"Catch him!" Han Xuhan shouted as he threw Shangguang Ce's body upwards, the guy still in his meditating pose, unaware of everything.
His enhanced strength was finally put to use, as even without a proper foothold on the ground due to the rising seawater, he managed to throw the stocky youth twice his size high enough for Zhanxian to catch him by wrapping his skeletal feet around Shangguang Ce's midsection gently.
Little Zhe let out a hiss of discomfort, its weak skeleton not quite capable of bearing the weight of Zhanxian and Shangguang Ce.
Tun Shi Tian, just below Zhanxian in terms of cultivation, let out a screech of effort and pulled up little Zhe with a single, mighty tug, taking up along with the snake Zhanxian and Shangguang Ce.
Han Xuhan was left at the bottom, almost swimming to keep his head above water. It was not a difficult feat in itself, as seawater could hardly drown anyone capable of flailing their limbs energetically. What posed the real problem were the surges coming from behind, crashing against the first layer of walls and spilling in where he was struggling. They were constantly getting stronger, higher, and faster. The first example of the trials he had faced half an hour ago was a gentle prank compared to this one. Perhaps the scale of the disasters depended on the progression of each sect...?
"Master! Catch!"
Han Xuhan quickly committed that realization to memory as he took on a new surge hitting his head by anchoring himself to the wall using Tun Shi Tian's tail.
"Hey, little Zhe! Are your joints alright? Oi, little Tian, give his body a checkup!" He yelled amidst the raging flood.
"I'm okay, papa!" Little Zhe answered.
Tun Shi Tian had the best sight among them, a natural gift of predatory birds. He quickly observed the snake's skeleton from top to bottom and shouted, "Just a few small cracks in one joint in the middle of the spine. You're much lighter than that dead guy anyway. Little Zhe can take it."
"Okay, pull me- wait, what do you mean 'dead guy'? He's still alive. Why would I bother risking my life for him if he's dead?" Han Xuhan said, confused.
"Uh, I'm pretty sure he's dead." Zhanxian intervened in the conversation, adding, "he had no pulse or heartbeat, and his body was far colder than yours is, even though you've spent more time in the water than him."
Han Xuhan sucked in a sharp breath and took a second look at the tribulation clouds above to confirm his rising speculation. Since the clouds hadn't dispersed, Shangguang Ce was definitely alive.
Ghost cultivators emulated dead people to a degree so extreme? What cultivation technique did these people practice? It seemed so interesting!
As he was pulled up on top of the second layer of the walls, Han Xuhan got a good look at the situation outside.
The sky above the Sunrider Sect was like cracked glass. Through the numerous cracks, furious sprays of water spilled onto the floating island endlessly.
The accumulating water was constantly surging up against the walls while a small amount continued to ebb away at the borders of the island, falling straight down to the sea.
However, a quick observation was enough to tell that the rate of accumulation was far greater than the rate of leakage due to the plate-like layout of the island, depicting a grim scenario if this situation continued.
"Well, shit. This can't get any worse," he muttered as soon as he got his first look at the maze he was about to enter.
Not only did the walls become higher and higher per layer, the evil-looking instruments occupying them increased in number and size as well.
Neither the vertical nor the horizontal gap between every two walls was a distance he could cross by leaping....probably. Han Xuhan was not sure how far he could really jump in his current state. However, he did not want to take the risk and find out the hard way that the answer to his doubt was negative. The wall he was standing on was seven meters tall. A fall from that height wouldn't harm him. But the next wall was at least 12 meters high. He would definitely not be able to climb that from the ground. He would be trapped the moment he fell inside the gaps between the layers of walls, because these spaces were gradually being filled with water too.
Han Xuhan found himself at an impasse. He couldn't move forward, he couldn't return, and he had no time to stand still and strategize either.
Right at that moment, a silent flash of lightning blinded him. The stench of charred chicken meat wafted into his nose gently. As his sight recovered, Han Xuhan cast a frigid look at the 'dead weight' of his team.
All the hair on top of Shangguang Ce's head had been melted. Part of his face dripped with a fluid of sickening implications. The bones protecting the frontal lobe of his brain were visible in some places.
Shangguang Ce had been rendered unrecognizable with a single strike of the tribulation lightning.
"I just had to jinx myself..." Han Xuhan shook his head and quickly went over his knowledge of tribulation lightnings.
