The airspace above Clear Cloud Peak was completely locked down.

Hundreds of the Radiant Sky Sect’s most powerful figures hovered silently in the freezing twilight. They had not come to interrogate or punish. They had come to protect.

The Elders and Peak Masters suppressed their immense auras. Their faces were grim and pale as they stared up at the cosmic anomaly. They knew exactly what was happening. Something terrifyingly similar had occurred decades ago, and the memory still made the oldest among them sweat.

When the giant, illusionary "Tree of Death" had dispersed its healing leaves, the executives realized this Dao Manifestation wasn’t a demonic invasion. It was a heavenly response.

And their deepest suspicions were confirmed a moment later.

High above the clouds, the fabric of the sky itself tore apart like a massive, yielding eyelid.

A colossal, emotionless, golden pupil materialized in the rift. It gazed down at the Radiant Sky Sect with the cold, absolute apathy of a deity looking at an anthill.

The sheer, suffocating pressure of its stare caused the space around the mountain to violently distort. The ambient Qi in the air froze. It was completely suppressed by a higher authority.

"It’s really the Eye of Heaven," Peak Master Hou Yan of the Heavenly Forge Peak muttered. His voice was thick with dread.

Standing nearby, Peak Master Shen Youran of the Silent Orchid Peak stared downward with an unreadable expression.

"He has reached the Tenth Stage of Qi Refining," her voice sliced through the heavy silence.

The older Elders exchanged terrified glances. In the cultivation world, the number Nine represented the absolute Mortal Extreme. Ten represented Heavenly Perfection. By stepping into the 10th Stage, a mortal was boldly claiming a state of "Perfection" that belonged exclusively to the Heavens.

This tribulation wasn’t a test of strength. It was the Heavens acting as an immune system, moving to crush a mortal who dared to sit on the same throne as a God.

They could not interfere. If an outsider struck a heavenly tribulation, the Eye of Heaven would instantly multiply its power and obliterate the entire sect. All they could do was silently prepare their most powerful healing arrays, ready to dive in the second the tribulation ended to save whatever was left of Su Bai’s life.

Down in the courtyard, Su Bai felt the crushing gaze of the golden pupil.

He ignored the armada of glowing swords surrounding his peak. He stared up at the sky. His breath was caught in his throat.

’An audit from the heavens,’ Su Bai realized. Cold terror gripped his heart.

This was the dreaded "Mortal-Reset" Excision Lightning.

Gritting his teeth, Su Bai sat perfectly cross-legged on the flat stone and forced himself into a deep meditative state. He had no defensive artifacts. He could only pray his corporate hardware was up to the task.

And finally, the Heavens passed their judgment.

From the center of the golden Eye of Heaven, a single, needle-thin beam of pure light fired downward. It was completely, terrifyingly silent.

The beam did not strike Su Bai first. It struck his cosmic anomaly.

The moment the golden light touched the colossal, illusionary "Tree of Death" that spanned the entire sky, the Dao Manifestation didn’t even have time to resist. It was instantly, utterly obliterated.

The gargantuan obsidian trunk and the sprawling canopy of Ashen-Frost leaves shattered like fragile glass. The Heavens erased the massive illusion from the sky in a fraction of a microsecond.

Everyone gasped.

The golden beam, completely unhindered by the destruction of the illusion, shot straight down. It bypassed Clear Cloud Peak’s defensive arrays as if they were made of air.

The Heavens didn’t want to blow up the mountain with kinetic force. They just wanted to permanently "debug" Su Bai.

Thwack!

The needle of golden light pierced directly into the center of Su Bai’s chest. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Su Bai braced himself for the agonizing pain of his flesh melting and his bones shattering. But a split second later, his highly analytical, corporate brain understood exactly what the Heavenly Dao was trying to do.

There was no pain. There was no physical damage.

