Don't Cause Trouble Chapter 97: Xuantian Thunder

At the moment Ye Su pulled Yan Hao into the forbidden area, they could clearly feel themselves enveloped by endless lake water. It was almost impossible to breathe, as if they were trapped in a sealed vacuum.

Ye Su instinctively tried to break through the confinement, but her spiritual power couldn’t be released, only her divine sense could be used to attack.

She failed, and was instead bound by a mysterious force.

When her divine sense was restrained, Ye Su didn’t think about escaping or giving up. Instead, she turned her divine sense around and wrapped it around the unknown force and swallowed it.

Before her sea of consciousness could react, a flash of white light filled their vision, the lake water vanished, and everything around them disappeared. It felt as if they had entered some kind of transitional space.

"Where are we?" Yan Hao looked around in a daze. After everything Ye Su had done, her brain had completely shut down.

Ye Su opened her eyes. That strange power had been forcibly absorbed into her spiritual core and stuffed into her sea of consciousness.

"...Hic."

Yan Hao turned to look at her, confused. "Did you just hiccup?"

"No," Ye Su denied immediately.

"Then I must've imagined it," Yan Hao muttered, feeling unsettled. They hadn’t been physically hurt on this journey, but the mental trauma was piling up.

Ye Su quickly changed the topic: "Where’s that demon beast?"

"Over there!" Yan Hao pointed at a faint orange glow in the distance.

Ye Su saw it too. "Let’s follow it."

The two trailed behind the bird-headed giant ape. Yan Hao, thinking ahead, cast an illusion concealment spell on both of them to avoid detection, not that the demon beast ever looked back even once.

"Its head just disappeared..." Yan Hao stared in disbelief as the front half of the ape’s body suddenly vanished.

"That’s the exit," Ye Su said. She pulled out a speed talisman, grabbed Yan Hao’s hand, and sprinted forward.

As the bird-headed giant ape passed through the forbidden area’s barrier, the spiritual flames on its body visibly dimmed, and even its fur dulled to the naked eye.

Ye Su noticed this change. She pulled Yan Hao close to the ape’s body and followed it out, all their protective talismans activated.

Fortunately, there was a delay in the ape’s exit. By sticking close, the two of them slipped through without being affected.

However, once they were out, Ye Su noticed something strange, the cultivators across from them couldn’t see them at all. Ning Qianyao also had no idea they were there.

Ye Su signaled for Yan Hao to cancel the concealment spell but that’s when they discovered a serious problem: the concealment spell wouldn’t deactivate.

So, while a battle raged nearby, the two of them stood awkwardly at the edge of the forbidden area, fiddling with magic to try and disable the spell.

Yan Hao was sweating profusely. She felt like her brain had short-circuited, she couldn’t remember where the concealment spell had gone wrong.

Just then, a qiankun bag flew toward them, You Fushi had thrown it. Ye Su turned and finally noticed her junior standing across from them, but realized his gaze was unfocused, clearly the concealment spell was still active.

Ye Su asked Yan Hao, "Did you break it yet?"

"Almost," Yan Hao replied. She held up two fingers and whispered a few incantations, then opened one eye. "Did it work?"

For a moment, the two of them flickered into visibility and then vanished again.

Ye Su: "……"

"I think... the illusion spell got enhanced somehow," Yan Hao muttered. She tried again, this time, the concealment finally broke. They reappeared in front of everyone.

"Ye Su?"

"Junior Sister!"

Xu Chengyu and Mei Chouren called out at the same time.

Seeing living people outside the forbidden area, Yan Hao suddenly felt like crying that place was terrifying!

Guliang Tian of the Ten Thousand Buddha Sect shifted his gaze from Lu Chenhan to Ye Su.

He recognized Yan Hao.

Before the Sect Tournament, he had studied the files of all major sects' participating disciples.

As for Ye Su from Qianji Sect, she’d only recently come to attention. Her cultivation level was average, but her techniques were far from ordinary.

……

Ye Su looked down and opened the qiankun bag in her hand. When she reached inside and felt what was there, she looked at You Fushi across from her in surprise.

