A Cultivation Tale: The Godly Punisher

Chapter 276: Soul Tribulation III

However, now that they possessed this perplexing and astounding attribute, they would be able to affect the soul of anything that is impacted, rapidly turning them into ice. But this would also depend on the soul-cultivation level of the soul cultivator. However, one mustn't forget about the numerous slivers of protoforce energy in each of his soul pillars, which would cause Alex to be greatly astonished with his soul-beings in future. And since he was done with this, he awaited the second phase of his soul-tribulation.

Not long, the color of the sky changed again. It changed from it previous color to scarlet red. Resembling a gigantic stretch of fire in the sky, the mortals who were hidden in their homes and were observing what was going on became scared.

'What's really going on?'

'Is it a god or a devil that's descending from the higher heavens?'

A few moment after the vast stretch of scarlet-red flame appeared in the sky, a large, solid column of dark scarlet fire descended from it towards the building where Alex was cultivating his soul.

However, no one saw this beam of fire, as it was something related to the soul. Only soul cultivators would be able to perceive it.

Bang!!

Argh!!

The beam directly struck Alex's soul pillars and caused him to scream out in pain. And because of the force that the dense column of soul-burning fire came with, it caused the massive soul pillars to shake and suddenly develop numerous cracks, giving the feeling that it was going to shatter onto smithereens the next moment.

Although Alex was incredibly hurt, he still tried to endure the agonizing pain that had begun to rack his soul when the huge column of fire descended upon his developing soul pillars. And as he endured that which he did by gritting his teeth, he started to pull in massive amount of soulforce energy from the realmverse into his soul-dwelling region. When this energy got into his body, he quickly directed it into his soul-dwelling region and infused slivers of it into each of the sixty soul pillars in his soul-dwelling region. His aim was to reinforce his soul pillars which gave him the feeling that they were going to shatter into tiny fragments the next moment. Therefore, as Alex did this, the hundreds of cracks that had appeared on each of his soul pillars sealed up, looking new again. But apart from looking new, it had grown stronger.

However, if one looked into Alex's soul, one would see dark scarlet flames burning around each of his soul pillars. These were remnants of the dark scarlet, soul-burning fire that formed the solid fiery column that struck Alex's pillar-shaped cores.

These wisps of flames could be seen burning brilliantly and ferociously on his body. It was like they had the intent to devour the entirety of Alex's soul pillars; the wisps of dark scarlet flames were actually trying to burn his soul pillars to nothingness, to the point that he wouldn't have a soul left, as they possessed the will of the realmverse to totally destroy souls of myriads of things.

Then apart from the great pain caused by the flames that burned interminably around his soul, his body began to burn like it was on fire. His blood began to heat up and burn. Same with his organs which felt like they were on fire.

Arghhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Therefore, Alex continually screeched in pain as the wisps of destruction intent-possessing flames wickedly burned his soul pillars and body. And as the flame burned his body and pillar-shaped soul cores, Alex began to roll about on the ground.

As Alex rolled about on the ground because of the pain that he was being inflicted with, he quickly released a power of his soul which possessed freezing attribute. And once this power was released by his soul pillars, the intense heat that he felt which was being emanated by the dark scarlet flames greatly reduced in intensity. So, this made the pain that Alex felt decrease a lot.

Then with a light of resoluteness in his eyes, he uttered inwardly 'Devour!'

Once he mentioned that, abstruse characters suddenly appeared all over all his body, and also on the surfaces of his soul pillars that were partly white in color. Then a rippling wave of devouring power instantly discharged from all of them and acted on the wisps of dark scarlet, soul-burning flame burning fiercely around them.

Immediately this wave of power acted on them, the numerous wisps of flame burning his soul pillars were pulled into them. And like that, his soul pillars which was partly white in color gradually grew a dark scarlet hue. And despite the intense cold emanating from each of them, the strong heat emanating from the soul-tribulation fire essence that had been infused into each of Alex's soul pillars wasn't affected. The opposite temperatures didn't actually cancel out each other.

