Master Immortal Buttons was getting really bored. It had been 35 days, yet the suspicious girl was still flying without showing any sign of stopping.
Just as he was getting frustrated enough to abandon his 'gentlemanly' attitude, the girl finally stopped.
...
Faith was confused. She had been unable to find the sect's location, even though she was sure she hadn't taken any wrong turns. It just seemed that the sect's location had changed.
There is a communication spell, but it only works over short distances, so she couldn't just call her master to ask; the log-distance communication formation has to be performed by at least three core formation cultivators.
Faith took a deep breath and thought, "I am lost."
Still, she was only momentarily fazed; then, she started looking around to find clues.
...
As a nascent soul, Jack was strong, but still, he was not strong enough to change the location of the sect nor had the ability to modify Faith's memory. Modifying and playing with one's memory is extremely risky; even Jack, who is one big stage higher than Faith, doesn't dare do it.
One mistake can make the other party crazy; it is a very experienced and skill-intensive job that only a few with centuries of training can achieve.
"What happened to her?" he asked Mike.
"We are looking, master!" Mike said.
Jack sighed; his plan was good, but things could still go wrong. This time, he was really innocent; Faith simply lost her way. After all, it was a vast and unknown ocean, and finding one's location was difficult in these conditions.
"Immediately inform me the moment you find her," Jack ordered.
As the creator of this world, Jack knows everything about it; he personally wrote the character of Master Buttons.
Master Buttons wasn't a true transmigrator; he only thought he was because Jack wrote it into his character. Buttons can act as a stepping stone to help him or a gate to prevent Jack from succeeding. He would benefit immensely if he captured him quickly, but if he gave him time to grow, it would bring a lot of disaster.
"If I lose him now, then when the real transmigrators arrive, I would have no chance of fighting them," he thought. Real transmigrators who arrive in the future would also have cheats; Jack also technically has a system, but his system doesn't really have any function. His system only has one task, which is conquering the world, and rewards only upgrade the world and don't benefit him directly.
Facing those transmigrators, he has very little chance.
"Send everyone out; anyone who finds her gets 100 million contribution points," Jack ordered.
Mike bowed and went out to deliver the news; usually, he doesn't like to talk so much, but when Jack orders something, his communication issues magically disappear.
...
After 40 days, Faith was still looking around.
Master Immortal Buttons, who was watching from a distance, by now knew that Faith had no idea where she was.
"She is lost! Did she forget the location of the flaw in the defensive formation?" His mood was down; he was counting on the generous reward he was going to get. As someone with a system, he didn't really need a reward, but still, he could use the reward as an excuse for suddenly advancing and reaching the divine soul. He could say he progressed quickly because they rewarded him well.
Suddenly, he felt another core formation cultivator's aura from far behind.
"Hmm? Why is there another core formation cultivator this far in the middle of the ocean?" He was doubtful; this area is barren and has nothing but water, so it's weird that someone is randomly flying around it.
"Wait, there is more than one person; there are actually three!" He noticed.
After keeping an eye on them for a while, he noticed they were looking for something, as they were shouting the name of someone named "Faith." Unfortunately, they were too far away; Master Immortal Buttons could hear them because he had the divine sense of a nascent soul cultivator.
Thinking of something, he intentionally amplified the cultivator's voice so that the suspicious girl in front of him could hear it. As soon as she heard "Faith," she looked back and started flying to them.
"So they were looking for you! You are not alone, as expected!" He smiled and followed them in secret.
...
"Sect Master Faith, we finally found you!" said a man with red eyes and hair. He was Khan Charles, who used to be under Faith; even though he is now under Amber, he still has a fondness for Faith.
"Charles, I'm so happy to see you! I was lost; can you please lead the way? I have to meet my master." said Faith.
Charles nodded and said, "Please, follow me."
They started flying in a certain direction while Master Immortal Buttons was following.
...
"We found her!" Mike came running; he had just received a message from Charles.
"Quick, order her to fly to the formation; tell them that I am waiting for them there!" Jack said.
