Chapter 311 - 286: Tribulation of Heaven’s Envy

Chapter 311: Chapter 286: Tribulation of Heaven’s Envy

An hour later.

Chu Mu came to a stop beside the crystalline, fiery-red Spirit Stone Vein.

To the naked eye, the crimson crystals before him looked no different from any other part of the vein.

But in his Divine Sense Perception, this patch of crimson crystal seemed slightly out of sync with the semi-natural Grand Array.

’Would a perfectly natural Grand Array have a discrepancy?’

Chu Mu stroked his chin, lost in thought.

A Fire Attribute Spirit Vein, a Fire Attribute Spirit Ore, and it was all situated in a place where the Earth Vein’s Fire Qi surged through a sea of magma.

Everything was inextricably linked to fire.

This was equivalent to someone artificially constructing a special Fire Attribute environment, then using it to achieve some unknown purpose.

This was easy enough to understand. In the Cultivation Immortal Realm, countless Spiritual Objects were born from all sorts of fortuitous encounters and coincidences.

Professions like Spirit Plant Masters and Spirit Ore Masters existed precisely to study these kinds of coincidences.

They used various methods to simulate environments suitable for the transformation or growth of Spiritual Objects.

By summarizing and experimenting with these principles, these two disciplines slowly took shape.

Of course, Spiritual Objects that required such special environments and chance encounters to be born were often exceedingly rare.

And a grand undertaking on this scale...

Chu Mu hesitated for a moment, then raised his hand and formed a seal. He cast out a series of Array Prohibitions, which landed on the crimson crystals before him.

The Array Prohibitions merged, and as time passed, the patch of fiery-red crystal actually began to melt slowly.

After about half an hour, a deep hole, tall enough for a person and about a meter wide, appeared in the flawlessly formed Spirit Stone Vein.

A crimson tunnel, crystalline from the inside out, now led deep into the Spirit Stone Vein.

With a wave of his hand, Chu Mu sent a Dragonfly Spiritual Artifact into the tunnel. Soon, the Dragonfly Spiritual Artifact flew back, and an image appeared before him.

A moment later, he swept his sleeve, putting away the Dragonfly Spiritual Artifact, and stepped into the crystalline red passage.

Based on the reconnaissance footage, the tunnel was extremely long, seemingly extending all the way to the center of this Fire Attribute Spirit Stone Vein.

The tunnel was located inside the Spirit Stone Vein, where the Fire Attribute Spiritual Energy was nearly liquefied. His Divine Sense was undoubtedly compressed to its limit, able to cover only a few meters around his body.

Chu Mu proceeded with extreme caution, his body tense and on high alert.

Fortunately, the passage seemed to hold no danger. Despite his vigilance, he reached the end of the tunnel smoothly.

A grayish-white Stone Gate, embedded within the Ore Vein, came into view.

He stood before it. In his Divine Sense Perception, there were no Restrictions on the Stone Gate; it seemed to function merely as a door.

But at this moment, his heart began to pound. The traces of artificial work were very clear.

Such a massive undertaking was clearly beyond the capabilities of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

It had to be someone above Foundation Establishment—a Golden Core True Master, or perhaps even a legendary Nascent Soul Old Monster.

The methods of such a being were beyond his imagination.

Though it seemed tens of thousands of years had passed, who knew what kind of traps might have been left behind?

His heart hammering in his chest, Chu Mu agonized for a good while before finally making up his mind. He reached out and touched the Stone Gate, surging his Power into it. The next second, the Stone Gate, which had been sealed for who knows how many years, slowly creaked open.

What greeted his eyes was still a field of translucent, fiery red.

Within the crimson crystal was a natural-looking cavern, not very large, only a few dozen feet across.

The scene inside the cavern was also extremely simple.

A fiery-red, altar-like platform stood in the center of the cavern. Atop it, blazing flames seemed to flicker.

Other than that, there was nothing else in the cavern.

Chu Mu frowned. He sent a Puppet in to test the area, and only after confirming there were no abnormalities did he step into the cavern.

He circled the platform once, confirming there was nothing else unusual in the cavern, before finally turning his attention to the platform itself.

The platform was nearly twenty feet tall and shaped like a pyramid, with steps on all four sides leading to the top.

The platform’s material...

Chu Mu pursed his lips. He was starting to get used to the extravagance of Ancient Cultivators.

This entire platform was built from Middle Grade Fire Attribute Spirit Stones.

And in his Divine Sense Perception, the core of everything, the very source, was clearly this platform.

Surging Energy converged on this platform. Washed by endless Spiritual Power day after day, the Spirit Stone platform before him had clearly fused into a single entity. It had even begun to exceed the limits of Middle Grade Spirit Stones.

Chu Mu looked up at the top of the platform, then set foot on the steps, ascending one by one.

What came into view was a Pill Furnace as tall as a man.

Chu Mu was slightly stunned. He had imagined many scenarios—a Magical Treasure tempered for ten thousand years, Spiritual Materials, or even a Spirit Medicine. But he had never expected that such a grand setup was all for Alchemy.

’This Alchemy... is it the same Alchemy Skill that I’ve learned?’

After endless years of being baked day after day by Earth Fire, the nature of this Pill Furnace had clearly changed.

Under his Divine Sense, he could only perceive an accumulation of dense Fire Qi. From an Alchemist’s perspective, this Pill Furnace was no longer suitable for refining any Elixir other than Fire Attribute Elixirs.

This had nothing to do with the Alchemist’s skill; the Pill Furnace itself had been fundamentally altered.

"Hm?"

As he moved behind the Pill Furnace, Chu Mu suddenly stopped.

The man-high Pill Furnace had perfectly blocked the view behind it.

