Chương 24: "If you're not guided, you may step onto a path that will end in tragedy"

Ch 24: "If you're not guided, you may step onto a path that will end in tragedy" As his meridians strained on the verge of collapse, Zhen forced Elementary Pulse to draw in every scrap of qi he could reach. He had one last, desperate roll of the dice. Jue Shi Long had dismantled Shuo and Chul effortlessly. If the two of them together couldn't defeat her, there was no way that Zhen could. At least not alone.

The crushing weight bore down on him, and even without the Eye Zhen felt fractures spread through his dantian. Opening your next gate pushes you into the next stage of Qi Condensation.

Unless you want to face down an actual tribulation out here in the open, we wait. Shuo's words from weeks ago echoed through his mind. Zhen had no idea what form a tribulation would take, indeed what it even really meant. His only experience had been the lightning that came down when he had opened his first spirit gate. According to Shuo, the lightning from his first breakthrough hadn't even been a real tribulation, it was only a warning.

But even that warning had caused enough trouble to upend his life entirely and rip him away from his home and his family. If another heavenly warning distracted the dragon for even a few seconds, they might have a chance to survive. The dragon's pressure intensified, threatening to dissolve his organs. Blood trickled from his nose and ears, and his ribcage groaned. Forcing a breakthrough in the hope that a tribulation might save him was reckless, but it was the only plan he had.

Zhen forced Elementary Pulse into action despite the agony. His breath came in shallow, ragged gasps and, despite the pain, he made each inhale deliberate and measured. The crushing weight from Jue Shi Long was overwhelming. Every instinct screamed at him to collapse, but he forced his breathing to maintain a steady rhythm. Qi flooded into his dantian faster than it ever had before. The Thirsting Veins were dense with spiritual energy, and Zhen drew it in with greedy desperation.

The pressure pushed his dantian past its stable capacity, yet he pulled in more. Behind him, Shuo's hoarse shout echoed across the plateau.

"Zhen, no…" Zhen ignored him. He opened the Eye of Xiezhi, and through the haze of pain, he perceived the eighth spirit gate at the base of his skull. The blockage there was thick and unyielding. No doubt there was a trick to unblocking it, but even with the Eye there was no time to find the structural weaknesses and exploit them gradually. Fully aware of the risk of an immediate backlash, Zhen gathered every drop of qi in his dantian and drove it toward the spirit gate like a battering ram.

The blockage shuddered but held. That he had expected. None of the other spirit gates had opened in a single strike. However, the question now was whether he could resist the dragon long enough to draw in enough qi for another attempt. The qi-rich atmosphere of the Thirsting Veins flooded Zhen's meridians and dantian once more with an ease he had never experienced before. Cultivation here truly was effortless, and any other time, he would revel in it.

But Jue Shi Long's crushing pressure turned that advantage into torture. Every breath required him to concentrate to ensure the qi wouldn't shred him from within. He forced his focus to narrow and used the Eye to examine the eighth gate's blockage. The Eye revealed structural fractures hidden inside the blockage. Unlooked for, a memory from his fight against the turtle Xuanfeng came to him. The Guardian Lake Turtle had tempered his body by pounding him.

Rather than question it, he gave in to the part of him that demanded action rather than analysis. The dragon's pressure bore down harder than before, and this time, instead of fighting it, Zhen used the qi he had built up in his dantian to steer that pressure rather than use it against the blockage. He stopped resisting Jue Shi Long's crushing force and instead accepted the pain to direct that pressure through his meridians into the fractures.

Now entirely exposed to Jue Shi Long's physical and spiritual pressure, Zhen could feel blood trickling out of his ears, he knew he only had moments before he died. Reversing the flow of qi he poured as much as he could against the blockage alongside the pressure from the dragon. Under the dual assault, the fractures widened. Then the blockage shattered. Earth-attuned qi from The Thirsting Veins gushed into him. It flooded his meridians with such violence that Zhen gasped as his body accommodated the torrent.

