"One begets two. Two begets three. Three begets all things."
His voice rose.
"If heaven dares stand in my way—I will shatter heaven itself. The Dao flows through me."
He paused, then spoke the final words with absolute certainty:
"I am the Dao."
And he stepped onto the ninth step.
When the mysterious figure heard those words, he shouted three times: "Good! Good! Good!"
Above them, the clouds that had been gathering finally erupted.
The tribulation descended.
Lightning burst from the clouds like a descending spear.
The first bolt crashed into the cultivator's body with explosive force. Stone shattered beneath his feet as blue electricity spread across his skin like living serpents. Pain surged through every nerve, but he remained standing.
The second strike came instantly after—stronger, sharper, burning into his muscles and bones until his blood boiled with energy. The third strike cracked open the ground around him. By the ninth strike, the plateau had become a crater of molten rock. Lightning surged through his meridians again and again, tempering his body like divine metal in a heavenly forge.
The first wave ended.
His robes were half burned away, yet the aura around him had grown denser. Above him, the clouds churned more violently. Heaven was only beginning.
Lightning fell faster now. The bolts were no longer simple flashes of energy; they began to take shape. Some resembled roaring thunder dragons, while others formed enormous blades of lightning that cleaved the earth apart. Each wave of nine strikes multiplied the pressure. Mountains miles away collapsed from the shockwaves. The void trembled.
On the platform, Chu Feng endured it all.
The twenty-seventh strike shattered the bones in his arm—but spiritual energy instantly surged through him, rebuilding them stronger. The forty-fifth strike pierced straight through his chest in a pillar of white lightning, forcing him to kneel for the first time. But he rose again. His body was now glowing faintly with thunder.
The heavens raged.
By the seventy-second strike, the lightning had turned golden. This was no longer ordinary heavenly thunder; it was tribulation lightning capable of destroying immortals. Each strike tore apart the ground and blasted entire ridges of mountains into dust. The cultivator's body was nearly destroyed—skin burned, meridians torn, blood flowing freely down his arms. Yet his eyes burned brighter with every strike.
When the seventy-second bolt faded, the storm above went silent. Only one wave remained.
The clouds opened. Chu Feng quickly grabbed the healing pills he had with him, smashing them all and absorbing their essence. Colour began returning to his pale face.
Deep within the clouds, a massive sphere of lightning slowly formed—an ocean of thunder condensed into nine final bolts. These were the true Nine-Nine Lightning.
The first of the final nine fell. It struck with the force of a falling star. Chu Feng roared as his body cracked under the impact. The lightning penetrated his bones and soul simultaneously, and his cosmic soul appeared behind him.
The second strike followed. Then the third. Each bolt seemed capable of destroying an entire city. With each strike, his cosmic soul fragmented apart but reassembled itself. This happened over and over again, but one could see intricate lines being added to his cosmic soul with each reassembly. At a certain point, it became very mysterious before breaking into motes of light and flowing into the mysterious marks appearing on his skin.
Unlike the previous people who had undergone their breakthrough, some of these motes surged into his eyes. He screamed with searing pain. The marks on his skin appeared more mysterious and intricate, resembling a runic inscription.
By the seventh strike, the cultivator stood in a lake of molten stone. By the eighth, even his heartbeat had slowed dangerously.
Then the sky trembled. The eighty-first lightning bolt descended as the last.
It was enormous—a pillar of divine thunder connecting heaven and earth. The bolt engulfed the cultivator completely, swallowing him in blinding white light. For several seconds, the world disappeared.
Then the lightning exploded outward.
Silence returned. The clouds slowly began to disperse.
In the centre of the crater stood the cultivator. Barely alive, the healing pills he had taken earlier were still activating as they healed him. But standing.
The Nine-Nine Heavenly Tribulation had been survived.
But the heavens were not satisfied.
Far above the fading clouds, a deeper darkness formed. A crack appeared in the sky itself. Ancient pressure descended upon the world—far heavier than the tribulation before. This was Heavenly Punishment.