Only now did he notice that behind the Pill Furnace, there was... a corpse?

Chu Mu took a step back, his gaze fixed on the body before him.

The corpse was perfectly preserved, but it had clearly been eroded by the Fire Qi over countless years, turning it into a fiery-red, jade-like Jade Corpse!

He could faintly make out the corpse’s original appearance; it must have been a graceful Female Cultivator.

He extended his Divine Sense. The faint, residual aura, far more terrifying than that of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator, was clear proof that this woman had been a High Tier Cultivator above the Foundation Establishment realm when she was alive.

There was a large hole in the woman’s abdomen, as if something had pierced straight through her body.

On the petrified corpse, he could clearly see her shriveled internal organs. She had obviously suffered a devastating injury before death.

’But why... did she die here?’

Chu Mu pondered in silence as a line of speculation formed in his mind.

The person behind the mysteries of this place was this woman.

Then, she had fought with someone, suffered a grievous wound, and fled here...

’Is that why the Grand Array is flawed?’

’So, what was this woman refining with such a grand setup?’

Chu Mu slowly crouched down. The Magic Robe on the woman’s body had been burned to ashes. There were no external objects on her petrified body, save for a pale silver ring on her index finger.

Chu Mu cautiously touched the woman’s corpse. After confirming there was nothing amiss, he removed the ring.

He touched it with his Divine Sense. With no resistance whatsoever, his Divine Sense entered the ring, revealing a dilapidated Storage Space.

Most of the space had already collapsed. Only a tiny wisp of the Power of Space remained, maintaining what was left of the Storage Space.

But even this was clearly on the verge of collapse, as if it could completely disintegrate at any moment.

He had no time to look closely. With a flicker of his Divine Sense, the few remaining items inside the collapsing Storage Space flew out and hovered before him.

At that exact moment, this action seemed to shatter the fragile balance of the broken Storage Space. In the unseen realm, he felt a faint flicker of the Power of Space, and the pale silver ring in his hand, which had still held a hint of light, went completely dim.

Probing it again with his Divine Sense, he found the ring had become a dead object.

He looked at the few items floating in front of him.

Two Jade Scrolls, one Jade Bottle, and one Jade Box.

Other than these, there was nothing else.

Chu Mu inspected them one by one. Both Jade Scrolls were Pill Books, recording several Pill Recipes and some insights into alchemy techniques.

The Jade Bottle contained several Elixirs. Thanks to the bottle’s excellent seal, their medicinal properties were still intact. Judging by their effects, they seemed to be some kind of healing Elixir, likely Tier Three.

Inside the Jade Box was a Spirit Medicine: a stalk of Stone Forest Ginseng, around six hundred years old and extremely rare.

Clearly, any information about this grand setup had either vanished into the Spatial Turbulence or been lost when the woman perished.

Chu Mu looked at the fiery-red Pill Furnace before him. After a moment of contemplation, he sat down cross-legged, formed a seal with his hands, and cast out a series of Techniques that all landed on the furnace.

He was going to open the furnace and retrieve the Pill!

But as he tried to control the Pill Furnace, he keenly sensed something unusual.

This Pill Furnace had been refined by such a grand setup for tens of thousands of years. Logically, it should possess no Attribute other than Fire and should be pure to the extreme.

Yet now, he could sense a trace of... Thunder Attribute energy on it?

Chu Mu’s expression filled with suspicion. Looking closer at the patterns on the Pill Furnace’s surface, which he had initially thought were part of its original refining, he now saw that they looked like marks left by a lightning strike. However, under the long years of intense heat, they had slowly... become perfectly integrated with the furnace.

At this, he suddenly recalled the flaw in the Grand Array outside...

’Perhaps the flaw in the Grand Array wasn’t caused by this woman, but by... Celestial Thunder? A Celestial Tribulation?’

Chu Mu’s pupils constricted. As this guess formed, his heart couldn’t help but pound violently a few times.

He remembered back in Water Heaven Workshop, he had borrowed some books from the Contribution Hall. In one of the Jade Scrolls, he had read a description of Celestial Tribulations.

It was said that after a Cultivator reached Foundation Establishment, they would face a Celestial Tribulation for every major advancement, whether it was Core Formation or reaching the Nascent Soul realm.

Only by passing the test of the Celestial Tribulation could one truly advance.

The same was true for Demon Beasts. In fact, the Celestial Tribulations for Demon Beasts were said to be far more terrifying than those for human Cultivators.

In short, a Celestial Tribulation was a test for Cultivators who walked a path that defied the heavens!

And this test wasn’t limited to living beings; inanimate objects were also subject to it.

Inanimate objects like Elixirs and Magical Treasures also faced Celestial Tribulations, known as Pill Tribulations and Artifact Tribulations.

However, according to that Jade Scroll, tribulations like the Pill Tribulation and Artifact Tribulation were exceedingly rare.

Every time one occurred, it meant that an object that incurred "Heaven’s envy" had appeared.

Heaven’s envy... even if it was just a turn of phrase.

But for an Elixir or a Magical Treasure to be able to incur Heaven’s envy, to have a tribulation sent down specifically for it, just how terrifying would it be?

Chu Mu stared blankly at the Pill Furnace before him as a speculative scene took shape in his mind.

This grand setup had been used to refine and nurture an Elixir for many years. On the day the Pill was completed, the woman had dragged her heavily injured body here.

A Celestial Tribulation descended from the heavens, pierced through tens of thousands of meters of earth, ignored the sea of magma, broke through the Grand Array’s seal, and struck the Pill Furnace directly.

That must be why the Grand Array was flawed, and why that Earth Fire Spirit was born.

But why did the woman die?

Did the Pill in the furnace survive the tribulation? Does it still exist?

...