Fire raged and thunder pealed both within and without for Lin Feng.

With the joining of the Kage of the other nations and their subordinates, his situation had gone from bad to the worst.

Not only were they steadily chipping away at his defences, they were causing him to divert attention from the tribulation to control the sand to repair the dome.

Now, the tribulation guided by the remnant will of the Kyuubi was wreaking havoc in his mind.

He knew that his will was the most important in this situation so he was intercepting the lightnings that seeked to destroy the earth but that meant that the volcanoes that represented his emotions were left unguarded.

More and more of them erupted within his mindscape, covering the skies of his mind with the haze of anger.

He wanted to just rush out and slaughter them all.

But he clenched his teeth and persisted, his gums bleeding from the force of his jaws.

His eyes were bloodshot with repressed emotion.

Often a stray bolt of tribulation lightning would hit the waters in his mind, permanently erasing some of his memories, leaving him with gaping holes in his recall.

He protected the important memories as well as he could, slowly losing the names and faces of the ones who had just made a passing impression on his life.

The Devil path leader he had made his first contract with.

The other disciples of the Grand Architectural sect.

The courtesan at the brothel who had taken his virginity.

All of them, all those memories gone… never to return.

He was left a lesser man as he felt a profound sense of loss as parts of him were sliced away.

It was like death by dismemberment… just slower and even more cruel.

The void within his soul compounded with his rising anger brought him to the brink of collapse.

Outside, dark red chakra began to seep out of his body and cover him in a shroud.

His eyes turned red with a slit pupil.

In the clouds above his mindscape, the Kyuubi’s will rejoiced and redoubled its effort.

It finally saw a chance of victory.

It gathered a large amount of the lightning and directed it at him.

A white pillar connected heaven and earth.

The ground melted, volcanoes erupted, water steamed and winds howled.

Yet when the dust cleared, the damage was much smaller than expected.

Lin Feng’s soul body looked up at the figure of the woman standing in front of him shining with a six-colour brilliance.

It was Pakura. She had managed to transfer the power of the bond and used it to bring her soul body into his mindscape and block the strike.

The total energy of the tribulation was limited to the soul intensity of the tribulation transcender.

Thus, after this strike nearly one fourth of the tribulation was exhausted.

The Kyuubi roared unwillingly but soon it was pleasantly surprised as new dark clouds began to form and merge with the ones already there.

By interfering in the tribulation, Pakura had initiated her own.

This was why it wasn’t possible for others to aid during this tribulation.

“Snap out of it!” she screamed at Lin Feng.

“I could feel your unstable emotions through the bond and came here… what do I find? You giving in to your emotions and nearly dying in the hand of a beast. Are you going to let a mere animal beat you!?”

Lin Feng staggered up and looked at her.

She had somehow used the Karma principle to protect them both, deflecting the majority of the strike onto the mindscape.

He had lost another chunk of his soul but at least, his core consciousness was still there.

As long as he was alive, all was hopeful.

Her consciousness body seemed dispirited, exhausted after transferring a principle level strength with her newly strengthened soul.

He sighed and looked up at the thicker and darker clouds that were forming into a loose shape of a nine tailed fox.

It seemed that due to the mixing of the tribulations, the tailed-beast had gained even more control over it.

If it succeeded in killing them both, it might even be able to truly substitute for them and even grasp the karma principle.

Such were the dangers of soul confrontations.

The winner was king and the loser forever erased from the world, his all taken by the victor.

Lin Feng concentrated his thoughts into winds that blew across the sky messing up the control of the Kyuubi and preventing it from gathering strength into another strong attack.

The diffused lightning, he could deal with.

The concentrated one? Not so much.

Lin Feng asked through gritted teeth, “Did Kaguya teach you anything useful for this situation? If not, we are both going to die and that bastard is going to take over our bodies.”

Pakura clenched her teeth and forcefully pushed past the repercussions of overdrawing her soul to use a principle level attack.

“Nothing in particular but I had recently been studying how to develop a suitable soul sutra. I have progressed in theory but… I have never put it into practise… my soul isn’t strong enough.”

Lin Feng thought briefly before reassigning a portion of his soul through the bond, stripping it of his own influence and leaving only pure soul force that poured into Pakura’s consciousness body making it more substantial.

It was only possible to do this because the bond made it so that in essence the both of them were one soul.

It made Lin Feng weaker but that also meant that the Kyuubi’s controlled tribulation clouds reduced and the new tribulation clouds popped up which were due to Pakura’s tribulation.

The total amount of the tribulation was fixed but by shifting the soul force around, he could cause a part to break away from the Kyuubi’s control and using his Aeolian thoughts, prevent it from absorbing them again.

Thus, the amount of controlled tribulation had reduced and the rest of the uncontrolled lightnings were diffuse in nature and thus easier to deal with.

He said, “I can only delay for some time… try to complete your sutra as fast as possible. If you fail or take too long, we won’t survive this.”