The heavens responded like a wounded beast.
Lightning turned black. Space trembled. Time fractured.
The sky convulsed.
And from every corner of the world, eyes turned upward—not in reverence, but in fear.
Something had begun.
Something that could not be undone.
...
"This... can't be."
Old Man Yan Shi's voice was barely a whisper, lost beneath the oppressive silence of the heavens.
His pupils shrank as he looked up — not at the sky, but at the churning sea of tribulations that swallowed it whole.
Thunder rumbled without sound.
Lightning slithered without form.
The very fabric of heaven quaked, not with fury, but with... restraint.
He had lived for centuries, tread countless paths of deduction, stared into the abyss of prophecy — yet never had he envisioned such a scene.
His lips trembled.
"This doesn't look like tribulation..."
He paused — the next words tasted like heresy.
"...This is like... someone refining heaven."
The phrase alone defied sense.
Logic screamed in protest. It wasn't simply improbable — it was impossible.
But he was a wisdom path Gu Immortal.
Soon he calmed his mind, sharpened it like a blade, and dissected the impossible.
Moments later, his eyes gleamed.
"Someone has deflected their tribulation."
A terrifying realization crept into his soul like cold poison.
"But whose tribulation could wield this might... and who has the strength to deflect it?"
...
At the heart of the True Yang Building, Fang Yuan sat in stillness — eyes closed, expression cold.
Yet from all directions, heaven and earth qi flooded toward him, like rivers pulled into a bottomless abyss.
This was not an ordinary ascension, it's a defiance of the natural order
This was theft — theft from the very heavens.
He is not only undergoing his tribulation, but also resisting it by deflecting.
And now, the Gu World paid the price.
Across the five regions, cataclysm reigned.
In the Southern Border, the skies fractured.
Bolts of tribulation lightning screamed down — not upon a cultivator, but upon the land itself.
Mountains shattered. Clans burned. Mortals died without knowing why.
In the Central Continent, a thousand spectral hands clawed down from the firmament — twisting, groping, wrenching Gu worms from their hosts.
Rank meant nothing. Defense meant nothing.
Even Immortal Gu howled as they were stolen, consumed, or returned to heaven's vault.
The Eastern Sea boiled.
From the depths, a titan of thunder rose — a silhouette carved from lightning and fury.
Each movement erased fleets, sank islands, and split the tides in half.
It was wrath made flesh.
In the Western Desert, the dunes cracked open.
Desolate beasts, some long extinct, others never seen before, poured forth in endless waves.
The air itself tasted like blood and sand.
And in the Northern Plains, as a frost blizzard swallowed the land in silence, a new terror emerged —
A mountain of fire, spewing magma into the storm.
The ice cracked, the snow evaporated mid-air.
Those who had hidden from the cold now found death in flames.
Their screams turned to steam.
All across the Gu World, chaos reigned.
Paths collapsed. Territories fell.
Gu Immortals scrambled like ants beneath a magnifying glass — watching their world burn from above and below.
...
Fang Yuan's aperture had long been obliterated, reduced to chaos — no longer a Gu Master's core, but a bottomless void.
From this chasm, heaven qi and earth qi surged in madly, as if the very world sought to pour itself into him.
At the same time, his body exhaled an overwhelming torrent of human qi.
It billowed outward in thick waves, pure white and boundless, swelling like a colossal balloon.
It engulfed not just his figure, but the entirety of his blessed land, stretching beyond its borders into the outside world.
Time passed. An hour.
Perhaps more as space trembled in silence.
The clear, unrestrained heaven qi.
The golden, heavy, grounded earth qi.
The pristine, snow-like human qi.
The three primordial forces began to twist and coil, converging into a singular, chaotic mass of multicolored brilliance.
He had stepped into the second stage of immortal ascension — Qi Absorption.
Others trembled before this juncture.
Countless geniuses across history had perished here, turned to ash by imbalance, their hopes for immortality shattered.
But Fang Yuan remained unmoved.
At the heart of the tri-force vortex, he sat — still, silent, unshakable. The eye of the storm.
He was the point where heaven, earth, and man intersected. One step out of line, and death would arrive instantly.
An excess of heaven qi would overload him. A surplus of earth qi would crush him. Even his own human qi, if left unchecked, would backfire, detonating him from within.
Yet Fang Yuan did not falter.
His expression was calm, detached.
Like a god watching mortals burn, like a blade that had forgotten what it meant to be sheathed.
His mind maintained perfect equilibrium. A constant flow of micro-adjustments, calculations that defied comprehension.
Every breath, every shift, was purposeful.
He wasn't merely surviving the chaos — he was mastering it.
As the three qi intertwined and collided, each resonance brought him insights.
The mysteries of the Great Dao poured into his mind like an unending tide.
Heaven and earth — the origin of all things.
Their union opened pathways unseen in the mortal realm.
And now, with human qi, the element of will and destiny itself, added into the mix, Fang Yuan's comprehension ascended to terrifying heights.
This was not the same Fang Yuan of his past life.
In that life, he had walked the path of ruthlessness with iron resolve, yet still been bound by the constraints of time and tribulation.
But now — now, with every fusion of qi, his understanding soared.
His attainments, not just in one path, but in many, surged forward.
Refinement path. Soul path. Dream path. Time path. Strength path.
One after another, his attainments rose like tides under the pull of a rising moon.
This was no mere ascension.
This was evolution.
Heaven qi, earth qi, and human qi coursed through him, eroding flesh, dissolving marrow, unraveling the threads of his soul, mind, and will.
Yet, with each annihilated part, a new one formed — stronger, purer, closer to perfection.
It was a silent, unending cycle of death and rebirth.
His body, once worn from countless battles, was now collapsing piece by piece.
Muscles disintegrated, tendons snapped, skin withered — only to be reconstructed instantly with divine precision.
Bones were broken, organs liquefied, features unmade — and yet, they were reassembled without flaw, carved anew by the Dao itself.
He resembled a newborn — not in weakness, but in purity.
A life untainted.
A vessel unblemished.
His eyes opened.