Urban Seduction: Housewives Club

Chapter 1238: Chapter 1238: Fusion with the Thunderbolt Bead

With so many close female friends, Ye Fei had become something of an expert in understanding women’s psychology.

His grandmother’s behavior was just too obvious. She had been awake all this time, despite being exhausted from his earlier antics, simply because she was worried about him.

After all, the thunder tribulation had been striking him directly.

But now, seeing the Thunderbolt Bead absorb the heavenly thunder, she had finally relaxed and fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.

It seemed that his prolonged ”activity” had indeed conquered his somewhat reserved and charming grandmother.

Though he was tempted to hold his grandmother close and cherish her, Ye Fei dared not. Even with the Thunderbolt Bead attracting the heavenly thunder, if he moved, the thunder might follow him.

Given her weakened state after being nearly drained by him, even a stray bolt of thunder could annihilate her. Ye Fei couldn’t bear the thought.

So, he decided to observe the Thunderbolt Bead instead.

After over an hour of being tempered by lightning, the Thunderbolt Bead had shifted from deep blue to a light purple, its energy increased by more than tenfold. It absorbed the heavenly thunder with much greater ease.

Looking up, Ye Fei saw that the dark, ominous thunderclouds showed no signs of dispersing. This puzzled him.

Why did the tribulation seem endless? Was he just unlucky, or were the top cultivators in this world all incredibly powerful, able to withstand thousands or even tens of thousands of bolts of heavenly thunder?

The reason for this seemingly endless tribulation was multifaceted. Firstly, it had been far too long since anyone had faced a tribulation here—over ten thousand years, to be precise.

After all, the Thunder Valley wasn’t the only place that could trigger a heavenly tribulation; other places could too, though it was more difficult.

However, those other places had one advantage: even if one couldn’t pass the tribulation, there were other ways to escape, unlike the Thunder Valley, where failure meant being trapped with no way out.

Over time, people stopped coming here. After ten thousand years, the power of the heavenly thunder had reached its peak, much like a man who has been holding back for too long will eventually release more.

Of course, this wasn’t the most important reason. After all, even if something had been held back for a very long time, there was always a limit.

A man couldn’t, for instance, hold back for a hundred years and then release a bowlful in one go, right?

The most important reason for this tribulation’s intensity was Ye Fei’s identity.

He didn’t belong to this world, and his cultivation method was completely different from—and even incompatible with—those in this world.

Naturally, the laws of this world regarded him as an evil outsider.

Yet, his cultivation level had reached, and even surpassed, the threshold that triggered a heavenly tribulation.

Thus, the laws of this world had given him a tribulation that was both high-quality and extremely intense, in an attempt to obliterate him.

Time ticked by, and several more hours passed. From the beginning, Ye Fei had been counting the number of bolts of heavenly thunder in his mind, even while he was digging the cave.

By now, he had counted over nine thousand nine hundred bolts.

The Thunderbolt Bead had also turned completely dark purple, and the power of the lightning it contained was even more terrifying than the thunderclouds in the sky.

At this point, Ye Fei suddenly became nervous. Ever since he had guessed that the mysterious heavenly thunder was a tribulation, he had been speculating about the number of bolts.

He believed it must be related to the number ”nine,” since in Taoism, nine is considered the ultimate number. The number of tribulations should be nine or a multiple of nine, such as nine, eighty-one, or ninety-nine.

Now, all the previous numbers had passed, and within the range that Ye Fei and the Thunderbolt Bead could endure, only one number remained: nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. If the tribulation didn’t end after this number, Ye Fei would be utterly hopeless.

In the blink of an eye, the nine thousand nine hundred ninety-ninth bolt of heavenly thunder struck and was absorbed by the dark purple Thunderbolt Bead without fail. However, the Thunderbolt Bead was clearly at its limit.

After this bolt, the thunderclouds in the sky finally changed, but not in a good way. Instead of dispersing, they began to gather even more tightly.

Half a minute later, the thunderclouds had still not unleashed another bolt of heavenly thunder; instead, they continued to condense. As they did so, Ye Fei felt an increasingly heavy pressure on his chest, making him extremely uncomfortable.

After about ten minutes, the thunderclouds had completely gathered together, and the oppressive feeling in Ye Fei’s heart reached its peak.

Even the Thunderbolt Bead, which had been floating in mid-air, descended and hovered less than ten centimeters above Ye Fei’s enlarged head after his transformation.

Then, the sky suddenly lit up, illuminating the entire valley in a blinding white light.

A gigantic bolt of heavenly thunder, dozens of times thicker than the previous nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, descended and enveloped Ye Fei, who stood like a colossal giant on the ground.

The Thunderbolt Bead, which was first in the line of fire, didn’t have time to absorb the lightning energy. It was crushed by the massive heavenly thunder, pressed through Ye Fei’s bald head into his body, and then exploded into smithereens, melting into Ye Fei’s flesh and blood.

The subsequent colossal bolt of heavenly thunder also poured entirely into his body.

If it had been before, even at his peak, Ye Fei wouldn’t have dared to say he could withstand such a strike. However, after fusing with the Thunderbolt Bead, his body instantly gained the bead’s ability.

This first and most perilous bolt of heavenly thunder not only failed to harm him but also provided him with an incredibly immense amount of energy.

After the ten-thousandth bolt of heavenly thunder struck, the thunderclouds in the sky finally dispersed and vanished without a trace within moments.

At this moment, Ye Fei felt incredibly good.

Not only was his body filled with power, but after fusing with the Thunderbolt Bead, his control over lightning energy had reached an entirely new level.

Taking a deep breath, Ye Fei targeted a large rock that he had previously excavated from the mountainside.

With a mere thought, a bolt of purple lightning as thick as a barrel descended from the sky without warning and shattered the rock into pieces.

”Hahahahaha...”

This outcome made Ye Fei unable to contain his laughter. His meridians had been completely blocked again, and he had thought that for a long time in the future, he would have to rely on close combat in fights.

This would have put him at a significant disadvantage against speed-based opponents.

But now, everything was different. After fusing with the Thunderbolt Bead and amplifying his lightning power by a hundredfold, he could now casually unleash lightning attacks comparable to heavenly tribulations. How awesome was that?