Takeshi staggered back, his feet skidding across the scorched earth. Smoke curled from his skin where fresh, angry red streaks of lightning crisscrossed his chest and arms like a roadmap of agony. The Heavens weren't just testing him; they were bent on killing him.
The rumble above grew continuous, a rolling drumbeat of execution. He looked up, eyes bloodshot and manic, spitting out a mouthful of ash and blood.
"You fuckers want to kill me and let the devil cultivator win?" Takeshi roared at the swirling vortex above. He glanced at Derek, who was scrambling to put distance between them, terror etched into his face. A twisted grin split Takeshi's face. "Let me help you do your job properly."
Without a second of hesitation, Takeshi launched himself forward. He moved diving through the air and slamming into Derek.
"Get off me!" Derek screamed, his voice cracking. He thrashed wildly, panic overriding his usual demenoar. He sank his teeth deep into Takeshi's injured shoulder, tearing at the flesh like a cornered rat.
Takeshi didn't even flinch. He locked his hands behind Derek's back, securing him in an iron-tight bear hug, pressing his chest explicitly against Derek's.
CRACK-BOOM!
The sky answered instantly. A jagged bolt of white-hot tribulation lightning slammed squarely into the crown of Takeshi's head.
But this time, the energy didn't ground itself into the earth. Because of the grapple, the circuit was closed through Derek. The voltage surged through Takeshi's conductive body and flooded directly into the devil cultivator.
"GRAAAAGHH!"
Derek's scream was inhuman. It was a sound of absolute violation. As a devil cultivator, his soul was steeped corruption; the pure energy tribulation lightning wasn't just physical pain—it was anathema to his very existence. It burned his soul harder than his flesh. Smoke erupted from Derek's eyes and mouth.
"Haha! Feel the burn!" Takeshi cried out, his laughter mixing with the thunder, shaking as the electricity coursed through them both. "It's amazing, isn't it?"
Derek convulsed, his biting grip loosening as his jaw locked open in a silent shriek of paralysis. He had experienced torture in two lifetimes, but he had never felt the judgment of the Heavens raw and unfiltered. It felt like his marrow was boiling.
Takeshi, trembling from the aftershocks but fueled by spite, looked up at the sky, his face illuminated by the arcing sparks still jumping between him and his prisoner.
"IS THAT ALL YOU GOT, YOU USELESS FUCKS?!" Takeshi screamed, challenging the Heavens.
The atmosphere suddenly grew heavy, crushing the air out of the lungs of everyone nearby. The swirling grey clouds didn't just darken; they deepened, turning an inky, bruised purple. It was as if the Heavens had heard the insult—and they were genuinely offended.
The low rumble stopped. The silence that followed was far more terrifying than the thunder.
Cultivation World - The Overland Ark
The massive overland ark cut through the clouds like a spear of spirit-steel. It was a marvel of the northern territories—a futuristic vessel powered by a roaring qi reactor, designed to ferry mercenaries and supplies across the continent's harshest terrain.
Inside the cockpit, Pilot Kareth, a late-stage Core Formation cultivator, watched his instrument panels flicker. The formations that stabilized the ship were whining, vibrating with a frequency he had never encountered.
"Turbulence?" his co-pilot asked nervously.
"No," Kareth whispered, his spiritual sense screaming at him to run. He looked out the reinforced viewports. The sky wasn't grey with snow; it was turning a bruised, violent gold. "The Heavens are angry."
CRACK-BOOM!
A bolt of lightning didn't just strike the ship; it ignored the ship. It passed through the defensive shields and the hull as if they didn't exist, seeking a specific target in the main hold.
The bolt slammed into the cargo bay, obliterating a stack of supply crates and arcing directly toward Zulu.
"TRIBULATION!" Kareth's voice was magically amplified, booming through the ship's speakers. "SOMEONE IS UNDERGOING HEAVENLY TRIBULATION! GET THEM OFF MY SHIP BEFORE WE ARE ALL DESTROYED!"
In the cargo bay, chaos erupted. The mercenaries, hardened killers who feared no beast, scrambled back in terror. They saw the golden electricity crawling over Zulu's metallic skin. They felt the judgment of the cosmos locking onto him.
"It's the kid!" the scarred woman from before shouted. "He's the lightning rod!"
"Get him out!"
Three large cultivators didn't hesitate. They rushed Zulu, grabbing him by his arms and legs. Zulu was barely conscious; his mind was a blur of agony, split between two worlds. On Earth, Takeshi was screaming defiance at the sky. Here, Zulu was paralyzed from the tribulation strike.
