Chapter 4054  Rising Tribulations

For a moment, they just stood there. Expecting something to happen.

They had heard of the crystal striders that Pioneer I had run into on their first planetary excursion. Perhaps they would run into some native alien life as well. The ground was of neon colors, flashy and bright, reflecting the exotic content of the soil and the bedrock. The sky was the cosmos. The light from the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy and of the entire universe painted a magnificent image. But it also meant that this planet was highly unlikely to be terraformable.

Some planets were terraformable, others were not.

It depended on several factors, but the most important ones were the composition of the planet, atmosphere, mass, gravity, and so on and so forth. This planet had too much gravity, completely disqualifying it from becoming a potential home for Gaian Civilization. Their technology only worked for planets that were close enough to Gaian conditions. Not even the elves, who had mastered environmental manipulation more than any other civilization, could possibly make this world Gaia-like.

That was good.

Because from the moment they set foot on the planet, the Martial Sages had begun to experience tingling nerves.

It was the classic sense of danger.

But they couldn't sense its exact source.

It was faint.

Sage Ceeran gritted his teeth as he commenced his surveillance procedures, scanning their immediate environment with the sensor apparatus present on his exo-Martial suit. STEP

STEP

STEP

STEP

They cautiously began to walk across the surface of the planet, scanning the entire region for any kind of motion.

To their surprise, they couldn't sense it.

There was no activity on the planet.

"No signs of life," Sage Ceeran murmured. "No signs of… well, anything."

"Keep searching. Remain alert and cautious. Report if you detect even the slightest of anomalies."

"The only anomaly is the sense of danger I feel." Sage Ceeran's eyes sharpened. "I almost wish we were attacked by alien crabs; that would make me feel more secure than whatever this is."

"Focus on the mission."

Sage Ceeran adhered to the words of his handler. Martial Sages were expected to brave dangers, and indeed, that was what all Martial Artists reckoned with even before they began pursuing the Martial Path. The fact that they were likely to have an unpleasant death, most likely at the hands of another Martial Artist, was something that each of them had accepted as a very likely reality.

Such was the life of a Martial Artist.

RUMBLE

Sage Ceeran froze as a chill ran across his skin. A tremor had passed through the entire planet.

Not just the ground beneath his feet.

It spread across the entire planet.

And yet, the tremors themselves were of seismic energy, despite spreading across the entire world.

His eyes widened.

It wasn't a tremor.

It was the planet itself that moved.

Only then did Sage Ceeran realize what they were dealing with. "JUMP!" Sage Ceeran yelled at his younger peer even as he took to the air.

The other Martial Sages didn't make it in time.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world split open as a fissure across entire tectonic plates erupted all at once, splitting the ground beneath their feet faster than even the young, inexperienced Martial Sages could experience.

Before they could even react, the fissure closed down on them with an astronomical amount of force.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Sage Ceeran's eyes widened with horror as he watched the planet crush the Martial Sages in the blink of an eye, killing them on the spot.

Like many Martial Sages who had broken through before the Sage boom over the past six years, he too had bemoaned the deteriorating quality of Martial Sages. They were brittle, they were inexperienced, relatively speaking, and they hadn't mastered their power the way that Martial Sages before them had.

A lot of them had undergone not just one artificial breakthrough, but multiple artificial breakthroughs.

Some had broken through to the Senior Realm, the Master Realm, and also the Sage Realm. They were so brittle and inexperienced that they truly paled in comparison to 'real' Martial Sages.

And it reflected in that moment.

Their poor reflexes.

Their poor instincts.

Their poor reactions.

They died in the blink of an eye.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The planet shook violently as Sage Ceeran gritted his teeth, his eyes grew grim with reckoning. His immediate priority had become to retreat from the planet and return to Pioneer V. He activated his Realms of power to their absolute fullest, causing them to flare with power as he poured all of his power into escaping from the world. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

He sky-ran up into the atmosphere, heading towards the exosphere as fast as he could. The sheer speed with which he could move as a Martial Sage was extremely intense. And yet, the gargantian was even faster.

The sentient planet species had managed to commandeer the power that only the alien virus would be able to command under ordinary circumstances, causing them to have great power despite being immobile planets.

RUMBLE!!!!!

Sage Ceeran's eyes widened as the atmosphere grew denser, forming what appeared to be clouds. Clouds of strange exotic colors, created from esoteric matter in addition to rapidly precipitated moisture. The planet leveraged esoteric matter to do an accelerated version of cloud-seeding. RUMBLE!!!!!

It created a storm of extraordinary proportions in a matter of seconds. Sage Ceeran's eyes widened as a bolt of lightning charged towards him at extraordinary speeds in just the blink of an eye.

And yet, it wasn't enough to take down a Martial Sage.

WHOOSH

He narrowly evaded the powerful impact, enhanced by esoteric matter. But the storm had only just begun.

CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE!!!

Lightning of strange exotic colors danced across the dark skies before charging at the desperate Martial Sage all at once.

RUMBLE!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

"Rgh!" Ceeran grimaced as a surge of electricity rampaged across his body. He used the standard anti-electric adaptive evolution techniques that the Water Sect had popularized over the past few decades, barely managing to survive the tremendous peril.

And yet, the tribulation was only just beginning.