60: Chapter 59 Li Han's Inner Demon Tribulation

Shattering the Core.

Within Li Han's body, that First-Grade Golden Core, perfect to the extreme, began to show its first crack under the drive of his will.

"Crack."

Accompanied by this soft sound, the sky above the Jueling Sea suddenly shattered.

Endless thunderclouds gathered at an incredibly frantic speed, blotting out the sky and sun.

The Six-Nine Heavenly Tribulation!

Thirty-six bolts of heavenly lightning, each more violent and terrifying than the last.

Li Han had withstood the first thirty-five bolts by relying on his own terrifying mana and endless trump cards.

His physical body had been tempered a thousand times, and beneath every inch of skin lay terrifying power.

But this thirty-sixth bolt of heavenly lightning, brewed to the extreme, possessed power that far exceeded the absolute limit that a cultivator at the Golden Core Stage could withstand.

"I will take it."

The remnant soul burned its origin power without hesitation, condensing an extremely thin yet incredibly pure ancient restriction outside of Li Han's soul.

This restriction blocked the destructive core of this final heavenly lightning bolt for him.

"Boom—!"

As the last bolt of heavenly lightning dissipated, the gray sky closed up once again.

Li Han was covered in blood, with hardly a patch of intact flesh left.

But his spine never bent.

Li Han threw his head back and laughed, blood mixed in with his laughter.

The Heavenly Tribulation, passed.

However, before his laughter could fade.

The colors between heaven and earth suddenly began to recede.

The sounds disappeared.

The wind stopped.

The gray earth of the Jueling Sea, the cracked abyss, the blurred horizon in the distance—everything was turning pale and void at an incredibly eerie speed.

It was as if an invisible giant hand was erasing the colors of the entire world bit by bit.

The Heart Demon Tribulation had descended.

...

Li Han found himself standing in a void of pure white.

There was no sky, no earth, no wind, and no sound.

Only endless white.

He looked down at his hands; his mana was still there, his divine sense was still there, and his consciousness was incomparably clear.

But the teacher's voice had completely vanished.

"Teacher?"

There was no response.

Li Han frowned, but he did not panic.

The teacher had long warned him that the Heart Demon Tribulation was a game between a cultivator and their own heart, and no external force could intervene.

He only needed to guard his Dao heart, remain as immovable as a mountain, and wait for the Heart Demon to appear.

Then, defeat it!

"Li Han."

A voice came from the depths of the void.

The voice was extremely familiar.

So familiar that Li Han's heart contracted violently.

Because it was his own voice.

In the white void, a black shadow slowly condensed.

It was a person exactly like him.

The same face, the same black clothes, the same figure.

Only those eyes were pure pitch-black, without any luster, like two bottomless, dried-up wells.

The Heart Demon.

It stood there opposite Li Han, looking at him with a smile.

"You really did come."

Li Han's expression was calm as he stood with his hands behind his back.

"Should I not have come?"

The Heart Demon tilted its head, sizing him up.

"Indeed, I should not have come, or rather, I should not be this strong."

As the Heart Demon spoke, it slowly walked toward Li Han.

"But who told you to have such deep obsessions, and for your Dao heart to have been shattered for a hundred years?"

"Chu Tiankuo! Lin Wan'er!"

The Heart Demon laughed wantonly, its laughter full of mockery.

"Those two inferior prodigies you regarded as defeated rivals actually used the method of exterminating your entire clan and killing your beloved, using their own lives, to cast the most vicious curse upon you!"

"They forcibly planted this seed of guilt deep into your soul!"

"So I came! Feeding on the fear you have suppressed day and night for these hundred years, I have grown into this appearance that even you fear!"

"Li Han, oh Li Han, for these hundred years, you have been in secluded cultivation, exhausting your heart's blood."

The Heart Demon leaned close to Li Han, pressing him word by word.

"Are you really ready?"

The moment the words fell, the pure white void shattered suddenly.

Li Han found himself back at the old Li family residence in the Extreme South.

Mud walls, wooden doors, and the old locust tree in the corner of the courtyard that he had climbed since he was a child.

"Han'er, time to eat!"

Smoke curled from the stove, and his mother, her face full of wrinkles, walked over holding a bowl of hot soup, smiling kindly.

"Come and eat; your father says the dough was kneaded well today."

Li Han's body stiffened.

He dug his nails into his palms, his voice extremely cold and hard.

"You are not my mother; my mother died two hundred years ago."

As soon as the words fell, the bowl in his mother's hands shattered, her face shriveled and cracked at a terrifying speed, and she fell at his feet, bleeding from her seven orifices.

"Han'er... why didn't you save us..."

Immediately after, more figures surged into the courtyard.

