Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 1099: The Crucible of the Heavens

The multi-colored storm hovering over the ancient plaza grew worse as the hours slowly dragged on. The initial strikes had been a simple opening barrage to establish the execution block but the heavens soon escalated their wrath into a terrifying display of cosmic power. The bolts raining down on Li Yu began to take on distinct and lethal forms recorded only in the most ancient cultivation texts.A jagged streak of Crimson Blood lightning crashed into his shoulders and tried to boil the fluids running through his veins. That strike was immediately followed by a silent wave of Azure Soul Searing lightning that bypassed his physical defenses to scorch his spiritual sea. The sky then unleashed bolts of Violet Void lightning that shattered the very space around his limbs and tore shallow gouges across his skin. The heavens threw every elemental law they possessed at the young cultivator to find a single weakness to exploit.

Li Yu felt his Qi draining slightly with each consecutive strike but it was a strange and unnatural draining. His energy reserves were actually full but he found that he could not tap into them freely. Invisible chains seemed to wrap around his Qi every time a bolt of lightning connected with his flesh. He remembered his parents telling him about this specific phenomenon during their evening conversations to prepare him for what was to come.

They had warned him that the heavenly dao restricts a cultivator’s Qi during a high tier tribulation so they cannot use external factors to replenish their strength. The cosmos forced the individual to rely solely on the raw durability of just themself rather than absorbing ambient energy from the air or utilizing swallowed treasures. It was a strict restriction of his Qi and it made every passing minute feel like an eternity of suffocation.

His body grew more injured as the storm raged on. His skin charred and cracked while deep wounds opened across his chest and arms. The heavy pressure bearing down on his soul multiplied with every flash of light but he continued to withstand the punishment through determination and his incredibly robust strength.

A full day passed and the strikes did not let up at all. The lightning only grew stronger and rained down upon the plaza with a constant terrifying rhythm.

The situation seemed hopeless on the surface but the heavenly dao always left some room for success, regardless of the crime. The universe favored balance above all else but it also never cut off a path entirely. If the storm had just bombed him with all its gathered energy at once he would have been dead in a matter of seconds. But the lightning was spread out enough to form a punishing wave pattern. The strikes escalated from weak to strong and then dipped back down to weak before ramping up to really strong again.

This oscillating rhythm made it clear that the event was not just a simple death sentence. It was the cosmos showing him that he was a strange anomaly that should not exist in the natural order but it offered a narrow window for him to live if his foundation was good enough to weather the tide. Li Yu seized those brief moments of weaker lightning to circulate what was left of his restricted Qi and mend his most critical injuries before the next devastating wave hit him.

Another full day went by and everyone watching from the distant ridges could not believe the storm was still going. The sheer duration of the anomaly defied all known logic and history within the Zhan Clan archives. Zhan Tian stood on the viewing balcony with a deep frown etched across his face. He watched the relentless flashes of light illuminating the dark clouds and turned to speak with Patriarch Yue.

"This makes no sense," Zhan Tian stated while crossing his arms over his chest. "My own trial under the Seventy Two Earthly Calamity lasted exactly one day before the clouds dispersed. The level four trials that you and the others faced were around twelve hours long which is roughly half that time."

Patriarch Yue nodded slowly as he recalled the ancient scrolls stored in the deepest levels of the library. "The sparse records detailing the Eighty One Chaos Genesis state that the sixth tier lasts for one day and twelve hours. Li Yu has already gone longer than that and the storm shows no signs of stopping. It is still going on with the same intensity."

"The strikes are not getting weaker or more spread out during this extended time either," Zhan Tian noted as another deafening crack of thunder shook the balcony. "If anything, the strikes are a lot more frequent now and everyone can see that. The strength roughly matched my own up to the one day mark but it keeps pushing higher. However, because the heavens are still striking the plaza, we know Li Yu is still alive in there trying to fight back."

Li Canghai and Zhan Tielan stood nearby and felt like they had held their breaths the entire time the tribulation was happening. Knowing how crazy the records were made the reality they were witnessing even more terrifying. Their son was enduring a crucible that surpassed the greatest legends of the Myriad Realms, at least that were mentioned in their records.

The hidden legions waiting out in the dark void held their breaths as well and each hour felt like an eternity. The troops stationed within all five legions were all elite cultivators who had been through the Tribulation stage themselves. They understood the agonizing pain of the heavenly lightning and they were stunned by such a miraculous event. Knowing how crazy the storm was, they could only watch in silent awe while maintaining their strict defensive perimeter.

There had been a few probing attempts during the second day as rival factions sent scouts to investigate the cosmic disturbance. The Zhan Clan destroyed any scouting force that approached their borders with ruthless aggression to send a clear message and some larger forces were destroyed by the other five legions. The outer patrol troops did not ask questions or offer warnings. They simply reduced anything coming their way to floating debris and ensured that no one disturbed Li Yu.