Unless two cultivators pursued the same dao down to the smallest details, one's tribulation would generally not target the other unless the latter helped him survive the tribulation. As to what the extent of 'help' was, that was too ambiguous to determine. History stated that the definition of 'help' deemed improper by the heavenly authority was sort of arbitrary.
As long as he avoided the splash zone and didn't provide Shangguang Ce with any sort of healing methods or shields to take on more lightning strikes, he'd probably not be targe-
"Watch ou-!"
A second bolt fell from the sky, this one slightly greater than the first. However, just before striking Shangguang Ce, a small fragment of the bolt separated from its path and struck Han Xuhan in the back.
Tun Shi Tian's late warning did not work in his favor. Han Xuhan lost his footing from the shock and nearly fell down from the top of the wall. At the last second, Zhanxian caught him by a sleeve and tugged his body down to a sitting position.
"OH MY FUCKING GOOODDD! THAT HURT! AHHHHHH!"
With tears of pain streaming down his face, Han Xuhan almost tore off his clothes and tried to leap into the rising volume of water behind them, only to be held back by Zhanxian and little Zhe. Neither had the strength to actually restrain him. But in his current state, he could barely see or hear things, let alone use all of his strength.
"Master, you can't swim right now," Zhanxian growled. "Tun Shi Tian, splash water at him."
Tun Shi Tian instantly flew a meter down the wall where the rising water had already reached. Swooping on the surface of the water, the bird flapped its wings at a rapid speed, hosing Xuhan's lowered body with waterdrops.
It brought nothing but discomfort. The burning sensation was bone-deep, not in the least affected by any rudimentary first-aid.
Thankfully, it had been but a tiny portion of the actual lightning strike. Han Xuhan recovered his bearings half a minute later and staggered back to his feet, his thoughts slightly sluggish.
Shangguang Ce was still unconscious. His face had been completely disfigured at this point. Han Xuhan knew a thing or two about major breakthroughs. But none of those descriptions matched with a tribulation this vicious. Was it really the result of an accidentally induced enlightenment?
Something was off here.
Regardless, he couldn't exactly investigate what the issue was. The water level was just half a meter below them now. Waves surpassing his line of sight had already appeared at the periphery of the island. It was time to do something, anything.
Han Xuhan quickly walked toward one of the defensive instruments on the top of the wall, just thirty meters away from where they had been standing.
"Zhanxian, little Tian, carry him and follow me," he ordered as his pace quickened.
"Must we do that? You survived the lightning strike because you're at the fourth layer, unlike the two of us who are still stuck at the first layer. If we get close to him, it's game over for us the moment the next strike falls," Zhanxian said, bluntly refusing his order.
Han Xuhan did not find an answer to Zhanxian's question. Keeping silent, he approached the machine that resembled a blender blade with three giant, scalpel-thin metal protrusions, each of them seven feet long.
The central component of the machine was a two-segmented circular disk where the root of the three metal blades was inserted within the gap between the segments. Han Xuhan examined it carefully. Soon enough, he found a small mechanism that powered the rotator– a tiny qi converter surrounded by a bluish barrier of light.
Han Xuhan pulled out a thin thread of qi from his body and inserted it into the barrier, hoping to elicit a reaction from the converter, an action he had done several times while using his precious cultivation gadgets back in the sect.
This time, however, it did not succeed. Rather, a shock coursed through his meridians as if it was a backlash from the attempt. The next second, an even more stunning development took place. A mechanical voice spoke from within the device.
"Unauthorized qi signature detected. Performing elimination sequence 4.2.7 in five, four, three..."
Stupefied, Han Xuhan quickly pulled his arm back and punched down on the center of the upper disk with maximum force.
"Alien threat confirmed. Initiating 'Operation Neutralization'."
This time, there was no countdown, not that Han Xuhan had expected that to begin with. He had already started running away at his top speed, closer to his minion party than the scarily advanced device.
But as it turned out, he had underestimated the terror of the device. By the time he had reached Shangguang Ce's 'corpse', a strange suction force began to emanate from the device.
Han Xuhan grabbed the guy just before his feet were lifted off the ground.
"I can't fly, AAAHHHH!"
"Aaahh! Papa, I'm flying! "
"What is this?!"
His minions were not spared either. All three of them zipped through the air helplessly toward the metal blades, which had just started rotating with a terrifying acceleration rate.
This was a pure and absolute killing machine!
