Chapter 435: Inheritance of the Thunder Prison, The Fall of the Great Sun

The moment Chen Chu revealed his Battle Dragon Emperor form, Li Daoyi felt an immense weight crash down upon him. The ground beneath him even began to crack.

"Holy shit! How is this possible?"

Enveloped in flames and lightning, the eighty-meter-tall giant emitted a terrifying aura.

Li Daoyi's eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets. Although he had predicted that Chen Chu’s strength would far surpass what it was before after breaking through to the Seventh Heavenly Realm, this was still far beyond his expectations.

Is this really the kind of power a Seventh Heavenly Realm cultivator can possess?

Li Daoyi couldn’t help but be excited. After all, there was a good chance that he’d finally get to enter the Thunderbolt Monarch's residence. However, he also felt frustrated.

Why are there so many freaks in this generation?

It made him, an Innate Awakener, feel as if he didn’t even have a presence. He was supposed to be a top-level genius!

Maybe chatting with beautiful women really did hold him back. After all, he used to be a minor realm higher than Chen Chu.

While lost in thought, Li Daoyi wondered if he should delete all the contacts of those women from his phone and focus entirely on cultivation.

As Li Daoyi struggled with his resolve, Chen Chu, in his Battle Dragon Emperor state for the first time, familiarized himself with the overwhelming surge in his power. Fortunately, he was in an environment where he could exert himself freely.

His strength and defense had increased thirtyfold. With his tenfold transcendent energy amplification, he now wielded an indescribable force.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Golden flames over ten thousand degrees Celsius erupted from him, causing the temperature within several hundred meters to skyrocket to several hundred degrees in an instant.

If they had been in a forest, the vegetation would have dried up and withered in moments, turning the area into a sea of fire.

In this form, Chen Chu had the aura of a walking calamity.

After briefly adjusting to his enlarged form, he willed his eighty-meter-tall Battle Dragon Emperor into motion, striding over the crumbling stone stairs.

Boom!

The ground cracked beneath his heavy, thunderous steps. The scorching flames turned the iron-hard rocks dark red and melted them.

Hum!

The eyes of the Thunderbolt Battle Puppet gleamed once more. It unleashed a terrifying surge of thunderbolt energy, spreading out to form a thunderbolt domain that spanned over a hundred meters.

Although not a human cultivator, the puppet had an energy core that allowed it to wield domain-level power equivalent to that of an Eighth Heavenly Realm cultivator.

A boundless storm of silver-blue thunderbolts filled the sky above Chen Chu. It seemed Chen Chu hadn’t been strong enough earlier to provoke its full power.

Boom!

Its axe, which was as large as a small room, grew tens of meters long. Engulfed in lightning, it tore a dark gash dozens of meters big through space.

A halberd over a hundred meters long shot skyward, entwined with golden flames and thunderbolts. Its immense power forcefully sealed the spatial rift and clashed with the thunderbolt axe at lightning speed.

Boom!

The world shook as blinding waves of lightning and fire coursed outward. The shockwave compressed the air, creating a dark red ring of light that spread hundreds of meters in all directions.

Right after, the halberd fired a burst of destructive force toward Thunderbolt Battle Puppet.

Boom!

The puppet, which had sent Chen Chu flying earlier, was hurled backward and crashed into the invisible barrier in front of the residence. Translucent energy rippled through the area.

Even with its incredible strength, the puppet failed to withstand the overwhelming thirtyfold power of the Battle Dragon Emperor.

Bang!

In the distance, thunderbolts around the puppet rapidly condensed into nine massive silver-blue thunderbolt dragons, each over a hundred meters long. They roared as they intertwined and charged toward Chen Chu.

At the same time, the puppet transformed into a streak of lightning, instantly accelerating to six times the speed of sound. In the blink of an eye, it appeared beside him.

Boom!

Chen Chu swung his halberd horizontally. The intertwining forces of endless thunderbolts and flames shot out a circular barrier three hundred meters high and a hundred fifty meters in diameter.

Eight Desolations’ Dominance.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The collision between the expanding barrier and the nine thunderbolt dragons created a cataclysmic explosion equal to nine intercontinental missiles detonating simultaneously. As dazzling light illuminated the sky, the explosion unleashed a wave of destructive force, sweeping across the land like a tsunami of fire and lightning.

Li Daoyi turned pale.

"I’m just here to watch!"

Thunderbolts enveloped him as he drew a long battle sword, its blade crackling with lightning. He slashed forward to meet the incoming wave of destruction.

Buzz!

