The Eternal Farmer: I Trade My Harvest for Immortality

To condense a Golden Core, a cultivator with a Five Elements Spirit Root had to endure five lightning tribulations.

Having just survived the third, Jiang Chen had only managed to form a glowing sphere within his dantian. The only anomaly was its color—instead of the expected five-colored radiance, it pulsed with a profound, abyssal black.

He wasn’t given a single second to breathe. Before the residual smoke of the third strike could even dissipate, the apocalyptic tribulation clouds above violently churned, hissing and crackling with renewed fury.

Thunder roared across the heavens. Lightning fractured the sky.

And then, it began to rain, blanketing an area of a thousand feet.

It was no ordinary storm. Drops of Supreme Yang Golden Lightning fell, capable of melting Spirit Weapons into slag. Withering Wood Lightning rained down, designed to rot and sever Spirit Roots. Profound Yin Water Lightning threatened to freeze the very soul, while Burning Fire Lightning sought to incinerate consciousness itself. Finally, Suppressing Earth Lightning plummeted, carrying the sheer mass to crush a mortal body.

These five elemental extremes fused into a torrential, world-ending downpour.

Jiang Chen braced himself, but his defensive arsenal was instantly overwhelmed. The Spirit Weapons strapped to his body—each a highly coveted, exceptionally powerful artifact bearing at least five patterns—shattered into useless fragments within moments, entirely unable to withstand the targeted annihilation of the fourth wave.

He forcefully cycled his elemental energies, using the laws of mutual generation and restraint to form a desperate, high-speed engine of survival. Yet, against this torrential lightning rain, his internal systems were failing. He watched his remaining Spirit Weapons dim and crack. The Suppressing Earth Lightning accumulated on his shoulders, the atmospheric pressure forcing him to his knees as his bones groaned under the weight of a small mountain.

The true, cosmic horror of the fourth tribulation finally dawned on him.

The first wave had been a single bolt of turbid lightning.

The second was merely five lightning serpents.

The third, the lightning beasts, had been all bark and no bite.

But this fourth wave—the Five Elements Lightning Rain—was a localized apocalypse. The heavens had used the first three strikes merely to test his defenses, calibrating this fourth strike to perfectly exploit his weaknesses.

Calculating his dwindling options, Jiang Chen mounted his final struggle. He ignited his Five Elements Spirit Light Shield. It offered a brief respite, but the effect was pitifully marginal. His cultivation base was simply too low to project a barrier thick enough to withstand the onslaught.

Initially, his fluid elemental shifting managed to neutralize the five types of lightning. He forcefully cycled Metal to birth Water, using the resulting torrent to feed his Wood root, keeping the engine running. But the celestial storm showed no signs of stopping. Instead, it intensified, the deafening roar of the deluge sounding like the wrath of gods.

The raincloud he had previously summoned was violently shredded. His Spirit Light Shield rapidly compressed, its glow flickering dangerously. At this rate, the terrifying lightning rain would soon punch through and turn his body into a bloody sieve.

“Isn’t this just bullying an honest man?” Jiang Chen cursed through gritted teeth.

Without hesitation, he activated his first Golden Light Talisman. Luminous golden threads materialized in the air, weaving together to form a radiant spirit talisman.

Instantly, the environment shifted.

Just a second ago, despite the layers of Spirit Weapons and his Spirit Light Shield, the crushing Pressure of the fourth tribulation had stretched his nerves to the breaking point. But the moment the Golden Light Talisman ignited, a profound silence fell over him. The apocalyptic threat vanished, perfectly isolated beyond the golden barrier.

So this is the heaven-defying power of the Golden Light Talisman? he thought, his hyper-logical mind quickly assessing the barrier’s durability. It completely negates the fourth lightning tribulation. At this rate, it should hold for a long time!

He finally understood the sheer arrogance Chen Tian had displayed when using this talisman. He had to admit—hiding behind an impenetrable paywall of wealth felt incredibly good.

As if the heavens themselves were enraged by Jiang Chen’s blatant “cheating,” the storm’s radius began to rapidly contract. It shrank from a thousand feet down to a mere hundred. Consequently, the deluge concentrated, hammering the Golden Light Talisman with exponentially denser impacts.

At first, the barrier held flawlessly. But as the storm’s focus narrowed to a suffocating ten-foot radius, the terrifying, rapid-fire drumming of the rain bled through the silence.

It became glaringly obvious that a single Golden Light Talisman was not enough to outlast the fourth tribulation.

Calculating his margins, he drew his second Golden Light Talisman but held off on activating it. He only had ten of these lifesavers in his inventory. As a pragmatic survivor, he needed to squeeze every last drop of value out of the first one. After all, the fifth lightning tribulation still loomed ahead.

The lightning rain compressed further, shrinking from ten feet to a mere three. It couldn’t condense any further, but the resulting concentration of power brought an unprecedented, suffocating oppression. The crackling explosions hammered against the barrier, sounding like the death knell of the cosmos.

