Chương 25: "Prepare to face the tribulation"

Ch 25: "Prepare to face the tribulation" The relief that flooded through Zhen at learning he wouldn't face a tribulation lasted a heartbeat. Then a sensation somewhere between disappointment and indignation replaced it.

"My cultivation is just adequate?" The woman's expression shifted, and there might even have been sympathy in those pitch-black eyes.

"You are young, Tie Zhen. Do not let hubris blind you from appreciating what you have achieved in such a short time. You managed to open eight spirit gates before reaching Qi Condensation Two. Most cultivators make that jump when they open six or seven spirit gates. By opening eight, you have shown your talent and secured yourself a long, honored life." She gestured toward his chest.

"Those who seek to open the ninth gate before transitioning to the next stage are fools." The woman's voice was final.

"Your speed of advancement has earned you the right to know of that gate, and also to be warned off from attempting it. There is a reason that the gate inside your dantian is only unveiled for a brief moment. It's not meant to be opened by those who value their lives." But Zhen was already tuning her out as he turned the Eye inward onto his dantian. It blazed in his perception, a sphere of contained energy that was still expanding as he pushed it out with qi as it grew into its new size.

But there, half-obscured by the churning qi, the Eye picked out an anomaly. Another gate sat inside the dantian itself. Intricate, complex, and already beginning to fade as the expansion process neared its completion. The blockage was made up of a dozen interlocking segments he would need to remove. In fact, it appeared that the blockage itself was made up of qi. The Eye gave him a sense of which weaknesses to attack to open it. This was within his capabilities, but time was not on his side.

The gate was fading and would be gone within minutes. Zhen's jaw tightened. He couldn't be anything other than the best. Getting into Cloudstone Peak required it. Protecting his family from the Order of Folded Shadows demanded it if he were to survive. But there was something more fundamental as well. As a smith, if he were to forge a masterwork and stop work on it knowing it was imperfect, he would never forgive himself. When it came to cultivation, he was his own masterwork. And he wouldn't compromise.

The woman was still speaking, explaining something about patience and wisdom, but Zhen had already made his decision. He gathered qi and struck at the first weakness in the blockage. The blockage fractured, and one segment became dislodged. With a twist of his qi he could break it free. But then the Eye highlighted an empty spot around the edge of the blockage that was exactly the same shape as that segment. Zhen frowned for a moment, then his breath caught as he worked it out.

The secret to this gate wasn't just to remove it. In a process that blended destruction and creation, he had to dismantle the qi blocking the gate and rebuild it to frame the gate itself. It reminded him of a wooden puzzle his father had made for him as a child, where each block only fit in one position. With no time to waste, Zhen used his qi to yank the loosened piece free, ready to move it to where the Eye showed it needed to go. The moment it came free, everything went wrong.

The Eye flared white-hot in his perception. Structural flaws erupted throughout his dantian. Qi began to leak out through the cracks in thin streams. Zhen bit down his panic and tried to push the piece back, to undo what he had done, but it wouldn't go. More qi escaped. It slowed his dantian's expansion further and the hidden spirit gate continued to fade. Zhen's hands clenched into fists. The only way forward was through. His father's voice echoed in his memory from a hundred lessons in the forge.

When the metal's hot and you've committed to the strike, finish it. Hesitation means disaster. But this wasn't metal. This was his cultivation base. If he failed he would damage his dantian beyond repair. He would destroy his chance to be a cultivator. Zhen gritted his teeth and reached for the floating piece. His meridians screamed as he forced qi to push against the growing leaks. The Eye showed him where it needed to go, and as soon as it was in place, it locked into its new position and wouldn't move.

Even so, it took time as the hidden gate flickered and became more transparent. All of this took long moments that he didn't have. The Eye showed him which piece to move next, but it also showed him every new crack and every new weakness spreading across his dantian. Time was running out. The gate was disappearing, and his dantian was failing. And he had eleven more pieces to move.

The woman's black eyes narrowed, fixing on Zhen with an intensity that made his skin prickle despite the agony radiating through his dantian. Stolen novel; please report.

"Are you certain you wish to do this?" Her newly sharp tone cut into his thoughts.

"The Heavens offered you an explanation. You have turned it into an invitation. If you continue, you will face Heaven's wrath whether you succeed or fail in opening the ninth spirit gate. Stop now, and I will repair the damage and restore your foundation." Zhen's only response was to wrench another piece of the blockage free with his qi and manipulate it into its place in the frame. The fragment locked into position with a rightness that resonated through his entire being. The woman's shoulders lifted in a shrug.

"In which case, the die is cast. Prepare to face the tribulation." Lightning struck Zhen before he could draw another breath. The bolt punched into his chest. There was no physical damage, only spiritual, but that was of scant comfort. If he thought his body and spirit had been tested by Jue Shi Long, he was wrong. The agony reached deeper and shredded through meridians and spirit gates alike. His qi scattered, and the careful control he had maintained over his dantian's expansion wavered.