"Sorry, kid," one of them grunted.
They heaved him toward the open cargo ramp.
Zulu tumbled out into the freezing air. He fell like a stone, plummeting hundreds of meters toward the jagged ice fields below.
As he fell, he looked up. The clouds above the ark weren't dissipating. They were following him. The tribulation didn't care about the ship; it wanted him. Because his soul was Takeshi's, the judgment falling on Earth was echoing across the galaxy, seeking to eradicate both vessels of the heavenly crime of soul stitching.
I'm going to die, Zulu thought dimly. His body, only 50% refined, couldn't survive a fall from this height, let alone a tribulation.
Thousands of Kilometers Away - Body Destroying Sect
Elder VolCartin stood on the peak of the volcano, his golden eyes snapping open.
He felt it. A ripple in the fabric of the world. A defiance so profound it made the Heavens scream.
"Finally," the ancient giant whispered, a smile cracking his stone-like face. "Someone has brought the Tribulation."
He looked toward the horizon. "You were so fast, Zulu."
VolCartin didn't fly. He didn't use a magical treasure. He simply... stepped.
He pushed off the volcano. The mountain groaned, a spiderweb of cracks shattering the summit as he vanished.
BOOM.
A kilometer-wide explosion of collapsed vacuum blossomed where he had been standing. He moved with such raw physical speed that the air couldn't get out of the way; it simply detonated.
Step One. He crossed the mountain range. The sonic boom flattened a forest below.
Step Two. He crossed the frozen tundra. The air pressure wave evaporated a glacial lake.
Step Three. He appeared beneath the falling ark.
The Drop Zone
Zulu hit the ground. Or rather, he hit something harder than the ground.
He slammed into a hand..
Elder VolCartin stood there, looking like a statue of a god come to life. He held the half limp Zulu in one massive palm, looking up at the swirling vortex of golden clouds.
A bolt of tribulation lightning, thick as a redwood tree, smashed down.
VolCartin didn't block it. He reached up with his free hand and grabbed it. The lightning writhed in his grip like a living snake, sizzling against his golden skin, before he crushed it into sparks and inhaled the energy.
"Zulu," VolCartin's voice rumbled, deep enough to vibrate Zulu's bones. "I have to admit to you, I was not entirely honest."
He set Zulu down on the ice gently.
"I am a Body Cultivator. I do not have a Dantian to store Qi. I can only progress by eating heavenly treasures and refining my flesh." The Elder looked at his own hands, frustration etched into his features. "I have been stuck at the peak of Nascent Soul for a thousand years. I thought, how can I progress to Demi-God? There is nothing on this world hard enough to temper me."
He looked up at the sky, grinning maniacally. "Then I thought... why not use Tribulation Lightning?"
Another rumble shook the heavens. The clouds were darkening, shifting from gold to a void-like purple.
"But I need a lot," VolCartin chuckled. "And do you know what the Heavens hate the most? Someone interfering in the tribulation of another."
He looked down at Zulu. "Sit down. Cross your legs."
"Elder..." Zulu wheezed struggling against the sheer amount of qi gathering in the air.
"SIT!" VolCartin commanded. "The lightning will strike me. I will take the brunt of it to shatter my limits. But the runoff... the sparks that fly off me... absorb them. Forge your body with them. If you survive, you will finish your first stage today."
VolCartin turned his back on Zulu and faced the sky. He spread his arms wide.
"I take this tribulation!" he bellowed, his voice overpowering the thunder. "Come and punish me!"
The sky went silent for a heartbeat. The Heavens seemed confused, then insulted. A mortal was daring to steal their judgment?
The clouds didn't just darken; they expanded. They swirled violently, drawing in ambient Qi from thousands of miles around. On Earth, the tribulation was limited by the thin Qi. But here? Here, the air was thick with power.
The intensity multiplied. Ten times. A hundred times. A thousand times greater than what Takeshi was facing on Earth.
VolCartin's body began to grow. His skin turned into living gold armor. He expanded rapidly—ten meters, twenty meters, fifty meters tall. He stood like a titan against the storm.
"What can the Heavens do against me?" he spat, chuckling with supreme condescension.
The sky answered.
The first true bolt fell. It wasn't a jagged line; it was a solid pillar of blinding white light.
It hit VolCartin with the force of a nuclear bomb.
The shockwave scoured the ice sheet clean for miles. The ark, miles away in the sky, was blown off course by the wind.
In the center of the crater, VolCartin roared in ecstasy, holding the pillar of light on his shoulders like Atlas holding the world.
