The dinner lasted for about an hour with everyone eating their share and taking themselves to bed afterwards. Renk, having just woken up, took his apprentice Taura and his books outside and towards the Light Tower. Medin packed the man full of food and dried meat as he went out and waved him off with a satisfied smile. The man waddled out like a pack donkey and his little apprentice followed, making sure to pick up any containers he dropped along the way.

Medin then came towards me, arms full of jerky, honey, and bread.

“Medin, please-” I tried to refuse. But the woman was having none of it.

“Nonsense. We always end up over-farming for the rainy season Mister Bill. If we don’t eat the food now it’ll all go to waste!”

I smiled and nodded as I accepted my second defeat of the night. Chin and Medin, the man who overfarms and the woman who overfeeds.

Even Rin Wi couldn’t escape the situation with some packed dinners of her own. We both bowed and headed out of the village, talking a bit as we did so.

“How are all the others taking to the village?” I asked.

“Alright,” She replied. “Though Mei Shan is having some struggle.”

“Oh? How so?” I asked.

Rin Wi shrugged.

“I suppose Mei Shan was always our leader. Ever since we were grouped together, she had taken the role of leader and the burden of it as well. And now that she doesn’t need to protect us… I assume she finds it hard to find a purpose.”

I thought about that for a moment. It was true. Mei Shan was the one who had approached me when I went to the Divine Beast Emporium, and though that itself sounded innocent enough on the surface, maidens who approached the customer were more likely to be assaulted in certain ways.

I had no care for romance or sex, but I was a rarity. What I had done to my mind and soul for power had affected me permanently, making me unable to love anything romantically. But most cultivators, given power, would take what they wanted when they wanted.

That included people.

“Is she alright?” I asked, my tone carrying a certain implication.

“She bared through it like we all did,” Rin Wi replied with a stiff voice.

“We had… methods of engagement. Damaged goods were useless after all and the Emporium took care to make sure we weren’t damaged. If a customer had requests that we couldn’t handle, then we’d get other servants who could. And besides, we were convinced that we were serving gods at that time. Creatures beyond humanity,” she finished.

“And now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Rin Wi said with a light head shake.

“Now I have no duties and no masters, and I see you, someone more powerful than any master I’ve ever served and… and yet you seem so much more mortal than all of them. So much simpler. It makes me believe my past masters couldn’t have been any better. Maybe they just were simply men pretending to be gods.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, but I could hear a bit of the fear in her voice. The sheer terror at saying this to me, and the hope that I wouldn’t take it as an insult.

“Maybe,” I replied. “But even if they were gods, gods like them wouldn’t be deserving of worship, would they?”

“No,” Rin Wi said with teary eyes staring into the deep night. “No, they should not.”

Then the skies colored gray. Storm clouds centered, surrounding us from either side. That wasn’t strange, it was the rainy season after all. But these clouds were dark, almost ash colored and they thundered with qi.

Rin Wi, for her part, recognized the situation. And I had already taken to hiding the phenomena from anyone else.

Off in the distance, lighting struck mountain tops. First, it was far away, hidden deep on the other side of the region and burning small forests in its wake. But every strike seemed to bring it closed, burning the distance between us in an instant.

The thunder was like a giant’s footsteps rumbling toward us furiously and every strike seemed to shake the earth as if it was trying to spit the land in two.

Rin Wi looked forward with a straight face, a face filled with nothing but resolve. She threw off her top, revealing the oversized tunic she wore beneath it, and instead of arming herself with a blade and shield, the woman pulled out kitchen knives.

A cleaver in one hand and an oversized kitchen knife in the other. Both of the blades seemed a bit too big for her, the cleaver seeming like it was made for a man twice her size and the kitchen knife was as long as her forearm.

But the strangest thing of all was that they were both mortal instruments, hand-me-downs from Medin’s grandfather.

“Rin Wi,” I spoke.

“It is my choice,” she replied.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I nodded. If I interfered, even to give her advice, the tribulation would only grow in strength and Rin Wi knew that.

The girl had made her choice and who was I to fight it?

The other maidens appeared behind me.

“Rin Wi!” Mei Shan shouted.

“I’m fine!” Rin Wi replied. “Just fine!”

“But-”

“I know Mei. I know. But I have to try.”

There was a stubborn calmness in her voice, one that Mei Shan seemed to know very well. With a final glance of concern, Mei Shan nodded.

Then the thunder struck. The sky split open and a white jagged stick of flame and lightning split the ground before us.

I had already set up an illusory array over the region, guiding both the maidens and the tribulation inside it. A pseudo space that overlayed the regular realm and hid the divine test from all except those I allowed to witness it.

Flame spat out, burning its way towards Rin Wi and she leapt, barely avoiding it in the nick of time. But the immortal fury was far from over. It twisted and turned, redirecting itself at her. She dodged, maneuvering around the stream of fire and lightning and using movement techniques to run faster than light itself.

