Chapter 158: Tribulation Transcendence

"An energy charging field?"
Academician Ding looked at Academician Zheng with a face full of confusion, somewhat curious as to why he had reached such a conclusion.

"Indeed. For Mr. Huang, this celestial phenomenon shouldn't be a calamity, but rather an opportunity!"
Academician Zheng replied, "After all, we all know that Mr. Huang's physical body has an extremely high affinity for electrical energy!"

"Do you remember what Mr. Huang mentioned to us before... Once, when he encountered a thunderstorm abroad, he couldn't help flying over out of curiosity to take a spin, just to see if he could take a few lightning strikes to supplement his electrical energy..."

"And then, guess what? After Mr. Huang charged back and forth through those thunderclouds a few times, as if they were afraid of being stolen from, the clouds directly quieted down and vanished into thin air!"

"What does this indicate? It shows that lightning is actually quite terrified of Mr. Huang. If it tries to strike him forcibly, not only will it fail to cause any substantive damage, but it will actually end up charging him instead!"

"Of course... the laws of physics abroad are different from ours. The lightning there exists more in the form of magical elements rather than being generated by electrical charges and potential."

"While foreign lightning might fear Mr. Huang, our domestic lightning isn't necessarily the same. Their form of existence is much more objective. As long as the conditions are met, they will strike Mr. Huang's head without the slightest hesitation!"

"Perhaps precisely for this reason, the mysterious power within Mr. Huang's body has directly started altering the weather, creating thunderstorms, attempting to use the power of nature to recharge himself!"

"Hearing you put it like that, I suppose it's not entirely unreasonable..."
Academician Ding thought about it carefully. Although Academician Zheng's conjecture contained a heavy dose of optimism, it actually possessed a certain degree of logic.

Previously, Huang Ze had mentioned to them that he had artificially created a heavenly tribulation for the Phoenix to help her break through her bottleneck. At the time, everyone found it magical and even went out to investigate.

In the end, they discovered that supernatural creatures abroad do not actually experience heavenly tribulations when their bodies are about to undergo a metamorphosis!

The situation with the Phoenix was very likely a special exception—a case of the Black Dragon forcibly rewriting destiny using external cheats.

"That's true... Heavenly tribulations are products of mythological legends. Our world doesn't possess any Dao of Heaven, nor does it have an entity capable of automatically detecting and executing lightning strikes. How could it target the Black Dragon for no reason and conjure up such a massive heavenly tribulation?"

"This enormous thunderstorm cloud might actually have been whipped up by Mr. Huang himself, in order to borrow the lightning power of nature to recharge himself and help himself break through!"

Academician Ding thought about it, and the more he pondered, the more plausible it seemed.

After all, everything that had happened actually followed a traceable pattern.

First, the Black Dragon's body continuously heated up, evaporating massive amounts of water from underground, which caused the air humidity to rise sharply. Under the influence of the Black Dragon's powerful magnetic field, strong updrafts formed, and the storm began to take initial shape.

Then, the Black Dragon's body radiated powerful, unknown energy rays, prompting the air to generate a large number of electrical charges. Under a mysterious chain reaction, massive cumulus clouds began to form, the atmospheric pressure at ground level dropped lower and lower, and a terrifying thundercloud storm gradually took shape...

"Hiss... If it's truly as I imagine, then Mr. Huang's ability is simply too defying of the heavens!"
Academician Ding was shocked by his own thoughts. It was one thing that Huang Ze, a Black Dragon who had never awakened ancestral memories, could normally charge and discharge electricity, but now he could even artificially create large-scale thunderstorms...

Still, it made sense. Only by achieving this could one truly be considered as having mastered lightning!

"Old Ding, haven't you noticed that the abilities Mr. Huang is currently displaying increasingly resemble technology rather than magic?"
Academician Zheng suddenly spoke up.

"Technology? Old Zheng, I don't deny the greatness of our technology, but to attribute the ability to summon wind and rain, and to beckon thunder and lightning, to technological means is a bit too optimistic, isn't it?"
Academician Ding couldn't help but retort. "If you ask me, this is neither technology nor magic; it is divine arts and immortal arts in the purest sense!"

"Hehe... Old Ding, don't forget, Mr. Huang is currently on domestic soil!"
Academician Zheng said with a smile. "The barrier hasn't vanished yet, and the laws within our borders are still quite robust. Regardless of whether it's magic or divine arts, their effects here are severely discounted!"

"Judging by its current intensity, the thunderstorm Mr. Huang has conjured up easily reaches the level of tier six or seven magic, or perhaps even higher. Given the scarcity of magical elements in our country, it is simply impossible to support a spectacle of this scale!"

"......I admit that what you say makes sense."
Academician Ding said, "At present, our country can indeed be considered a magical wasteland. Even entities as powerful as angels and dragons, upon arriving here, stall out due to a severe lack of mana. Forcibly using magic not only fails to unleash any power, but it also easily triggers a severe backlash."

"The spectacle Mr. Huang has whipped up right now is indeed likely not created through magic or divine arts, but it shouldn't have anything to do with technology either, right?"

"No matter how magical technology might be, wanting to pull off a stunt of this magnitude should still be impossible, shouldn't it?"

"How could it not be related? How could it be impossible?"
Academician Zheng argued, "Old Ding, our current technology indeed cannot artificially manufacture such extreme weather, but in the distant future, that might not be the case."

"You should also be aware of weather weapons; the Americans used to tinker with this sort of thing quite a bit in the past, and I have specifically looked into and researched this field."

"Current weather weapons are indeed still very immature, capable at most of artificial rainfall and cloud seeding, and they are still a long way from artificially creating droughts, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and other extreme weather."

"The main reason is that our current computer technology is not yet powerful enough to provide sufficient data support for weather weapons."

"In reality, as long as we have a super-intelligent computer with sufficient performance, coupled with sufficiently advanced information-gathering technology, wanting to build a thunderstorm generator is actually not difficult at all."

"Old Ding, we are both men of science. How can you not believe in the greatness of science, or in the growth potential and diversity of technology?"

"It's just that our current science has been developing for too short a time; otherwise, we wouldn't need to give the slightest regard to those hiding deities who only know how to skulk in the shadows!"

"Yes... Science is great!"
Academician Ding suddenly felt a wave of emotion as well. "I still remember what Yagu once said: rather than saying the end of science is theology, it is more accurate to say that the end of theology is science..."

Yagu was the necromancer previously hired by the Xia Kingdom as a security consultant—a very erudite and studious wise man. Before his brain was scrambled by advanced calculus problems, he particularly loved seeking out academics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences for intellectual exchanges.

Academician Ding still remembered when Yagu had once sighed with deep emotion, saying that the theology of this world was almost coming to an end, and that the people of the Xia Kingdom were the ones grasping the truth and holding the hope for the future!