Hunched over on the wall by purely relying on the slippery grip he had gotten on a rough corner, Han Xuhan saw death looming over his shoulders for him and his minions. And that very mental image seemed to finally shock his brain into operating at full speed properly.
He canceled the summoning cycle of the skeletal monarch technique, making the minions disappear right before the whirling blades could shred them. Two and a half seconds later, Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian leaped out from his back once more. But this time, Han Xuhan kicked them away fiercely, helping them barely evade the scope of the suction force. Tun Shi Tian gripped Zhanxian by a bone and screeched from the effort it took for him to fly against the device's force field.
"UGGGHHH!" An inhumane scream was heard as the bird managed to reach beyond the machine's force field.
Finally free from the suction, the two minions noticed Xuhan's wild gestures. Tun Shi Tian carried Zhanxian and flew toward the third wall. Like the second wall, this one also contained similar-looking shredding machines.
"Zhanxian! Use your qi to attack the blue barrier inside!" Han Xuhan shouted.
Zhanxian started examining the device, trying to carry out his orders. Meanwhile, Xuhan realized that the water level had risen to seven meters already, now touching his feet. A surge hit him almost instantly, leading to the slip of his flimsy grip.
Han Xuhan tightened his fist around Shangguang Ce's collar and embraced the guy heroically. Then he stood up straight for a second with all of his might, gritting his teeth through the suction force coming from the first active device.
To buy a couple more seconds, he had decided to go with the flow....literally. A larger wave he had seen coming hit his body and pushed him down in the gap between the second and third layers of the walls. Before he could fall down with Shangguang Ce, the suction force of the shredder device doubled down and pulled their bodies up towards it again, their speed somewhat neutralized by the fierce waves of water. But before the two of them could hurtle toward their choppy deaths, a third lightning strike fell from the sky and hit Shangguang Ce with perfect accuracy. Because Han Xuhan had not loosened his grip on the guy, his smaller body was mostly shielded from the majority of the burns. A portion of it still fell on his shoulders, nearly numbing his body once more. Han Xuhan screeched tearfully.
"Watch out! There is a fourth bolt coming!" Tun Shi Tian's yell made his bones go cold.
Death...seemed unavoidable today.
"Catch him!" Han Xuhan shouted as he threw Shangguang Ce's body upwards, the guy still in his meditating pose, unaware of everything.
His enhanced strength was finally put to use, as even without a proper foothold on the ground due to the rising seawater, he managed to throw the stocky youth twice his size high enough for Zhanxian to catch him by wrapping his skeletal feet around Shangguang Ce's midsection gently.
Little Zhe let out a hiss of discomfort, its weak skeleton not quite capable of bearing the weight of Zhanxian and Shangguang Ce.
Tun Shi Tian, just below Zhanxian in terms of cultivation, let out a screech of effort and pulled up little Zhe with a single, mighty tug, taking up along with the snake Zhanxian and Shangguang Ce.
Han Xuhan was left at the bottom, almost swimming to keep his head above water. It was not a difficult feat in itself, as seawater could hardly drown anyone capable of flailing their limbs energetically. What posed the real problem were the surges coming from behind, crashing against the first layer of walls and spilling in where he was struggling. They were constantly getting stronger, higher, and faster. The first example of the trials he had faced half an hour ago was a gentle prank compared to this one. Perhaps the scale of the disasters depended on the progression of each sect...?
"Master! Catch!"
Han Xuhan quickly committed that realization to memory as he took on a new surge hitting his head by anchoring himself to the wall using Tun Shi Tian's tail.
"Hey, little Zhe! Are your joints alright? Oi, little Tian, give his body a checkup!" He yelled amidst the raging flood.
"I'm okay, papa!" Little Zhe answered.
Tun Shi Tian had the best sight among them, a natural gift of predatory birds. He quickly observed the snake's skeleton from top to bottom and shouted, "Just a few small cracks in one joint in the middle of the spine. You're much lighter than that dead guy anyway. Little Zhe can take it."
"Okay, pull me- wait, what do you mean 'dead guy'? He's still alive. Why would I bother risking my life for him if he's dead?" Han Xuhan said, confused.
"Uh, I'm pretty sure he's dead." Zhanxian intervened in the conversation, adding, "he had no pulse or heartbeat, and his body was far colder than yours is, even though you've spent more time in the water than him."
