Master Firespring, using all of his substance souls, started casting spells without holding back, as Jack had ordered.
Seeing all kinds of spells approaching, Jack had no choice but to cast his Heavenly Defense spell. Of course, even if all attacks from Daoist Firespring hit him, they would not be able to harm him, as his armor stat approached 10,000,000. Still, Jack was testing his strength, so relying solely on the armor stat would be ridiculous.
Relying on his armor stat would be like cheating; with his armor, his defense could withstand even early-stage perfection attacks, so if he uses his armor, he wouldn't learn much.
Heavenly Armor is an overpowered spell; it can nullify all attacks. The only downside is that the Heavens would send tribulations.
Immediately after Jack cast heavenly armor, a white fog spread and swallowed up all the attacks of Daoist Firespring.
At the same time, red clouds appeared, having the aura of the peak multiple souls realm. Obviously, the Heavens were unhappy with Jack using its power.
"Heavenly Knife," Jack intoned. Jack cast this spell; the Heavenly Knife spell can use tribulation clouds, transforming them a knife against enemies.
A significant chunk of the clouds dissipated and reappeared as a massive, glowing red knife. Jack, only a substance soul cultivator, didn't have enough power to draw all the clouds.
Seeing the terrifying knife, Master Firespring sprang into action, using his 20 clones as formation nodes to set up a powerful defense formation. Having many different substance souls has advantages, such as extreme ease in setting up formations.
Jack's situation was no better; after he used the Heavenly Knife, it only enraged the Heavens further. The tribulation clouds' pressure increased again, almost breaking through the void soul realm.
"Heavenly Match!" Jack cast.
Burning with blazing black fire, a small match appeared and flew to the clouds. After impact, a small piece of the clouds dissipated, turning into red ash; the effects weren't impressive at all. After all, Jack was only a substance soul, while the tribulation was a half-step void soul realm.
"Damn!" Jack sighed; even with Heavenly Dao, fighting against multiple soul cultivators with substance soul cultivation was hard.
Sensing the incoming tribulation lightning, Jack had no choice but to use the 'Delay Disaster' spell.
As soon as he cast it, the astonishing tribulation clouds started dissipating; the clouds contained massive holes shaped like eyes.
When Jack cast the Heavenly Delay, the eyes became much angrier, and just as the tribulation was about to dissipate, it finally broke through to the void soul realm!
But even after reaching the void soul realm, the Delay Disaster spell still overpowered it, and the tribulation clouds dissipated despite the best efforts of the will of the Heavens.
"195 seconds! It only delayed the tribulation by 195 seconds!" Jack sighed.
Using Delay Disaster, Jack temporarily solved his issues; Master Firespring, however, had no such miraculous spell.
Master Firespring's formation shone with bright silver light, forming layers upon layers of walls to defend against the Heavenly Knife.
The knife hit the formation, cutting through the walls one by one, not losing any momentum at all. The formation collapsed in a few moments. The knife had red elements of heavenly tribulation, and its power was near the peak of the multiple souls realm.
A peak substance soul realm cultivator like Jack casting a peak multiple souls realm spell was indeed strange.
"I surrender!" Master Firespring shouted, but Jack paid no heed to it.
Seeing the knife still moving towards him, Master Firespring gritted his teeth and cast a joint spell using all his 20 substance souls.
A spell close to the peak of the early stage of the multiple souls realm was cast. He could have cast spells as strong as the mid-multiple soul realm if he had brought all his substance souls.
"Freezing Bullet!" he cast.
It was called a bullet, but it was more like a smoking massive cannonball. Even though it was smoking, it was not hot; it was extremely cold.
Despite his name, master Firespring is specialized in Ice dao.
The shining red heavenly knife collided with the smoking cold 'bullet.'
Bang! With a big explosion, the knife tip broke, but it was still flying forward.
The difference between the peak and the early stage is very big; even being able to cut the tip of the knife was extremely impressive.
Sensing the chaotic space close to him, Master Firespring ruled out teleportation; if he were a void soul cultivator, he could have teleported away even with this chaotic space, but he obviously wasn't a void soul cultivator. He had no time to cast any other spell nor the speed to avoid the knife.
The knife had the power and speed of a peak multiple souls spell; it was impressive to be able to react to it already.
One other advantage of heavenly Dao spells is the ease of casting them. Jack cast his heavenly armor spell immediately after Master Firespring attacked; if it were other spells from other Daos, Jack wouldn't even have been able to find time to cast a defensive spell.
