Chapter Eighty-Two: Beating the Bird-Man Senseless-Divine Sniper(A warrior travels the world on foot.)

“Damn it!” Lei Dong had time for only a furious roar before a bolt of heavenly lightning came crashing straight down onto him.

Boom!

With a deafening blast, the strike smashed Lei Dong brutally into the ground, gouging out a man-shaped pit more than a meter deep. He lay flat on his back, his whole body charred black, arcs of electricity running wildly over him, thin streams of blue smoke curling from his mouth, nostrils, even his ears. Yet he did not move at all. All signs of life seemed gone.

“Lei Dong!” Black Cloud, Fairy Shuiyao, and the others cried out together. Before any of them could act, the second bolt split the air with a crack and struck down at Lei Dong again.

Fairy Shuiyao had no time to think. Her hands flew through a series of seals, and the White-Bone Black Jade Sword shot from her grasp, glowing with an ever more eerie radiance as it rushed head-on toward the descending lightning. But before the jade sword could even approach it, she felt a vast, crushing force transmitted through the flying blade. Her heart meridian shuddered violently, sweetness surged into her throat, and a thread of blood seeped from the corner of her lips. Still she clenched her teeth, gave a sharp cry, and drove the sword forward with even brighter brilliance.

The lightning seemed to sense her hostility. It exploded in midair, and a violently destructive force blasted straight toward the jade sword. The power contained within it was so terrifying that everyone standing nearby could scarcely breathe. They all knew that if this heavenly thunder struck home, the best possible outcome would be a shattered sword and a grievously wounded wielder.

Just as that world-rending bolt was about to hit, a figure sprang up from the ground like a meteor. In the instant before the thunderbolt and the jade sword met, he squeezed into that tiny gap and forcibly took both impacts upon himself.

Boom!

The two thunderous crashes rang out almost simultaneously. The heavenly thunder and the White-Bone Black Jade Sword struck the figure at nearly the same moment, hurling him several meters through the air. He landed heavily, staggered backward more than a dozen meters, and only then planted his feet firmly.

Everything had happened too fast. From the descent of the second heavenly bolt, to the jade sword’s release, to the figure taking the double blow, no more than two seconds had passed. Yet to Fairy Shuiyao, it felt as long as a century. When her dazed eyes finally made out the man standing there, surprise and joy overwhelmed her, and she cried out involuntarily, “Lei Dong!”

At the most critical moment, the one who had thrown himself in front of the Black Jade Sword and borne both blows was Lei Dong.

His clothes were in tatters. Knotted muscles stood bare in patches across his body. His charred skin still spat arcs and sparks, but he paid them no heed. His short dark hair stood straight upright, and with one hand pointing furiously at the mass of black tribulation clouds overhead, he roared, “Come on then, you bastard! Hit me again!”

The words were crude, but his bearing was fierce, carrying a majesty no one dared affront.

As though answering Lei Dong’s taunt and challenge, the tribulation clouds churned violently, and a third heavenly bolt, even more terrifying in force, came slashing straight down toward him.

“Don’t block it!” Lei Dong shouted at Fairy Shuiyao. Then he leaped more than ten meters into the air and actually met the third bolt with his chest.

Boom!

The heavenly thunder struck him midair. His body swayed several times before crashing heavily back to the earth.

But this time, Lei Dong only staggered back less than five meters before standing firm again. He threw back his head in wild laughter, thrust a massive middle finger at the sky, and bellowed, “What, that’s all you’ve got? Come again!”

Crack!

With another tremendous peal, the fourth heavenly bolt struck him head-on. Yet it did no more than make his upper body rock; his feet never even left the ground.

“Hahahaha! I get it now. Again!”

Amid Lei Dong’s nearly crazed laughter and cursing, the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth heavenly bolts fell one after another onto him as though they had eyes.

To the utter horror of Black Cloud, Fairy Shuiyao, and the others, each bolt was fiercer than the last, each more imposing and savage than the one before. Yet Lei Dong seemed to take them more easily each time, as though even those heaven-shaking blasts could not interrupt his exhilarated laughter.

Even more astonishing, the charred blackness covering his body began to fade at a rate visible to the naked eye. By the time the nine bolts had passed, his flesh had regained its original luster.

After the ninth strike, the tribulation clouds overhead began to spin even faster, clearly brewing an even harsher thunderbolt. Meanwhile, the Five-Direction Spirit-Gathering Array, pierced through nine times in succession, had already collapsed into ruin, and its dense spiritual barrier had dispersed into nothingness.

“Be careful!” Fairy Shuiyao suddenly cried.

Before Lei Dong could react, a tremendous force slammed into his back with a heavy bang. His body did not even sway, but a burst of sharp pain shot through him.

He spun around and saw James Sam hovering a few meters behind him, wings spread wide, face twisted in savagery, swinging a thick pillar of light down at him with all his might.