Han Xuhan sucked in a sharp breath and took a second look at the tribulation clouds above to confirm his rising speculation. Since the clouds hadn't dispersed, Shangguang Ce was definitely alive.
Ghost cultivators emulated dead people to a degree so extreme? What cultivation technique did these people practice? It seemed so interesting!
As he was pulled up on top of the second layer of the walls, Han Xuhan got a good look at the situation outside.
The sky above the Sunrider Sect was like cracked glass. Through the numerous cracks, furious sprays of water spilled onto the floating island endlessly.
The accumulating water was constantly surging up against the walls while a small amount continued to ebb away at the borders of the island, falling straight down to the sea.
However, a quick observation was enough to tell that the rate of accumulation was far greater than the rate of leakage due to the plate-like layout of the island, depicting a grim scenario if this situation continued.
"Well, shit. This can't get any worse," he muttered as soon as he got his first look at the maze he was about to enter.
Not only did the walls become higher and higher per layer, the evil-looking instruments occupying them increased in number and size as well.
Neither the vertical nor the horizontal gap between every two walls was a distance he could cross by leaping....probably. Han Xuhan was not sure how far he could really jump in his current state. However, he did not want to take the risk and find out the hard way that the answer to his doubt was negative. The wall he was standing on was seven meters tall. A fall from that height wouldn't harm him. But the next wall was at least 12 meters high. He would definitely not be able to climb that from the ground. He would be trapped the moment he fell inside the gaps between the layers of walls, because these spaces were gradually being filled with water too.
Han Xuhan found himself at an impasse. He couldn't move forward, he couldn't return, and he had no time to stand still and strategize either.
Right at that moment, a silent flash of lightning blinded him. The stench of charred chicken meat wafted into his nose gently. As his sight recovered, Han Xuhan cast a frigid look at the 'dead weight' of his team.
All the hair on top of Shangguang Ce's head had been melted. Part of his face dripped with a fluid of sickening implications. The bones protecting the frontal lobe of his brain were visible in some places.
Shangguang Ce had been rendered unrecognizable with a single strike of the tribulation lightning.
"I just had to jinx myself..." Han Xuhan shook his head and quickly went over his knowledge of tribulation lightnings.
Unless two cultivators pursued the same dao down to the smallest details, one's tribulation would generally not target the other unless the latter helped him survive the tribulation. As to what the extent of 'help' was, that was too ambiguous to determine. History stated that the definition of 'help' deemed improper by the heavenly authority was sort of arbitrary.
As long as he avoided the splash zone and didn't provide Shangguang Ce with any sort of healing methods or shields to take on more lightning strikes, he'd probably not be targe-
"Watch ou-!"
A second bolt fell from the sky, this one slightly greater than the first. However, just before striking Shangguang Ce, a small fragment of the bolt separated from its path and struck Han Xuhan in the back.
Tun Shi Tian's late warning did not work in his favor. Han Xuhan lost his footing from the shock and nearly fell down from the top of the wall. At the last second, Zhanxian caught him by a sleeve and tugged his body down to a sitting position.
"OH MY FUCKING GOOODDD! THAT HURT! AHHHHHH!"
With tears of pain streaming down his face, Han Xuhan almost tore off his clothes and tried to leap into the rising volume of water behind them, only to be held back by Zhanxian and little Zhe. Neither had the strength to actually restrain him. But in his current state, he could barely see or hear things, let alone use all of his strength.
"Master, you can't swim right now," Zhanxian growled. "Tun Shi Tian, splash water at him."
Tun Shi Tian instantly flew a meter down the wall where the rising water had already reached. Swooping on the surface of the water, the bird flapped its wings at a rapid speed, hosing Xuhan's lowered body with waterdrops.
It brought nothing but discomfort. The burning sensation was bone-deep, not in the least affected by any rudimentary first-aid.
Thankfully, it had been but a tiny portion of the actual lightning strike. Han Xuhan recovered his bearings half a minute later and staggered back to his feet, his thoughts slightly sluggish.
Shangguang Ce was still unconscious. His face had been completely disfigured at this point. Han Xuhan knew a thing or two about major breakthroughs. But none of those descriptions matched with a tribulation this vicious. Was it really the result of an accidentally induced enlightenment?
Something was off here.
Regardless, he couldn't exactly investigate what the issue was. The water level was just half a meter below them now. Waves surpassing his line of sight had already appeared at the periphery of the island. It was time to do something, anything.