His dantian stretched. He had expected that in the form of the gradual expansion he had experienced after opening his previous spirit gates. This was anything but gradual, rather it was an instantaneous doubling. The distended reservoir yawned open, and the incoming qi filled it with terrifying speed. Thunder cracked overhead, and Zhen barely had a moment to register his dantian's transformation before lightning fell around him in a line that carved a burning circle into the plateau floor.

The foot Jue Shi Long had wrapped around him was severed cleanly by that line. Still tangled in the ruined claw, Zhen fell and hit the stone floor in a spray of crystals and blood. As he scrambled clear, the pressure crushing him had already disappeared. With a sense of relief, Zhen finally drew in a full breath. Blood still leaked from his nose and ears, but oxygen flooded his lungs. His desperate ploy had worked. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Around him, the lightning wall expanded outward in a perfect circle, pushing everything back. Stone cracked and melted where the columns touched ground. The air itself screamed as the heavens' wrath claimed the plateau. Just before the lightning's glare intensified to block out the surrounding world, he glimpsed Jue Shi Long recoiling in pain. Shuo and Chul were still in the crystal cage, but they had stopped struggling and instead stared at him with a mix of horror and awe.

Then the wall stopped extending and it closed up into a dome above him. Zhen stood at the center, untouched. The absolute silence that replaced the screaming was disconcerting. Inside Zhen's body, his qi churned furiously and started to shred his meridians and dantian. With a jolt of dread, Zhen realized that unless he got it under control, it would consume him from within. At the same time, he tried to process all the changes within him.

He could tell that he was in the middle of a qualitative change as he straddled the boundary between the first and second stages of Qi Condensation. Qi flooded into his meridians faster than he had thought possible. Part of his mind maintained Elementary Pulse almost automatically now, drawing in the dense spiritual energy of the Thirsting Veins. His dantian had already doubled in size when the eighth gate shattered, but he continued to be able to expand that reservoir even further.

The walls stretched as he pushed them out with his qi to create more capacity. Once that process was complete, he knew he would be fully into the second stage of Qi Condensation. To make the most of this brief window he focused on optimizing his growth from this unexpected, and unexpectedly powerful, breakthrough. Zhen pressed against those walls deliberately, shaping them. The sensation was deeply uncomfortable more than painful. But he instinctively knew that this was the right thing to do.

This was the last chance he had to improve his base at this new stage of cultivation before it was locked in, and he wanted to make that foundation as stable as he could. The qi-rich atmosphere supported him as each cycle of Elementary Pulse brought him fresh waves of energy to drive that expansion. He activated the Eye to try to ensure that he wasn't creating flaws in his dantain and gasped, trying to understand what he was seeing. The Eye had always shown him flaws and weaknesses.

Now he was entering the second stage of Qi Condensation it allowed him to see qi as well. Zhen looked around the plateau with the Eye and found himself overwhelmed by layers of information. Each type of qi looked and moved differently. Earth-attuned qi rose from the stone beneath him in dense, ochre currents that reminded him of molten metal. Beyond the lightning dome, faint emerald wisps of what might be wood-, or life-attuned qi drifted up from Baolao's forest.

But it all faded in comparison to the dome that pulsed around him. Silver-white lightning-attuned qi sparked off it. filling his vision with blinding light. His vision swam as his mind struggled to process it, and he stopped using the Eye before he became overwhelmed. His eighth gate pulsed at the base of his skull, and as the other gates responded, Zhen suddenly understood. The eight open spirit gates worked in coordination now, drawing qi through his meridians in perfect harmony.

Whereas before each gate had drawn in qi individually, now the eight gates synchronized in one unified system. As a consequence, his rate of qi absorption increased exponentially. Zhen felt his expanded dantian filling rapidly. In a place as qi-dense as the Thirsting Veins, he estimated it would be a matter of minutes before his newly expanded dantian would reach capacity. But at the same time, he realized that his meridians were no longer fixed in size.