Not long, another dense column of soul-tribulation fire descended from the sky and directly struck Alex's soul pillars.

Bang!!

A loud explosive sound rang out as the dark scarlet fiery column which was many times larger in size than the one that previously fell, struck Alex's soul with a powerful momentum and immense force that it seemingly caused his room to ripple. While the overly heavy impact of the large, soul-obliterating flame column with his soul pillars caused the release of large numbers of tyrannical waves which then swept outward with viciousness in all directions within his soul-dwelling region.

Any soul-cultivator that was at the stage that Alex had reached in the cultivation of his soul and was struck by this powerful soul-shattering wave would be instantly decimated by having their souls explode into bits, or they could become extremely injured if they weren't completely obliterated by the waves that would crack or shatter their corporeal soul-beings.

At this point in time, Alex's soul pillars had reduced to pieces by the immensely heavy force that the dense and huge soul-tribulation fire column struck it with. Also, they were being burned by the flames that caught on them.

When this happened, Alex screamed out loud in pain that the people in the building who were now members of the organization that he had established heard his sorrowful cry and became exceedingly worried. They wondered why their master was screaming. They wanted to go upstairs to his room to see what exactly was happening. But in the end, they decided against it and believed that their boss was only trying out some cultivation techniques that were exceedingly harsh to his body. So with the thought that he would be fine when he came out of his cultivation, they stated back and resumed what they were all doing.

At the moment, Alex's eyes were completely red, and numerous green veins could be seen all over his body. But this was due to the immense pain that was racking his soul. He was supposed to even die from having his developing soul pillars shatter into fragments. But because he had a special soul that had been merged with a type of originforce energy from a Beyonder-level expert, and which were also numerous in numbers, he actually defied death. And this had caused Alex's pillar-shaped Soul Core to upgrade. Then, it was a supreme-grade, mortal-level Soul Core. But now, it is a peerless-grade, quasi-immortal Soul Core. It couldn't achieve immortality as Alex hadn't reached the immortal stage yet. However, it had achieved pseudo-immortality; it was now a soul that couldn't fully be destroyed. Alex of course didn't know what had happened to his soul, but he would discover this later.

While groaning in intense pain, Alex tried to mold back his shattered soul fragments into pillars once again.

When his soul pillars explosively shattered into bits, Alex was overly horrified. He thought that he had come to the end of his life by trying out heaven-defying cultivation practices. However, seeing that he was still alive, he felt that there was till something that he could do to bring back his soul fragments into soul pillars once again.

Then exercising his powerful will on his soul fragments, he commanded them to rearrange back into pillars.

Although they formed back into pillars, it was very rough and would scatter back into fragments in his soul-dwelling region if it was hit by a slight opposing force.

Seeing the dilapidated state of his soul pillars, Alex pushed his devouring power to the extreme and drew soulforce energy from the realmverse.

Once the matchless power of energy and essence absorption was released, soulforce energy from the realmverse began to rush towards him in form of tidal currents from hundreds of meters away. And once it got to where he was, it impacted him like a tsunami and rushed into his soul-dwelling region where it abruptly infused into the worn-out looking soul pillars floating in his soul-inhabiting region.

The instant that the energy was infused into them, his numerous soul pillars glowed. While the thousands of cracks that could be seen on each of them rapidly vanished, causing the pillar to look new again. At this point in time, the roughness that they had had smoothen out, looking flawless again.

Although Alex was suffering greatly from the soul-tribulation that attacked him. However, if he could overcome them, many astonishing benefits of the soul would await him. Like now, his many soul pillars were looking flawless in appearance, which wasn't supposed to be so until he got to a particular cultivation stage. Then this would mean that they were been tempered by the tribulation that struck him, making the tribulation that he faced a good thing. But if one was conquered by it, what would result to that person was the Absolute destruction of his or her soul; meaning that person's total oblivion.

A few seconds later, the pillars were back to normal and even radiated a powerful soul-presence that was many times stronger than before.