"No—no!"
Eighteen thousand miles away from Daxing City, on a snow-capped mountain shrouded in dark clouds and crackling with lightning.
In a valley of the Great Snow Mountain, the Turning Sutra Dharma King let out a desperate wail as the tribulation lightning began to descend.
Just seven days ago, he was a mere nobody at the late stage of Foundation Establishment, yet in a mere seven days—
No, in less than an hour, he had become a peak Golden Core Grandmaster.
Now, he was facing his Nascent Soul Heavenly Tribulation. If he could overcome it, he would become a fifth-tier Nascent Soul cultivator, a True Person with a noble title.
However, he didn't want it to happen so soon!
It was too fast. He didn't even feel the rapid progression.
The feeling of cultivating quickly.
More importantly, his foundation was unstable.
He hadn't even consolidated his Golden Core realm cultivation yet, and facing the Nascent Soul Heavenly Tribulation, he had no confidence at all.
"What good deed has that scoundrel Yang Hong done again? He's bestowed so much merit upon me again!
It's so much that I can't suppress it, causing me to directly advance to Nascent Soul."
"Rumble—"
Amidst the Turning Sutra Dharma King's curses, the first bolt of tribulation lightning struck.
"Ah—"
After a piercing scream, the Turning Sutra Dharma King was left clinging to life.
"Scoundrel—scoundrel, I shouldn't have—shouldn't have made that vow.
I can only bear one-tenth of Yang Hong's karma. This monster's karma is too immense."
"Right, karma! I can vow to sever my connection with that scoundrel Yang Hong."
The Turning Sutra Dharma King's dying spirit suddenly flickered with renewed life.
He shakily stood up, assumed a Buddhist salute, and began to speak.
"I, a Buddhist monk who turns sutras, vow to the Heavenly Dao to sever all ties with my disciple Yang Hong, voluntarily giving up the cultivation and merit I have obtained.
May the Heavenly Dao bear witness to this vow."
"Rumble—"
As if in response to the Turning Sutra Dharma King's vow, the heavens and earth echoed with a muffled thunder.
Hearing the thunder, the Turning Sutra Dharma King's face lit up with joy.
"Hahaha—The Heavenly Dao has responded! The Heavenly Dao has responded! I am saved."
The Turning Sutra Dharma King's voice gradually regained some strength, and his spirit improved.
His method was indeed effective.
Then...
"Rumble—"
A blue bolt of tribulation lightning descended,
The Turning Sutra Dharma King, with a look of ecstatic joy on his face, was charred into a crisp!
In the 150th year of the Great Yuan Dynasty, the living immortal in the hearts of the Great Yuan people, the National Master of Great Yuan, the Turning Sutra Dharma King, died under his own Heavenly Tribulation.
"Rumble~~ Rumble~"
Two more bolts of tribulation lightning struck, reducing the Turning Sutra Dharma King to ashes before the tribulation clouds dispersed.
Three hours later, several figures appeared in the valley one after another.
"Master, there was a lightning tribulation here."
"Yes, and judging by the charring on the ground and the residual tribulation energy in the air, someone was undergoing a Nascent Soul Heavenly Tribulation here.
However, they didn't survive."
"Hiss— A Nascent Soul Heavenly Tribulation? It's been 300 years since anyone in the Five Directions Domain has faced one!
Who is this reckless youngster?"
"Hmph— You're only at the Foundation Establishment stage, yet you dare to call a peak Golden Core senior a reckless youngster. What are you then?"
"Hehe~ Disciple is just a nobody, a nobody."
"Let's go, we must continue our journey. The spiritual energy in the Five Directions Domain is becoming increasingly thin, no longer suitable for cultivation."
"Exactly, Master. We should have left long ago. You always talk about our 'foundation,' our 'foundation.' We disciples are the true foundation of the Dragon Tiger Sect; those broken mountains and temples are not the foundation."
"Enough nonsense, let's go."
After the master and disciple left, many more people came to investigate.
After their investigations, these cultivators became even more determined to leave the so-called Five Directions Domain.
In the following period, the Five Directions Domain, a radius of a million miles, was completely devoid of immortal cultivation sects.
Only some ill-informed rogue cultivators continued to lord over their small territories.
...