An immortal’s tribulation was an immense one. If I hadn’t set out the illusory realm and brought everything inside of it before it had begun, this whole region could have been burned to nothing in the process.

More bursts of flame and lightning left the clouds, each seeking Rin Wi and each failing. She could dodge efficiently, she could even try to run away, and with her movement technique she could traverse across the continent in half an hour, but the tribulation would follow.

I raised my hand, expanding the illusory array and spreading it to cover the entirety of the planet. The strongest being in this realm was a tenth-rank fella currently in secluded meditation, which was three ranks below my own, so I didn’t have to worry about someone sensing my actions, but Rin Wi’s actions were different.

Rin Wi weaved through the thunder, avoiding the fury at every turn. She ran, traversing the length of the region and back within the short span of the valley. The tribulation followed, speeding up with each attempt.

Eventually, it became too fast. Its speed and power were beyond Rin Wi and the lightning and flame became faster than light itself.

Rin Wi raised her kitchen knife, imbuing it with qi and striking back at the divine judgment. She would have been better off using her hand or clothes instead of a piece of mortal metal, but she refused to put the instruments down, chopping at the fire with the cleaver and striking at the lightning with the knife.

“Why is she doing that?” Xi Lu muttered. “She has far better weapons than that in her storage ring.”

The lightning struck again and Rin Wi defended with the kitchen knife.

“Dao,” I answered. “To become an immortal is to become your own. You refine your body, will, and soul through tribulation and overcoming. Servants are generally pushed to the peak of the fifth rank, but not higher. Because if they go beyond that then they’ll need a dao, a purpose and belief that goes beyond their master, and Rin Wi seems to have chosen cooking as that purpose.”

“Why?” Mei Shan asked me.

“Dunno,” I shrugged. “But I do know that you can find purpose in anything, whether a king or a farmer, everyone can find a reason to persist, and her reason is to make food I guess.”

Rin Wi’s blades showed a slight crack and with every move she made, the metal seemed to break even more.

“Tribulation is a product of the self,” I said to the girls behind me. “All of this qi and lightning is Rin Wi’s. It’s what she seeks and what she soon will be. It’s like the soreness of a tired muscle during practice and the effort of a hard day worked. If she can go through it, all of this strength will come to her and push her into the immortal realm.”

“What if she can’t?” Mei Shan asked.

“Death,” I answered and I saw the girl’s face twisted in fear.

“Well at least if I wasn’t here,” I clarified. “I’ll intervene before that can happen.”

Mei Shan gripped her chest and looked worriedly at her sister.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine,” I said to her.

Mei Shan nodded in response.

Both blades were cracked now, basically broken, and only held together by Rin’s qi and nothing else. And Rin Wi herself bled from several places. Her right hand was painted red with the blade being unable to defend her, the lightning had worked its way through it and into her body.

Fire burned her left hand as her cleaver was unable to hold on and the burning qi had worked its way deep into her core.

And yet still she stood.

Many people thought that tribulation was a test from the heavens, an act of suppression against cultivators by some divine force above them. But that was wrong. Every stage increase had some sort of turmoil and usually, it was nothing more than an overabundance of qi production, forcing the qi to flow out of the body.

But in certain stages of growth, too much qi would be expelled, making the world itself feel threatened, and the world in response would try to take that qi and shove it right back where it came from.

An immortal’s qi was different from that of a mortal. It was dense and unending, concentrated in its amount and Rin Wi in her revelations had started to create it. The newly created immortal qi, unable to be held by a mortal’s body, leaked into the world and fought with the natural qi around. Then the realm would do its best to squash out that rebellion and shove the qi where it came from.

But Rin Wi was still unable to accept it. She had to reform herself, body, will, and soul, or otherwise, she risked death.

The lightning struck again, and Rin Wi swayed, her body almost collapsing under the force. Blood leaked from every crevice of the woman’s body this time and her skin split open like cracks on a mountainside.

I smiled.

“Clever,” I mumbled. “She’s shoveling away the excess qi into the blades, that’s why they haven’t broken yet.”

“Wouldn’t a stronger weapon defend against the tribulation better regardless?” Bri Lou asked me.

“Yes,” I answered. “But a weapon would be just that, a weapon. Rin Wi carries knives, objects that align with her Dao. If she holds through with this, then the blades would be stained with her very soul.”

The lightning struck again and this time, the blade held it back.

“She’s forging a soul-bound weapon, focusing on her blades before her body. Normally that’d be a stupid thing to do, but since her dao aligns with it... well, it’s still a stupid thing to do. But she’ll come out alive at the very least.”

A flame tunnel struck out at her and she fanned it away with her cleaver.

Rin Wi leaped. With her blade crossed in front of her, Rin Wi propelled herself into the storm of qi. Her scream echoed throughout the valley and her body glowed bright orange and she committed itself into the clouds.

I watched in silence as the storm raged. The two blades had been completely imbued with immortal qi by now, each able to block and defend against the tribulation but Rin knew that those blades couldn’t last her forever.