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The third day passed and the situation inside the lightning dome deteriorated into a living nightmare for Li Yu. He was barely alive and he did not even look human anymore, resembling a rotting zombie sitting through a tempest of light and fire. A thick bolt of dark golden lightning crashed into his shoulder and tore away a large chunk of his flesh. The impact spun him around while a secondary wave of corrosive green energy washed over his side.

He was covered in his own blood and missing large pieces of muscle across his entire body. Half of his left arm was missing from a particularly vicious strike during the second night and anyone could clearly see the charred bone exposed in multiple places along his ribs and legs. If his parents or the others outside could see him now, they would be terrified beyond measure. It was the absolute worst state he had ever been in physically and his Devouring Abyssal Leviathan physique was struggling to keep up with the cascading damage.

His four souls were flickering wildly within the spiritual space around him. The Koi, Whale, Muddy, and Human souls had used up their limits to protect his fragile life force. They could no longer maintain their solid projections and they retreated inwardly to hide as they could no longer help him any longer.

The fading souls however were still helping within and together were now diverting maybe ten percent of the total calamity compared to the forty percent they had shouldered before. The sudden increase in pressure had fallen directly onto Li Yu was the turning point of what put him in a state of barely being alive.

His Koi martial spirit was surprisingly still alright and seemed to be undergoing a strange evolution amidst the destruction around it. The grand projection hovered above him while lightning of all different kinds of colors crackled down its long serpent like body. The spirit absorbed the heavenly energy like a sponge even though its two wings had jagged holes burned all over them.

Li Yu lay on the cracked stone and stared up at the blinding sky. He had never been more miserable in his entire life and every atom in his body screamed in agony. He wanted the noise, pain, burning and maybe worse of all, at least to his mental state was the smell of his ruined body to end. He had many times even thought of ending his own life, starting around half way through the third day just to escape the seemingly endless suffering. The pain was too much for his mind to process and the sweet release of death looked like a comforting embrace that was welcoming him home.

However, he continued to press onward while blood, flesh and everything else laid on the ground around him. He knew that enduring this much suffering would only lead to incredible power on the other side. It was a power that he desperately needed to fulfill his long standing goals and this tribulation would be the real turning point in those goals, ‘it just had to be.’ He told himself to give himself more strength.

He wanted to shoulder the burdens weighing down his parents and his grandfather, but he quickly corrected himself in his own mind when those thoughts had come. That was too little and not enough for the kind of torturement and torture he was undergoing. Li Yu did not just want to shoulder their burdens alongside them, he wanted to end their burdens forever!

He wanted to be strong enough to dictate his entire life without answering to the whims of the cosmos or anyone else. He wanted to be with the ones he loved, build a future where Lian and his family could live in peace and not have to constantly be away from him. Li Yu had to keep pushing forward because it was either him falling here as a forgotten pile of ash or let this crucible be his first full step toward realizing everything he had ever wanted.

It was that singular burning resolve that allowed him to make it this far in the terrible state he was in now. He was barely alive and more than half way dead already as he barely hung onto the edges of his consciousness. The heavenly strikes continued to rain down and he focused every ounce of his remaining willpower to simply continue to exist.

The third day came to a close with Li Yu looking like a gruesome mixture of mostly skeleton and barely any flesh. His facial features were unrecognizable under the burns and the dried blood. His weakened souls had fully retreated inwardly to act as a spiritual glue just to hold his crumbling physical body together. His incredible soul power was the sole reason his body hadn’t already fallen away and turned to dust.

Just as the sun set on the third day, the Koi martial spirit finally exploded outward with a blinding flash of light. The grand spirit had successfully drained thirty percent of the entire calamity thus far and the dense cosmic energy fueled a miraculous evolution.

The long serpentine body of the martial spirit suddenly shrank back and bloated out in the center. Its form became much more whale-like now instead of maintaining the sleek shape of a long serpentine dragon. The wings enlarged significantly on both sides and stretched out to match the new heavy proportions of its own body size.

The evolved spirit still had the distinct head of a koi fish with long flowing whiskers but it now possessed the bulky dense body of a whale. Its dragon-like wings had grown far bigger and more robust than before while the tail shifted to look more like a traditional koi tail once again. The previous evolution had made the spirit appear more like a long and slender dragon but now it was reverting back to its core Koi features and its true aquatic nature while keeping the imposing dragonic wings.

Once the evolution was completed, the bloated winged creature looked up at the churning tribulation clouds and opened its jaws. The evolved martial spirit roared loudly into the sky and the sheer force of the sound pierced through the howling wind and shook the entire realm itself, along with the tribulation clouds above. The ground trembled beneath the feet of the spectators on the distant ridges and the vibrating shockwave caused the ancient trees to sway violently. The martial spirit was now shouldering more than half the lightning descending by itself.

Everyone standing outside the lightning dome wondered what was going on inside the sacred grounds because they still had no idea what was happening. The strange roar did not sound like a man dying but rather like an ancient beast waking up from a deep slumber to challenge the very heavens.