Concurrently, Yang Hong, who was dealing with a large tiger, felt a warm sensation spread through his body.
However, he mistook it for the comfortable feeling of his body warming up from exercise and paid it no mind.
What he was concerned about was processing the tiger demon's corpse.
After the tiger demon died, its body had grown significantly larger.
Excluding the lower half that was severed by a spatial rift, it was still thirteen zhang long, a length of 40 meters, which filled Yang Hong with admiration.
When laid out, the tiger demon was six zhang tall and over one zhang wide,
It exuded an imposing aura.
However, Yang Hong's eyes gleamed as he looked at the tiger demon's corpse, calculating in his mind how to utilize its body.
"This big tiger is a treasure from head to toe; we can't waste it."
"Tiger meat hotpot is a must. Tiger bone wine, tiger blood wine, tiger skin to be stored for when I learn artifact refining.
Oh, and the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys..."
The more he calculated, the brighter Yang Hong's eyes became. He used his true qi to suspend the tiger demon's corpse, preventing its blood from flowing out.
"Whoa— This tiger is truly heavy, must be around 30 tons?"
"It doesn't look that big, yet it's so heavy. What a treasure!"
The heavier the tiger demon's corpse, the more it indicated its extraordinary nature.
Using his Qinggong, Yang Hong, carrying the over 30-ton tiger demon corpse, dashed into the wine cellar.
For now, within the Place of Refusing Words Pavilion, only this place was spacious enough, quiet enough,
And it also had enough tools for him to dismember the corpse.
To allow Yang Hong to brew wine properly, this wine cellar had been expanded. The ground area was only 3 mu, but the underground area was over 10 mu.
It was equipped with a large number of various winemaking equipment.
Arriving at the underground level of the wine cellar, he found sufficient tools and began preparing to brew wine.
First, all the tiger blood was drained, mixed with some medicinal herbs and strong liquor, and sealed in jars!
Thirty large hundred-jin wine jars were filled and half-buried in the ground.
Following the wound where the tiger demon was cut, Yang Hong exerted considerable effort to extract the tiger meat, bones, and internal organs.
Yang Hong couldn't cut through the tiger bones at all, so he could only decompose them section by section along the joints.
"Hehe~ I'm like the butcher carving the ox, dissecting it cleanly."
Unmindful of the bloody scent on himself, Yang Hong wiped the sweat from his forehead and continued to prepare the tiger bone wine.
Based on the size of the tiger bones, Yang Hong chose different wine jars, using a total of 68 jars of various sizes to store all the bones.
"Heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys~ These will be pickled first and slowly stewed later with some medicinal herbs; they should be very nourishing.
There's too much tiger meat, so I'll pickle it too and eat it slowly.
The intestines and so on...
Forget it, I'll use them for fertilizing flowers."
Thinking that the tiger demon ate people, Yang Hong decided it was best not to consume its stomach and intestines.
It wasn't disgusting enough.
He stored the tiger meat and tiger skin in his storage embroidered pouch. Using large wooden barrels, he filled them with the intestines and stomach. Yang Hong then hurried back to the Baolian Pond.
Day was breaking.
He buried the unwanted parts beneath the demonic qi blood lotuses, took a bath in the Baolian Pond, changed his clothes, and only then, with a hint of exhaustion, returned to the Baolian Pavilion.
He needed a good night's sleep.
"What the hell! What's going on!"
However, after having lunch delivered by Xiao Cao at noon, Yang Hong's face turned ashen white when he checked his storage embroidered pouch!
The Golden Core within the storage embroidered pouch had vanished!
It had disappeared without a trace, without any warning!
"This tiger demon is terrifyingly powerful to have disappeared from the storage equipment without anyone noticing!
What kind of technique is this?
Cultivators are truly bizarre beings!"
After scanning his storage embroidered pouch with his divine sense more than ten times, Yang Hong finally sat down, resigned, confirming that the tiger demon's Golden Core had indeed disappeared.
"I killed this tiger demon, and now it has escaped. It will surely return for revenge.
Next time, I may not be so lucky. I need to speed up my cultivation!"
"Tiger demon, I'm waiting for you. I can kill you once, and I can kill you twice, thrice!"
Encouraging himself, Yang Hong entered the Baolian Pond.