134: Chapter 134: Heavenly Tribulation, though merciless, is not entirely natural.

Sunset Forest, core area, above the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

The sky at this moment was no longer the familiar azure or leaden gray, but had transformed into a churning sea of destruction that made one's soul tremble!

Endless, thick thunderclouds, layer upon layer, piled up like mountains, gathering from all directions and even from the nine heavens, completely obscuring the sky for hundreds of miles, leaving not a sliver of daylight.

The clouds were not ordinary dark clouds, but presented a bizarre color intertwined with dark purple and ink black, inside which countless thick, dragon-like, mottled-colored thunderbolts were crazily darting, roaring, and exploding!

These were not just silvery-white lightning, but also blood-red lightning as scarlet as blood, pale and ghostly yin-sha thunder, deep purple eerie destructive tribulation thunder, and even pitch-black, extinction thunder that seemed to swallow all light...

All kinds of terrifying lightning that only appeared in ancient legends were now sinking and brewing in this sea of thunder, emitting a shocking aura that caused all things to wither and rules to collapse.

"Rumble—!!!"

The thunder was no longer simple thunder, but sounded like billions of primordial thunder beasts roaring simultaneously in the depths of the clouds, or like the final wail of a World approaching its end!

Every explosion made the earth tremble violently, and countless rocks fell from the peaks surrounding the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well valley.

The air was filled with a thick smell of ozone and a more primitive, suffocating will of destruction.

The might of heaven is like a prison!

This was no longer a pressure aimed at an individual Spirit Master, but the entire law of heaven and earth, a merciless judgment and obliteration descending upon an anomaly about to break through its inherent framework and reach a higher level of life!

That vast, cold, unquestionable sense of oppression poured down from the nine heavens like a tangible tide, shrouding the entire Sunset Forest and continuing to spread outwards.

Inside the forest, it was already in chaos.

Spirit Beasts, whether fierce, cunning, or docile, regardless of their cultivation age or species, all felt the deepest fear stemming from their life instincts!

Countless Spirit Beasts prostrated on the ground, shivering, emitting shrill wails and desperate low roars, losing control of their bowels, leaving the forest in a mess.

Century-level Spirit Beasts fainted directly, millennium Spirit Beasts collapsed like mud, and ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts were also terrified, fleeing for their lives in the direction away from the center of the thunderclouds, trampling each other, forming small-scale beast tides.

Even those lords hidden in the depths of the forest with cultivation reaching fifty thousand years or even stronger, were now cowering in the deepest parts of their dens, restraining all their auras, not daring to breathe, fearing they would be locked onto by the will of the Heavenly Tribulation and bring about a catastrophe.

Within the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, that strange spring was still bubbling, the red and white spring water seeming unaffected, but the precious Immortal Plant and spiritual medicines around it were dim in luster, their leaves drooping under the terrifying heavenly might.

"Go!"

Almost before the thunderclouds gathered and the first tribulation lightning fell, Lu Jing made a prompt decision, grabbed Wang Donger's hand, and gave a low shout.

Strong light erupted from both of them simultaneously.

Lu Jing was a deep black-purple destructive escape light, while Wang Donger was a holy sea-blue butterfly wing stream of light.

Without any hesitation, like two reverse meteors, they shot away at the fastest speed in the direction opposite to the center of the thunderclouds, which was outside the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well valley!

They were extremely fast, rushing out of the valley area in an instant, arriving at a higher, relatively open hillside on the outskirts, where they stopped and looked back.

It was not that they did not want to help, but in the face of this level of seven-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Tribulation, any external interference would not only be unhelpful but would trigger a chain reaction of the tribulation, doubling its power, and might even lock onto the interveners as attack targets!

That kind of power, even with Lu Jing's current ninety-third-level cultivation, plus the protection of the origin of destruction, he absolutely dared not say he had the certainty to withstand a few strikes.

Not to mention Wang Donger.

This was no longer a realm where human power could intervene; this was the ultimate showdown between a Spirit Beast and the laws of heaven and earth.

"Lu Jing, do you think... can Big Sister Snow Empress succeed?" Wang Donger stood beside Lu Jing, her beautiful face filled with undisguised worry, her pair of azure eyes staring tightly at the white figure in the center of the valley, who appeared exceptionally proud and exceptionally small against the backdrop of the sky full of thunder.

Snow Empress was still floating above the cold spring, her silver hair dancing wildly, her white dress fluttering, her whole body blooming with ice-blue divine light ten times stronger than before, attempting to contend with the might of heaven and earth.

Lu Jing's expression was equally solemn, gazing at the apocalyptic sky, feeling the heart-palpitating destructive fluctuations, and slowly shook his head: "I am not sure. A seven-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Tribulation is no small matter. Big Sister Snow Empress has a deep foundation and has borrowed the origin power of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well's cold spring, so the success rate should not be low. But..."

He paused, his brows slightly furrowed, a cold edge flashing in his eyes, and his voice deepened: "Although the Heavenly Tribulation is the manifestation of the merciless Heavenly Dao, sometimes, it may not be entirely natural. If everything goes smoothly, Big Sister Snow Empress might succeed. But if... there is someone behind the scenes plotting, or if this heaven and earth itself does not want to see her succeed?"

"Plotting? The heaven and earth itself?"

Wang Donger was stunned at first, then seemed to think of something, her face changed slightly, and she asked: "Is there some kind of power deliberately targeting or guiding the fate of Spirit Beasts?"

"Yes." Lu Jing nodded, his gaze becoming deeper, as if penetrating the tribulation lightning before him, seeing some more distant, more macroscopic causal threads.

"Spirit Beast cultivation, especially for Spirit Beasts over one hundred thousand years, every tribulation is a gamble of fighting against heaven for life. But some creatures, their very existence seems to have touched the reverse scales of certain rules, or rather, their fate trajectories have long been 'arranged' by some higher-level existence. Snow Empress is one such case."

He thought of the ending of Snow Empress in the original work, which could be called tragic and stifling.

With her cultivation of nearly seven hundred thousand years, her understanding of the laws of ice, and the home-field advantage of being in the core of the Far North, logically speaking, her grasp of passing the seven-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Tribulation should be far greater than that of ordinary one-hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts.

After all, no matter what, she was the darling of ice and snow, an existence born of heaven and earth.

But what was the result?

Not only did she fail the tribulation, but at the moment of transforming into a human, when she was weakest, she was "coincidentally" discovered by people from the Star Luo Empire thousands of miles away, sealed with the God-Sealing Platform, reduced to an auction item, and eventually forced to become Huo Yuhao's Spirit Soul.

All of this was shockingly coincidental and chillingly smooth.

It was as if an invisible hand was manipulating everything behind the scenes, ensuring that Snow Empress must fall or be subdued at a specific time and in a specific way, and then become a crucial piece of the puzzle on the growth path of a certain "Child of Destiny."

"As for who is laying the plan..."

Lu Jing's voice carried a trace of cold mockery, saying: "Besides this Douluo Continent, or rather, this Douluo star's plane will itself, who else could it be? It may not have a specific consciousness, but it has a certain instinct or established program to maintain the plot and push the growth of the Child of Destiny. For powerful individuals who may exceed control or are untimely, it will lower more severe tests, or even guide them to their destined ending. Snow Empress may be one of the existences marked by it."