"This was merely a lingering wish of my former master, one that could only be fulfilled after the master's ascension." The Crab Daoist nodded, saying nothing more.
At that moment, the five-colored cloud mass in the sky had grown ever more vast, and an indescribable aura of solemn gravitas was emanating from within it.
"Fellow Daoists, please withdraw for now. My tribulation is about to begin!" Han Li raised his head once more to regard the sky, narrowing his eyes as he spoke.
Demon Light and the others raised no objection whatsoever. Their lights of escape immediately streaked into motion as they shot outward toward the edge of the barren island.
At the same time, Han Li gave a broad sweep of his sleeve, and a ball of golden light shot forth from within. Inside, a faintly visible small figure in purple-gold — bald, browless — flickered and vanished into the sky in an instant.
It was none other than the Gold Devouring Beetle King.
Only then did Han Li settle calmly into a cross-legged seat.
After several flashes, Demon Light, Fire Whiskers, and the rest had all appeared high in the air on the far side of the barren island. They halted their lights of escape one by one and turned to gaze toward the island's center from afar.
A thunderous roar echoed from the distance. Within the five-colored mist, a pitch-black gaping hole materialized out of thin air, and with a howling sound, a gust of ashen-white wind swept downward in a spiral.
The wind had started as but a slender stream, yet the instant it emerged from the black vortex, it expanded with a droning roar into a sky-blotting tempest that pressed down upon everything below.
"The Celestial Wind has appeared — it seems the Ascension Tribulation has truly descended." Fire Whiskers let out a chuckle at the sight.
"This Celestial Wind is formidable, but for Fellow Daoist Han, he will already have measures to deal with it. There's nothing to worry about," Demon Light said in an unhurried tone.
No sooner had this Heavenly Demon finished speaking than a blue lotus bloomed at the center of the barren island. It began no larger than a house, but in the blink of an eye it expanded to cover several acres. After spinning rapidly, dazzling azure sword-light surged forth from within, slicing apart everything in the vicinity.
Despite the sand and rocks hurtling through the air outside and the rolling celestial gales, the blue lotus hovered motionless low in the sky, shielding everything beneath it with perfect stability.
The Celestial Wind blew for several hours on end.
For an ordinary Mahayana cultivator, this wind alone would have been enough to leave them in utter misery — their Magical Power within would drain away in no small measure, making it utterly impossible to endure the far more terrifying tribulations yet to come.
But for Han Li, this amount of Magical Power was less than a drop in the ocean.
A muffled boom!
A flash of radiance shot from within the black vortex, and the howling gale throughout the sky screeched to a halt. First, a wave of scorching heat surged outward, then the edges of the black hole expanded slightly — and countless crimson-red runes drifted out from within.
Each rune was the size of a palm, its surface crystalline and shimmering, with faint golden veins flickering in and out of visibility.
After a series of muffled pops — "phut, phut, phut" — the runes drifted about beneath the black vortex for a moment before each one exploded into a burst of crimson light.
The next instant, a dense downpour of molten lava rained from the sky, dyeing the greater part of it a blazing red.
Even though the barren island was vast and the lava rain fell at a considerable distance from where the others stood, the onlookers at the island's edge still felt the searing wall of heat bearing down on them amid the sulfurous stench. Every face changed, and they hurriedly released various defensive treasures to shield themselves.
The Mo Spirit Holy Boat itself trembled briefly before a thick layer of dark curtain appeared, enveloping everyone aboard within its protection.
On Nangong Wan's face and the others', a trace of worry could not help but flicker past.
They, standing all the way out here, were already in such a state merely from the peripheral force of the lava rain.
How could Han Li, who stood directly beneath it, be experiencing anything less than a hundredfold what they felt?
What worried them even more was that all of this was only the beginning of the tribulation!
A clear cry rang out from within the enormous blue lotus, and a great silver bird burst forth from inside.
When it first emerged, it was only several zhang in size, but its wings spread wide, utterly ignoring the lava in the sky, and every feather transformed to a pale gold hue as it instantly swelled into a colossal creature a thousand zhang across. At the same time, a wave of extraordinary cold radiated from the bird's body, transforming the earth within several thousand li into a frozen glacier.
……
Three days and three nights later, every variety of tribulation had rained down in succession, yet Han Li, within his blue lotus, resolved each one with effortless composure.
By now the entire barren island had long since been obliterated by these terrifying tribulations. All that remained was the blue lotus, resting atop a luminous formation array, shining brightly below.
The surrounding sea level had dropped by several zhang, and half of it had been transformed into a crystalline sheet of ice, while the other half had become a churning ocean of molten lava.
Aside from Ice Spirit Silver Moon and a handful of other Mahayana cultivators, the rest had been forced to retreat to a far more distant location to wait.
……
When the black vortex in the sky flickered and collapsed into nothing, clusters of purple lightning arcs began to condense within the five-colored clouds. The most terrifying tribulation of all — the Lightning Tribulation — had finally descended.
But Han Li, fully prepared, simply raised one hand, and a small gray mountain materialized out of thin air above the blue lotus. It spun once and then swelled into a titanic peak ten thousand zhang tall that pierced the heavens.
A droning hum filled the air!
Ring after ring of gray halos swept outward from the mountain, rippling in all directions.
Each ring of purple-gold lightning plummeting from the sky shrank by a fraction the moment one of the halos passed over it.
These halos contained a law power that happened to be the natural bane of heavenly lightning.
Some of the purple-gold arcs did not even make it to the ground before a dozen halos converged upon them simultaneously in midair, dissolving them into nothingness.