Chapter 1380: Plans Do Not Keep Up With Changes (I)

Li Hao ignored the action taking place in the sky. He was still busy combining dao stars. Overwhelming presence billowed over the land, filling it with the power of great dao. Thunderbolts shuddered in the air—the tribulation seemed to have accumulated enough strength.

It was time for it to descend!

Li Hao sighed. This chaos tribulation... was outside his scope of expectations. He had no experience with them. After all his planning, none of it was as useful as pure strength!

Lin Hongyu and the rest probably wouldn’t be able to make it until he successfully weathered the tribulation.

KABOOM!

An incredibly thick thunderbolt raced toward the young man. He vanished, reappearing near Li Daoheng. However, the thunder and lightning ignored Li Daoheng and everyone else in the vicinity. Despite its massive size, its targeting was incredibly accurate as it aimed straight for Li Hao!

BOOM!

A thunderclap exploded in the ear. A cracking sound echoed from Li Hao’s body as it crumbled somewhat. Incomparable strength flared, ripping through the young man’s flesh. He looked incredulously at the sky.

He was a peak Empyrean King, but he’d nearly died to that blow!

The key was, he wanted to borrow the tribulation and redirect trouble elsewhere, but he’d failed!

“You were hoping for too much,” someone sighed in the far distance. “What do you take a chaos tribulation for? You must’ve read too many novels in thinking that you could drag others into it. This is your tribulation, so it’s targeted at you. No one who comes will be of any help!”

It was Celestial Pole!

He felt compelled to issue a reminder when he saw that the young man sought a scapegoat.

The thunder and lightning is meant for you, so don’t think of using it against an enemy. If it’s so easy to handle, it wouldn’t be called a chaos tribulation!

Li Hao’s expression shifted.

It’s aimed only at me?

He’d made another error in judgment due to lack of experience. Or rather, almost no one had such experience to draw from. Only Celestial Pole had encountered this situation before because he’d lived long enough.

Li Hao had thought that this thunder and lightning was so strong that it might become his trump card, but reality proved otherwise!

“The tribulations usually come in a factor of nine,” Celestial Pole continued. “The fewest number of bolts will be nine, and the highest number will be an infinite number of times! They won’t stop until they end you, so... good luck!”

BOOM!

The second thunderbolt was at hand; Silver City evaporated a split second later. No one else was affected, only Li Hao. He was reduced to smoking ashes in the blink of an eye!

Such incredible strength stunned everyone! How could this be?

A long river slowly appeared and an ashen-faced Li Hao walked out of its end. He looked disbelievingly at the sky overhead. This was... too strong!

I’m just incorporating a fake dao, not a real one. I’m not even a half step emperor, but the second blow absolutely contained the strength of one!

Fuck! Why is this happening??

He’d be dead from that second thunderbolt if it wasn’t for his power of time being able to reverse time for thirty seconds!

The third thunderbolt gathered in the void—it was stronger than before! Li Hao’s death seemed guaranteed this time!

“I cultivate my own dao, what does it have to do with the chaos?!” the young man roared at the firmament. He was livid!

If I survive this and walk out of Silver Moon, I’ll create a world a day. I’ll make sure that there is no rest for the chaos universe! That bastard! The chaos tribulation wants to kill me!

......

Thunder and lightning had arrived before the half step emperors battled. Whether it was Lin Hongyu or the combined forces of the Great Li king and Zhang An, they could only hold on for a moment. They were here to momentarily obstruct the half step emperors, not to determine the outcome of battle.

But the tribulation had come before Li Hao turned the tables. It’d delivered two blows; the second had reached half step emperor. It shattered Li Hao and now the third was swift upon him. There was no recovery period in between or need for the tribulation to accumulate strength between blows.

𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

It had already accumulated enough and its only goal was to strike Li Hao dead.

“Damn it!” cursed the young man, no longer as composed as before. As expected, plans never kept up with changes.

How would I ever think that me creating a tiny internal world for fun would result in a chaos tribulation?

The heck is this?!

He couldn’t contend with a half step emperor to begin with. The chaos tribulation was just additional fuel for the flames. It was so... aggravating.

The third thunderbolt was immediately upon him—there was no time for Li Hao to catch his breath.

As I thought, pure lies fill the pages of ancient tomes,

the young man reflected resentfully.

They say that tribulations can be redirected to others and used against one’s enemies, and that one can temper and reforge their bodies after a thunderbolt. That’s how people can break through in a tribulation. That’s all bullshit!

How am I supposed to break through anything in just a few seconds? Not to mention, this thunder and lightning is just pure destruction. There’s no hint of wanting to help me progress within it!

