Chapter 319.1: Weathering the Tribulation (1/2)

With his Spectral Eye, Lu Yun could clearly discern wisps of black smoke coalescing over the three Tribulation Surrogate Pills. Despite their transient nature, the smoke didn’t dissipate after forming.

It seemed to contain the energy of death, but there was also something else in it he couldn’t put his finger on, as if… one would be plagued by misfortune if the smoke clung to them.

Like raindrops, endless lightning bolts mercilessly struck the pills. A tiny part of the black smoke scattered with each rumble of thunder.

“A Tribulation Surrogate Pill is both a pill to weather tribulations and to summon them!” Lu Yun’s brows furrowed tightly. He now understood why Qi Hai had refused to refine the pills a second time.

Even though one could weather an immediate tribulation with the pill, one couldn’t avoid the tribulation that came with the pills themselves.

The pills were simply unable to endure such dreadful lightning strikes via their own virtues. Before the lightning could disperse the smoke that represented tribulations, the pills themselves would be destroyed.

In the distant past, Qi Hai had likely used a special method to block the thunder and lightning, keeping the pills intact. Even so, the three celestial emperors who’d taken the pills probably hadn’t escaped their preordained fate in the end.

“Unless…” realization struck Lu Yun, “unless someone can take the pills’ place and bear the brunt of the tribulation for them!”

In a daze, he suddenly recalled that there’d been someone else after Qi Hai who’d managed to refine a Tribulation Surrogate Pill. But that pill had ultimately bitten the refiner in the rear… as well as caused carnage throughout the immortal world.

“If someone uses a life to block the pill tribulation, then the pill will no longer be a Tribulation Surrogate Pill, but a ‘Tribulation Traversing Pill’.” Lost in thought, Lu Yun considered the increasingly intense tribulation in the sky.

……

“A pill tribulation! Someone’s refining a heaven-defying pill!” Xue Daozi’s jaw dropped almost clear to the ground.

As a peak powerhouse who’d plucked nine aether dao fruits, he was extremely perceptive and had immediately realized what the tribulation clouds racing past represented.

A pill tribulation!

In the world of immortals, pills that could cause such a phenomenon were as rare as hen’s teeth. The more intense the tribulation, the more earth-shattering the pill.

Lu Yun had once shocked the world by refining the Heaven Descent Pill in Xiankan and summoning a lightning tribulation, so much so that he was honored as the greatest pill master below the dao immortal realm.

But he’d then disappeared for fifteen months afterward. Adding the machinations of some folks to that, it meant the furor had gradually died down and Lu Yun’s influence was thereupon forgotten.

By the time he’d reappeared, it’d been in the capacity as guardian of the path of cultivation. In comparison, being the foremost pill master below the dao immortal realm seemed insignificant. After all, the true pill refining powerhouses of the world were all mighty dao immortals.

Upon realizing the nature of the tribulation that’d disrupted his enlightenment, Xue Daozi’s previous resentment vanished into thin air, replaced by irrepressible greed.

“Four hundred eighty million bolts of lightning have converged above the tribulation clouds…. It’s at the level of a Heaven Descent Pill, at least!” Agog, his figure turned incorporeal as he traveled through the void and slowly approached a fortress ship, one flamboyant to the point of cockiness.