The Immortal Sect's Desperate Charge

Elder Zhou Yifei led the vanguard of Immortal Sect disciples through the chaos, her Late Nascent Soul cultivation blazing like a beacon as she tried to maintain formation cohesion.

Behind her, three dozen of the sect's finest warriors struggled to keep pace, their pristine white robes already singed and torn from the ambient energy discharges.

"Hold formation!" she screamed over the howling winds. "Remember—we're here to extract Elder Feng, not engage whatever monster caused this!"

But even as the words left her lips, another wave of spatial distortions rippled outward from the mountain peak. Two of her disciples simply... ceased. Not vaporized, not torn apart—they stepped into a fold in space and were gone, their screams cut off mid-breath.

"Elder Zhou!" gasped Inner Disciple Liu Ming, his Core Formation aura flickering with terror. "The energy readings—they're off the charts! This isn't just Great Vehicle realm—this is something beyond classification!"

Elder Zhou's spiritual sense probed ahead, trying to penetrate the swirling maelstrom of divine qi. What she found made her blood freeze.

"Four signatures," she whispered, her face going pale. "One massive presence... and three others. Familiar ones."

Her heart clenched as recognition dawned. "Feng... Elder Feng Lianhua is up there."

The Azure Dragon Sect's Aerial Assault

From the eastern approach, Sect Master Ling Haoran led his sect's legendary aerial cavalry in a desperate flanking maneuver. Their flying swords cut through the storm-dark sky like falling stars, but the closer they got to the epicenter, the more apparent their insignificance became.

"Sect Master!" called out Elder Wang Xuefeng, his voice barely audible over the cosmic thunder. "The spatial integrity is collapsing! We can't maintain sword flight much longer!"

Even as he spoke, one of their Peak Core Formation elders lost control of his flying sword, the spiritual construct simply dissolving as the ambient energy overwhelmed its formation arrays. The man plummeted toward the earth with a scream that was lost in the chaos.

Sect Master Ling's eyes were fixed on the peak ahead, where four figures stood silhouetted against the golden pillar of ascension light. "Is that...? No, it can't be."

But there was no mistaking the distinctive ice-blue aura, even at this distance.

"Elder Feng Lianhua," he breathed. "But she's supposed to be with the research expedition. What is she doing with whoever is causing this tribulation?"

The Blood Moon Valley's Corruption

From the shadow-shrouded south, Patriarch Xue Wuji's demonic legions poured forth like a tide of nightmares. But even their corrupted forms, enhanced beyond mortal limitations, were being shredded by the pure yang energy radiating from the mountain.

"Master!" shrieked his lieutenant, her rotting flesh literally steaming as purifying light washed over them. "The energy—it's burning away our corruption! We can't get closer!"

Patriarch Xue's ancient eyes blazed with frustrated hunger as he watched his carefully cultivated forces being cleansed against their will.

Several of his blood-sworn servants were actually weeping with joy as their demonic transformations were stripped away, revealing the tortured humans they'd once been.

"What kind of monster radiates pure yang energy of this intensity?" he snarled, black qi flaring around him as he fought to maintain his own corrupt form. "This isn't ascension—this is cosmic purification!"

Elder Zhou Yifei's formation finally crested the ridge, and what she saw made her cultivated composure shatter completely.

There, standing calmly on the peak as cosmic forces raged around them, were four figures that defied all reason.

And at the center—

"ELDER FENG!" she screamed, her voice carrying across the battlefield.

The ice-blue figure turned at the sound, and Elder Zhou's world tilted on its axis. This was indeed Feng Lianhua, but... changed.

Enhanced. Her aura blazed with Soul Formation power that dwarfed Zhou's own cultivation, and her pale features held a serenity that spoke of absolute confidence.

But it was the man standing beside her that made Zhou's breath catch in her throat.

Tall, perfectly proportioned, radiating power that made the air itself sing with harmonics—and somehow familiar.

The way he held himself, the casual authority in his posture, the golden light that seemed to emanate from his very presence...

"Impossible," Zhou whispered. "That face... but he should be dead. The Emperor... Emperor Zhao Tianlong died weeks ago!"

SSSSRNCHHH!

Another wave of tribulation lightning crashed down, this one close enough to flash-fry a dozen fleeing disciples. In the aftermath, Elder Zhou found herself and her remaining followers thrown to their knees, their formations shattered, their qi reserves nearly depleted.

"Senior!" she gasped, using the last of her strength to project her voice toward the peak. "Senior Feng! Please—help us!"

