[CUMULATIVE BENEVOLENCE MERIT THRESHOLD REACHED! INITIATING RANK 6 GOLDEN CORE BREAKTHROUGH!]
The instant the golden notification rang through Lin Mo’s mind, the entire sky above Azure-Mist Border City changed color.
From horizon to horizon, the grey frontier clouds parted like curtains drawn back by invisible hands. In their place rolled a thirty-mile canopy of auspicious Nine-Heavens Golden Nectar Clouds. A deep, resonant celestial bell-chime echoed across the border plains!
Down in the north moat, imprisoned former City Lord Cao Kun (Goodness: -42) dropped his scrub-brush into the mud. He stared up at the firmament with his jaw unhinged.
“A Golden Core heavenly phenomenon?!” Cao Kun croaked, his half-shaved mustache trembling. “That lower-realm kid was only at Peak Foundation Establishment?! Good! Hahaha!”
Cao Kun pointed a mud-caked finger at the sky, his bloodshot eyes gleaming with spiteful excitement.
“In our Nine-Prefecture Immortal Continent, the Heavenly Dao is ruthless!” Cao Kun shouted to the bandits scrubbing beside him. “Whenever a cultivator breaks through to the Golden Core realm, the sky sends down Black-Iron Annihilation Lightning to punish them for defying nature! When I broke through to Early Golden Core forty years ago, the lightning charred half my ribs and broke three meridians! Since this Lin Mo is triggering a thirty-mile cloud canopy, the Heavenly Tribulation will blast him into cinders!”
