The first bolt of tribulation lightning tore through the volcanic ceiling with the fury of an enraged dragon. Crimson-purple heavenly fire illuminated the shadowy cavern in blinding brilliance, crashing directly into the center of the sealing array where Zhang Hao sat cross-legged.
BOOM!
The cavern floor fractured into spiderweb crevices. The violent shockwave hurled dust and scorched pebbles outward, battering Li An’s robes where she stood guarded at the fissure entrance.
Inside the smoke, Zhang Hao let out a stifled grunt. The lightning struck his raised shoulders, scorching his outer garments and searing into his flesh. But instead of faltering, his high-grade fire spiritual roots flared with desperate defiance. The Golden Core Formation Pill churning within his belly responded instantly; its ferocious demon flame absorbed the violent heavenly thunder, while the soothing, peerless yin essence provided by Li An wrapped around his dantian, preventing his meridians from rupturing under the catastrophic heat.
"Hold on, Senior Brother!" Li An murmured under her breath, her knuckles white around the blunt black iron rod.
She had no time to look back.
"There! The cavern behind the volcanic fissure!" Chen Wu’s roar sliced through the howling wind outside. "The heavenly tribulation is striking into that crevice! Zhang Hao is inside!"
Nine figures descended upon the narrow gorge before the cavern like hungry vultures.
Chen Wu led the charge, his broadsword drawn and gleaming with lethal intent. Flanking him were the two female disciples from the Punishment Peak, their hands holding glowing black-iron chains inscribed with crimson restriction runes, and the two remaining vanguard swordsmen from the Sword Peak. Behind them, the four Formation Peak disciples—two young men and two young women—quickly fanned out, unrolling four gleaming jade banners to construct a sealing perimeter.
"Form the Four Quadrants Sealing Array!" commanded Junior Sister Liu from the Formation Peak, her hands rapidly weaving mudras. "Lock the ambient spiritual energy so neither of them can draw upon the surroundings!"
"Don't let Zhang Hao consolidate the first strike!" shouted Senior Sister Ning, the lead enforcer from the Punishment Peak, her cold, sharp-featured face twisted in malice. "Junior Sister Han, prepare the soul-locking chains! Slaughter the cripple guarding the entrance first!"
Li An stepped forward into the narrow mouth of the crevice, her posture steady despite the tremors running through her legs. The gorge before her was barely wide enough for three people to stand together—a natural choke point that limited their numerical superiority.
"Junior Sister Li," Chen Wu sneered, halting ten paces away as his peak-stage Foundation Establishment aura surged forward like a crushing wave. "You're already half-dead. Your left arm is broken, your blood essence is drained, and you wield a scrap of useless forged iron. Step aside, hand over Zhang Hao, and perhaps we will leave your corpse intact!"
Li An didn't waste her breath on words. Her dark eyes, calm and ancient beneath the plain exterior of her mortal disguise, assessed every angle, every shadow, and every gust of wind.
With a flick of her slender right wrist, she retrieved five yellow talismans from her sleeve and slapped them against the stone walls of the gorge.
"Earth Wall Formation, ignite. Fog of Mist, bloom!"
Hiss!
Thick, impenetrable white vapor erupted across the narrow defile, instantly blinding the attackers. Simultaneously, three jagged stone slabs thrust upward from the volcanic bedrock, walling off the four Formation Peak disciples from providing direct ranged support.
"Tricks of a desperate rat!" Chen Wu bellowed. "Cut through!"
Sword beams and fiery arcs slashed through the fog, shattering the first stone wall into flying shrapnel.
Two Sword Peak disciples lunged through the breach, their twin blades whistling toward Li An’s neck and torso in a coordinated pincer attack.
In her past life as Li Feng, possessing a robust male frame and domineering yang roots, he would have met such a strike with a thunderous head-on parry, relying on raw physical weight and explosive aura to overpower his foes. But now, dwelling within the supple, delicate vessel of Wu Meng Ting, brute force was an impossible foolishness.
Instead, Li An’s body flowed like water.
Activating the Mystic Yin Sword Art-Silvery Moonlight Step, she sank into a low, fluid crouch. Her slender waist curved with astonishing, effortless flexibility, bending beneath the horizontal arc of the first blade by a mere hair's breadth. The motion was breathtakingly graceful—her soft hips shifted her center of gravity instantly, carrying her weightless frame gliding along the damp cavern floor.
Clang!
Li An raised the blunt black iron rod with her single working arm. Though the weapon possessed no edge, no hilt, and no sharp tip, the cold yin qi flowing from her dantian wrapped around the iron core like razor-thin frost. She struck the side of the incoming blade with meticulous precision—Mystic Yin Sword Art: Veil of Frost.
