Chapter 1: Lei Wang: The Lightning Emperor

The world of cultivation is often said to follow the law of the jungle and worship strength. The strong are given respect and authority while the weak have no choice but to obey. In order to gain even a little more strength, people don't hesitate before sacrificing their humanity and morals. In such a world, is it even possible to become one of the strongest individuals while still remaining true to one's ideals?

Well, most cultivators believed this was impossible, until they were proven wrong by a living legend of the world of cultivation. This man was Lei Wang: the Lightning Emperor.

Lei Wang was a cultivator who had both unparalleled talent and an untainted reputation in the entire world of cultivation. While most would sabotage and sacrifice others in order to ascertain their own benefits, Lei Wang helped and made these people his allies.

When he was still young, Lei Wang was looked down by his elders and juniors alike. They all thought that he would lose the opportunity to grow himself if he kept focusing on helping others. This concern of theirs, however, didn't last long, as Lei Wang soon surpassed all of his peers and even his seniors in strength.

Lei Wang was brilliant both as a person, as well as in cultivation. He cultivated the Dao of Lightning and was without a doubt, a genius who appeared once every millennium. Due to this, he had been given the title: The Lightning Emperor.

Today was the day when the Lightning Emperor would finally endure his Heavenly Tribulations and ascend to Heaven, the realm in which he rightfully belonged.

Lei Wang sat calmly in a meditative posture, the clouds above him rapidly swirling with occasional crackles of thunder and sparks of lightning coming out of them.

Right above him, the clouds swirled at an incredibly fast rate and had created a point similar to the eye of a storm. The Heavenly Tribulation had finished forming itself and was ready to strike the man seated beneath it.

With an ear splitting crack of thunder, a majestic purple bolt of lightning plummeted straight downwards and crashed into the seated cultivator.

To all the spectators who watched from afar, this scene was both glorious and terrifying. Such a spectacle was expected from a Heavenly Tribulation.

Unlike the spectators, the Lightning Emperor kept his calm and remained stationary in his position. The Heavens' Lightning didn't pain him as much as it seemingly assimilated with him. Lei could feel the Qi of the Heaven establish a connection with him; more particularly, his Dantian.

Such a phenomenon was unexpected, but Lei Wang didn't think much of it and remained focused albeit the strange sensation welling up in his body. He just had to remain unmoved while the tribulation lasted.

As easy as it seemed, however, changes started occurring in Lei Wang's body and Dantian; and this time he knew what was going on. His Dao of Lightning was having a breakthrough because he had started to comprehend the nature of the Heavenly Tribulation itself. Since Lei was a Lightning cultivator, and an extremely talented one at that, he was gaining insight towards the pure heavenly lightning which mortals call the 'Heavenly Tribulation'.

A few moments after this realization of his, Lei felt a powerful force inside his Dantian. His Qi was internally rumbling at an incredibly fast speed and just when he felt it was about to get out of control, the energy in his Dantian transformed into a suction force and started devouring the Heavenly Tribulation around him. As this process started, Lei's entire body started to rise up into the air even though he was still in a semi-trance like state and wasn't moving of his own accord.

The Lightning Emperor felt his strength increase at such an incredible rate by such an extensive amount for the first time in his entire life. Within a couple seconds, the entire Heavenly Tribulation had been absorbed into Lei's Dantian.

The spectators, who could see all of this clearly from afar were confused about what was exactly happening, but since they could see Lei floating upwards, they naturally assumed that he had succeeded in overcoming the tribulation and was just about to ascend.

Lei felt way more powerful that he could have ever imagined, but he was also completely out of energy. Staying calm and motionless during a Heavenly Tribulation was hard enough, but Lei had to simultaneously control his Dantian which wildly absorbed the Heavenly Tribulation inside it. The last minute was an ordeal unlike any other for Lei, whose body slowly floated upwards on its own.

The crowd cheered on and Lei smiled to himself for coming this close to ascension, when something even more unexpected than what he had just experienced happened.

Lei Wang was about a dozen feet away from the eye of the storming clouds, when a glowing human like figure appeared right in front of it. What Lei saw before him was a middle aged looking man with an incredibly powerful aura, who was glowing and emitting radiant golden colored rays of light from his body. His hair was brownish red and he didn't have a mustache but he had a moderately long beard, along with some slight wrinkles all over his face. He was dressed in auspicious looking robes which were similar, yet somehow different to what Lei had seen throughout his entire life.

All of these clues pointed to only one thing: a deity. A deity had descended and graced the mortal world with his presence. Deities were the inhabitants of Heaven and the only way for a mortal to become one was overcoming the Heavenly Tribulations and ascending to Heaven.

The crowd, which had started roaring in amazement once they saw that the Lightning Emperor had started ascending, had now all gone silent and kowtowed to the deity out of sheer respect.

Lei also initially had to urge to kowtow to the deity, but then he realized two things which stopped him from doing so. The first was that his body did not have any strength left it in to voluntarily move; in order to move again, he would have to wait a little while until he actually ascended. The second was that he himself had also practically become a deity, or at least he would in less than a minute. Since he was no longer a mortal himself, such formality wasn't expected from him.

At that moment, Lei Wang thought that the deity had come to receive him, as he was the first cultivator in recorded history to absorb a Heavenly Tribulation.

Before he could think of any other possible reasons for the deity's presence, however, Lei noticed a change in the deity's visual state. His face, which was previously mostly expressionless, was now filled with rage and jealousy. He gritted his teeth and furrowed his eyebrows and his eyes got redder and started to look sharper.

"How dare a filthy mortal absorb the pure, untainted energy of the Heavens!?!?" shouted the deity as his blood curdling scream echoed far throughout the land.

Giving Lei not even a second to think about what just happened; the deity launched a giant dragon made of golden qi towards an exhausted and unprepared Lei Wang.