The knife hit his substance souls one by one! Every hit tore up a soul entirely, completely foreclosing the chance of soul treatment.
Nascent souls are extremely difficult to heal if they get injured, but divine souls are much more reparable; substance souls can be healed even if they lose their heads. The heavenly knife, however, completely ripped apart the souls into microscopic pieces, basically disintegrating them and leaving nothing behind.
"Master Jack, please! Forgive me!" one of Master Firespring's substance souls screamed.
But Jack didn't stop the heavenly knife; it went through and destroyed 15 out of the 20 substance souls before lffinally stopping.
Jack saw all this and thought, "Heaven's spells are indeed very powerful; it's just that the side effects are too terrifying!" He looked at the sky; the sign of a massive tribulation was already apparent. The next tribulation would be at the void soul realm, which means spells such as 'Scatter Tribulations', 'Deceive Heavens', or even 'Distract Heavens' would simply not work.
"Master, please forgive me!" Master Firespring's substance souls were on their knees, begging.
"Go away!" Jack ordered.
Hearing this, Master Firespring's five substance souls didn't hesitate at all and immediately ran as fast as they could, disappearing from sight.
Taking out a cup, Jack poured himself some wine; he would resist the void soul tribulation using his armor stat.
There are two basic ways of getting rid of a heavenly tribulation: one is to discharge its rage, and there are many techniques and formations for this. However, discharging a tribulation of this scale is very costly and time-consuming.
"Heavens really hate me! To think it hates me enough to send a void soul tribulation ...," Jack smiled bitterly. Even though he created this world, Heaven's will didn't seem very grateful.
The second way is just to resist the tribulation, allowing the rage to discharge naturally; this is what Jack will do. With his armor, unless the tribulation is at the perfection stage, it would not even be able to tickle him.
Tribulation clouds, so thick they completely covered up all light from the sky yet shining and basking everywhere in sight in red light, appeared; two massive holes, along with a big opening, presumably a mouth, were printed on the clouds.
The clouds began rumbling; fortunately for mortals, Jack selected a remote place to do this. Otherwise, this simple rumbling alone would have killed them.
Without warning, the clouds sparkled, and a massive, pure purple lightning strike struck Jack with such speed he couldn't react! The ground under him was directly reduced to its building blocks, which were pure energy. Jack didn't fall but used his spell to stand in the air.
The pure energy under his feat had no purpose or direction; it was just energy without a container, so it exploded, just as one would expect of such unattended energy.
The explosion was far more massive than mortals of this continent had ever imagined; the radius of 300 miles was wiped out completely in a moment, and shock waves traveled thousands of miles.
Jack was still standing in his original place, only losing his clothes; his armor stat completely resisted everything that hit him.
He took out another set of clothes and put them on. Then, he looked down at his equipment and frowned; his necklace and rings were damaged because he had not used the farm girl disguise bug.
"These equipment are so fragile!" Jack complained; his body armor, sword, etc., remained completely fine, but the less durable ones, such as rings, were damaged. After all, armor stats only protect the player, not the equipment.
Of course, if he uses the farm girl's disguise, nothing can steal or harm them again. Because it was very important not to allow his equipment to be destroyed while going through the tribulation, Jack took out the farm girl's disguise and put it on.
His looks changed from that of a man with green eyes and hair to that of an ordinary-looking girl.
The next thing that happened caught even him by surprise; the tribulation cloud's eyes started turning, looking at the land as if unable to find Jack's location. After a few minutes, the tribulation began dissipating.
"So, this disguise can even deceive a heavenly tribulation of the void soul realm?" Jack thought it would, at most, work on the multiple-soul realm.
Even though the tribulation dissipated, its rage was still there, which means if Jack wants to live, he better not let the tribulation remain idle and accumulate more and more rage. So, he removed his farm girl disguise; as for the damage to his equipment, he has a few sets, so he would just replace them if they were damaged to the point of destruction.
As soon as Jack took the disguise off, the heavenly tribulation gathered again, looking at him angrily; it sent another pure purple tribulation, which damaged Jack's equipment a bit but could not even scratch his skin. Of course, his clothes were reduced to ashes, so he decided to just go through the tribulation naked and change his clothes at the end; after all, it's not as if there is anybody that can peek at his body, and even if there is, Jack doesn't care.
...
After ten hours and taking over 1,000 lightning strikes, the tribulation's rage bottomed out and finally disappeared.
"My max firepower is around the peak of the multiple souls realm. If I was fighting a substance soul realm, I could have defeated my opponent easily, but it's still difficult against multiple souls realm," Jack thought.