“So you feathered freak are trying to steal the spoils too!” Rage exploded in Lei Dong’s chest. He stomped hard on the ground and shot into the air, his left hand flashing out to clamp around James Sam’s right wrist.

His palm met searing heat, like gripping burning iron, but Lei Dong no longer cared. With a violent wrench downward, he unleashed overwhelming force and smashed James Sam brutally into the ground.

James Sam had seized the moment when the Five-Direction Spirit-Gathering Array collapsed to dive from the air and launch a sneak attack. He had thought he could finish Lei Dong in a single blow. He had never imagined that Lei Dong would not even stagger. While he was still shocked, he was caught and hurled to the ground. His mind was in chaos when he saw Lei Dong twist lightly at the waist in midair and dive down in a sharp turn, moving with even greater agility than someone with a pair of giant wings. The ferocity of his momentum surpassed James Sam’s by countless times.

Alarmed, James Sam was just about to beat his wings and rise when Lei Dong seized his right wrist again. The grip was so monstrously powerful that even James Sam, whose body had nearly fully transformed into energy, could not break free. It felt as though an iron band had locked around his wrist, pinning it completely.

“Fuck you!” Lei Dong roared, and a furious iron fist crashed down onto James Sam’s head.

James Sam felt his thoughts blur. His fully energy-formed head—he no longer even knew why it was still capable of thought—rang violently, and the power he had just gathered instantly collapsed.

Then came a relentless rain of iron fists, pounding down upon him without pause. James Sam felt no pain, only endless humiliation, as if he had returned to a dozen hours earlier, when he had likewise been utterly helpless, beaten savagely by this opponent whom he had thought an ant but who was in truth a dragon.

“Awooo—!” James Sam howled hysterically like a grievously wounded beast, his whole body twisting and struggling.

At that very moment, the tribulation clouds overhead finished gathering strength again, and another heavenly bolt came crashing down onto Lei Dong’s back with earthshaking force.

This bolt was twice as thick as any of the previous nine and more than twice as powerful. Lei Dong’s entire body flared with electric light at once, convulsing violently, and his left hand loosened involuntarily. James Sam felt the pressure on his wrist lift and immediately beat his wings, wrenching himself free.

But before he could rise even two meters, Lei Dong had already sprung up again. His left hand shot out, three fingers settling on James Sam’s wrist. James Sam had no idea what technique Lei Dong used. He only felt those three fingers turn slightly, and his body was forced to spin half a circle with them. Then a vast, unimaginable spiraling force yanked him viciously downward.

“Trying to run?” A savage grin spread across Lei Dong’s charred face. With one pull and twist of his left hand, he smashed James Sam into the ground with a bang, then drove his right fist into James Sam’s face like a speeding train, sending him flying several meters.

But the assault did not stop there. Even as James Sam’s body flew backward, Lei Dong followed him like a shadow, surging forward at blinding speed. His left hand still clamped tightly around James Sam’s wrist. With another guiding pull, James Sam’s huge body lurched, and then Lei Dong’s right fist, rumbling like thunder, slammed into his face once more.

“Taiji Fist! Never seen it, have you?” Lei Dong snarled.

Bang!

“Jade-Shattering Fist! Never heard of it, have you?”

Bang!

...

One heavy strike after another crashed into James Sam’s head, face, chest, lower abdomen... He felt as if he had fallen into a boundless sea, or sunk into a sucking swamp. His body listed and reeled like a drunkard, utterly beyond his own control, able only to endure the merciless beating again and again.

Amid that rainlike barrage of blows, crack! another heavenly bolt struck Lei Dong.

“Damn you!” Lei Dong cursed furiously, heedless of everything, and drove another punch into James Sam’s eye socket, as though venting his fury at the heavenly tribulation itself.

Yet it was not merely blind venting. From the moment he had been struck by the first bolt of the first wave, Lei Dong had discovered that while the force of heavenly thunder was indeed unimaginably vast, hidden within that destructive power of death was a faint intimation of life.

When that power struck him, it rampaged through his body, battering his meridians and his flesh. But after circling through several cycles within him, it would smoothly transform into spiritual energy of heaven and earth, ready to be absorbed. And at that point, the hidden meaning of life began to exert its strange effect, soothing the wounds in his meridians, as though preparing him to receive the next strike of heavenly thunder.

Between life and death, Lei Dong felt himself undergoing ceaseless tempering. The heavenly tribulation was like a giant iron hammer, and he was a keen blade in a blazing forge, enduring stroke after stroke beneath the hammer’s blows. The impure force within him, the hidden places his true qi could not fully reach, the parts of his body not yet tough or strong enough—all were being refined and strengthened bit by bit.

But the process was excruciating beyond measure. Lei Dong could even feel that if anything went wrong with his body, if he failed to withstand the power of death, then at any moment he would be utterly annihilated, his soul scattered to nothing.