Rivers of the Night - Chapter 257

Chapter 257: Mandate
It was hard to describe what it felt like to be struck by a bolt of Tribulation Lightning.

In his life, Theron had suffered all sorts of wounds. Or more accurately, in the last year, he certainly had. He had gone from a young scholar without even the slightest callus on his hand to a seasoned assassin, littered with scars that layered so well in a mesh of thick and fine lines that some were so concentrated they hid the existence of others.

There was no easy way to put into words just the sort of hardship he had suffered to be able to stand here today.

But those wounds felt surface-level.

A bolt of Tribulation Lightning wasn’t just trying to break down your body—it was attacking your Mana. It wasn’t just trying to rip your cultivation out of you, but also tear your soul down from its deepest depths.

It scarred your flesh, assaulted your Core, and pelted against your mind. It wanted to not just kill you, but to rip apart everything you were, had been, or ever could be. And it wanted you to suffer that humiliation while believing you deserved it—that you had no right at all to stand tall in front of it, that the punishment you were receiving was only right.

It was the Mandate of the Heavens, that all-seeing eye that descended from above and judged you for daring to try to take more from it than it was willing to give.

Who were you to try and break into Gold Mancy? Who were you to need more from the Heavens after everything it had already given you?

You were nothing at all. And it would remind you of that.

No more than 30% of those that reached Quasi Silver would ever even have the chance to trigger a Tribulation. And of that number, only 30% of them might survive to see another day.

Some of them failed, unable to withstand the Mandate. And some of them passed, only to be scarred by the experience for the rest of their lives.

Theron had once read a work that was excoriated by the general public.

Why was it that it seemed teens everywhere were deep in Silver Mancy, and yet the strongest of them that reached adulthood were still idling in Gold?

This excoriated scholar claimed that it was not due to a lack of Gold Mana or Gold Resonance Treasures, but instead a state of the mind. They said that after experiencing one’s Tribulation, most would never be able to raise their heads to face off against the Heavens’ Mandate ever again.

Subconsciously, they had given up striving for the truest peak the cultivation world had to offer.

These were words that even Theron hadn’t taken very seriously. It was hard for him to understand, back then, the link between one’s state of mind and one’s cultivation.

But the more he progressed, the more he touched onto the secrets of his bloodlines, the more he realized just how inextricably linked to it all his thoughts, emotions, and comprehensions were to just how strong he was…

The more he realized that that excoriated scholar just might have been correct.

His body had moved all on its own just now, as though it refused to take a step back, as though it wanted to prove to itself that the Tribulation that young man had gone through at Quasi Gold, he could go through right now at the mere Fifth Resonance.

He had to prove it to himself, and he refused to take a step back while doing it.

The Blood Crystals beneath his feet thrummed with life, larger and larger swarms of it all pooling into his body in an uncontrollable mass.

But as though slowly boiling water on a stove, it hardly budged Theron’s internal state.

He stood there, his skin charred to ash, sparks of gold still dancing between the cracks of his broken flesh. His hair was singed to ash, his clothing left in a mess of nothingness, but he continued to stand there.

There was nothing to fight. If this had been his Tribulation, he would be able to face off against the bolts directly. But this wasn’t his Tribulation. It was his Punishment, a Judgement come down to viciously tear him down for daring to interfere in the Mandate of the Heavens.

He could only take it.

One bolt after another rained down, and by this point, the Alpha couldn’t worry about Theron even if it wanted to. Much of the Blood Crystal was being siphoned away by the young man, but it couldn’t even do much to fight back against it.

It had given up too much. All it could do now was fight for a small sliver of a chance at survival.

The harsh winds and heavy rain continued to billow down from the skies, currents forming and sweeping forth.

But Theron continued to stare up. His eyes had long been blinded, but he stared, and he stared, and he stared as though he could overwhelm the state of his body with nothing more than his will alone.

Scalding breath and icy chills crept his throat in one swinging temperature change after another, the necklace around his neck dancing in the chaos.

At some point, he seemed to have entirely turned into a statue, a black mass of charred nothingness that was vaguely human and yet nothing else.

His head was tilted to the skies, and his body was entirely frozen in place… but if one was looking from a distance, there were two very clear oddities going on here.

The first oddity was that the Blood Crystals were still rapidly dimming at a rate of speed that made little sense considering there were only two present.

And the second oddity was that… over 90% of the Tribulation seemed to be aimed at Theron himself, as though the Mandate of the Heavens had forgotten who amongst the two had triggered it at all.

High in the skies, hidden above the black mass of clouds, familiar moons began to tremble, shifting their alignments once more.