Han Xuhan quickly walked toward one of the defensive instruments on the top of the wall, just thirty meters away from where they had been standing.
"Zhanxian, little Tian, carry him and follow me," he ordered as his pace quickened.
"Must we do that? You survived the lightning strike because you're at the fourth layer, unlike the two of us who are still stuck at the first layer. If we get close to him, it's game over for us the moment the next strike falls," Zhanxian said, bluntly refusing his order.
Han Xuhan did not find an answer to Zhanxian's question. Keeping silent, he approached the machine that resembled a blender blade with three giant, scalpel-thin metal protrusions, each of them seven feet long.
The central component of the machine was a two-segmented circular disk where the root of the three metal blades was inserted within the gap between the segments. Han Xuhan examined it carefully. Soon enough, he found a small mechanism that powered the rotator– a tiny qi converter surrounded by a bluish barrier of light.
Han Xuhan pulled out a thin thread of qi from his body and inserted it into the barrier, hoping to elicit a reaction from the converter, an action he had done several times while using his precious cultivation gadgets back in the sect.
This time, however, it did not succeed. Rather, a shock coursed through his meridians as if it was a backlash from the attempt. The next second, an even more stunning development took place. A mechanical voice spoke from within the device.
"Unauthorized qi signature detected. Performing elimination sequence 4.2.7 in five, four, three..."
Stupefied, Han Xuhan quickly pulled his arm back and punched down on the center of the upper disk with maximum force.
"Alien threat confirmed. Initiating 'Operation Neutralization'."
This time, there was no countdown, not that Han Xuhan had expected that to begin with. He had already started running away at his top speed, closer to his minion party than the scarily advanced device.
But as it turned out, he had underestimated the terror of the device. By the time he had reached Shangguang Ce's 'corpse', a strange suction force began to emanate from the device.
Han Xuhan grabbed the guy just before his feet were lifted off the ground.
"I can't fly, AAAHHHH!"
"Aaahh! Papa, I'm flying! "
"What is this?!"
His minions were not spared either. All three of them zipped through the air helplessly toward the metal blades, which had just started rotating with a terrifying acceleration rate.
This was a pure and absolute killing machine!
Hunched over on the wall by purely relying on the slippery grip he had gotten on a rough corner, Han Xuhan saw death looming over his shoulders for him and his minions. And that very mental image seemed to finally shock his brain into operating at full speed properly.
He canceled the summoning cycle of the skeletal monarch technique, making the minions disappear right before the whirling blades could shred them. Two and a half seconds later, Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian leaped out from his back once more. But this time, Han Xuhan kicked them away fiercely, helping them barely evade the scope of the suction force. Tun Shi Tian gripped Zhanxian by a bone and screeched from the effort it took for him to fly against the device's force field.
"UGGGHHH!" An inhumane scream was heard as the bird managed to reach beyond the machine's force field.
Finally free from the suction, the two minions noticed Xuhan's wild gestures. Tun Shi Tian carried Zhanxian and flew toward the third wall. Like the second wall, this one also contained similar-looking shredding machines.
"Zhanxian! Use your qi to attack the blue barrier inside!" Han Xuhan shouted.
Zhanxian started examining the device, trying to carry out his orders. Meanwhile, Xuhan realized that the water level had risen to seven meters already, now touching his feet. A surge hit him almost instantly, leading to the slip of his flimsy grip.
Han Xuhan tightened his fist around Shangguang Ce's collar and embraced the guy heroically. Then he stood up straight for a second with all of his might, gritting his teeth through the suction force coming from the first active device.
To buy a couple more seconds, he had decided to go with the flow....literally. A larger wave he had seen coming hit his body and pushed him down in the gap between the second and third layers of the walls. Before he could fall down with Shangguang Ce, the suction force of the shredder device doubled down and pulled their bodies up towards it again, their speed somewhat neutralized by the fierce waves of water. But before the two of them could hurtle toward their choppy deaths, a third lightning strike fell from the sky and hit Shangguang Ce with perfect accuracy. Because Han Xuhan had not loosened his grip on the guy, his smaller body was mostly shielded from the majority of the burns. A portion of it still fell on his shoulders, nearly numbing his body once more. Han Xuhan screeched tearfully.
"Watch out! There is a fourth bolt coming!" Tun Shi Tian's yell made his bones go cold.
Death...seemed unavoidable today.
