Senior Lee smiled as he watched the blonde girl strike down the heavens lightning. He always enjoyed seeing the heavens being defied by mere mortals.

However, that smile soon turned into a frown as he felt a looming presence bearing down on him.

He had angered the heavens far too many times over the years and knew sticking around for a second longer would be a terrible idea. So, walking briskly over to the spirit tree, he touched its trunk and mentally spoke.

"Spirit tree, I will return with that new fruit tea sometime soon."He said while patting the spirit tree's trunk, "I have gifted two divine items today and fear I cannot stay on this realm for much longer before the heavens turn on me."

"Wait!" The tree's weird distorted voice shouted, but Senior Lee had no plans to stick around for even a second longer. So, with a simple thought, he vanished from the lower realm and reappeared in his inner world, floating above a flat meadow that spread out in all directions until the horizon.

Picking a direction, Senior Lee began to fly over the meadow at high speeds.

The lush grass blurred beneath his floating feet. However, the looming pressure he aimed to escape only increased no matter how fast he flew.

Senior Lee's eyes widened as he looked over his shoulder and saw the clear blue sky of his inner world transform before his very eyes. The peaceful expanse was rapidly consumed by creeping darkness, spreading like wildfire across the horizon.

As he watched, thousands of glowing eyes appeared in the distance. The eerie lights multiplied rapidly until they seemed to occupy the entire sky, creating an otherworldly, ominous spectacle that seemed to herald the end of days.

Senior Lee's inner world shuddered under the intense gaze of the heavens will. "Persistent bastard." He muttered under his breath as even the sky right above him became corrupted.

Giving that spirit tree a divine fragment was always within heaven's plan, as they hadn't cared when he gifted it. In fact, the heavens had even rewarded the tree with a burst in cultivation and a tribulation.

What wasn't within heaven's expectations was his saving of the girl. The pill he had given her was nothing too special in the upper realms, but it would make her a future powerhouse down here.

But having one more powerhouse in a lower realm shouldn't warrant this reaction from the heavens? Senior Lee had given the pill for one simple reason. He had felt a sudden surge of demonic Qi corrupting the spirit tree when lightning struck her.

Clearly, the girl meant something to the tree, and having her nearly dead caused the tree to show signs of the demonic path.

Unless that had been heaven's plan all along? "Did you want the tree to form heart demons and resent the world?" He shouted at the thousands of eyes, which seemed to anger them even more.

They glowed with furious light, and the entire small world orbiting his soul shook. Reality cracked like stained glass, and tendrils of pure Qi snuck through the gaps in the shattered sky. They slammed down as if trying to crush him.

Senior Lee gritted his teeth, kept his speed up, and even burned his cultivation to forcefully rotate his inner world faster. All high-realm cultivators eventually cultivated their own world that lived inside them, and these inner worlds had many uses.

Other than providing insight into the natural laws, a realm of power above mere Qi manipulation, it also allowed for fast travel as the inner world mirrored the outside world.

With every inch Senior Lee crossed in his inner world, many miles were passed in the physical world. He was an entire continent away from the spirit tree by now, but heaven was still chasing him.

With a huff of annoyance, Senior Lee accepted he needed to realm shift to avoid heaven today. It was a catastrophic waste of energy, but it had to be done as almost the entire sky was a sea of eyes and tendrils aiming for his life.

With a flash of dimensional Qi, Senior Lee was gone from his inner world.

***

Ashlock looked in awe at the empty spot where Senior Lee had been a second ago. He had literally just watched a man vanish into thin air. There was no trace of Qi or sign of a magic trick. He had literally just disappeared as if he had never existed.

[Commencing upgrade to Star Core Realm: 50%]

"Ha, take that!" Stella shouted as she punched another cluster of lightning, causing it to arc and strike the mountain, and once again, mysterious golden letters flashed and blocked the strike.

Ashlock had no idea what was in any of those pills Stella had taken from Senior Lee, but he hoped they didn't come with side effects befitting their miraculous effects. She had literally gone from near death to a lightning-punching demigod.

Ever since Senior Lee appeared, fewer things made sense. His worldview had been shaken once again, which he thought wasn't possible after witnessing the fight between the grand elders of house Ravenborne and Winterwrath.

This time, the only difference was that Ashlock got to speak with this guy rather than watch from afar as a spectator to a conflict. Wait... speak. "I spoke to someone... I actually spoke real words and had a conversation!"

With that grandpa out of his head, he could finally rejoice about how monumental of an occasion that had been. Now he just needed to figure out how Senior Lee did that and if Stella could replicate it.

The storm overhead became even more fierce, and Ashlock braced as best he could as hundreds of lightning bolts descended on him. Like a lightning rod, the swirling ball of lilac Qi floating overhead that was his forming Star Core took the brunt of the strikes and seemed to grow stronger.

The real issue came from the lightning bolts that refused to follow the script and aimed at his body instead. His trunk could somewhat resist the strikes, only suffering fist-deep burning holes that quickly extinguished due to his fire resistance, but his branches were another story.

"Ow, fuck me." Ashlock grimaced as yet another smoldering branch tumbled to the stone below with a thump. The dull grey stone was dyed in a myriad of colors as the branches crushed the fruit that had been dangling from them. It was a sad sight to see. And also slightly dangerous as the stone was now caked in poisonous juices.