Under the relentless scouring of the lightning rain, the Golden Light Talisman flickered frantically. Its once-blinding radiance dimmed to a sickly glow, trembling like a candle in a hurricane, on the verge of shattering.

Jiang Chen decisively activated the second Golden Light Talisman.

Golden light flared anew as fresh luminous threads wove into a pristine barrier, instantly restoring that absolute, isolated silence.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, the torrential downpour finally began to wane. The deafening roar, the violent tremors, and the apocalyptic impacts gradually faded into nothingness.

At long last, the storm broke. The sky cleared.

Having survived the fourth tribulation, the glowing sphere within his dantian sea grew incredibly dense. His internal energies shifted into overdrive. Metal spiritual power forcefully cycled into Wood, birthing a torrent of Water that ignited into Fire. The Fire then fed back into Water, compressing to release a heavy surge of Earth. The elements cycled in a desperate, high-speed engine of mutual generation and restraint, locking into a flawless, self-sustaining loop.

The faster this elemental engine ran, the deeper and more profound the black color became, and the more solid the sphere condensed.

Just as Jiang Chen was immersed in this sensation, a sharp crack echoed from the depths of the tribulation clouds. A Pressure more intense than the previous four tribulations combined suddenly descended. A chaotic lightning core, ten feet in diameter, slowly emerged. Its surface swirled with five-colored lightning patterns, converging at the center into a dark vortex that seemed to devour all things.

Overall, it contained the sharpness of Metal, the vitality of Wood, the softness of Water, the ferocity of Fire, and the solidity of Earth, yet it also carried the chaotic characteristic of “neither birth nor destruction.”

Before the lightning core even landed, everything around began to disintegrate. The Spirit Weapons on Jiang Chen’s body couldn’t withstand even a single breath. The Profound Yellow Earth Armor, the Primordial Spirit Robe, the Five Elements Silk Wristbands, the Dual Elemental Rings, the Striding Boots, and more all instantly turned to dust.

Facing such terrifying power, only the Golden Light Talisman barely held on.

Jiang Chen’s pupils contracted. “Is this the fifth lightning tribulation?”

To be honest, it was countless times more terrifying than he had imagined. The previous lightning rain now felt like a mere drizzle.

Now, with his Spirit Weapons gone, he had eight Golden Light Talismans left, one Five Elements Spirit Pill, and one Primordial Chaos Pill in his mouth.

With a deafening hum, the lightning core crashed down, slamming into the second Golden Light Talisman that hadn’t yet been exhausted. It felt as if the entire world shook.

The protective barrier violently dented, golden light flashing wildly before shattering with a loud crack.

Fortunately, at the same time, Jiang Chen activated his third Golden Light Talisman, barely withstanding the first wave of the lightning core’s impact.

At that moment, the dark vortex at the core’s center suddenly expanded, spewing chaotic turbid energy that collided with the golden barrier, corroding three holes.

Terrifying energy leaked through. The moment Jiang Chen came into contact with it, his flesh turned charred, revealing stark white bones. Even his soul and consciousness suffered severe erosion.

Without hesitation, he decisively swallowed the two Spirit Pills in his mouth.

Instantly, rich life force spread throughout his body, and his wounds healed at a visible rate.

Not stopping there, Jiang Chen activated his fourth and fifth Golden Light Talismans, not daring to be careless now.

In an instant, golden light surged, becoming brighter and more solid than before. Not only did it repair the holes, but it also pushed back the turbid energy.

At this point, Jiang Chen was surprised to discover that when the lightning core couldn’t harm him, its core began to weaken bit by bit.

This was another form of mutual generation and restraint.

When the Golden Light Talisman weakened, the lightning core grew stronger.

When he activated another Golden Light Talisman, the lightning core weakened again.

Now, it had become a war of attrition, seeing who would give in first.

With the sixth talisman, the lightning core was reduced to half.

With the seventh, it was less than a third.

With the eighth, only the core part remained.

With the ninth, the lightning core unleashed its final, most powerful attack. Seeing it couldn’t break through the Golden Light Talisman’s defense, it finally exploded.

The power of the Five Elements and chaos, ignoring the Golden Light Talisman’s barrier, directly poured into the tribulation survivor’s body.

The damage to his body and soul was repaired in that moment.

His aura and condition soared, quickly reaching an unprecedented peak.

The already solidifying Golden Core, under the impact of this power and the coordination of the Five Elements spiritual energy, became incredibly clear in an instant.

Deep within his dantian sea, a sense of heaviness emerged.

Jiang Chen immediately looked inward and was shocked.

Before surviving the fifth lightning tribulation, although the Golden Core was black, the five-colored spiritual energy could still be seen.

Now, looking again, the core had solidified, with a diameter as large as a fist. Its surface was smooth and unmarked, as hard as a star’s core yet as warm and smooth as ancient jade.

At that moment, the tribulation clouds in the sky stopped churning. The lead-gray clouds receded like a tide, then condensed high above into a mysterious mark…