A thirty-meter-long thunderbolt blade sliced through the oncoming shockwave. Li Daoyi passed through the gap before the shockwave crashed violently against the boundary wall.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The micro-world shook on impact, making it seem as if it was on the verge of collapse.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

In the distance, the Thunderbolt Battle Puppet had fully transformed into a streak of silver-blue lightning, growing dozens of meters in size. It circled Chen Chu at nine times the speed of sound—nearly three thousand meters per second.

The sheer kinetic energy it created tore open black rifts in space. With overwhelming force, it struck Chen Chu with its axe.

This was the fearsome power of the lightning attribute; it granted cultivators extreme speed and the ability to create instant, explosive destruction. Only a few in the same realm could rival such formidable strength.

Nevertheless, Chen Chu remained unmoved in the face of the puppet’s rapid attacks. Even though his Battle Dragon Emperor form reduced his speed, he still swung his halberd multiple times faster than the speed of sound, sweeping and deflecting attacks from all directions.

Each swing of the hundred-meter-long halberd carried terrifying power, churning space itself and creating waves of destruction that obliterated everything in their path.

At the same time, two of the arms behind Chen Chu continuously compressed his golden flames. Ten golden suns formed around the four glowing wheels of light behind his head.

The compressed energy radiated an intense and destructive heat, making even Li Daoyi's heart race in fear.

The other two arms of Chen Chu wielded blue-black thunderbolts, weaving an intricate web of lightning that clashed with the thunderbolt domain of the war puppet.

This was the complete form of the War God Body.

With two arms sweeping the halberd to dominate the battlefield and four arms controlling fire and thunderbolt to annihilate all that stood in his way, Chen Chu resembled a mythical divine figure that suppressed the thunder demons of the lower realm.

He struggled to keep up with the speed of the puppet, which had turned into pure lightning. The space-rending axe couldn’t penetrate his defenses either, though.

Using transcendent energy as fuel, Chen Chu had activated his core defense ability rune, which granted him a thirtyfold defense boost, forming a meter-thick layer of transparent black scales over his body.

Each time the puppet's space-rending attacks struck the black scales, the explosive impact left "wounds" several meters long and half a meter deep. However, Chen Chu’s scale armor regenerated in the blink of an eye.

As their battle raged on, the plaza, hundreds of meters in diameter, was quickly reduced to rubble. Even the hundred-meter stretch from the entrance to the plaza was completely destroyed.

The golden flames melted rocks and soil into lava, and the shockwaves from the clashes flung them into the air, forming a fiery rain of molten rock over a kilometer-wide area.

From sky to earth, blue-black and silver-blue thunderbolts flashed continuously. Every strike left craters several meters wide and deep.

This was the power of a late-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm cultivator; every gesture from the puppet stirred the heavens and earth, bringing rapid destruction to everything.

However, the residence remained untouched. An invisible force prevented the destruction from reaching it.

Amid their fight, Chen Chu roared, "Got you!"

Boom!

His halberd descended with immense force, shattering vast portions of the void at multiple times the speed of sound. With world-ending power, it crashed down onto the puppet's head.

Before it could react, four thunderbolt chains momentarily bound the puppet, abruptly stopping its high-speed movements. The endless thunderbolts around it contracted.

Boom!

The thunderbolt domain entered its body, transforming the puppet into a nearly pure, radiant thunderbolt. The boundless light it unleashed illuminated the world and shattered the chains binding it.

However, the chains had fulfilled their purpose; the puppet no longer had time to dodge the incoming attack.

Boom!

Chen Chu's most powerful strike seemed to invert the heavens and the earth. As if turned into the surface of the sea, the ground suddenly sank and then shattered, sending countless chunks of dirt and rock soaring into the sky.

Moreover, as the halberd descended, the ten suns behind Chen Chu’s head blazed even brighter and hotter. They transformed into meteor-like projectiles and rained down on his opponent.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

A blast similar to a nuclear explosion erupted from the ground, devouring everything within a diameter of two hundred meters. Radiating endless golden light, it annihilated everything in its path.

The intense shockwave instantly melted the ground into lava. As if the apocalypse had been summoned, the lava then surged into the air, forming a lava tsunami.

Li Daoyi’s eyes widened as he stared at Chen Chu’s unbelievable power.

"What the hell?!" he exclaimed.

In a panic, he hurriedly unleashed a thunderbolt-infused shield around him to block the incoming attack. He trembled violently as he swayed amid the scorching storm like a lone boat in the middle of a raging sea.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The collision created multiple shockwaves for nearly a minute before the destruction gradually subsided.

The battle had drastically transformed the entire micro-world. The area in front of the residence, including the plaza, which spanned a mile in diameter, had completely vanished. In its place was a massive crater, a hundred fifty meters wide and dozens of meters deep.