Mike bowed and went to send the message through a spell; the messages can only be sent via a formation. For now, they don't have any spell that can be used by one person to send and receive messages; at least three people and a formation are required. All the teams they sent to look for Faith were at least three-person teams.
...
As soon as Faith and her companions received the message, they changed their direction and flew toward it.
Master Buttons saw it but wasn't worried; his father had given him many treasures. He even has a treasure that can defend against an attack from a multiple sou realm cultivator.
...
Faith and her companions looked at each other, confused. They reached where they were ordered, but no one was waiting there.
"We should wait!" Faith decided. Their master ordered them to be here, so as good subordinates, they had to wait.
...
"They are waiting for someone, probably their leader?" Master Buttons smiled; his patience paid off.
"Time to call Dad!" he thought.
His dad is the leader of the local branch or headquarters, so he is usually busy; but now that he is on something, it's time to report it. None of the cultivators he met so far have the aura of breakthrough tokens; something big is going on.
Casting a nascent soul-level long-distance communication spell, he connected to his dad after a few seconds.
"What?" his dad asked impatiently; as opposed to what most believe, his relationship with his dad is not good.
"Dad, I found something very interesting…" He told everything he found out.
"Outsiders, huh… I'll be there in a few days!" then, the call was disconnected.
Shaking his head and secretly complaining about his dad's lack of concern for his son, he could only sigh.
Just as he wanted to move closer, he suddenly realized an issue. unknowingly, red clouds appeared in the sky.
"Tribulation? Why is there a tribulation?" he pursed his lips.
...
Faith looked at the sky in horror; the aura of tribulation was so severe that her breath nearly stopped. Fortunately, it wasn't targeting her.
"We cannot wait here anymore; let's run!" Charles said. Faith didn't oppose, so they ran in the opposite direction of the tribulation.
...
Seeing his targets running away, Master Immortal Buttons didn't pay attention to them; his attention was solely on the tribulation.
"Its power is around the Divine Soul stage; why is there such a huge tribulation in the middle of nowhere?" He looked calmly; he wasn't worried at all. The tribulation was not targeting him, but it was as if it was confused as if it couldn't find its target.
Thinking for a moment, Master Buttons thought of his red mask. "Maybe it is targeting me, but because of my mask, it cannot find me!" he thought. His mask is a soul substance level treasure, which outranks this level of tribulation.
Thinking of this, he gave up on chasing those suspicious people for now and decided to wait for his father.
Turning around, he left; the tribulation, however, remained and didn't dissipate. It just rumbled, its rage growing more and more severe by the second.
...
Mike, who was watching from far away, put away the formation controller and sat back on his chair. The mission was successful!
The formation was nothing special; it was called casting trigger Formation; its whole purpose was to cast a spell once a certain condition was met.
Heaven's will is dumb, but not too dumb; at the moment, the heavens are much stronger than they used to be. It would not be deceived and would detect anyone who tries. But, even though it's not dumb, it is still an idiot!
The trap set by Jack was very simple; he readied the formation to cast the 'Deceive Heavens' spell but didn't actually trigger the spell. The condition of the formation's trigger was simple; as long as anyone used any spell of the nascent soul while in the formation, it would be triggered.
That happened when Master Buttons cast a spell to talk to his father; the formation, of course, wasn't able to detect Master Buttons himself, but it did detect the spell and automatically cast the 'Deceive Heavens' spell. The 'Deceive Heavens' spell is a specialty of the Heaven's Way Sect; it is a spell made by Jack using his knowledge from outside. When crafting it, he lost a few percent of the world's Dao collection.
The spell was crafted using his knowledge as a follower of Rachel, with access to all kinds of unimaginable knowledge. It can be said that even though the technique is only at the level of core formation, its masterfulness is in no way less than those techniques in the Soul Perfection realms.
The technique is masterful but still has its limit; at the moment, the heavens are too strong compared to it, so anyone casting it would only anger the heavens, draw a heavenly tribulation on themselves, and achieve nothing more.
The formation was set up by Jack and his sect, but they didn't trigger it; it was only when Buttons cast the spell that it was unintentionally triggered. But the heavens don't care about intentions; it only targets whoever caused the spell to be triggered.