The deflection was gentle yet absolute. The redirected sword crashed directly into the chest of the second attacker.
"What?!" the disciple gasped as his companion's blade pierced his shoulder guard.
Before they could recover, Li An’s right foot kicked off the wall. Her body rotated in mid-air with serpentine elegance, the blunt tip of her iron rod driving forward in a piercing thrust—Frozen Moon Slash.
Crack!
The iron rod struck the disciple’s solar plexus with the accumulated weight of concentrated yin force, shattering his defensive aura and hurling him backward into the fog, coughing mouthfuls of blood.
BOOM!
Behind her, the second and third bolts of tribulation lightning crashed down in rapid succession. The mountain shuddered violently, and the air inside the cavern grew suffocatingly hot.
Deep within the chamber, Zhang Hao was bathed in blistering crimson arcs. The second strike tore open the flesh across his back, and the third struck his dantian directly.
"Arghhh!" Zhang Hao roared, his hands gripping his spear as veins bulged along his neck and forehead.
The pain was terrifying, threatening to shatter his spiritual roots into fragments. But at the exact moment his dantian seemed on the verge of collapsing, the dark red liquid Li An had blended into the pill released a radiant, crystalline vapor. It was astonishingly pure—cooler than snow, deeper than an abyssal spring, carrying an intoxicating life force that cradled his core.
This yin essence... Zhang Hao thought through the searing agony, his spirit shaking with awe. It isn't ordinary spiritual medicine. It possesses a primordial purity that rivals ancient heavenly herbs! How did Li An acquire such a treasure?
Under the dual baptism of heavenly thunder and peerless yin-yang fusion, an astonishing transformation occurred within his spiritual roots. The crimson fire flowing through his meridians began to shift, shedding its muddy impurities and taking on a dense, noble purple-gold hue.
His high-grade fire spiritual roots were burning away their mortal limitations, evolving straight into peak-grade fire spiritual roots!
Outside the cavern, the battle intensified to a frantic pitch.
"Useless trash!" Senior Sister Ning from the Punishment Peak snarled, seeing the two swordsmen repelled. "Junior Sister Han, bind her!"
Two heavy black-iron chains burst through the dissipating fog, rattling with vicious speed. The spiked chains were designed specifically to ensnare limbs and disrupt internal spiritual circulation.
Li An gritted her teeth. She pulled a handful of Gale and Flame Burst talismans from her pouch, hurling them into the air and detonating them simultaneously.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The explosion created a fiery curtain that deflected the first chain, but the second chain bypassed the flames, grazing past Li An’s left side. The jagged iron links scraped across her useless left shoulder and thigh, tearing through her robes and opening bloody gouges across her pale skin.
"Ugh!" A pained whimper escaped Li An’s lips.
The impact jarred her fractured arm, sending a sickening wave of agony tearing through her already-damaged meridians. Her breath hitched, her legs trembling beneath her. The blood she had lost over the past three days left her head spinning, and the sheer exertion was draining her remaining stamina at a terrifying speed.
I cannot hold them with brute strength, Li An thought, tasting copper on her tongue as fresh blood trickled from the corner of her lips. Every breath burns... my dantian is almost empty.
In her former life, Li Feng had been fiercely independent, trusting only his own blade, viewing reliance on others as a fatal weakness. Yet now, bleeding in the dust, a strange, profound change stirred in her chest. Looking back toward the blazing lightning within the cavern, she felt an intense, desperate need to protect the man inside. It was not merely the cold calculation of an immortal seeking an escape route; it was an instinctive, tender warmth that made her heart ache with fierce devotion.
Zi Qing’s teasing words echoed faintly in her mind—You care for Senior Brother Zhang far more than you admit.
Perhaps... she was right, Li An thought, a bittersweet smile touching her pale face before vanishing behind cold resolve.
"Die, you stubborn bitch!"
Chen Wu surged through the smoke, his broadsword radiating blazing peak-stage Foundation Establishment sword light. Behind him, the four Formation Peak disciples had finally aligned their jade banners, suppressing the ambient spiritual qi and locking Li An’s movements within a heavy, invisible quagmire.
Li An found her footing pinned by the formation’s gravitational weight. With her useless left arm dangling limp and blood soaking her lower robes, evasion was no longer possible.
She took a deep breath, drawing upon the absolute last vestige of her mid-grade yin spiritual energy.
Mystic Yin Sword Art: Moonlit Ripple!
Instead of retreating, she stepped directly toward Chen Wu’s sweeping blade. Her supple torso twisted with impossible precision, the curve of her waist brushing against the glowing aura of his weapon as she used the blunt black iron rod to catch the broadsword’s flat spine.
