Chapter 684

Fang Yuan judges that small family qi Gu can influence the heavenly tribulation and earthly calamity, though only slightly, never control it. Hei Lou Lan keeps scattering and retrieving the Gu as it fills, some self-detonating and returning their stored qi to the world. The wind and icicles batter Fang Yuan’s unharmed zombie body while heaven and earth qi keeps thickening toward the calamity. Both mortal Gu and Immortal Gu take backlash from that surging qi as she ascends. He grows uneasy when the calamity itself takes unusually long to form. ^{ch. 684}

A purple chime appears in the clouds: the heavenly tribulation has begun. Its noise spreads over a hundred li, and his sound path attainment is too low to defend against it. Fang Yuan recognizes it as heart shocking noise tribulation, which drives blood backward and hearts to bursting. His zombie blood resists it best, but Hei Lou Lan’s active blood, from her Great Strength True Martial Physique, suffers worse. Fang Yuan must destroy the chime itself. He flies close enough that his own heart briefly bursts, then uses icy drill stardust, made unusually strong since fusing Dou Min Jun’s inheritance, to shatter the chime and silence the noise. A new chime forms at once, and he destroys it too, repeating the exchange as more chimes keep replacing each other. ^{ch. 684}

Below him, Hei Lou Lan’s injuries heal fast under her physique. She now scatters her small family qi Gu mostly on the ground rather than the sky. She does not have many of them, since even with the recipe, refinement materials for this ancient Gu are hard to find. Fang Yuan then hears a desolate, weeping voice. A pink chime has joined the purple one, the decadent noise tribulation, sapping his strength and will before he can strike it. A third noise follows, a thunderous tremor thought noise tribulation that scrambles his slow zombie cognition until he nearly falls from the sky. Burning three beads of green grape immortal essence through delight in water and mountain Gu barely steadies him. ^{ch. 684}

A fourth attack, the flying blade noise tribulation, slices his fingers off with invisible sound-lines before he can react. He activates hair armor and light illusion bat wings to twist through the web, and when the armor breaks three breaths later he casts a thinner layer that barely covers him. His fingers and burst heart regrow rapidly even as the purple chime reforms behind him. Every mortal killer move he holds, icy drill stardust, light illusion bat wings, and hair armor, is already stretched to its limit, and still the danger will not ease. Ten percent of his stored joyful will is already spent. This is still only the heavenly tribulation, since the small family qi Gu have kept the earthly calamity from forming. ^{ch. 684}

Four more chimes then form beside the first four, forcing Fang Yuan toward his immortal killer move myriad self. Watching from hiding, Tai Bai Yun Sheng judges this ascension at least a dozen times more dangerous than an ordinary Gu Master’s tribulation, worse than his own had been. Fairy Li Shan recognizes the pattern as eight layer enchanting noise tribulation, one of the ten catastrophes: if all eight chimes sound together, the blast would reach eight hundred and eighty li and could kill immortals outright. Fang Yuan names the same tribulation himself and judges that eight noises at once would end the ascension in failure. His mortal Gu keep breaking under the backlash of heaven and earth, but he has stocked plenty and keeps his killer moves running without pause. Just as he moves to activate myriad self, Hei Lou Lan opens her eyes. ^{ch. 684}