The seething whirlpool split apart, ripped into tatters by an unstoppable force. The endless ocean that had smothered the heavens quaked, torn open by the sheer will of Lin Mu.
A brilliant blue light enveloped his body, and from his dantian, a figure shot forth.
It was none other than the Nascent Soul of Lin Mu, clad in resplendent nebulous cape and roaring with might. It soared into the skies, defying the storm, and raised its tiny fist.
With one strike, it punched toward the heavens.
The ocean-clouds cracked open, split as though by a divine blade.
Lightning-like fissures ran across the watery heavens, and the tribulation itself seed to scream. A monuntal surge of energy funneled down from the rift, not in destruction, but in acceptance. The Nascent Soul absorbed it in a flood, swelling with newfound power.
Around its head, halos ford. First ca the brown halo of Earth, gleaming with steadfast strength. Then the green halo of Wood, alive with growth and renewal. Next, the red halo of Fire, blazing with fury and passion. And then, a fourth.
Blue.
The halo of Water glowed like a moonlit sea, serene yet boundless, encompassing all within its depths. The fourth halo pulsed with majesty, marking the completion of another trial, another ascension.
Lin Mu opened his eyes, and in that instant, the ocean above shattered into rain. Gentle droplets fell across the courtyard, the city, and the land, soothing the hearts of mortals and cultivators alike.
From the ruins of the tribulation’s fury, Lin Mu had erged unscathed. Stronger. Firr. Ascendant.
He had crossed into the Fourth Tribulation Stage of the Immortal Realm.
The heavens had tested him once again—and once again, Lin Mu had endured, unbowed and unbroken.
The skies above the city were still rumbling, although the thunderous sounds were fading.
The clouds that had turned into an endless ocean now thinned, retracting into wisps of white and vanishing as if they had never existed. But no one present could forget what they had witnessed.
Daoist Chu’s mouth was still open, his beard fluttering in the lingering winds.
The Grand Elder’s eyes remained fixed on the heavens, unblinking, as though afraid he would miss another spectacle.
Around them, countless cultivators had long forgotten to breathe, their eyes glassy and wide as they stared at Lin Mu floating high above.
To them, he seed less like a man and more like a celestial being... One who could wrestle directly with the heavens and co out unscathed.
"Impossible... utterly impossible..." one of the elders whispered, trembling. "He treated the Heavenly Tsunami Immortal Tribulation as if it were nothing but a sparring partner..."
"That physique of his... not a single ripple of weakness..." another muttered, sweat dripping from his brow despite the cool mist still falling from the sky.
The common cultivators in the city dared not speak aloud, but their hearts were roaring. For them, what they had seen was the kind of story that would echo through generations.
Lin Mu, the outsider turned sect pillar, had done what countless geniuses of history had perished attempting. He had conquered the Heavenly Tsunami, the very tribulation that had claid the lives of peak prodigies for hundreds of thousands of years.
Yet while awe and terror rippled through the crowd, Lin Mu himself was focused inward. He ignored the gasps and the reverent whispers. His golden form floated in the sky, calm and still, as he looked within himself.
His injuries were laughable.
A few hairline cracks across his ridians, so tears from Dao Insights, a lingering heaviness in his dantian... And yet all of it was already nding.
His vitality surged endlessly, each breath he took, drew in strands of immortal essence from his apertures, knitting the damage shut.
For others, even those of great clans, surviving an Immortal Tribulation ant collapse. Their bodies and souls would be so taxed that weeks, even months of recovery were necessary.
But for him... he felt even stronger than before.
Then, amidst this sea of new power, sothing unusual caught his attention. A subtle awareness lingered at the edge of his senses. He frowned slightly.
At first, he thought it was residual energy from the tribulation: remnant Water Dao Traces still floating in the sky.
But the more he observed, the clearer it beca. He was not just sensing traces outside his body. He was sensing them everywhere, even within himself, as though the Water Dao Traces had beco an extension of his perception.
He did not need to strain his Spatial Perception nor refine his focus. They were simply there, flowing naturally before his awareness.
"What is this..." he muttered under his breath.
He pushed his immortal sense inward, tracing it to the source. It went directly to his lower torso, settling between his kidneys, where the spinning core of deep cerulean light rotated steadily.
The sight made him freeze.
"...Impossible."
The water elental core of the Omnicore Ascendancy Technique had grown.
No! It had transford.
It was nearly twice the size it had been before the tribulation. The core pulsed with a richness of elental essence that almost frightened him. It did not look like the careful, incrental growth he was used to.
It looked like the leap of a predator who had devoured an ocean’s worth of prey in a single gulp.
His mind ran through countless calculations. To grow his elental cores, he usually needed rare materials, months or even years of refinent, and constant circulation of his cultivation thod. Yet here, without any effort on his part, his water core had surged past all the others.
Before this mont, his wood core had been the largest, nearly seventy percent complete, while fire and earth followed close behind. His water core had lagged significantly, sitting at a re forty-five percent, overshadowed by the rest. tal, wind, and lightning cores were still trailing far behind.
But now...
Now, his water core had bypassed them all. Its completion rate stood at an astonishing ninety percent, practically on the edge of perfection. It glowed with an ocean’s might, a living spring that seed ready to overflow at any mont.
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