Her remaining disciples took up the cry, their voices cracking with desperation:

"Elder Feng! We're from your sect!"

"Please, Senior—we don't understand what's happening!"

"The tribulation—it's beyond our comprehension! We need guidance!"

On the peak, they could see the four figures clearly now. Three women—one bronze-skinned and athletic, one pale and curvy, and Elder Feng herself, somehow transformed into a goddess of ice and beauty. And the man...

"He caused this," whispered Inner Disciple Liu Ming, blood streaming from his mouth as another energy wave nearly liquefied his organs. "Senior... that man... he's the source of the tribulation. But the power levels... how is he not being destroyed by Heaven's judgment?"

Elder Zhou stared up at the impossible scene, watching as Emperor Zhao Tianlong—somehow alive, somehow ascended to heights that shouldn't exist—casually gestured at the raging sky as if discussing the weather.

"Senior Feng!" she screamed one last time, pouring everything she had left into the cry. "Please! If you can hear us—we're dying down here! The tribulation energies—they're too strong! We need shelter! We need—"

Her words were cut off as another spatial rift opened directly beneath her formation. Half her remaining disciples simply vanished into the void, their terror-filled screams dopplering away into dimensional nothingness.

From his vantage point on the peak, Tianlong watched the chaos below with detached amusement.

The various sect forces looked like insects scurrying before a storm, their formations breaking apart as Heaven's preliminary judgment continued its work.

"Husband," Mei said softly, her vines twitching with nervous energy, "some of them are calling for Feng. They seem to recognize her."

Feng's pale blue eyes had found the remnants of Elder Zhou's formation, and for a moment, her expression flickered with something that might have been sympathy.

"Zhou Yifei," she murmured. "Always too stubborn for her own good."

Yue's archer instincts were cataloging the battlefield with professional interest. "The organized formations are breaking down. In another few minutes, it'll just be every cultivator for themselves."

Tianlong nodded absently, his attention focused on the gathering storm above.

The real tribulation was beginning to coalesce—not the random energy discharges that had been clearing the area, but the focused judgment of Heaven itself.

"They want shelter," he said conversationally, watching another group of would-be heroes get erased by stray lightning. "Yet they came here in greed for power."

He looked down at the struggling cultivators, at Elder Zhou's desperate attempts to maintain some kind of order, at the thousands of others fleeing in panic or charging to their deaths.

His lips curved into a smile that held no warmth whatsoever.

"Yue, tell me, if I were to go there and take everything on me, what do you think these people would do?" His question was directed towards his sharpest wife.

Though he could have asked Feng Lianhua, he wanted to use her mouth for something else rather than talk.

"They will wait until you are most vulnerable and then attack you." Yue's answer was simple and straightforward, given that everyone knew how these cultivators have a crab mentality—not just them but every human.

So if they could not do it, then they would make sure the one climbing up falls down.

"Then the answer is simple." Tianlong was using those people as a shield to clear the worms, adding, "Let them burn."

As if triggered by his words, the storm above reached critical mass.

The black clouds began to swirl in perfect geometric patterns, forming a spiral of divine wrath that stretched beyond the horizon. At its center, something vast and terrible was taking shape—not lightning, but pure judgment given form.

The surviving cultivators on the battlefield looked up in growing horror as they realized the truth: everything that had happened so far had been just the warm-up.

The real tribulation was about to begin.

And they were all still here.

"Heaven help us," Elder Zhou whispered, watching as the eye of the cosmic storm fixed its attention on the mountain peak. "What have we stumbled into?"

Above them, Tianlong spread his arms wide, welcoming the coming judgment with a grin that promised violence.

"Now," he said to his wives, his voice carrying impossible distances on winds that shouldn't exist, resonating throughout the air as he moved, his energy shot out. "...that the bugs are dead..."

SCRNRNCH!

A sharp lightning bolt struck his body directly. Dust filled the place while he moved, only for the mountain behind him to be destroyed, clearly showing how, due to reaching the Vehicle Realm and gaining control over dimension, he redirected the lightning from one space to the other, passing through his body.

Clearly, the cultivators, still remaining just like mosquitoes flying here and there on their swords, could only see the terror, the true power of the one possessing the Apitum strength within the mortal realm.

"Husband, all lightning is redirecting towards—" Before Feng could explain how the lightning was hurling towards them, given how by activating his energy it became far denser for the lightning to target him instead of the other cultivators holding the key.

As hundreds, even dozens of lightning strikes started to sort towards him, the ground beneath was burning, stone melting, heat radiating, yet everything was being deflected.

'System, activate the Harem Harmony.'

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