"Ah? Wang Ping? You want to fight me too?" the cultivator scoffed when he saw the furious man being held back by his own junior.
"Since when did the dogs of the Eclipsed Sun Sect start acting like real men?" he continued, bursting into loud, mocking laughter.
"Look, the boy still doesn't give him face!" another cultivator yelled, pointing down at Mo Lingtian as the surrounding crowd laughed in unison.
Unable to take the humiliation any longer, Wang Ping clenched his fist, releasing a dangerously pervasive aura of fire. Behind him, a massive sphere of boiling, golden-red flame rapidly expanded, radiating intense heat.
"Oh? Suddenly acting tough? Today, I will wipe your ego on my shoes and make you beg for mercy at my feet!" his rival sneered, taking a forcefully domineering step forward that sent a heavy shockwave rippling across the sky.
"What a rich aura!" a Perfection Stage Qi Refining practitioner exclaimed as the shockwave washed over them.
"They are both in the mid-stage of the Qi Refining Realm, yet in terms of true strength, they are worlds apart," another Perfection Stage expert noted, followed by a collective sigh from their group.
"The Eclipsed Sun Sect has truly fallen into ruin," he added, shaking his head in pity as he watched the rival cultivator force open spatial cracks beneath his feet.
It was a mighty clash of auras as the violent energy fluctuations from the cultivator's step collided directly with the boiling heat of Wang Ping's flames.
"Evil beast!" a voice suddenly cried out from the heavens.
The sheer, intimidating echo of that voice instantly shattered the confrontation between Wang Ping and his rival.
"Come and accept your trial!" the voice boomed again, this time accompanied by resounding, thunderous claps from within the golden, tunneled clouds.
As the voice faded, the two bull-headed giants raised their colossal axes from the depths of the sky. They dragged the weapons across the clouds, unleashing a slow, heavy, and powerful slash that carved a visible rift through the clouds.
As the axes descended toward the dragon, every practitioner present held their breath, their petty squabbles forgotten. They gazed anxiously, waiting to see if this strike would instantly cripple the beast.
With a sudden, violent whip of its enormous, slender tail, the dragon knocked the descending axes off course in a single strike, sending them rebounding upward. The sheer air pressure released from the collision erupted across the sky, forcing several practitioners to stumble backward in mid-air.
"A few half-hearted beasts dare to try and kill me? This seat is not someone you can easily judge!" the dragon roared at the sky.
"That beast is unusually strong," one of the early Dao Realm elders muttered, his eyes narrowing as he watched the dragon deflect the heavenly weapons so effortlessly.
"Even I could not block that strike in one move," the hunched old man added, slowly stroking his beard.
"Evil beast! Obediently accept your judgment!" the calm yet absolute voice echoed again.
Prompted by the heavenly decree, the bull-headed giants struck once more, this time with a far more terrifying, powerful force. Massive chains of golden lightning loomed around the descending axes, tearing severe spatial fissures across the sky.
"Retreat!" one of the Great Perfection Stage practitioners roared when he saw the void tearing apart around the weapons.
In the blink of an eye, the four qi refining cultivators in the Perfection and Great perfection stage teleported several miles away.
Practitioners rarely took risks, they valued their years of painstaking cultivation more than any gain they could get except of course, whatever gain they could get could make them invincible, that they'd risk everything for but this dragon's core wasn't worth it especially when Dao practitioners also had their eyes on it. There was no certainty they'd gain a share of the loot even if they put their lives on the line.
Like a bursting volcano laying waste to everything in its wake, the axes came crashing on the dragon and this time it could not strike back, it could only defend using a barrier to shield the sharp edges of the axes from searing through its body.
The emanating lightning from the axes struck through the barrier on the dragon's massive body continuously causing cuts and wounds that burned and stung all over its body. It cried with loud groans continuously defending against the crushing weight of these weapons of judgement.
Some of the cultivators and practitioners who didn't evacuate on time were roasted and burnt alive with horrifying screams by the lightning from the colossal axes while some had major parts of the bones in their bodies crushed and permanently deformed by the sheer weight of the extending pressure from the collision of the axes with the beast.
The dragon's barrier began to fracture. Web-like cracks spread across the shield until it finally shattered, leaving the beast entirely exposed. Just as the axes dropped toward its flesh, the dragon opened its massive jaws and unleashed a continuous, devastating torrent of dark red mist directly into the heavenly weapons.
"What kind of power is this?" one of the Dao Realm elders gasped, hastily conjuring a shield technique as the invading mist rapidly expanded across the sky.
The dark red mist instantly consumed the colossal axes, dissolving them into nothing but floating golden dust. It even lashed against the hands of the bull-headed giants, leaving deep, festering scars of corruption on their energy-forged skin.
"Interesting," Mo Lingtian murmured from his canoe, watching the devouring power of his new mount.
More than half of the gathered cultivators instantly evaporated into bloody mist as the red fog saturated the sky, devouring everything in its path.
Panic erupted. Many fled the scene, abandoning their treasures and talismans in a desperate bid to survive, their bodies severely deformed by the corrosive air. Only a handful managed to remain, burning through their highest-grade defensive talismans just to withstand the fallout.
The Dao Realm practitioners, however, effortlessly blocked the mist, peering through the chaotic fog like it was never there.
Suddenly, one of the struggling Qi Refining cultivators noticed something strange
The supposedly ignorant boy in the wooden canoe hadn't moved an inch since the tribulation began.
From the devastating collisions of the axes with the dragon that released torrents of thunder and lightning to the ocean, to the devouring mist that evaporated everything within a radius of hundreds metres to nothingness, he stood on the boat, calm, unfazed, untouched. He watched the tribulation with amusement rather than anxiousness, that was too unusual for an ignorant lone practitioner in the vessel cleansing realm.
"Fellow Daoists!" One of the practitioners shouted with a hint of danger in his tone which alerted everyone present including the Dao realm practitioners and the Qi refining cultivators in the perfection and Great perfection stage while he desperately blocked the violent stream of the devouring mist with the talismans in his hands.