The thunderbolts just want to end me!

Boom!

The third thunderbolt was just as crazed, maddened, and formidable as before.

BOOM!

Li Hao’s newly recovered physical body was promptly smashed to pieces. Unending destruction ripped through the area, shredding him to fragments. A faint ray of time appeared, but the thunderbolt continued to dole devastation to the power of time.

Once the power of time was obliterated, Li Hao would be thoroughly dead. Clearly, the tribulation also knew that this was the young man’s true nature. Endless energy erupted, seeking to doom Li Hao. A tattered river flowed through the world, broken into two by loud rumbles!

Three thunderbolts!

Li Hao’s river of time was nearly exterminated after three thunderbolts! Only less than half remained to neutralize some of the destructive force. This time, it took a full twenty seconds before Li Hao could walk out of the end of the river with great difficulty. The weakness and aged look about him was much more pronounced than before!

The powerhouses holding down the main cities in the surroundings registered the change with alarm. They could also sense that Li Hao was unbelievably weak, that the young man might die from all of this!

Even Zheng Yu and the rest were surprised. This tribulation was that strong? Although it wasn’t on par with an exalted emperor’s tribulation, one had to take Li Hao’s current cultivation level into account!

His tribulation was so strong that it might even harm half step emperors, and this was only the third bolt. If the situation proceeded according to Celestial Pole’s estimation and the thunderbolts came in factors of nine, then they wouldn’t need to do anything to ensure Li Hao’s death!

The young man might not survive a fourth bolt, to say nothing of nine. His river of time was almost obliterated after three bolts and being deployed to help two people summon their future selves. If the fourth bolt was a little bit stronger... it would certainly eradicate Li Hao.

......

Whether it was Lin Hongyu, the Great Li king, or Zhang An, all of them wore solemn expressions. Everyone was here standing against the half step emperors because they felt that Li Hao would be able to rival them as well once he succeeded. With him here, even death wasn’t a worry. They could just come back to life.

But... what if Li Hao died first?

“Li Hao, your plots and plans are unparalleled,” roared the Great Li king. “Bring out all of your trump cards!”

Bam!

The long whip broke through the void and slapped him bloody, leaving the king wanting to cry, but lacking sufficient tears to!

Aren’t you unrivaled when it comes to scheming? You make your enemies suffer loss after loss! I finally made up my mind to participate in the fight. You aren’t really going to end my future, are you?

No wonder I don’t have a future self... what future is there to be had with Li Hao dead?

The young man walked out of the void once more and looked up at the sky with brewing rage.

Trump cards? Unparalleled plots and plans? How was I supposed to know this kind of thing existed without ever experiencing it? If I plot against something, that’s built on a certain foundation of knowledge and familiarity. How am I supposed to plan for something that pops out of thin air and targets only me?

Am I supposed to scheme against the air?

Seeing that the fourth thunderbolt was upon him, Li Hao grit his teeth and howled, shaking the void! There was no time to consider anything else.

A world manifested—the mental world!

Both Zheng Yu and Li Daoheng paused when they saw the world. It was one with stars that were half immaterial and half corporeal. 160 of them had fully integrated with each other and the remainder were well on their way.

“As I thought!”

The combination of the corporeal and immaterial!

But would that simple act elicit a chaos tribulation?

They watched silently, also finding the sight to be somewhat different from what they’d imagined. In addition, Li Hao hadn’t increased his strength by too much. Although he was a peak Empyrean King, he didn’t seem all that strong.

The mental world materialized, as did a seal, stone, and tree. The three powerhouses also looked up, at where the cataclysmic chaos tribulation raged in the sky. They were equally shocked and stunned by the fearsome force!

How had Li Hao caught the attention of this thing?

Once Li Hao revealed his mental world, he forcefully combined numerous dao stars. He wanted to complete the 180 as soon as possible and see if he could succeed. The tribulation wouldn’t wait for him—this was downright bullying!

He ought to undergo a metamorphosis when he succeeded, but the tribulation wasn’t giving him such a chance! This was humiliating!

For the first time ever, Li Hao felt that tribulations could be shameless. Exalted emperor tribulations waited until the target was on the cusp of advancing. The thunderbolts didn’t arrive until the last possible second, giving the cultivator a chance.

Exalted emperor tribulations were just a trial for the cultivator, it wasn’t meant to kill. But the thing over Li Hao’s head only wanted to kill. It didn’t want to temper anyone.

Regular peak Empyrean Kings would’ve long since flown apart as dust after the three thunderbolts. They stood no chance.