The bottom of the crater had crystallized into glass-like material, while the surrounding areas were still covered in molten lava that hadn’t yet cooled.

The ground around the crater had been stripped away in two layers. All the dirt and rocks on the surface were now black, lava-like objects.

At the edge of the crater stood the Battle Dragon Emperor, still holding a halberd like an ancient war god and exuding an overwhelming sense of dominance.

However, its flames had disappeared, and it now only had faint, flickering arcs of thunderbolts. Its aura had weakened as well, having seemingly exhausted all its strength.

Suddenly, the Battle Dragon Emperor released a wave of scorching air from within. Like a deflating balloon, it rapidly shrank until it returned to its normal height of 1.9 meters, revealing Chen Chu and his halberd.

In a flash of lightning, Li Daoyi appeared before Chen Chu, excited and bewildered.

"You’re insane, Brother Chu! Holy crap! You just blew up a late-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm Thunderbolt Battle Puppet!"

Chen Chu exhaled deeply. "It wasn’t too bad. It was just a puppet, so it was slightly inferior in endurance and adaptability to a real Eighth Heavenly Realm cultivator."

Although he had destroyed the puppet, he showed neither arrogance nor complacency. He was fully aware of the differences between him and his opponent.

More importantly, the battle had allowed him to roughly gauge his combat limits.

In his Battle Dragon Emperor form, he could contend with a late-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm opponent, and with the Double Void Pupils, he even had a chance to kill them.

However, pushing himself to his limits meant he’d have to exhaust himself just to kill one late-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm cultivator. His combat power would still be at its peak after defeating a beginning-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm opponent, but he couldn’t say the same against a late-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm one.

"Let’s go in and see what’s inside."

The two crossed the shattered ground, blinking forward several times until they reached the front of the residence, which was covered by a law-based restriction.

"I’ll handle this," Li Daoyi said.

He gathered purple thunderbolts in his hand and transformed them into a spear. Afterward, he fiercely hurled it at the law-based restriction.

Boom!

The thunderbolt exploded, but it didn’t even leave a scratch on the restriction.

However, the Innate Thunderbolts’ unfamiliar energy woke up a powerful will deep within the residence. It sent out invisible waves that swept across the entire micro-world.

"To defeat a Thunderbolt Battle Puppet at the age of seventeen or eighteen... You certainly have commendable strength. You both are qualified to receive some of the small items I left behind."

As the cold voice echoed, the barrier in front of them silently vanished. The ten-meter-wide, fifteen-meter-tall gate of the residence slowly opened, revealing a serene scene of birds chirping and flowers blooming.

However, before the two could explore the grand courtyard, the flow of time resumed, causing the majestic residence to crumble like sand, disintegrate into dust, and scatter into the wind.

The scene was quite similar to what happened with the previous pavilion.

Such was the power of time. Everything would eventually wither, turn to ashes, and vanish. Even oceans would one day turn to dust, and stars would one day face extinction.

While watching the scene, Chen Chu faintly grasped something.

Li Daoyi’s eyes lit up. "Brother Chu, look over there!"

At the far end of the collapsing residence was a twenty-meter-tall platform. It was surrounded by five massive pillars, each ten meters thick and tall enough to stretch into the thunderclouds above.

Staring at the five stone pillars, Li Daoyi began to look excited. "I can sense the presence of thunderbolt laws there! Let’s check it out, Brother Chu."

Whoosh! Whoosh!

The two instantly closed the several-hundred-meter gap and appeared at the edge of the platform. Li Daoyi immediately placed his hand on one of the stone pillars, and purple lightning erupted from his body, enveloping the pillar.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The thunderclouds above raged. Bolts of lightning rained down, striking the stone pillars. Amid the barrage of lightning, a pure, silver-blue thunderbolt emerged from the lightning patterns etched into the stone.

As the thunderbolt materialized, Chen Chu felt as if he was witnessing an endless downpour of lightning. It seemed as though he was in a world created entirely out of thunderbolts, causing it to radiate a mysterious aura of destruction.

Stimulated by the power of the thunderbolt law fragments, the other four pillars also lit up with powerful bursts of lightning, and four identical silver-blue thunderbolts emerged from the patterns on their surfaces.

Finally, the lightning patterns on the five pillars detached and converged in mid-air, swirling together to form a thirty-meter-tall figure made entirely of crackling lightning patterns.

"The true form of the Thunder Prison."

As the figure appeared, Chen Chu and Li Daoyi received information through their spiritual will.

It seemed to be the Thunderbolt Monarch’s inheritance. However, the information only contained the cultivation path up to his time before ascending to the rank of king and insights into laws up to the peak of the Ninth Heavenly Realm.