Chapter 133 - 132: Essence of this Tribulation

Thump!

The wave of pressure tore across the vast expanse of Lin Yuan’s Sea of Consciousness, instantly ripping through the mist of his Half-Step Spirit Severing Cultivation.

When it struck Lin Yuan’s spiritual avatar, the impact was devastating.

It was as if an entire ocean of mortal despair had been violently compressed and dropped directly onto his soul. The aura seeped directly through his defenses, carrying the heavy dread of absolute loneliness.

"Argh!"

Lin Yuan’s spiritual avatar fell to one knee, clutching his head. In the physical world, sitting within the temporal isolation of the River of Years Pagoda, Lin Yuan violently convulsed. Blood spilled from his lips, his nose, and the corners of his eyes, trailing down his flawless skin and staining his robes.

Thump!

Another pulse. Another wave of obsession.

The edges of his spiritual sea began to crack, spider-web fractures of golden light violently splitting the fabric of his inner world. If he allowed this to continue, his soul would shatter into a billion fragments.

"I will not be consumed by this!" Lin Yuan roared, his will aggressively surging to combat the assault.

He forced his spiritual avatar back to its feet. He could not destroy the black heart with brute force—his blade had proven utterly useless against it. He had to contain it. He had to quarantine the tribulation before it completely destroy his foundation.

Lin Yuan raised both hands, his fingers blurring as he formed a sequence of seals.

He drove his spiritual hands downward, projecting a colossal Qi around the beating black heart. Instantly, the fabric of his Sea of Consciousness folded inward, constructing a cage of Qi.

Lin Yuan exhaled, watching the cage seal shut around the Black heart.

Thump!

The black heart pulsed violently inside the cage.

Thump!

An invisible wave of obsessive aura erupted from it, carrying an overwhelming pressure that seemed to distort the very space around the heart.

Yet the wave did not even register the barrier.

It did not collide with the cage or attempt to break through it. Instead, the oppressive aura simply phased straight through the barrier as though the cage did not exist, rendering the entire restraint completely meaningless.

Then, the wave slammed into him again, forcing him backward, his spiritual form flickering violently, threatening to disperse.

"If that cannot hold you... then time should!" Lin Yuan bellowed.

He changed his hand seals, reaching outward and tapping directly into the time runes of the River of Years Pagoda that housed his physical body.

With that, Lin Yuan carefully drew the power of the time runes into his Sea of Consciousness. Using his spiritual power as a bridge, he redirected the temporal force toward the black heart, attempting to isolate it from the normal flow of time.

Then, massive, glowing golden runes cascaded from the sky of his spiritual sea, wrapping around the black heart like heavy chains of iron. Lin Yuan poured his spiritual power into the formation, attempting to completely freeze the flow of time within that specific point in his soul. He wanted to pause the heartbeat and suspend the tribulation indefinitely, buying himself enough time to find a permanent solution.

This should be enough for now, but it was far from an ideal solution. It required his physical body to remain inside the River of Years Pagoda so that he could continuously draw upon the power of its time runes.

As long as he remained within the pagoda, he could maintain the suppression of the black heart. But the moment he left, the connection would be severed, and the temporal suppression would disappear with it.

Then, for a fraction of a moment, it seemed to work. The rhythmic beating of the black heart slowed. The golden runes flared with blinding light, grinding the gears of time to a complete halt.

But then, the black mist coating the heart began to writhe and boil.

Thump-thump!

The rhythm rapidly accelerated, fueled by a furious resistance.

The dark mist seeped into the golden temporal runes, slowly eating away at them. The chains of time began to rust, corrode, and shatter one after another. The black heart was not merely resisting the suppression. It was actively devouring the temporal laws, treating the power meant to restrain it as nothing more than fuel.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

The heartbeats grew faster and faster, turning into a frantic drumbeat of pure destruction. Wave after wave of pitch-black aura battered Lin Yuan’s soul. His spiritual avatar was pushed to the absolute brink of collapse, barely holding itself together under the relentless assault.

Even his physical body inside the River of Years Pagoda was trembling violently. Cracks continued to spread across his skin as thin trails of blood seeped from them, while the pressure building within his body climbed toward a terrifying limit.

Lin Yuan was running out of options. The black heart was an entity born from the clash between his refusal to sever his mortal attachments and his forced step into the Spirit Severing Realm. By refusing to follow the conventional path of severing everything, he had challenged the natural order of cultivation. In response, the Heavenly Dao had given birth to a terrifying tribulation meant to crush that defiance.

Lin Yuan dropped to his knees within his crumbling spiritual sea. The golden-purple mist around him was rapidly darkening as it was swallowed by the relentless tide of black obsession. The deafening rhythm of the heartbeat filled his mind, drowning out even his own thoughts.

He was going to die here.

"No."

Lin Yuan thought the word with every ounce of clarity he could still gather, a desperate, razor-sharp thought piercing through the suffocating fog of agony.

He was not going to die here. Not after everything he had endured, not after spending years cultivating his Mortal Heart, and certainly not after reaffirming the path he wanted to walk. If brute force could not destroy the black heart, and even temporal techniques could not restrain it, then there was only one thing left for him to do.

Understand it.

Lin Yuan slowly lowered his arms and allowed his spiritual avatar to sit cross-legged in the very center of the storm, completely exposing himself to the crushing waves of black aura. He stopped resisting and abandoned every attempt to suppress the tribulation. Instead, he opened his mind and deliberately allowed a tiny strand of the black mist to enter his consciousness.

Thump!

The wave struck him.

Pain instantly erupted throughout his spiritual avatar as the black aura tore at the edges of his consciousness. His soul trembled violently, and for a moment, Lin Yuan felt as though his entire Sea of Consciousness was about to collapse. But this time, he did not fight it. He endured the agony, using his comprehension to carefully isolate a tiny fraction of the black mist and analyze it piece by piece.

The deeper he looked, the stranger it became.

It was incredibly heavy. It was primordial. Yet it did not possess the stable essence of ordinary energy. It had no clear attributes of fire, water, thunder, or any other elemental force. It was not purely destructive, nor was it truly creative. It simply devoured.

Then suddenly, Lin Yuan felt a chill run down his spine. The realization was so profound that even the agony ravaging his soul seemed to fade for a brief moment. Lin Yuan stared at the black heart as a terrifying grin slowly spread across his face as the truth of his tribulation finally locked into place.

"Chaos energy!"