Chapter Ninety-Eight: The Abnormal Lightning Tribulation

Two nights later, atop the summit of a barren mountain a thousand miles from Cloudflow City.

Sensing the sudden heaviness settling into the surrounding air, Liu Pan’s expression turned bitter. The final outcome was just as he had anticipated; he could feel the impending aura of a lightning tribulation.

Of the two days, he had spent the first searching for a secluded spot devoid of human presence. The second day was spent centering himself and preparing to break through to the Martial Master realm.

Liu Pan had not consumed the Earth Origin Pill. Whether it was because his spiritual power was exceptionally formidable or because there was indeed some anomaly with his spiritual root aptitude, he encountered no bottleneck whatsoever. With a mere thought, the vortex of origin energy within his dantian compressed rapidly, beginning to solidify.

That he could condense his origin core so effortlessly was both within and beyond his expectations. After all, he remained uncertain of his true potential and aptitude.

The condensation of the origin core marked his entry into the Martial Master realm.

For cultivators, the origin core was not only a vessel for storing origin energy, but also the "nest" of their divine sense. Thus, it served as the wellspring of all a cultivator's power at this stage.

Furthermore, the origin core was the crucible where the origin spirit was nurtured. When a cultivator broke through from the Martial Master realm to the Martial King realm, the core would transform into the spirit. This underscored the absolute importance of the origin core to any cultivator.

Moreover, a cultivator could only condense a single origin core in their lifetime. If it were shattered or stolen, even if they managed to cultivate back to the peak of the Martial Disciple realm, they would never again be able to break through to the Martial Master realm.

Sensing the air growing increasingly heavy, Liu Pan retrieved several bottles of pills from his storage bag. He then flew down the mountain on his sword, stashed the storage bag beneath a large tree, and returned to the barren summit.

Facing the imminent lightning tribulation, Liu Pan felt a wave of anxiety. After all, he was a civilized youth from twenty-first-century Earth. Although he had read countless stories of protagonists surviving tribulations in web novels, fiction was just fiction. Experiencing it firsthand was a terrifying reality.

Furthermore, he could not begin to imagine the sheer agony of lightning striking his bare flesh.

Thrusting his long sword into the ground beside him, Liu Pan took a deep breath, sat down cross-legged, and began to circulate the origin energy vortex within his body to accelerate the condensation of his core.

Despite his apprehension, Liu Pan knew that what must come could not be avoided. Condensing an origin core required absolute resolve; to falter now out of fear would cast a permanent shadow over his martial path, making any future attempt to condense the core far more difficult, if not impossible.

As he channeled all his strength to compress the vortex within his dantian, the golden glow at its center grew increasingly brilliant, and he could clearly sense something solidifying.

As the origin core began to take form, a profound sense of emptiness washed over him. It was not a loss of physical strength, but rather his essence, vitality, and spirit being drained away.

He could feel these vital forces being drawn out thread by thread, merging into the nascent core in his dantian.

Liu Pan did not panic; he knew this vital energy was precisely what the origin core needed to nurture. When his cultivation eventually transitioned from the Martial Master to the Martial King realm, this very energy would break through the core to emerge as his origin spirit.

As time ticked by, the golden radiance within his dantian grew blindingly intense, until the entire space was bathed in a brilliant gold.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the draining of his vital energy ceased. Liu Pan knew the origin core was on the verge of completion, and a surge of excitement welled up within him.

Another few minutes passed, and the origin energy vortex vanished entirely. Two breaths later, the golden light filling his dantian retracted sharply, revealing a dark golden origin core the size of a pigeon’s egg.

The moment the core solidified, a strange, profound connection resonated in his mind.

Following a brief moment of disorientation, he felt his connection to the surrounding world grow far more intimate. He knew the condensation was complete, and his divine sense had finally awakened.

*Boom!*

The tribulation clouds churned. The instant Liu Pan’s origin core formed, a bolt of lightning tore through the sky, striking directly at him.

In the pitch-black night, the lightning shone with blinding brilliance, illuminating the entire landscape. At the same time, Liu Pan’s expression shifted. He had not expected the tribulation to strike so rapidly.

Acting on pure reflex, he pushed his origin core to its absolute limit. Springing to his feet, his right hand gripped the hilt of his sword and swung it upward in a sweeping arc.

Instantly, a thirty-foot-long wave of sword qi, so dense it was nearly solid, surged up to meet the lightning.

*Boom!*

The collision produced a deafening explosion that reverberated across the sky. Before Liu Pan’s eyes, both the sword light and the lightning shattered simultaneously, dissolving into nothingness.