There is a saying: Heaven grows jealous of those who defy its limits. When talent shakes the heavens, the heavens respond with punishment, for they cannot tolerate such beings.
From the裂 opening in the sky descended a colossal bolt of black and red lightning—thicker than a mountain. The heavens intended to erase him.
Chu Feng looked up, breathing slowly.
The black and red lightning fell.
Instead of dodging, he stepped forward. The mysterious figure immediately moved his hand, saying, "Fellow cultivator, let me sow good karma." A surge of pure golden energy rushed in from all angles, pouring toward Chu Feng. Even the platform erupted with blinding light as everything seemed to fuel him. All the mysterious marks on his body flared simultaneously.
With one movement, an intricate array appeared like stacked barriers to stop the advancement of the lightning. But the lightning shattered through everything.
The punishment thunder struck him directly. He roared and drew his sword. Mysterious energy flowed from him into his blade, and beneath him, a complex pattern spread outward as he faced the punishment.
For a moment, the entire plateau vanished in a storm of black energy. Space itself fractured under the impact.
But inside the storm, Chu Feng's body erupted with brilliant black and white energy, facing the punishment. For a long time, he used his sword against the punishment and his rune arrays when necessary. He was gradually getting injured, but he kept standing—not even kneeling once.
As time dragged on, the black and red thunder punishment began to weaken.
Then, with a final explosive clash, the punishment shattered. The clash shook the heavens. Fragments of black and red thunder scattered across the sky like dying stars.
The heavens finally fell silent.
As the ancient saying holds: Even when heaven punishes, it leaves a single thread of survival.
The storm clouds dissolved. Sunlight returned.
In the smoking crater stood the cultivator—body remade, aura vast as the sky itself. He had endured eighty-one tribulation strikes. He had shattered Heavenly Punishment.
And for the first time since the storm began, the heavens no longer dared to strike.
The remaining people became dumbfounded at what they had just witnessed. The entire scene seemed to replay itself over and over in their minds.
Only moments earlier, some of them had been mocking Chu Feng. Then he had calmly spoken about cultivation being the act of defying the impossible.
And the next moment— He had begun to climb.
What they saw, however, was completely different from what Chu Feng himself experienced. What seemed like years to him happened in an instant to those observing. They watched him raise his foot and place it on the first step.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Step after step, he ascended as though no obstacle stood in his path. With each step, he made continuous breakthroughs, his aura climbing higher and higher until he reached the top as if he were simply taking a walk in a park.
Then he underwent a terrifying tribulation—if they could even call it that. If they were honest with themselves, calling it a tribulation felt almost too gentle. Punishment seemed a better word. It was as though the heavens themselves believed he had cheated and had descended to deliver judgment. Yet even under that overwhelming storm of destruction, he had still broken through and stepped into the next realm.
But then came the moment that truly unsettled them. What did they hear the mysterious figure call him?
Fellow cultivator?
For a moment, some of them wondered whether everything they had just seen had been some kind of illusion. Yet when they looked again at the platform and saw Chu Feng seated there in meditation, his aura deep and vast like a boundless ocean, they had no choice but to accept the reality before them.
Even if they did not want to believe it.
A few of them even tried to comfort themselves with a different explanation. Perhaps the mysterious figure had secretly helped him, they reasoned, or perhaps it was because he was the youngest. That explanation felt safer than the alternative.
But even as those thoughts surfaced, they themselves felt how weak those excuses sounded.
They remained lost in their thoughts until a quiet voice suddenly broke the silence.
"Impossible…"
It was Yan Lu.
Her expression was pale as she stared at Chu Feng.
"That was the Nine-Nine Heavenly Tribulation… with heavenly punishment."
Her voice trembled slightly, laced with disbelief.
"How can someone of this calibre appear in such a barren place?" she continued, still refusing to believe her own eyes. She had heard stories about this type of tribulation. They were legendary events that appeared only rarely, even among the greatest geniuses.
And yet—
It had just descended upon someone who had only just stepped into the Soul Spirit Realm.