He had assumed those spiritual channels had natural limits that were unchangeable, but the Eye showed him otherwise. The meridians were living pathways that could now be widened and made to carry more. He diverted some of the qi he was drawing to saturate his meridians to ensure they didn't ossify before he could work out how to turn that theory into practice.

With Shuo's critical voice at the back of his mind, Zhen examined his use of Elementary Pulse with the Eye, mapping the flaws in the technique's structure now that he had another spirit gate to deal with. He adjusted the technique in light of what he saw, tweaking his breathing and the routes qi took around his body to remedy the flaws. That was something he would need to work on to refine it further in the future, but it would do for now.

Where Elementary Pulse had guided qi through his meridians like a gentle trickle, Zhen restructured it to move like a stream, faster, more vigorous, and hopefully powerful enough to widen his meridians over time. The change took hold immediately. Qi rushed through his body with renewed force, and his meridians started to stretch to accommodate the increased volume. It wouldn't be an immediate change, but he could tell that it would lead to his meridians expanding.

As Zhen established control over all of these elements of his expanded cultivation base, his breathing steadied, and the pain in his chest eased to a dull ache. Another few minutes and he would be fully into Qi Condensation Two. He let out a sigh of relief, then froze. A vertical line of brilliant light split the air within the lightning dome. Reality split open before him. Through the portal stepped a slim woman who radiated an absolute authority that he could not ignore.

Still handsome, silver streaked through hair pulled back in a severe knot. She carried herself with the ease of someone who had long ago stopped needing to prove anything. But Zhen's Eye saw through the form immediately. She wasn't human. The woman was constructed entirely of qi, though of a type Zhen had never encountered. The energy that came off her felt simultaneously ancient and heavy with authority. It flowed through her in patterns even the Eye couldn't map.

And if he was in any doubt about her inhumanity, her eyes were spheres of absolute black without pupil or iris. As the portal shut behind her, the woman placed her hands behind her back and looked at Jue Shi Long's severed claw with a mildly irritated frown, then clearly dismissed it. She took a few brisk steps forward and tilted her head, studying Zhen with academic curiosity. She smiled warmly as she spoke for the first time.

"So, Tie Zhen, are you ready?" Understanding came to him all at once. He had been so caught up in trying to get his cultivation under control that he had lost sight of the fact that he had succeeded in his goal of freeing himself from Jue Shi Long. The severed dragon foot before him proved that much. But success came at a cost. This woman of pure qi, who knew who he was without asking, represented the Heavens. This was the tribulation he had wanted.

Not pausing in drawing in qi Zhen bowed low, keeping his eyes respectfully lowered.

"Of course, Honored Mistress. I am prepared to endure whatever judgment the Heavens deem fit to impose." The woman let out a rich and unguarded laugh.

"Judgement? Is that what you fear, little smith? Put that from your mind. I simply wish to know if you're ready to head into the next stage of your cultivation. You are about to cross the threshold into the second stage of Qi Condensation faster than usual, certainly. But hardly earth-shattering." She gestured at the lightning dome surrounding them.

"This, like when you advanced for the first time, is a warning. A last, more explicit, warning this time. Do not seek to reach too high, too fast." The warmth in her voice deepened she stepped closer.

"Cultivation is a wonderful thing, child. A journey full of wonder. That journey is one on which you should work with the heavens," her black eyes held his, "not look to defy them." She spread her hands, and the smile turned beatific.

"Delivering that simple advice is my purpose here, Tie Zhen. You have potential, and if you're not guided, you may step onto a path that will end in tragedy. But do not fear. The speed of your progression is notable enough to earn a glance from the Heavens, but you have done nothing to deserve a tribulation." She tilted her head, a flicker of something like pity in those void-black eyes.

"You have the wisdom to push, but not to overreach. For that adherence to the natural order, the Heavens salute you. Only fools and the arrogant seek the gate within the core."