16
Chapter 79: Great Ascension
Winter goes and spring comes, and another eight hundred years or so have passed.
Ever since Lu Mingfang killed a Void Refinement Cultivator of the Demon Race,
the actions of the Demon God Cult quickly fell into silence.
Without the chaos caused by the demon disaster, the Yufantian World returned to its former appearance.
If not for the occasional escaped Demon Race members being discovered, people would have almost forgotten that a demon disaster once existed.
However, after centuries of continuous sweeping operations,
the remaining number of the Demon Race that entered Yu Fantian through the temporary passages was pitifully small.
It was even rarer than the pandas of Blue Star.
Every time the Demon Race was discovered, a large group of Cultivators would strongly gather around to watch.
In order to compete for the merits of killing the Demon Race, the Cultivators would even start a fierce brawl.
As a result, even more Cultivators were beaten to death by their own people than those killed by the Demon Race.
Mostly because the merits of the Dao Saint Sect were simply too alluring.
As long as one had enough merits, even Heaven-Rank Divine Abilities could be exchanged.
For the Cultivators, such temptation was completely irresistible.
The only problem was that there were too few of the Demon Race.
Without enough of the Demon Race for them to kill, they simply could not gather enough merits.
The regulations of the Dao Saint Sect were also very rigid.
If one wanted merits, they could only kill the Demon Race.
Other than that, there were no other channels to obtain merits.
This depressed the Cultivators to no end.
Everyone once thought that the so-called merit exchange was just an empty promise painted by the Dao Saint Sect.
They simply could not gather enough.
Currently, the Cultivator who earned the most merits
at most only had enough to exchange for an ordinary Dharma Treasure.
As for wanting to exchange for cultivation techniques and Divine Abilities, the merits were still far from enough.
Despite this, the enthusiasm of the Cultivators for joining the Demon Suppression Army did not decrease by even a fraction.
After all, besides patrolling various places within the prefecture normally, they did not need to do anything and still had a salary to collect.
Then why not join?
The Dao Saint Sect also accepted all comers.
As long as they were Foundation Establishment or higher Cultivators, the Demon Suppression Army would take them.
Moreover, the salary was paid very promptly and was never delayed.
Therefore, in some slightly larger prefectures,
the number of the Demon Suppression Army even expanded to hundreds of thousands.
Ordinary people watched the excitement, but those major forces had long since seen through the inner workings.
The Dao Saint Sect formed the Demon Suppression Army with such a big movement,
and it had lasted for nearly a thousand years without sending the Demon Suppression Army out to do anything.
Obviously, the Dao Saint Sect was preparing for war.
As for what the purpose of preparing for war was and where the enemies came from,
that was a bit hard to say.
But they knew it certainly was not from within Yu Fantian.
Because throughout the entire Yu Fantian, there was no one worthy of the Dao Saint Sect treating them with such seriousness.
Some guessed that perhaps the Demon Clan Army was going to make a comeback, recreating the calamity of one hundred thousand years ago.
In order to deal with the calamity, the Dao Saint Sect thus formed the Demon Suppression Army everywhere.
Some also guessed that it might be because the Dao Saint Sect discovered a new civilized world.
Forming the Demon Suppression Army was intended to invade the new world.
There were even people who guessed that the Dao Saint Sect forming the Demon Suppression Army was to cleanse the forces of Yu Fantian once over.
Various guesses were varied and numerous.
However, the Dao Saint Sect had never given a clear statement.
It was merely accumulating strength silently.
...
Cloud Python Mountain Range, Thunder Lake.
"Phew, I have finally survived another Heavenly Tribulation."
Zhang Yuhe stood on the surface of the lake and let out a long sigh of relief.
At this moment, his aura was fully unfurled, and his intimidating coercion swept across hundreds of thousands of miles.
He was unexpectedly already in the Great Ascension Realm.
After more than eight hundred years of arduous cultivation, he finally reached Body Integration Great Perfection.
Then he came to Thunder Lake to undergo a tribulation.
The Heavenly Tribulation triggered by breaking through to the Great Ascension Realm was indeed fiercely peerless.
In the final round of the Heavenly Tribulation, eight consecutive bolts of Nine-Color Divine Thunder struck down.