"You dug out all these beast cores?"

Inside were no fewer than two hundred fourth-rank beast cores and she even saw some fifth-rank ones.

You Fushi didn’t answer her question. Instead, he frowned at Ye Su.

"You said we’d meet inside."

The underlying accusation in her junior brother’s words was impossible for the senior sister to ignore.

"We ran into something unexpected," Ye Su explained.

You Fushi looked at the disheveled mess of a mortal in front of him and, after a moment of hesitation, decided to reluctantly forgive her.

"You..." Ye Su began, walking over to return the qiankun bag to You Fushi. But just then, a bolt of lightning as thick as a fist struck straight down from the sky and hit her directly.

It happened too suddenly. Ye Su had no time to react. The lightning hit her squarely, her entire body turned black, her hair stood on end, and yet the You Fushi she was holding onto remained completely unaffected.

Ye Su could even see her own ridiculous appearance reflected in her junior brother’s eyes.

She opened her mouth:

"I..." and exhaled a puff of white smoke.

The sky above seemed to have triggered a thunderstorm. Dozens of lightning bolts began to rain down with crackling force. Their main target was Ye Su, but the surrounding people also started getting caught in the crossfire.

Lu Chenhan held Ning Qianyao as they dodged a bolt of lightning. He didn’t even spare a glance for the demon beast nearby—his eyes were fixed on the sky above, confusion flashing through his cold gaze.

This was inside the Chaos Mirror.

How could there be heavenly thunder here?

"Everyone, evacuate immediately!"

A voice suddenly rang out from the sky, it was Daoist Fengchen.

Everyone inside the Chaos Mirror looked up. They saw the sky being torn open with a massive rift. Before they could even react, they were pulled upward by a powerful force.

……

Inside the competition arena, Sect Master Wu Yue of the Hehuan Sect had already noticed something was wrong when Yan Hao first disappeared. None of the Water-Mirror or Moon-Mirror arrays could locate her, and at that moment, the other sect leaders also began to speculate.

Unexpectedly, right after that, Ye Su doing something unknown, also vanished from the Water-Mirror's view.

Those outside the Chaos Mirror could only see what the disciples were doing, but couldn’t fully perceive what they saw or heard inside.

From the perspective of the five major sect masters, Ye Su had touched a tree, then disappeared from the Water-Mirror view, just like Yan Hao.

"Did they enter the forbidden area?"

After a while, the Sect Master of Shangque Sect asked.

"Why is there a forbidden area entrance here?"

Wu Yue slammed her teacup down heavily. Everyone knew the forbidden area was a place of no return.

"Sect Master Wu, please calm yourself. Only disciples have entered the Chaos Mirror," Daoist Fengchen tried to comfort her, "No one tampered with it, and it may not necessarily lead to the forbidden area."

"But they can’t be seen in the Water-Mirror anymore," Wu Yue muttered, stunned that her disciple could vanish from what should have been a regular zone.

"Why don’t we check their life lamps first?"

Sect Master Zhou Qi of the Sword Sect suggested. "In previous years, any disciple who entered the forbidden area had their life lamps extinguished within three days."

Sect Master Le Ji of the Wanfo Sect also spoke up,

"Perhaps they accidentally entered a formation. The Chaos Mirror is an ancient artifact from before the Divine Fall era, there are likely many residual formations left within."

Wu Yue couldn’t enter the Chaos Mirror, so she could only monitor her disciple’s life lamp. Fortunately, although Yan Hao disappeared from the mirror’s view, her life lamp never dimmed, not even slightly.

As the trial neared its end, the life lamp still showed no change, and Wu Yue finally relaxed a bit: at least she hadn’t entered the forbidden area.

Then, when the two suddenly reappeared at the boundary of the forbidden area, Wu Yue finally let out a long sigh of relief.

"So it really was a formation mishap," said Sect Master Le Ji of the Wanfo Sect thoughtfully.

Meanwhile, Kunlun’s attention had shifted to Lu Chenhan. He and a female cultivator were teaming up and had actually managed to completely suppress a sixth-rank beast.