Zhen's vision went white, but he knew that if he let himself yield to the pain, his breakthrough would collapse. He locked his jaw and forced his qi to move. The Eye of Xiezhi showed him the next segment. His entire body shook as he reached for it with his qi, and another crack appeared across his dantian's surface. The second bolt hit him in the shoulder. Zhen bit through his lip, tasting blood. The lightning broke open cracks in his dantian, and qi leaked from a dozen fresh fractures.

He couldn't use this pain the way he had used the dragon's pressure. That had been a force he could redirect. This was pure destruction. He yanked the third piece free and jammed it into place. Nine pieces remained. The hidden gate was barely visible now, its edges dissolving into nothing. He forced more qi into his dantian to push it out further and the gate became a little firmer. But the effort drained him. He didn't know how many more times he would be able to do that.

As he reached for the fourth piece, lightning struck his spine and his control slipped. His dantian shuddered as his expansion stuttered. More qi escaped through widening fractures. He dragged in more from the qi-dense atmosphere around him, pulling it in with an Elementary Pulse technique that had become ragged and desperate despite his eight open gates. In any other location, he would have already failed. Here in heart of the Thirsting Veins, saturated with spiritual energy, he had just enough to keep going.

He reached again for the fourth piece once more, and this time he managed to tear it away and move it into place. Anticipating another bolt, with a swift motion, he moved the fifth piece into place just as the next bolt crashed into his skull. Darkness crept at the edges of his consciousness, but he shook it off. Passing out meant failure. Without his conscious control, his dantian would shatter and leave him broken. The Eye showed him the sixth piece through a haze of agony.

His qi felt like broken glass scraping through his channels. He moved it anyway, each incremental shift an act of pure will against a body that wanted nothing more than to surrender. The lightning came in multiple strikes in quick succession, and all he could do was to ride it out. Each strike pushed him closer to the edge, even as each piece he moved destabilized his foundation further. He was only halfway. Zhen lost count of the strikes and of the pieces he had moved as time lost any meaning.

Each bolt obliterated his thought, leaving only the knowledge that he had to keep going. He couldn't adapt to the pain. His body refused to numb itself. Every strike carved into his body and his soul deeper than the last, as if the Heavens were learning where he was weakest and exploiting precisely those points. The only constant was movement. Reach. Pull. Rotate. Lock. He no longer thought about the pieces.

The Eye showed him where they needed to go, and his qi obeyed despite the screaming protests of his body and his mind. Nothing mattered but the work. He was the hammer falling on the anvil. The only way forward was through. Another bolt split his world, and when his vision cleared, he found his qi wrapped around another piece, dragging it toward its position. But as it snapped into place, something felt different.

Zhen blinked through the haze of pain and realized with a jolt that cut through even the lightning's aftermath that he had just slotted in the last piece. The ninth spirit gate stabilized, then ignited inside his dantian. He looked inward with the Eye. All the cracks in his dantian sealed as he watched. The structural weaknesses that had spread across his dantian's surface disappeared, and he stopped hemorrhaging qi. But more than that, everything had changed with his cultivation.

The first eight spirit gates worked in sequence, each drawing qi in turn like a perfectly timed series of hammer blows. The ninth gate was different. It operated independently, almost intelligently, pulling in qi with a varying intensity that was calibrated to balance and smooth the flow from the others. Where before qi had pulsed through his body in rhythmic surges, now it flowed continuously. His dantian had finished expanding, and Zhen knew it was at least three times the size it had been when he started.

There was no additional expansion after the ninth gate, but it wasn't needed. If Cloudstone Peak wanted to see evidence of raw potential, he had earned it. That feeling of triumph lasted half a heartbeat.

"You chose this path." The woman's voice cut into his thoughts.

"Therefore, let us start the tribulation in earnest." The dome of lightning that had surrounded them since the first strike began to crackle. Not the isolated strikes that had been hammering Zhen, but a continuous, building roar. Then multiple bolts erupted from it simultaneously, writhing past the woman and converging on Zhen from every direction. He hit the ground convulsing, his jaw locked so tight he felt teeth crack. The lightning intensified.

The dome contracted, drawing closer, tightening the noose around him. Zhen's vision whited out. His body arced against the stone, muscles seizing in spasms he couldn't control. The qi flowing through his new nine-gate system scattered and reformed, with each cycle growing more chaotic. The only way forward was through. All he could do was refuse to let the darkness take him. Through the strobing glare of continuous lightning, Zhen fixed his gaze on the woman's black eyes.

They watched him without pity or mercy, but also without malice. Twenty feet. The dome contracted further. Fifteen. Now the strikes were physical as well as spiritual. Zhen's skin blistered where the lightning touched him. The reek of burning flesh mixed with ozone. His robes had long since burned away, leaving only charred remnants. But he held the woman's gaze. Ten feet. His meridians felt like they were made of molten glass, each one ready to shatter.

The ninth gate pulsed wildly, trying to maintain the smooth flow of qi, but the lightning disrupted everything. Five feet. Zhen couldn't even scream anymore. His throat had locked up. All he could do was endure, staring into those pitiless eyes that reflected his torment back to him. The dome pressed closer still, but Zhen refused to black out.