Chapter 284 The Heavenly Tribulation Qualification Stripped Away

After Li Changfeng's death, the three major clans did not immediately admit defeat.

They can't afford to lose face.

That disastrous debut has already cracked the "Golden Core Level Combat Power" label. But cracked as it may be, as long as the label isn't completely shattered, they still want to mend it, still want to save it, still want to help those twelve people get back on their feet.

Kyoto, the Li family's underground meeting room.

The entire screen was frozen on the last frame of Li Changfeng falling into the muddy water. His neck was broken, his armor was stained with blood, and the blurry Foundation Establishment figure beside him had already retreated into the gray mist. His face was not visible, but it was like a slap in the face to everyone.

The meeting room was quiet.

No one dared to speak first.

Finally, Li Daokun slammed his teacup down heavily, his voice deep and resonant.

"I don't need to repeat the nonsense about blocking live streams, controlling public opinion, and suppressing discussion."

"Li Changfeng is dead; he ruined himself."

"But his death doesn't mean this path is blocked."

An elder frowned and said, "Now the Coordination Bureau and the military have seized the opportunity to make trouble. If we continue to resist, I'm afraid..."

"What are you afraid of?"

Li Daokun raised his eyes, his gaze turning fiercely sinister.

"What they're focusing on now is Li Changfeng's lack of practical combat skills, not the problem with our 'Golden Core level combat power' itself."

"In the end, he was just too weak-willed and didn't have enough experience in killing people."

"In that case, let's fix it."

Upon hearing this, the expressions of several clan elders changed simultaneously.

What should I supplement?

It's neither a finishing move nor a way to gain experience.

Instead, it's about strengthening the foundation.

Li Daokun raised his hand and swiped, and another sealed file popped up on the light screen.

[Thunder Abyss Bone Cleansing Project]

The meeting room fell silent.

"Is Thunder Abyss Pool going to open?"

"Now?"

Li Daokun's expression remained unchanged.

"Li Changfeng's death has pushed things to this point. From now on, he can't turn things around by just bragging."

"To save the remaining twelve people, we need to help them take another step forward from the 'paper elixir' stage."

"At the very least, we should let heaven and earth give them some response."

As he said this, his tone finally became a bit somber.

"As long as we can attract a hijacker, even if it's just a trace of divine might, as long as we can use the lightning to cleanse their bones, the false fire in their bodies that they've forced out with medicine and spiritual liquid will have a chance to be suppressed."

"By then, who will dare to say they're fake?"

These words resonated with many in the conference room.

Li Changfeng's death was too gruesome.

The most direct way to make up for this is to have someone truly recognized by heaven and earth from among the remaining people.

The Li family possesses the Thunder Abyss Pool.

It was a forbidden area formed after a large hydroelectric power station collapsed in the old era, connecting with an underground lightning-attribute spiritual vein. Normally, no one dared to approach it, but if successfully activated, there was indeed a chance to catch a trace of the true aftermath of a lightning tribulation.

The Wang and Zhao families reacted almost simultaneously after receiving the news.

They didn't openly join forces, but their actions were remarkably synchronized.

Recall the remaining "Golden Core level combat power".

All frontline appearances have been suspended.

Seal off their respective forbidden areas.

Tonics, pulse stabilizers, and elixir-strengthening agents are prepared to attract celestial phenomena.

This is a must-win situation.

……

Lei Yuan Pond, a forbidden area of ​​the Li family on the outskirts of Kyoto.

The night was very dark.

Layers of dark clouds piled up in the sky, with occasional streaks of purple lightning flashing through the gaps, illuminating the surface of the pool intermittently. The pool was not large, but it was frighteningly dark, like a deep well buried in the ground, its bottom filled with surging lightning-attribute spiritual energy.

Li Chengze sat cross-legged in the center of the pool.

He was the most stable among the "Golden Core level combatants" of the Li family, and also the one that Li Daokun valued the most.

Even so, he couldn't hide his nervousness.

Inside his dantian, the pseudo-core, forced out by resources, demon cores, and high-pressure spiritual liquid, was bulging outwards with each contraction. With each contraction, his meridians twitched, the pain feeling like someone was pulling at his flesh with hooks.

Outside the pool, a dozen array masters and physicians guarded their positions, and layers of auxiliary array patterns had already lit up.

"Prepare the Lightning-Attracting Pill."

"Stabilizing the pulse with fluid".

"Suppress the spiritual pressure fluctuations and prevent the pseudo-core from cracking first."

Li Chengze took a deep breath and swallowed the dark purple pill.

boom!

The moment the pill entered the stomach, the entire Thunder Abyss Pool trembled violently.

The lightning-attribute spiritual energy that had been submerged at the bottom of the pool seemed to be pulled up by something, rushing upwards through the pores of Li Chengze's body. The clouds in the sky also began to churn, and the lightning became denser, even turning the rocks by the pool pale white.

The Li family members all held their breath.

coming.

It's really here.

If this step is successful, and if the lightning really falls from the sky, even if it's just one strike, there's still hope for this group of people.

Li Chengze was also gritting his teeth.

He knew very well what kind of thing was in his dantian. It looked decent, but when it came to actually facing the heavens and earth, he himself had no idea whether it could withstand it.