Just as Lu Chenhan was about to finish the beast off with his sword, a bolt of heavenly lightning suddenly struck straight down onto the Chaos Mirror.

None of the sect masters had ever seen such a scene. They stood frozen in shock as bolt after bolt of heavenly lightning poured into the Chaos Mirror.

In the midst of the lightning, Daoist Fengchen’s pupils shrank. He waved his hand and forcibly opened a passage in the Chaos Mirror.

"Everyone, come out immediately!"

All the disciples inside were sucked out of the mirror. In the blink of an eye, they appeared on the competition field. Some, unprepared, even collapsed to the ground as they landed.

All the sect masters stood up. Sect Master Zhou Qi of Sword Sect was the first to notice the Chaos Mirror had a visible crack just before Daoist Fengchen stowed it away.

Then another bolt of lightning came crashing down, this time targeting Ye Su, who had just exited.

"Stay away from me!"

Ye Su reacted instantly, sweeping her spiritual power to push You Fushi and the approaching Yi Xuan out of the way.

But that moment of distraction got her struck squarely again.

Senior Sister Ye only felt her soul scream in protest from the shock.

"All disciples, clear the area!"

A brown-haired elder shouted first, ordering the dazed and confused returning disciples to step away.

Soon, Ye Su was the only one left in the center.

The five sect masters stood at the edge of the arena, watching her in silence. She was undergoing a breakthrough.

A golden core stage cultivator, triggering heavenly tribulation?

"Second Master!"

Yi Xuan weaved through the crowd and finally found Xin Shenzi.

Xin Shenzi looked at his beloved disciple, scratching his messy hair.

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

He summoned the Lengquan Sword. A stream of blue sword light flew out, blocking one of the lightning bolts from hitting Ye Su.

"Ye Su, catch!"

Without hesitation, Yan Hao snatched a bunch of pills and a thunder-shielding umbrella from Mei Chouren next to her and threw them toward Ye Su.

Wu Yue noticed the pile of gear, items she had carefully collected for her disciple’s future advancement and turned to glare at Yan Hao.

Yan Hao just raised her pink feather fan to hide her face, pretending not to notice her master’s stare.

In the center of the arena, Ye Su finally realized: She was advancing.

But…

Ye Su looked up at the crisscrossing bolts of lightning coming from every direction.

This was overkill.

It was like she’d committed a crime against the heavens.

The Lengquan Sword could only block one strike at a time. But multiple bolts were now falling at once.

Ye Su dodged while opening the thunder umbrella.

With the protection of the artifacts, she was finally able to sit down and focus, beginning to reorganize her spiritual core and sea of consciousness.

Inside her consciousness, waves surged, it was the power from the lake that caused it.

Ye Su directed her spiritual sense to restrain it.

In her own spiritual sea, she was the one in control.

That glowing orb wasn’t large about the size of a fist but Ye Su could feel the immense spiritual power within.

Since it was here already, that power would become hers.

As she busied herself refining the energy inside, the heavenly lightning outside continued to strike her.

The thunder umbrella broke after the tenth strike. Only Xin Shenzi’s Lengquan Sword remained, but it could do little more.

"Is she trying to pass the tribulation in one go?"

Lian Lian pulled out a Lightning Shield Comb from her qiankun bag and tossed it toward Ye Su.

The Wuxing Sect master, seeing this, roared: "What are you doing?!"

"It’s a magic item my mother left me." Lian Lian replied indifferently, "I’ll use it however I want."

The comb could block normal lightning but not the terrifying, purple-tinged Xuantian Thunder, which was thick as a human head.

Everyone watched as the Xuantian Thunder struck down. Even the Lengquan Sword was frozen in place by the overwhelming force, unable to move.

Ye Su suddenly opened her eyes. One hand grabbed the Lightning Shield Comb above her head, and the other raised a spiritual shield.

And then… she was struck through to her soul.

Those watching from the edge of the arena saw that the scorched, blackened Ye Su had completely vanished from sight. The spot where she had been meditating was now a perfectly round crater, still emitting white smoke.

The dark, oppressive sky cleared in an instant, becoming bright and cloudless again.

As if nothing had ever happened.