Chapter 1880 Sense of humor
"Indeed, the Primordial Garden is spicy. Things can get really heated in here," Lex's headless Jorlam body said as he lifted his two arms and grabbed what remained of the star, forcefully containing the explosion, and suppressing the formation of a black hole.
Tribulations were lethal - that much was common knowledge across the universe. But Lex hardly ever paid attention to the destructive parts of it. Instead, he always focused on the benefits they provided. They always helped evolve his body, or strengthen it in some regard. Even the spirit tribulation, despite being strange, helped to evolve his spirit by a lot. Naturally, this Primordial tribulation was no different - it was just that, as unbelievable as it may seem, Lex's body was not strong enough to endure the benefits offered. There were no weak Primordial beings. Even the weakest of them had strength that defied common sense, as well as the concept of cultivation realm. After all, in the Primordial Age, there was no concept of cultivation realms because those who were alive were all just strong, and they were born that way. They didn't even need cultivation techniques to grow stronger, for they were born with the ability to accumulate strength ingrained into them.
As the nourishing Primordial energy flowed into his body, refined from the exploding star, the energy nourished the cells in Lex's body to death! Even in his Jorlam stage, he could not accept that nourishment. After all, even if he was as strong as a Celestial before that rank, he was not up to the standard of a Primordial.
But... even if he could not get the full benefits that this tribulation afforded, it wasn't as if Lex got nothing at all. Even as he struggled to hold the collapsing star above his head, with his body disintegrating either from the leaking energy of the star, or the nourishment of the tribulation, he began to cycle his cultivation technique.
It was impossible to bring about such a drastic change in a short period of time, especially in such high cultivation levels, however, that did not mean there could be no change at all. As his cultivation technique cycled, his body slowly adapted, becoming minimally more resistant to the specific type of Primordial energy the tribulation gave.
To be clear, normal Primordial energy would not be as big an issue for Lex at all. This was just special.
Besides that, the rate of change was also a little sad. Back in the day, a single cycle of his technique was enough to bring about significant changes in his body, yet now the changes were barely noticeable. In the end, such a change was inevitable since it took a lot more effort to cause change at such high levels.
Fortunately, Lex's own healing factor was tremendous, coupled with the ridiculous body of a Jorlam, Lex regrew his face in no time, though destroying the star took him several hours, leaving him panting once the task was done.
It wasn't that the Jorlam form was weak, but that he had to deal with the destructive and nourishing force of the tribulation both wearing him down, which is why his effectiveness had been reduced.
But he would be ready for the second strike. Next time, he would destroy the strike in one move so he could deal with the nurturing energy in peace.
Lex quickly drank another drop of blood, returning to his peak state, and even going as far as growing his body even more - which was actually strange. When he focused on the tribulation clouds, Lex felt like his body was as large as the sun, yet when he focused on his surroundings, he was not even large enough to reach the bottom of the lake he was in. The Primordial Garden was trippy, but then again, he should have expected as much.
Lex swam out of the water, finally able to resist the pressure from the clouds, and stood on solid ground. He had expected the second strike to fall down any time now, but it never came. Instead, the clouds simply continued to slowly grow in strength, steadily approaching the point of being almost double the strength of the first strike.
Lex did some mental math. If the second strike was double the strength of the first, and the third strike was triple, then basically the last strike of this tribulation would be 18 times the strength of the first strike.
It was a good thing he was a Jorlam, or else he would have gone pale. Instead, he immediately entered the Flow state, and began analysing his situation and coming up with the best way to counter it.
All jokes aside, that first strike had literally blown up his face, and it wasn't like Lex was holding back. That meant that if he did not demonstrate some real power, he genuinely might not survive this tribulation!
His casual smile, his careless humor, all of that faded from his mind, replaced instead by a sober focus as he gave his situation its due respect.
Alright, that wasn't entirely true. Somewhere deep in his mind, he was cursing his fate for slapping him with a deadly situation to remind him not to be too arrogant with his newfound strength. It was almost as if the universe couldn't bear to watch him enjoy himself.
But for the most part, Lex was deadly serious.
The first thing Lex realized was that the gap between strikes would not be small. In fact, just by studying the clouds, he could tell that the length of the gap would increase based on the strength of the upcoming strike.
That was good. It would give him time to adapt to recover.
When the second strike finally formed, Lex was expecting another star. But no, this time the cosmic dust took on a different shape. This time, it took the form of a massive ship, riding down a wave made of cosmic dust, its sails wide open, its cannons pointed forward, its frontmost point shaped like the animal ram to... well, act like the ship's ram.
It seemed like the tribulation had a sense of humor.