"Heavens! He is going to kill himself out there."

"What do you know? Senior sister hasn't said anything. Besides, this is not a death duel."

Xu'er's juniors began arguing as they watched Wu Tao continue receiving blows and kicks from his opponent.

He was clobbered with a powerful punch just below his ribs, and blood immediately splattered from his mouth. He looked at his opponent and smiled with bloody teeth. "Now start punching your body until you are unconscious," Wu Tao whispered using Soul whispers. It was a skill on how to manipulate the soul among other skills that was in the technique his master had given him. It was very efficient but hard to use since, during fights, opponents tended to keep a distance from each other.

His opponent dropped him and took a step back. As his eyes started turning fully white, he began smacking his own body as if he were fighting a formidable opponent. His cries of agony echoed in the whole arena while he inflicted pain on himself.

This turn of events aroused endless murmurs as they grew curious about what was going on. Some realized the soul attack that had taken place, while some concluded that Wu Tao's opponent was going crazy.

Heaving from exhaustion, Wu Tao got to his feet, a hand on his abdomen.

"I've finally-" *Heavy breaths* "-done it." He smiled feeling proud of himself.

When his opponent thudded heavily after besting himself to unconsciousness, the man overseeing the duel flew on the platform and announced the winner.

"Wu Tao from Dragon Sword Sect has defeated his-"

"Wait!" A feminine voice boomed from the sky before she made her appearance. And when she did, she brought with her her wrath. With each step she took in the air, a pressure befell the spectators in the arena.

Groans and moans of pain rose as the crowd suffered under the domineering pressure of the angry female. "A mere Mid Core formation dares to hurt my disciple like this? Preposterous!" She spat and the pressure doubled, sending everyone below the level one thousand and five hundred to their knees, forcefully subduing them.

"Ggggh!" Wu Tao grunted, holding up to resist the pressure using his trained soul, but the weight of it was like a mountain wanting to crush him.

He pressed his abdomen, his organs screaming in agony. "I won this...fair," he groaned struggling to look up at the female.

"Senior sister, let us go."

"Shut up!" Xu'er hissed. Even though she wasn't as subdued as most of the crowd, she could still feel pain inside her chest as the pressure increased. "He's not here. Dammit! I came here for nothing."

"Are we going to help him?" Her junior asked with a look of discomfort on her face. Her other junior was holding her chest doubled over hoping to lessen the pain.

"Of course. We are in charge of the peace of the city after all," answered Xu'er summoning her sword.

It was a little difficult to get on it just as it was difficult to fly it down at the center of the arena, ignoring the cries for help from the spectators.

"Xu'er from Soul Sect, I greet you," she said saluting the female bringing chaos to hundreds of people.

"Oh? Is that man from your sect?"

Xu'er glanced back at Wu Tao who was holding on by a few threads.

"No, but his master-"

"Then get out of my way." She swayed her hand and Xu'er was knocked off the platform. "Boy, what do you have to say? This will be your last day alive."

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Wu Tao could not even breathe properly due to the pressure, but, he still managed to whisper, "Release everyone." He wasn't trying to manipulate her soul, no. Wu Tao genuinely didn't want anyone else to suffer because of him.

"Oh? How heroic."

She took another step and vanished, only to appear in front of Wu Tao. "How do you want to die? Should I cut your head from your neck and send it to your little sect, or should I cut off your limbs slowly and let you bleed to death?" She asked, a thin sword appearing in her hand.

Wu Tao chuckled.

"I won the duel without cheating. So why do you want-" *cough* "-to kill me? This is against the rules." He looked over her shoulder.

The man who had been overseeing the duels rushed with difficulty to stand close to them, hoping to dissolve the misunderstanding. "Hehehe! Elder Yulian, this young man has truly not broken the duel rules. Could you please give me some face and let this go? I will compensate y-"

She drove the sword through his abdomen.

"Who are you to talk to me about face? You should have intervened when my disciple was being humiliated."

She retreated her sword and blood splattered on the gray floor as he fell to his knees, eyes widened from the surprise stab.

"I'll give you a painful death. In your next life, learn whose disciple not to mess with." She thrust her hand forward, the tip of her sword going for Wu Tao's right side of the chest.

