As Yang Hong stepped onto his flying sword, black flames erupted from his body.
Karma fire!
Without warning, Yang Hong, who was still breaking through his cultivation, suddenly erupted in karma fire.
The most terrifying thing was that this time, the Red Lotus Karma Fire did not immediately engulf the karma fire and burn it.
After flying only a little over three hundred miles, the seventh-grade flying sword beneath Yang Hong's feet was reduced to scrap metal by the raging karma fire, forcing him to land.
At this point, his continuous breakthrough in cultivation halted, reaching the fifth level of the Tribulation Crossing Realm.
"Sect Master~ What is this..."
"Don't come over, I need to undergo tribulation."
Yang Hong loudly stopped the Qingfeng Villa disciples who wanted to approach. After landing, he directly threw out sets of formation plates.
There were lightning avoidance formations, defense formations, and two sets of formations to calm the mind and stabilize the spirit.
*Boom*
The black karma fire on his body suddenly exploded, covering a hundred zhang wide area. The sandy ground beneath him was instantly burned to nothingness, and he fell with it.
This was something that had never happened when he encountered karma fire burning him before.
Karma fire burned the spirit, soul, and divine sense, and then the true qi. It generally did not burn physical objects.
This showed how fierce Yang Hong's karma fire outburst was this time!
"Damn it! What is going on? I was just enhancing a common plant, how can there be so much karma?"
Circulating his mana, he hovered in mid-air and quickly communicated with the Red Lotus Karma Fire in his sea of consciousness.
However, the Red Lotus Karma Fire's reaction this time was a bit strange. It only burned within his sea of consciousness, protecting his divine sense and soul.
As for his entire body of mana, it could only be burned by the black karma fire.
*Rumble*
It was truly a case of one misfortune after another. Just as he was trying to mobilize the Red Lotus Karma Fire, the tribulation clouds in the sky had already rapidly gathered.
A silver-white lightning bolt struck down!
"Holy shit, what's going on!
This is a heavenly punishment, not a heavenly tribulation!"
"Ah~~~"
Since being reduced to a skeleton by spatial storms, this was the first time Yang Hong had let out a shrill scream.
This heavenly punishment directly struck his divine sense and soul hidden in his sea of consciousness. It was both painful and itchy, piercing his heart and scratching his bones!
"Hold on!"
Yang Hong decisively hid his divine sense and soul directly within his Nascent Soul. The Nascent Soul rapidly circulated the [Clear Wind Breathing Technique], which had evolved from the top-tier breathing technique.
He finally managed to reduce the pain and itchiness by more than half.
However, his cultivation also began to slowly regress. After just three silver-white lightning bolts, his mana cultivation had regressed to the fourth level of the Tribulation Crossing Realm.
The heavenly punishment did not reduce Yang Hong's cultivation; it was the black karma fire that was burning his mana cultivation.
Furthermore, no matter what method he used to stop it, it had no effect.
The rumbling heavenly punishment tribulation lightning only lasted for two hours before ending. A total of twenty-six heavenly punishment tribulation bolts concluded the event.
As the heavenly tribulation dispersed, the overcast sky cleared, and the sun emerged, returning to a state of being completely cloudless.
Only Yang Hong remained, like a black torch, burning with raging black karma fire.
"Hiss~ What the hell is this? My cultivation, which had just broken through to the Tribulation Crossing Realm, was burned back to the Integration Realm?"
As the heavenly punishment dissipated, his soul immediately emerged from his Nascent Soul, and he opened his eyes to look around his body.
"This karma fire has become much smaller, from a hundred zhang down to a little over ten zhang."
*Boom*
As he communicated with the Red Lotus Karma Fire again, blood-red flames once again engulfed him, and the blood-red flames were slowly engulfing the black flames.
*Hoo*
After another hour of effort, the blood-red Red Lotus Karma Fire finally completely engulfed the black karma fire. Only then could he absorb the karma fire, along with the Red Lotus Karma Fire, into his sea of consciousness to burn slowly.
"Holy shit!"
Upon checking his cultivation, Yang Hong directly swore.
"Integration Realm third level? I was already at Integration Realm ninth level, and it directly dropped me back to Integration Realm third level."
"No, I had just broken through, so it should have been Integration Realm fifth level. An entire major realm was burned away!"
Yang Hong felt like crying. The old system's ten thousandfold cultivation return, while illusory, was actual cultivation returned. Now, not only was there no cultivation increase, but it was also deducting cultivation!
"This is truly a scam!"
After complaining and grumbling, he flew up, took out another sixth-grade flying sword, and rode it back to Qianran Plain. He found a teleportation array and directly arrived at the Tianshu position, sitting cross-legged to recuperate.
Pure, top-grade spiritual energy instantly surged into his limbs and bones from all directions like a tide, and his cultivation rapidly began to recover.
It was at this moment that Zhu Yuyan and Song Yuzhi arrived together.
However, they did not disturb Yang Hong, but merely hovered in the air to guard him.
The sun rose and set, and five days passed in the blink of an eye.
When the sun rose again, Yang Hong finally opened his eyes and stood up. However, his cultivation had only recovered to the fifth level of the Integration Realm and stopped there.
The remaining cultivation would require a long time to improve slowly.
"Husband, were you struck by heavenly punishment? Your cultivation has dropped again!"
Seeing Yang Hong stand up, Zhu Yuyan, Song Yuzhi, and Wanwan descended to his side. All three simultaneously reached out to examine him.
"Yes, there was a slight accident, but it's not a big problem. My cultivation can be recovered slowly, and I've broken through to the Tribulation Crossing Realm, so the next breakthrough will be much easier."
Yang Hong held the hands of the three women, patting each of them to reassure them.
His three wives' feelings for him were sincere and earnest, and he had nothing to hide. He simply set up a soundproof formation and explained the cause and effect of the matter.
After hearing Yang Hong's explanation, Zhu Yuyan also became nervous, then thought of the key point.
"Husband, let's go quickly and check that rice plant. Perhaps that rice plant has something special about it."
"Okay, let's go!"
Yang Hong directly embraced the three women and instantly teleported to the previous farmland, arriving before the rice plant he had divinely bestowed upon.
It was an ordinary rice plant, only four feet tall, with a common stalk as thick as chopsticks. The ears of rice were also unremarkable, even smaller than the surrounding rice plants.
However, as Yang Hong's divine sense swept over it, his expression changed to joy.
It was successful!
"Husband, it seems to have succeeded, but something feels off. It's so small?"
Wanwan said disdainfully, looking at the clearly weak rice plant.
"It is indeed a bit small, but it appears to have succeeded. The grain-setting rate of the ears of rice is over ninety percent, approaching a hundred percent."
Zhu Yuyan also bent over to examine it closely but dared not touch it.
This was something that had cost Yang Hong an entire major realm of cultivation, and it was a treasure of which there was only one plant.
They were afraid of damaging it.
"Whether it is successful or not cannot be definitively determined yet. It still needs to be planted."
Yang Hong checked it in detail with his divine sense. The rice seeds were not only plump and well-ripened, but they also emitted a faint vitality.
Most importantly, the unstable spiritual energy within the seeds had stabilized. All the seeds were ordinary ninth-grade, possessing a trace of very faint spiritual energy, and the spiritual energy was stable and peaceful.
All the signs indicated that the rice plant, which he had modified by divinely bestowing upon it at the cost of an entire major realm, was successful.
However, until it was formally planted on a large scale and experienced no problems, it could not be considered a success.