This lightning didn’t attack flesh or bone. It bypassed the physical realm entirely and directly attacked the concept of his cultivation. Its sole purpose was to forcibly dissolve a cultivator’s Qi, shatter their Spirit Root, and instantly reset them into a baseline, crippled mortal.

Su Bai’s eyes flew wide open.

’Wait... this lightning is just a Hard Factory Reset!’ Su Bai realized as sheer relief washed over him. ’It’s designed to format my biological hard drive, wipe my Dantian’s memory, permanently revoke my admin privileges, and demote me back to a mortal!’

If the lightning had been pure, explosive kinetic energy, Su Bai might have actually been in trouble. But because it was purely a conceptual attack designed to alter his internal foundation... it had just stepped into his Reversal Body’s absolute domain.

The Heavens had just sent him a targeted malware attack. And his Reversal Body was the ultimate, unbreachable firewall.

The instant the "Factory Reset" command entered his Dantian, the Reversal Body caught the code and violently inverted its logic.

Instead of wiping his foundation, it aggressively reinforced it. The pale, destructive golden lightning was instantly corrupted into freezing, pitch-black energy. Because the lightning was made of the highest, purest laws of the Heavenly Dao, it acted as the ultimate, hyper-concentrated fertilizer.

Inside his boundless Dantian, the crystalline Sapling Wood Root greedily drank the inverted tribulation lightning. Its roots dug deeper into the infinite void, permanently solidifying its structure.

Su Bai closed his eyes and sent his senses inward.

The Heavens hadn’t crippled him. They had just hand-delivered the purest, most high-tier energy package in the universe directly to his core.

***

Meanwhile, outside the perimeter of the peak, the executives were frozen in profound shock.

They had all seen the Excision Lightning strike him. They had fully expected Su Bai to cough up blood, his aura to shatter, and his hair to turn white as he was violently stripped of his cultivation.

Instead... Su Bai just blinked, looked mildly surprised for half a second, and then peacefully closed his eyes to continue meditating.

His aura didn’t shatter. In fact, it felt even heavier and more profound than before. He absorbed the Heaven’s wrath as easily as a man drinking a cup of warm tea.

The Elders stared at the young man, feeling utterly ridiculous for overreacting. They had prepared their life-saving ultimate spells... and the kid hadn’t even flinched.

High above, the Eye of Heaven slowly closed.

The Elders, however, had not recovered. Their mouths were slightly open. Their worldview was completely shattered by the sheer unreasonableness of what they had just witnessed.

Even Peak Master Shen Youran stood frozen. She slowly lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Something similar had happened in the past, but never with this level of casual disrespect toward the Heavenly Dao.

"Senior Brother Su..." Shen Youran muttered into the night wind. "Just what have you brought to this world?"

The nearby Peak Masters heard her whisper. Their hardened faces broke into wry, helpless smiles.

"Like father, like son, I guess," Peak Master Hou Yan laughed. He shook his head as he canceled his healing array.

"More like the younger generation has vastly exceeded the old," another echoed, stroking his beard.

A chorus of relieved, hearty laughter broke out among the old men. Their sect had just secured a monster of a genius.

Shen Youran, however, didn’t laugh. She just stared flatly at Su Bai.

Just as the executives were preparing to descend and formally congratulate their new 10th Stage prodigy, another violent anomaly ripped through the sky.

RUMBLE!

Everyone whipped their heads around. The night sky above Silent Orchid Peak suddenly churned with violent, crackling violet thunderclouds. The energy was sharp, ferocious, and entirely different from Su Bai’s strange manifestation.

"I cannot believe it..." Peak Master Hou Yan gasped. His jaw dropped for the second time that night. "Two peerless geniuses breaking through in a single day?!"

Shen Youran’s icy eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter. She immediately sent out her spiritual senses, piercing through the distance toward her peak.

It was her disciple.

Ji Ruyue was currently undergoing the Heavenly Tribulation to form her Golden Core!

Without a second thought, she surged across the night sky, rushing toward the next major crisis.