Buttons were hidden because of his red mask, but still, the will of the heavens was vast. It could detect the person who caused the spell to be cast but couldn't detect his exact location, so it looked around in confusion. Not being able to find the perpetrator only caused the heavens' will to become more enraged.
Few people know how terrifying an enraged heaven could be.
...
Master Buttons didn't take off his mask. As someone who reached a nascent soul using his cheat, his knowledge base was shallow. He didn't know how to deal with tribulation, so he decided to wait for his father.
After a few days, his father arrived as expected.
"Oliver," his dad called him by name; there were six divine soul realm cultivators behind him.
"Dad, there is an issue," said Oliver.
"What?" his dad asked curiously.
Then, Oliver began to explain.
...
Over the past few days, the tribulation clouds had gotten thicker and thicker, and finally, the quantitative increase translated into a qualitative increase; the tribulation, which was originally only at the level of the divine soul, broke through to the soul substance realm.
...
"You left the tribulation? You bastard! Tribulations should be dealt with immediately, otherwise, the rage accumulates!" His dad shouted, almost pulling out his hair over his son's stupidity.
Just as his dad said this, red clouds gathered! After breaking through the soul substance realm, it could finally find Oliver.
"It broke through soul substance!" His dad took out magic treasures.
The rumbling clouds in the sky formed a rageful face with two red eyes looking down at Oliver; then, two balls of pure blue tribulation came crashing down!
Boom!
They hit the magic treasure taken out by Master Immortal Ted Buttons, his dad. The magic treasure was in the shape of a circular war shield; it comfortably resisted the strike.
The face in the sky only got more rageful; more and more clouds came from nowhere.
"Damn! The space is unstable; we cannot teleport away!" Ted cursed. Immediately contacting the headquarters of the sect in the western region, he asked for reinforcements for a cultivator specialized in dealing with tribulations; the good thing about sects is that they have many masters specialized in all kinds of topics.
As Ted was asking for reinforcements, the aura of the tribulation broke through to the late stage of substance soul.
This time, it sent two colored bolts of lightning, shining blue and purple. They hit the shield and were repelled again, but this time, the shield also cracked.
As if frustrated, the tribulation, which was fixed on Oliver, started to expand again. This time, its aura went all the way until the initial stage of the multiple souls realm!
"Damn it! There is not enough time!" Ted cursed with bloodshot eyes. The tribulation was left to fend off for days; its accumulated rage is so huge that it may even break through to the Void Soul realm.
Heavenly tribulations very rarely form, but once they do, they must be dealt with immediately; otherwise, the consequences would be disastrous. They would continue expanding until their accumulated rage dissipated, but this tribulation obviously accumulated a lot of rage, so it wouldn't dissipate anytime soon.
There are ways to extract its rage, but only specialized cultivators can do it; now, there is not enough time to wait for them to arrive.
It would attack them until it kills its target, so…
Ted said to Oliver, "Give me the purple aura I gave you a while ago."
Confused, Oliver took out a purple token and gave it to Ted. This token was a gift from the sect's supreme elder; it can defend against one attack from a strong multiple-soul realm cultivator.
Taking the purple token, Ted sighed and said, "Sorry, I had high hopes for you!"
"Father?" Oliver was even more confused.
Just as he was confused, he felt a strong force on his butt; looking back, he saw his father, who kicked him away.
A moment later, his father started running in the opposite direction. As a cultivator of the soul substance realm, Ted was, of course, selfish; he wouldn't sacrifice himself for even his son. The purple token can only resist one attack; this tribulation can send out hundreds. With the reinforcements so far away, there is no way they would arrive in time.
In such a situation, it was rational to just let the tribulation kill its target.
Looking at the sky, Oliver saw a bolt of lightning shining with pure purple light. That was the last thing he saw.
...
The Icefall Sect investigated the situation for a few days and recalled Ted and his team to headquarters for investigations. At the same time, Jack dived deep into the ocean and located a piece of charcoal.
Taking it, he laughed as he looked at the system interface in front of his eyes.