His father.

His uncles.

The cousins he had fished and caught shrimp with since childhood.

And that woman standing under the locust tree, wearing a coarse-cloth floral skirt, tears in her eyes.

His beloved, Su Wan.

"I said I would wait for you to come back... but the one who returned was the one who wanted to kill us."

Su Wan wept, looking at him miserably.

Li Han's Adam's apple bobbed.

He stared fixedly at that face, his nails already deeply embedded in his palms, blood dripping through his fingers.

"I said, you are not real."

His voice trembled slightly, but he still maintained his final cold hardness.

"Heart Demon, do you think you can shake me by using their faces? In a hundred years, I have already accepted all of this."

"Their deaths are my karma; I accept it."

"But accepting it means accepting it; it's useless for you to act it out another hundred times."

The illusion shattered instantly.

The Heart Demon stood opposite, nodding slightly.

"Not bad, you have passed the test of kinship."

"Then, the next test."

The scene changed again.

Li Han stood within an extremely luxurious secret chamber.

Sandalwood incense curled, gauze curtains hung low, and glowing spirit stones lit up the entire secret chamber as if it were a fairyland.

A female cultivator of peerless beauty reclined on a soft couch, her skin like congealed fat, her features like a painting, her whole body exuding a deadly charm enough to shake the mind of any male cultivator.

That was not Su Wan's face.

It was a face he had never seen, yet perfect to the point of being unreal.

It was as if the Heavenly Dao had blended the most extreme beauty in the world together, just to shatter his defenses at this moment.

"Cultivation is too bitter."

The female cultivator extended her slender, fair hand, her voice as soft as melting honey.

"You have killed so many people, fled for so many years, and suffered so many injuries."

"Why bother? Stay and keep me company; what Dao, what longevity—nothing compares to this moment of tenderness."

Li Han did not even take a second look, sneering.

"I have been in solitary cultivation in a sea of blood and a mountain of corpses for a hundred years; are you insulting me with mere illusions of lust?"

He took a step forward, his true essence surging, and with one palm, he smashed the female cultivator along with the secret chamber into dust.

The Heart Demon appeared again, still with that same half-smiling expression.

"Lust, passed."

"Li Han, you truly are an extremely restrained person."

"Then, the third test."

This time, Li Han stood on the scorched ruins of the old Li family residence.

Over two hundred charred corpses lay scattered about.

The old locust tree was just a charred stump, and beside it was Su Wan's unrecognizable corpse, her hand still clutching the wooden carving he had personally carved years ago that said "Wait for me to return."

Li Han's breathing was heavy, but he still stood straight.

"What is the difference between this and the first test? It is nothing more than another way to stab my heart."

His voice was low but resolute.

"Grief? Guilt? For these hundred years, I have already refined all of this into a part of my Dao heart."

"You... cannot shake me."

The scorched earth and corpses turned to ash in the wind, and the world returned to pure white.

The Heart Demon looked at him, the half-smiling curve on its face disappearing, replaced by an extremely serious scrutiny.

"Kinship, lust, death, and guilt—you have passed them all."

"A hundred years of polishing, your Dao heart is indeed repaired extremely well."

"It is a pity, if there were only these three tests, you would be able to form your Nascent Soul today."

The Heart Demon's voice suddenly became chillingly cold.

"But you have forgotten one thing, or rather, you have deliberately avoided one thing."

In Li Han's constricted pupils, the Heart Demon's body began to shrink rapidly, finally turning into a black figure only three inches tall, hovering in front of him.

The figure's features were blurred, but it had the exact same silhouette as Li Han, sitting cross-legged in the void, looking at him with an air of looking down upon all living things.

"Li Han."

The three-inch figure spoke.

"I will ask you a few questions, and you only need to answer."

"Answer correctly, and you pass the test."

"Answer incorrectly..."

The figure smiled.

"Then you will stay here forever."

In the white void, Li Han looked at this three-inch figure before him, without anger or panic.

Only he himself knew the bitterness and blood and tears of the journey he had taken.

"To get to where I am today, I have already paid every price I could pay."

"Parents, beloved, kin..."

"I have nothing left, only this life and this Dao!"

"Therefore, I can only succeed; I will never fail!"

Li Han's gaze was like iron, and he drew his sword, standing resolutely.

"Clap, clap, clap."

The Heart Demon figure was not intimidated by this will that erupted in a desperate situation; instead, it clapped its hands with a face full of mockery.

"What a moving determination."

The figure slowly put away its smile, hovering cross-legged in mid-air, looking at him with a gaze of extreme pity and mockery.

"Since you are so confident, then I will only ask you three questions."

"Answer correctly to pass, answer incorrectly... die."