{Lightning Qi Protection[B]} -> {Lightning Qi Barrier[A]}

{Fire Resistance [C]} -> {Fire Qi Protection[B]}

Ashlock's system flickered to life after that latest hit, alerting him to his newly upgraded skills. It had been a long time since he last saw any of his skills naturally upgrade without credits, so it was nice to see free upgradesespecially in a scenario like this.

Instantly deploying his new and improved Lightning Qi Barrier, Ashlock could immediately tell the big difference between the two skills. Lightning Qi Protection had provided a passive barrier but was rather weak.

If Lightning Qi Protection was like wrapping his trunk in bubble wrap, his new skill was a sheen of bulletproof glass that he could repair with Qi. Unfortunately, most of his Qi was taken up by the forming Star Core, but of the little he had left, he spent it all on deploying a barrier along his branches.

[Commencing upgrade to Star Core Realm: 70%]

The system countdown continued in the corner of his mind.

In a way, wasn't it weird that the system knew precisely when a tribulation would end? Senior Lee giving him a divine fragment from an unknown entity made Ashlock question things more.

The guy had appeared so suddenly, dropped two divine items, and then dipped without a proper goodbye?

Ashlock watched as more lightning exploded out of the sky and struck one of his branches. A lilac shield rippled and then showed cracks before shattering. With just a bit of Qi, Ashlock could redeploy the shield and prepare himself for the next strike.

Everything was going smoothly, minus Stella almost dying and the storm's ferocity.

His Star Core, which had reached a few meters in diameter, bathed the courtyard in its flickering lilac glow.

[Commencing upgrade to Star Core Realm: 80%]

Ashlock noticed his Star Core suddenly ballooning in size the second the countdown hit eighty percent. Did Star Cores follow the life cycle of a real star? If so, this was the red giant stage where an average size star rapidly expands and gobbles everything up.

Luckily for Ashlock, his Star Core didn't eat him alive and rose into the sky instead. Considering the sky had been replaced with dark clouds with nothing but streaks of lightning to illuminate the valley, a sudden massive lilac ball of fire in the sky was rather noticeable.

Especially since, as it grew larger, it attracted more heavenly lightning, causing it to grow even faster. After that, it just kept growing and growing. Within seconds it had ballooned to be a hundred meters in diameter.

"Patriarch!" Diana yelled over the roaring rain, "We have company!"

Ashlock used his {Eye of the Tree God} skill, and sure enough, from his vantage point, he could see multiple balls of green and white flames dashing up the side of the mountain and breakneck speeds, and he highly doubted they were in such a hurry to be the first to congratulate him on his advancement.

And in the distance... hundreds of cultivators were sprinting over.

[Commencing upgrade to Star Core Realm: 85%]

"Well, shit." Ashlock had all of his Qi tied up in the tribulation... actually it made sense why they would choose now as a perfect time to attack. A Star Core realm cultivator would be a significant threat, considering they could blow themselves up and take out a chunk of a city or summon valley-sized blizzards and stand upon the shoulder of thousand-meter-tall ice golems.

"Do they know it's a tree ascending to the next realm, or do they think it's Stella?" Ashlock wondered as he thought up a battle plan. Stella didn't need to spend effort protecting him from heavenly lightning anymore as his enormous Star Core attracted all the lightning for hundreds of miles.

"Currently, my best forms of attack are puppets and my demonic eye." Ashlock was still unsure what they saw when they looked at his demonic eye, but he could guess it was similar to how he felt when Stella used her earrings.

Annoyingly, Ashlock couldn't tell Diana to fight. But she seemed ready to defend the Ashfallen sect anyway. Blue flames shrouded her body and sword. Also, mist poured around her and began to obscure the central courtyard.

Stella seemed to notice the situation, and she dashed back and stood under Ashlock's canopy. "Tree, hurry up and ascend! We will have nothing to fear with you at the Star Core realm!"

Ashlock appreciated her optimism and trust in him, but he wasn't so sure. He still couldn't control his spatial Qi without a corpse, but something told him there would be a lot of corpses for him to control soon.

An explosion went off at the doorway to the pavilion, which had blown shut from the ferocious winds, but to everyone's surprise, the entire building lit up with golden characters.

"They are using a defensive formation!" Someone shouted from the other side.

Another explosion went off, and the building flashed with golden characters again.

"Hey, aren't those ancient runes?" Stella commented as she withdrew a sword from her spatial ring. She squinted as they continued flashing with every hit from the invaders waiting on the other side, "I should ask Senior Lee about them when he comes back."

"We have to survive this first, you know?" Diana grumbled, "Where is Senior Lee anyway?"

Stella shrugged as she stood beside Diana and watched the shaking door, "No idea, but I don't think this battle will be too hard."

"Why?" Diana squinted at Stella. She seemed a tad too confident.

Stella laughed and gestured with her chin to the area above the door. Diana followed her line of sight and saw the titanic spider excitedly twitching its fangs.

Diana smiled but then yelped as she heard something wheezing beside her. Looking to the side, she saw a human corpse standing with a black vine trailing from its mouth and lilac flames burning in its eyes.

Diana gripped her sword tighter and watched the door flash with symbols once last time until an explosion shook the entire pavilion, and the door flew off its hinges in a shower of splinters.

It was time to fight to the death for the future of the Ashfallen sect.