Even a golden thunderbolt appeared at the very end.
In the ancient texts, Zhang Yuhe had never seen any records regarding golden thunderbolts.
That was to say, in the history of Yu Fantian, a golden Heavenly Tribulation should never have appeared.
When this unknown golden Heavenly Tribulation appeared,
it truly gave him a big scare.
Fortunately, he had later improved the Renshui Lightning Absorption Array.
Although he did not replace the Lightning Absorbing Pillars,
he redesigned the array patterns.
The re-improved Renshui Lightning Absorption Array had an extremely strong weakening effect on the Heavenly Tribulation.
It could probably weaken two-thirds of the Heavenly Tribulation's power.
To the extent that when dealing with the first sixty bolts of thunder,
he did not use any Spirit Treasures at all, directly circulating the Milky Way Celestial Cycle Art and shattering the Heavenly Tribulation with his fists.
Even those eight bolts of Nine-Color Divine Thunder, after being weakened by the Renshui Lightning Absorption Array, were easily dealt with by him.
Only that final golden Heavenly Tribulation had a truly terrifying power.
Even if it was weakened by one-third of its power by the Renshui Lightning Absorption Array,
it still hacked through countless layers of the defense of the Nine Heavens Primordial Chaos Sword Formation.
And it almost struck directly onto his body.
At that time, it scared him half to death.
If the golden Heavenly Tribulation were to really strike directly on his body,
with his frail physique, even if he circulated the Milky Way Celestial Cycle Art, he definitely would not be able to withstand it.
"It has finally been survived."
Watching the sky return to clarity,
Zhang Yuhe had a feeling of surviving a catastrophe.
"The power of the Heavenly Tribulation is more outrageous each time. I really do not know how perverted the upcoming Ascension Great Heavenly Tribulation will actually be?"
After promoting to Great Ascension, Zhang Yuhe had to prepare for Ascension.
Fortunately, he had enough time to slowly plan.
To trigger the Ascension Great Heavenly Tribulation, one had to cultivation to the Great Ascension Perfection.
This was not something that could be done in a short while.
cultivation in the Great Ascension Realm was extremely difficult.
The progress was terrifyingly slow.
According to rumors, the Dao Saint Sect Sect Master Feng Xiaotian only spent twenty thousand years to cultivation to the Great Ascension Realm.
However, another ten thousand years passed, and Feng Xiaotian was still in the Great Ascension Early Stage.
Another Old Ancestor in the Sect, Wu Yuemin, had Cultivated the Dao for over eighty thousand years and was still only in the Mahayana Middle Stage.
From the cultivation progress of these two people, the difficulty of cultivation in the Great Ascension Period can be seen generally.
Although Zhang Yuhe's natural talent was heaven-defying, he did not think he could quickly break through to the Great Ascension Perfection.
At least three to five thousand years would have to be spent.
With such a long time to prepare, he would always think of a way to deal with the Ascension Great Heavenly Tribulation.
Moreover, the Dao Saint Sect had previous precedents of Cultivators successfully Transcending Tribulation and ascending.
At that time, he could also refer to it.
See how others endured the Great Heavenly Tribulation.
Although the Great Heavenly Tribulation he was about to welcome would definitely be countless times more ferocious than other Cultivators,
seeing other people's tribulation-undergoing process would still have some reference value to some extent.
He believed that the Dao Saint Sect must have corresponding records in ancient texts.
It was just that he had not broken through to the Great Ascension Realm before and was not qualified to view them.
Zhang Yuhe looked towards the surrounding lake surface, only to see that the lake surface was boundless.
It was a full two to three hundred thousand miles in radius.
"This place is really going to turn into a vast sea."
Looking at the vast lake surface around him, he could not help feeling a bit emotional.
Having successively undergone three Heavenly Tribulations in this place,
Thunder Lake had expanded from a radius of several thousand miles to two to three hundred thousand miles.
He thought,
if the next Ascension Great Heavenly Tribulation was also undergone here,
perhaps even the entire Cloud Python Mountain Range would be blasted away.
The power of the Heavenly Tribulation was truly terrifying.
And he did not know where the energy came from to gather such a fierce Heavenly Tribulation.