao Mao could react, they sent fifty red lightning bolts toward Cao Mao!
'HAHAHAHA!! Take it! This is the highest tier of lightning BLESSING! Since this is not tribulation but a BLESSING, therefore, we are going to BLESS you with Raiden's Lightning! Be honored that you can accept such a generous advance element Qi from us!'
As Cao Mao had predicted, the eye was using loopholes of the world laws to attack him with advanced element Qi. They used the guise of BLESSING instead of TRIBULATION to kill him!
However, the five heaven eyes had miscalculated one thing.
[MINE!!]
The starving katana was dying to eat something for a while. As Cao Mao had digested all dragon fire, Killer Queen wanted to steal his lightning tribulation as payback.
Thus, she activated her unique ability, the force attraction. All 50 red lightning bolts were redirected to the katana instead of Cao Mao!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The lightning was so loud that Cao Mao and other elders' eardrums almost burst. Yet, none of them was harmed from the impact or the shockwaves.
KQ obtained her desired advanced element Qi as she had always wanted. However, the electric shock numbed her. She fell from the sky and landed on top of the barrier dome of Siren City.
The five heaven eyes stared at the katana in astonishment for a moment. Ten seconds later, they glared at Cao Mao in anger.
One of them yelled, 'You are cheating! You're not supposed to give our blessing to others! How dare you decline our goodwill!?'
Veins became visible on Cao Mao's orc face. He yelled back, "Bitch, please! Your blessing? Don't make me laugh. It's more like your TRIBULATION lightning! Isn't it illegal to use advanced element Qi to attack a weakling 4th-stage cultivator like me? Hey, aren't you all violating the world's laws!?"
Although Cao Mao didn't know the detail of the world's laws, he bluffed them and tried to get any dao god, who had been watching his sponsor's live-streaming channel, to take actions against these unruly heaven eyes.
The five eyes were flustered. Four of them suddenly faded to nothingness, retreating from the crime scene. However, the leader of the group remained there, staring at Cao Mao with hatred.
'Illegal or not, you're a threat to my dao god and my child! Today, you will die here!'
The last heaven eye summoned ten red tribulation clouds. The sky turned bright red as everything above Siren City was covered by red lightning clouds.
Ding
[You have overused your Heavenly Fate Power.]
[All Heavenly Fate Pieces have entered a dormant state for a year.]
[Heavenly Fate Pieces cannot be forcefully awake, and they will become active again the cooldown is over.]
'Oh, shit!'
Cao Mao's plot armor was gone at the last moment. The corner of his mouth twitched as he lost his confidence.
Still, he had forgotten that other elders were nearby, and Zhao Bao had just reached the 8th-stage. Moreover, another heaven eye who had favored Zhao Bao was still there.
Zhao Bao hummed as he clapped his hands, resuming his righteous monk's posture.
"Amitabha, world guardians shouldn't violate the world laws. Every action has a consequence, and Buddha has always warned humans that one should be wary of their actions."
The Buddha statue also turned around. He gave his colleague with a pitying look, "Buddha is merciful, benevolent, and kind. However, the others might don't think so…"
As soon as the statue had finished speaking, the red clouds instantly dispersed and the remaining eye shattered to pieces. Everyone around Siren City could hear the scream of the dying guardian, which echoed in the sky.
Again, another world guardian died because of his personal agenda.
Cao Mao had a wry smile on his face, thinking that this GUARDIAN job had an unusually high mortality rate, and it was not an ideal job for immortals. The world's laws and the mysterious judges were no joke.
As the nosy heaven eyes had left the area, the Buddha statue of Zhao Liang also reverted back to another heaven eye. It left quietly as it had finished its mission.
The sky of Siren City was calm again. The crisis was over.
That was what everyone had thought.
Jia Shan resumed his business. He hadn't forgotten what he had come to ask Cao Mao, "Brat, show me that sword. Let me see it!"
"…"
…
The death of Kzarka was not unnoticed. As the orc warchief had been implanted with a life brand, the orc emperor was notified right away.
Sitting inside a brick castle was the orc emperor, who had unified all orc tribes on the Holy Land Continent as one. He was a white overweight human with a face full of zits and pimples. Still, he wore a steel mask, which resembled a mask of Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat Series, and hid his ugly face. His battle armor and clothes were also made from 1st-grade soul stones, which gave him enough defensive power to ward off all assassination attempts from fellow orcs.
Next to his throne, a hundred beautiful half-orc women with various skin colors, who had been inseminated by the emperor, continued sleeping on the floor. None of them had enough strength to move as the orc emperor's vitality was too much for their bodies to handle.
A hundred 5-meter tall orcs, who had the same strength as Kzarka, formed ranks in the throne room, standing attention. They were the royal guards, who had the duty to protect their emperor.
The orc emperor, aka the obese human cultivator, opened his eyes after the last-minute experience of Kzarka had been transferred to his brain.
'There's another orc in the wasteland continent? I thought I have gathered all orc tribes except the wood orcs.'
The emperor stood up and paced back and forth, contemplating what he should do as an important chess piece had suddenly been removed from the board.
Unable to decide, the emperor opened a semi-transparent system menu, which was only visible to him.
The system menu showed his levels, skills, and abilities. It was a common RPG system, which had been with him since the day he had been reincarnated into this world.
The emperor opened the [Map] tab, which revealed the entire map of the Holy Land Continent and 15 small continents around the mainland.
At the farthest southeast continent, Aves Continent was shown on the map with great details, including roads, mountain ranges, forests, and hundreds of cities.
A new popup and an arrow highlighted the northwest area of the Aves Continent with the message.
[The lost city, Siren City, has been restored.]
North of Siren City, where the red arrow highlighted, an orc camp marker was also shown.
The emperor stared at the locations as he had figured what had happened to Kzarka. He sighed and transmitted his voice directly to Fogan's mind.
"A change of plans. Focus on defending your camp until you complete the portal. Wait for the reinforcements and avoid direct skirmishes against the local cultivators."
The orc emperor took out his phone. Then, he called his parents, who were major characters in a certain famous clan.
It didn't take long before his father picked up the call.
[Yan'er, what's wrong?]
"I need you to deploy some men from our clan to help me something."
[Aren't your orcs enough for you? Why do you need my men?]
"My men ran into trouble against several nascent soul cultivators on Aves Continent. I need some additional trustworthy men to lead my useless orcs."
The emperor's father was silent for a moment. A minute later, he delivered his son a piece of good news.
[I'll send two youngsters from our clan and our subordinate clan to help you. They are candidates for the next grand tournament. You can use them.]
"Thanks, father."
[Listen, Yan'er. Whatever you do, don't underestimate your opponents. If you want to steal the land from those rebel clansmen, do it properly.]
"I know."
The HUMAN father of the orc emperor ended the call. The latter grinned and turned toward his aide, who stood at the forefront of all royal guards.
The aide looked out of place since he was a thin human cultivator, which didn't belong in the group of giant orcs.
"Lord Liu Yan, what will be your order?"
Liu Yan, the orc emperor grinned.
"Zhang Song, my father will send a few men to help us raiding the Aves Continent. I need you to prepare a few rooms for the esteemed guests."
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