But it's too late to get a refund now.

He pushed his internal energy upwards.

The pseudo-elixir trembled, and its spiritual pressure soared to the heavens.

The array patterns outside the pool simultaneously lit up to their maximum brightness.

As expected, the dark clouds in the sky lowered once more, with a few streaks of lightning flashing deep within the clouds, and the faint rumble of thunder.

Li Daokun stared intently upwards, his knuckles turning white.

Just one more push.

All that's missing is a response.

But it was at this moment...

Above the nine heavens lies Kunlun.

Gu Qing sat deep within the main hall, glancing down at the rolling clouds far outside the capital.

He had seen it long ago.

It wasn't just the Li family; the Wang and Zhao families were doing the same thing.

They want to use the world to clear their name.

Gu Qing showed no expression, but simply raised his hand and gently pressed down in mid-air.

Something that was originally vague in the whole world seemed to have been suddenly tightened like a valve.

Those "pseudo-Dan" cultivators who were barely qualified to even touch the threshold of Heavenly Might were stripped of their qualifications in an instant.

……

The dark cloud that had almost pressed down on the surface of Thunder Abyss Pool suddenly stopped.

It's not scattered.

Instead, it paused for a moment.

He glanced down innocently, then lost interest.

The next moment, the clouds slowly parted.

Those few strands of purple lightning, which had already begun to solidify, flashed twice in the clouds and then gradually faded away.

The ominous clouds that seemed poised to crash down at any moment slowly dissipated right before everyone's eyes.

Not a single bolt of lightning struck.

There wasn't even the slightest probing.

Li Chengze remained in the posture of tilting his head back and taking a deep breath, but his whole body was frozen.

The area outside the pool was completely silent.

"What happened?"

"The calamity clouds... have dispersed?"

"That's impossible!"

Li Daokun took two steps forward, and the composure he had been forcibly maintaining finally crumbled.

He had seen many strange things in his life, but he had never seen anything like this before.

Calamity clouds have gathered.

As a result, Tiandi glanced at it, turned around and left.

It's like they're too lazy to even chop.

Li Chengze, who was in the center of the pool, knew better than anyone what had just happened.

He had clearly pushed his condition to its peak, and he had clearly used the Lightning-Attracting Pill and the Thunder Abyss Pool to push that pseudo-pill to the position closest to a "true pill".

But just a moment ago, he clearly felt something of a higher level slip past him.

It's not that I look down on it.

It is skipped directly.

There was no hostility, nor any emotion.

Simply put—not counting you.

In that instant, he felt a sudden emptiness in his heart.

The pseudo-elixir, which was already barely holding on, trembled under this extreme contrast.

puff!

Li Chengze suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood and fell forward, as if his dantian had been hit by a hammer. The already fine cracks on the surface of the fake pill suddenly appeared three more.

"Keep him calm!"

"quick!"

A group of healers and array masters outside the pool rushed forward instantly...

The same thing happened at two other companies at the same time.

The Wang family's lightning-attracting platform and the Zhao family's thunder-and-lightning well both encountered problems one after another.

Someone pushed themselves to their peak, and as a result, the clouds in the sky only circled once before dissipating.

Some people couldn't even gather clouds.

The one who fared even worse was immediately backfired by the fake pill, half of his meridians collapsed, and even the "Golden Core level combat power" that he had originally managed to withstand fell away.

The news couldn't be suppressed for even half a day before it became completely out of control.

Because this isn't just one company that's having problems.

All three companies were involved in the incident together.

And they came out exactly the same.

It's not that I failed to transcend the tribulation.

Even the calamity won't come.

This was even worse than Li Changfeng having his throat slit by a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

After all, in Li Changfeng's case, the powerful clans could still grit their teeth and say, "It was a personal mistake."

But now?

All three families simultaneously sought to strengthen their foundations and cleanse their bones with divine intervention.

As a result, neither Heaven nor Earth paid any attention to it.

This is no longer just shameful.

This is fundamentally true: your path is blocked.

When the news reached Bloodstone Town, the area below the large screen in the black market was silent for a few seconds before erupting into chaos.

"Even Heaven doesn't recognize them?!"

"Damn it, so it wasn't that they couldn't rob it, they just weren't qualified!"

"That's hilarious! Taking medicine and getting a belly full of internal heat, does he really think he can fool heaven and earth?"

"The blood from the front lines, the lives in the mines, the good stuff dug out of the ruins—they've all taken it all, and all they've produced is a bunch of useless trash that even God wouldn't bother to look at?"

Laughter, curses, and shouts mingled together.

The pent-up anger that had been building up for so long was finally released in that moment.

Meanwhile, in the Green Zone, the Coordinating Agency and the military acted almost simultaneously.

All war zone takeover applications from the three major clans regarding "Golden Core level combat power" are suspended.

Freeze the allocation of some high-level resources.

The laboratories and purification plants that were labeled as "wartime research and development" were re-examined.

This is no longer just a reprimand.

This is the takeover of power.

Wang Mingyuan looked at the failure reports in the conference room, remained silent for a long time, and finally only said one sentence:

"It's not that they can't make up for it, it's that heaven and earth will no longer allow them this path..."

......