"FORGE YOUR BODY OR DIE!" VolCartin screamed, his golden skin sizzling as he channeled the heavens through his flesh reforging it. "THIS IS THE WAY OF THE BODY CULTIVATOR!"
Earth- Central Park
The sky above Central Park didn't just flicker; it turned into a strobe light of divine execution.
The strikes weren't coming one at a time anymore. They were falling in a ceaseless barrage—ten, twenty, thirty bolts a minute. A jackhammer of pure, white-hot judgment pounding Takeshi and Derek into the scorched earth.
"GRAAAAGH!" Derek screamed, his voice distorting as his vocal cords fried and regenerated in the same second.
He bit into Takeshi's chest, blood flowed but Takeshi did not loosen his grip. He kicked, he clawed, he thrashed like a wild animal caught in a trap. But Takeshi's arms were immovable bars of iron.
"YOU CAN'T HOLD ME! I AM MEANT TO BE A GOD!" Derek shrieked, but the fear in his eyes betrayed him.
"You are nothing!" Takeshi roared back, his voice booming over the thunder.
From the sidelines, Riku and Himari watched, shielding their eyes from the blinding flashes. They were frozen in absolute horror.
"He's..." Riku's voice trembled, barely audible. "He's taking it. How is he taking it?"
"This isn't just Qi," Himari whispered, her assassin instincts sensing the truth beneath the violence. "Look at the energy. It's spiritual. It's attacking their minds."
She was right. The Heavenly Tribulation wasn't merely burning their flesh; it was flaying their souls.
Inside the lightning, Derek was being dragged through a hellscape of his own making. Every insecurity he had buried under violence, every moment of weakness he had tried to hide with murder, every fear that he was just a small, pathetic man—it all came rushing back, amplified a thousand times. The lightning asked him: Who are you without the blood? And Derek had no answer. His soul, stitched together with stolen lives, began to fray.
But Takeshi?
Takeshi's soul had been forged in a wheelchair for twenty years. He had stared at a ceiling and faced the abyss of his own helplessness every single day. He had screamed in silence until his will was compressed into a singularity of defiance.
The lightning showed him his fear, and Takeshi laughed at it. His soul was made of the strongest material in the universe: Unwavering Will.
CRACK-BOOM! CRACK-BOOM!
The rhythm accelerated. The air in the park steamed.
Then, the barrage stopped.
The silence was sudden and deafening. The swirling vortex above glowed with a terrifying, blinding luminescence. The clouds contracted, pulling in every scrap of qi from around the world. The air static raised the hair on Riku's arms.
It was the final blow. The executioner's axe.
"Let me go!" Derek shrieked in madness.
"NO," Takeshi growled, tightening his grip until Derek's ribs cracked. "We finish this."
BOOM.
The final bolt didn't look like lightning. It was a jagged pillar of light. The Heavens final Blow.
It struck Takeshi squarely in the back.
"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
Takeshi screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated effort. The pressure was immense enough to flatten a building. His knees buckled, smashing craters into the concrete, but he did not let go. He channeled the entire current through his chest and directly into the thrashing devil cultivator.
Derek didn't scream. He couldn't.
With a wet, sickening pop, Derek exploded.
He didn't vaporize. The pressure was too high. He simply lost cohesion. Inside Takeshi's crushing bear hug, Derek burst into a shower of fleshy, red goo, splattering across Takeshi's chest and the surrounding grass like a popped water balloon.
The pillar of light vanished.
Silence returned to Central Park, broken only by the hiss of steam.
Takeshi remained on his knees. He was a statue of ruin. Smoke curled from his shoulders. Intricate, fern-like Lichtenberg figures were burned into his skin from head to toe, glowing with fading heat. He was covered in the gruesome remains of his enemy.
He swayed.
He tipped forward, his massive frame succumbing to gravity.
Himari moved. She sprinted across the ruined grass, a blur of motion fueled by pure desperation.
Just inches before his face smashed into the scorched earth, she slid underneath him. She threw her arms up, catching his shoulders.
The weight hit her like a falling building.
"Ghh—!" Himari grunted, buckling under the incredible density of his new body. He was heavy—far heavier than a human should be—dense with muscle and soul-matter.
She struggled, her muscles screaming as she fought to keep him from hitting the dirt, slowly lowering him until his head rested gently in her lap.
Takeshi's eyes fluttered, the blue soul-fire fading to a dim ember as he looked up at her through the haze of unconsciousness.
Himari brushed the ash from his forehead, her hands trembling.
"You're safe now," she whispered.
Takeshi's eyes closed, and the titan finally slept.