Yet, seeing them annihilate each other brought him no joy. Instead, his heart sank.

That strike had been thrown out in desperation. Though he had not unleashed his full potential due to his unfamiliarity with his new realm, his origin core had indeed been pushed to its limit.

This meant the strike had required at least seventy percent of his total combat power. What did seventy percent of his power mean at this stage? And that was only the very first bolt!

The tribulation for breaking through from the Martial Disciple to the Martial Master realm was known as the Nine-Fold Lightning Tribulation, consisting of nine consecutive bolts.

If the first bolt demanded seventy percent of his strength to block, what about the rest? During a tribulation, each successive bolt was always stronger than the last.

Before he could ponder further, the clouds churned, and almost the instant the first bolt was dispelled, a second one tore through the heavens and crashed down.

Liu Pan’s face paled. He realized that this tribulation was completely abnormal!

In his own novel, he had written a detailed description of the protagonist Liu Kuang’s first tribulation, so he knew exactly what a Nine-Fold Lightning Tribulation should look like. Yet, the ordeal he was facing now was vastly different from the one he had penned.

He had felt something was amiss the moment the first bolt struck. It had descended far too quickly, leaving him no time to adjust to his newly formed core. This contradicted the very rules he had established in his book.

The second bolt was the same—it fell without giving him a single breath to recover. This was entirely unnatural!

Under the laws of the Heavenly Dao, no matter how devastating a tribulation was, there should always be a sliver of survival.

Thus, when designing the rules for his world, Liu Pan had always allowed a few breaths of time between each bolt for the cultivator to catch their breath. Even though he enjoyed tormenting his protagonists, he had only made Liu Kuang’s tribulation exceptionally brutal; he had never stripped away those precious intervals of recovery.

Yet now, Liu Pan could feel no such mercy. The sheer power of the lightning terrified him. He could sense that the tribulation he was enduring was far more monstrous than anything he had written for the protagonist, Liu Kuang.

The Heavenly Dao seemed intent on leaving him no way out...

Why?

The origin core in his dantian spun frantically. With a raise of his hand, he unleashed another near-solid sword light to meet the descending lightning.

*Boom!*

The violent blast shook the heavens.

This time, his sword qi failed to halt the lightning. A split second after shattering the sword light, the silver bolt slammed directly into his body.

He gasped in agony as the silver current shredded his clothes and tore bloody gashes across his flesh.

Almost instantly, he activated the *Mystic Ice Art*. Ice-attribute origin energy surged through his meridians, neutralizing the wild, destructive electrical currents inside him while numbing the excruciating pain.

Without a single moment of respite after the second strike, the third bolt tore through the clouds and plunged down.

His eyes shot with blood, Liu Pan drove his core to spin even faster. He recalled the origin energy that was numbing his pain and channeled every drop of it into his sword.

*Boom!*

Another near-solid sword light collided with the lightning. Once again, the sword light shattered, and the wild lightning crashed onto him.

The colossal impact sent him crashing to the ground, which sank several inches beneath him. As the wild electricity coursed through him, more wounds ripped open. In the blink of an eye, he was drenched in his own blood.

As his body convulsed uncontrollably, despair gripped him. He had never imagined his own tribulation would be this horrific. He knew with absolute certainty that he no longer had the strength to survive a fourth strike.

Yet, just as he braced himself for death, the churning clouds above did not release the fourth bolt.

*What’s happening?* Though bewildered, he did not waste time wondering. He pushed the *Mystic Ice Art* to its absolute limit. Within moments, a thin layer of frost coated his skin.

The moment the residual electricity was purged from his body, he forced himself up despite the agony and grabbed the medicinal pills he had set aside to assist with his tribulation.

He felt a sudden wave of gratitude that he had taken the time to learn alchemy before attempting this breakthrough. Otherwise, he would have had no choice but to lie there and await his doom.

He swallowed several pills in a frenzy and stuffed the remaining ones into his mouth, keeping them ready under his tongue.

As the medicinal energy surged through him, he did not dare waste time meditating. Grabbing his fallen sword, he turned his gaze back to the heavens.

His origin core spun furiously. He had no idea when the fourth bolt would strike, but now that he had been granted this brief respite to prepare, he believed he could withstand it.

Only now did he have a moment to analyze the situation.

The pause after the third bolt meant the Heavenly Dao had not entirely closed off the path to survival. However, this window of respite was two-thirds shorter than a normal tribulation. Of course, this was assuming it would pause again after the sixth bolt.

But why was this happening? He could not understand.