He couldn't jump out of its way even if he wished to. 'Father, is this how you died?' He closed his eyes, accepting his fate, just like his father's.

Suddenly, a black hole appeared behind him and he was pulled in, saving him from the fatal stab. As it closed, it snapped the tip of the female's sword as if it were a piece of wood.

She gasped at the incident and jerked her head from one side to the other, angrily looking for the person who had dared interfere. "Who is it? Come out!" She screamed throwing the broken sword on the ground.

Xu'er, who was lying on her hip, smiled. "He's here. Finally."

The second black hole opened and Ren stepped out, a crossed countenance shadowing his face.

She felt his breath for a split second before the portal closed up.

"Who are you? Why did you-"

"You wanted to kill him, why?"

"He humiliated my disciple. Of course, I can kill him for his sins."

The black sword his disciples had gifted him the day he came back materialized in his hand. "What will happen if I kill you?"

She giggled stepping backward. "You? Are you going to do that with that old thing?" She questioned looking at his sword condescendingly.

Ren brought the weapon to his sight. "You're right. I shouldn't stain a precious gift with dirty blood."

He put it away in his void and the female laughed even harder.

"Are you a fellow disciple of that little loser? Where have you taken him? I will-"

Ren brought his right palm forward and opened a small black hole. His chest seething with anger, he let out a bolt of lightning and it shot straight at her.

She gasped, hurriedly setting up a barrier, but the bolt was no ordinary lightning.

Other than it being from a thunder tribulation, after absorbing the void's energy, it had evolved into, black lightning. One of the most feared lightning that only showed when a cultivator was crossing over to Immortal ascension.

The barrier cracked, but before the bolt of lightning could hit her, she hopped up in the air and soared to distance herself from Ren.

"Where did you get that from? How can you-"

"You talk too much."

He opened ten more small black holes around her.

The sizzling of the incoming lightning bolts made her panic, disrupting her concentration as she tried to set up a protective array that was stronger than an emergency barrier.

"Wait!" She cried but Ren had already made his decision to teach her a lesson that would be carried on to her next life.

Since he couldn't control all the lightning he had absorbed that night, he had to separate the bolts apart and use them.

"Receive my gift."

The bolts began attacking her from every direction, weakening the pressure subduing most of the people in the arena.

But even with their freedom, they were quickly frozen by terror, witnessing a rare vision of black lightning. They stared, their eyes wide open, and their jaws almost unhinging from their faces.

Even Xu'er who thought she had understood how powerful Ren was, was left speechless.

As the electrifying energy continued coursing through her meridians, injecting too much energy than her body could handle, the Dao sensed the abnormality and brought its punishment on the being going against the laws.

Thick dark clouds gathered, covering not just the arena but the entire city and beyond. Lightning could be seen flowing through the clouds from miles away as it ran to concentrate on one area that was directly above the platform.

"Run!"

"Help!"

"Go! Go!"

The screams of the crowd filled the air slowly charging with dense energy. They overlapped the female's painful screams, but everything became nonsense when thunder began booming.

Ren had drawn...an Immortal tribulation.

'This one is too powerful. I should stay away and watch what happens. I wonder if Clay would have wanted to eat some of its energy."

To protect himself, Ren opened a black hole to get away from the impending danger when he saw Xu'er. She had grown paralysed staring at the incoming tribulation. The raw fear had rendered all her limbs useless.

Sighing, Ren picked her up with his roots and drew her onto the platform as chaos ensued from the people knocking each other to flee.

He covered her body with a barrier, from head to toe before walking into the portal awaiting him.

If he had just let her go through the void without any protection, she'd have been ripped to shreds by the mysterious energy inside it.

Ren had tested this theory back at the mountain after he awoke from his seclusion.

He had sent in a dead boar through one hole. But all that came out from the second portal was an ugly goo of blood, flesh, and ground bones as if it had passed through a grinder.

The darkened sky attracted the attention of all cultivators with profound cultivation levels. The charged air, the divine cosmic energy spilling in from the open path, everything drew in elders and even grand elders from different sects. They gathered in the air like flocks of birds, soaring to the area where they believed a fellow cultivator was about to become immortal and ascend.