Chapter 1879 Reason and madness
Tribulations always accompanied clouds for some reason, even when there was no lightning. For example, the Fire tribulation too took place underneath the black clouds of tribulation. Naturally, the Primordial tribulation also came from the clouds, unleashing an aura so powerful that the aura alone would be enough to kill Earth Immortals.
The fact that Lex, in spite of his tremendous growth, could not swim up due to the pressure from the clouds was a testament to the scale of the power they contained.
Although Lex felt the incredible danger, and a genuine threat of death, he could not help but smile. He was not a masochist, he just liked a challenge. It was good to know that he hadn't become so powerful that the universe had become boring. Then again, he could find ways to entertain himself even among weaker cultivators, so it wasn't as if his life would end without the stimulation from a decent challenge. On the contrary, this challenge was so stimulating that it might really end his life.
The clouds, though dark, revealed a type of cosmic dust of various shades of orange, swimming around in the clouds. They were formless and shapeless, swimming in the clouds as if gathering power, revealing only the slightest edge of their power.
Lex felt himself being locked onto by the tribulation, and it was through the feedback of his body that the orange celestial dust began to take form. Back in Primordial times, lightning may not have even existed, so the tribulation did not take the form of lightning. Instead, the form was dependent on the target.
With Lex as the target, the first strike fell...
The cosmic dust poured down like a tsunami, and as it fell it began to merge together forming a... ball?
Lex turned his head as he looked at the ball curiously. That didn't feel intimidating at all. Then the ball grew, and turned into a moon.
"Oh, I get it," said Lex as he reached into his spatial ring and pulled out a single drop of blood and threw it into his mouth like a tic tac. To activate his third form, he needed the help of this blood - it was a good thing he had a lot of it. Ordinarily, he would try fighting off the earlier rounds of the tribulation with his sword, but he had a feeling that in the Primordial Garden, he couldn't afford to take things lightly at all.
The moon grew larger, until it was the size of a planet, and then grew larger until it was even greater than the sun.
Of course, the attack wasn't actually physically greater than the sun. Its size remained that of the ball Lex saw earlier. But when Lex looked at it, his entire field of vision was taken up by the attack as it continued to grow larger in size, and strength.
"Minute 1 of being a Heaven Immortal, and a star fell on my head. What a way to kick things off," Lex's voice rumbled across the garden as his size, too, grew large. After all, his third form was the Jorlam-form.
A star? Heh, that was breakfast.
In the future, once Lex fused with more of the Jorlam blood, he would be able to activate this form without needing to drink a drop of blood. For now, though, this would suffice.
Lex's size grew rapidly, but that was only in comparison to the star falling on him. In truth, the rules of the Primordial Garden did not allow things to grow too large. So, relative to the garden, Lex was a big human, and the star was a ball. But with respect to each other, the star was, naturally, as big as a star, and Lex's body was on the path to grow even larger.
Somehow, despite being so large in respect to one another, the damage they caused to their surroundings was nonexistent, because naturally the environment wouldn't be hurt. The air was Primordial air, the grass was Primordial grass, and the water was Primordial water. Born from the birth of the universe itself, these things would not be damaged from something as insignificant as the crashlanding of a puny star - one much bigger than the sun! The attack took less than a second to fall, but at Lex's level, that was more than enough time. With mania in his eyes, Lex opened his jaw wide and bit the falling star!
Much like what would actually happen if a cosmic level giant took a bite out of a star, the star involved went supernova. In short, it exploded in Lex's face. One would think that such an incident would cause earth and the sky to convulse and tremble, for reality itself to bend and scream, for light to fade and laws to quiver. No such thing happened, though the explosion did cause a gentle breeze in the surroundings.
Lex himself, though, did not escape unscathed as he bore the full brunt of the explosion. For him, a humanoid shaped Jorlam that was not quite in full size just yet, the instant his teeth made contact with the star was a cataclysmic
moment.
His teeth, made of condensed asteroids, vaporised. His flesh ripped apart under the stars' apocalyptic fury, and his hairstyle was thoroughly ruined. Instead of blood, light bled out from Lex's wounds in torrents brighter than creations dawn! A tide of fire, orange, cool, made of celestial dust, washed out reality and common sense, burning the very fibers of his being, and the laws that allowed him to exist.
As if the incinerating glory that seemed to erase existence itself was not enough, all that had happened was only a result of the initial impact. The remainder of Lex's body could feel the star collapsing in on itself, quickly setting the stage to form a black hole.
Reason and madness writhed in agony, as if all of creation were being dragged into ruin from the collision of the star and the short Jorlam, with no end to the
destruction in sight.
Lex's face, and even his neck, were incinerated completely, leaving behind only memory, as the remainder of his body faced the as yet unquenched ferocity of the first strike of this tribulation.