When Arthur went up to see the rank 5 bomb, he saw that it was a spherical ball with runes etched all over its surface and an energy core that was brimming with dangerous power.
Being around the bomb made his skin crawl. He said to himself, "Reminds me of that time Thor brought out a bomb that he called a rank 4 energy core. I guess it is like teacher like disciple. I shouldn't have been surprised by the thought that Sword Flash was making bombs."
This bomb is many times stronger than the energy core that Thor was messing around with. That energy core only had an output of 20D or so. So this rank 5 bomb is 5,000 times stronger than the one Thor had.
This difference in power is why he can feel the threat of death despite possessing power that is above the golden core realm, the same way he had felt the threat of death from Thor's energy core when he was still at the second mortal coil.
After he got a good look at the bomb, he retreated to safety while saying to himself, "That's about enough. No need to stick around the equivalent of a nuclear bomb for so long."
He wasn't exaggerating to compare the rank 5 bomb to a nuclear bomb. In fact, when compared to a nuclear bomb, this rank 5 bomb with a power of 10B can be compared to a nuclear bomb with an output of 10 megatons of TNT.
A 10 megaton yield is a lot of power. In comparison, the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in his past life during World War 2 had an estimated yield of 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons of TNT. That's the equivalent of a bomb with a power output of 1.5C and 2.1C.
This makes the rank 5 bomb 500 times more powerful than something capable of leveling an entire city. This is why Arthur thought that it was perfectly normal for him to be scared of the rank 5 bomb.
Golden core cultivators like him won't be afraid of the energy core that Thor was carrying around, but only nascent soul seniors at the peak of the fifth mortal coil won't be in danger of dying instantly because of the explosion of the rank 5 bomb.
Nascent soul patriarchs will still be threatened by the nuclear bombs of his past life, though. After all, a yield of 10 megatons is not the highest that nuclear bombs were able to achieve in his past life.
In his past life, there was a nuclear bomb called Tsar Bomba with a yield of 50 megatons of TNT. It was made by the Soviet Union in 1961. He is sure that humans have developed even more dangerous nuclear bombs since then, so humans can still threaten nascent soul patriarchs and maybe even rank 6 unity realm cultivators.
But it should not be forgotten that only the yield of bombs can threaten them. As long as the bomb can't get close to them, they cannot be threatened by it.
Nascent soul cultivators are very fast and can easily outfly a hypersonic missile moving at speeds that are 100 times the speed of sound. So they can surely outrun most nuclear warheads or missiles that humans can launch at them.
The speed of nascent soul cultivators makes it so that even if they can't withstand the explosion of a bomb head-on, they can run away from it. This reduces the threat of bombs and missiles to them tremendously.
Someone like Sword Flash with his manipulation of space won't be threatened at all. He would have many ways to deal with such bombs or escape from them.
Even foundation establishment cultivators who are weaker than him won't be threatened much by anything that has to fly over to them before it can harm them. This is because even if they can't outrun it, they can still push the bomb away from them with their divine sense or cause it to detonate far away from them by crushing it with their mind.
After thinking of this, he said to himself, "I wonder how the Sun King will deal with this bomb, though."
The Sun King doesn't have a divine sense, so he can't use that to escape. Even if he had a divine sense, it is unlikely to be helpful against this rank 5 bomb.
He still remembers the small sun that the leader of the Red and Blue Fire sect had created out of desperation. That small sun didn't explode in the first layer, but he was still able to tell how powerful it was.
The explosion of that small sun created by an artifact that was half a step into rank 7 by a desperate nascent soul cultivator willing to sacrifice all of his body was capable of leveling an entire continent of Earth in his past life.
The rank 5 bomb doesn't have that kind of power, but the kind of damage that it can deal will be comparable to the small sun because Aries is much weaker than the world of Ethera. Because of the power of the rank 5 bomb, most of its power will be displaced to the second and third layers of space in order to protect the world.
When he pictures the Sun King trying to survive against an explosion of such power, he can't think of a way for the Sun King to survive it. So he is willing to bet that the bomb will surely kill the Sun King.
The thought of the Sun King dying because of an explosion filled him with glee. He said to himself, "Serves him right."
He was full of anticipation for what was about to happen, but the first Sun King was full of fear and dread. He hurriedly tried to contact the gem people for help.
Most of the gem people are dead after the three patriarchs scoured the world with their divine sense. Every powerful gem person was killed by them. But some weaker gem people are still alive.