Screeech!
Sparks erupted as the iron rod guided Chen Wu’s deadly momentum downward into the rocky earth.
Chen Wu’s eyes widened in disbelief. "How can your sword technique be this refined?!"
Before he could pull back, Li An snapped her wrist, driving the blunt pommel of the rod into his collarbone.
Crack!
Chen Wu staggered back, howling in fury as his bone fractured. But the remaining Sword Peak disciple and Senior Sister Ning seized the opening, lunging from her blind spot.
A sword beam slashed across Li An’s back, shredding her garments and painting the stone behind her in crimson.
"Ah—!"
Li An fell to one knee, the blunt iron rod planted against the ground to keep herself from collapsing. Her vision blurred, dark spots swimming before her eyes. Her robes were drenched in her own blood, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Behind her, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh tribulation bolts descended in a relentless storm of heavenly wrath. The entire cavern shook as if the mountain itself were tearing in half.
Inside, Zhang Hao’s flesh was scorched black, but beneath the charred skin, his bones shone like pure white jade, and his blood flowed like molten gold. His spear hummed with an invincible, soaring will. The seventh lightning bolt struck his chest, but his newly evolved peak-grade fire spiritual roots swallowed the heavenly fire whole, feeding the radiant golden sphere spinning within his dantian.
The core had already formed seven luminous rings of pure golden light.
And then, high above the torn heavens, the clouds contracted into a single, terrifying spiral.
The eighth strike—the final, ultimate judgment of the Heavenly Dao.
CRACK-BOOOOOOM!
A dragon of crimson-gold lightning descended like a falling pillar of heaven, plunging straight down into the mountain fissure!
Zhang Hao stood upright, his eyes snapping open. Two beams of blazing purple-gold fire shot from his pupils.
"Break for me!" he roared, thrusting his crimson spear straight into the jaws of the falling lightning dragon.
KABOOM!
The heavenly thunder exploded into blinding shards of golden light, flooding every corner of the cavern. In the center of the radiant tempest, the golden sphere inside his dantian condensed into absolute perfection. Eight brilliant, resplendent spirit rings locked into place around its circumference, pulsing with terrifying, majestic authority!
An eighth-grade Golden Core!
Outside the cavern mouth, Chen Wu gripped his broken collarbone, his face contorted in frantic terror. "The tribulation is ending! Kill her now! Breach the cavern before he stabilizes!"
"Die!" Senior Sister Ning screamed, hurling her soul-locking chain straight toward Li An’s throat while Chen Wu gathered all his remaining spiritual energy into a decapitating, crimson sword slash.
Li An knelt in the dirt, her body trembling with exhaustion. She raised the blunt black iron rod with her bloodstained right hand, preparing to burn her very life essence to block the blow.
I held them... she thought softly, her eyes closing as the lethal sword light filled her vision. Zhang Hao... live.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The cavern wall behind Li An did not simply open—it disintegrated in an apocalyptic tidal wave of golden-purple fire.
A sound like the shattering of a mountain resonated across the gorge as a streak of blazing crimson light tore through the dust.
CLANGGGGG!
A heavy crimson spear descended from the heavens like a meteor, smashing directly into Chen Wu’s broadsword and Senior Sister Ning’s iron chains.
The immense, suffocating pressure of a Golden Core powerhouse erupted outward in an instantaneous shockwave. Chen Wu’s broadsword shattered into a hundred flying iron shards, and the soul-locking chains were snapped into twisted fragments. Both Chen Wu and Senior Sister Ning were hurled backward through the air, crashing violently against the gorge walls and spraying mouthfuls of blood.
The dust settled in an instant.
Standing tall and broad-shouldered directly in front of the fallen, bleeding Li An was Zhang Hao.
His torn robes billowed in the scorching wind, revealing skin that radiated a dense, golden-purple luster. His spear rested firmly in his right hand, its blade dancing with terrifying arcs of heavenly lightning and liquid flame. The overwhelming, majestic aura of an eighth-grade Golden Core cultivator pressed down upon the nine traitors like the weight of an entire mountain range, suffocating their breath and pinning them to the earth.
Zhang Hao lowered his spear slightly, his towering figure completely shielding the injured woman behind him.
He did not look back at the enemies. His gaze shifted downward over his shoulder, his eyes softening with unbearable heartache and fury as he looked upon Li An’s battered, bloodstained form.
"Rest now, Junior Sister," Zhang Hao’s voice was deep, steady, and vibrating with lethal, protective wrath. "Your Senior Brother is here."