The world turned dark. Though he was covered in wounds and layers of both his own blood and that of others’, he felt nothing but a numb sensation, accompanied by a high-pitched ringing sound that seemed to come from within his head.
He continued to remain in this state of near-death for an indeterminable amount of time. As he lay in silence, the sounds of the outside world fading away, so did his consciousness.
Bom.
Bom bom.
Bom bom bom.
The sound of beating, at first faint, but soon louder and more numerous, broke Wuxian’s peaceful limbo, shattering his peace and quiet. At the start, it was just a single rhythmic beating, but it was joined by a chorus of three more separate beats that seemed to take turns contracting and relaxing, resulting in a constant and rapid flow of regular strikes, when in actuality, each individual beat was slow and steady.
“Wuxian! Wuxian! Wake up!”
Laying on his bed, Wuxian’s head ached with a throbbing pain. The rest of his body, however, was completely numb, feeling as if he was no longer connected to his limbs. As he slowly sat up, he couldn’t help but bring a palm to his forehead, rubbing back and forth.
“…What’s going on? Where am I?” He mumbled.
Big North levitated in front of him, inspecting him with great concern. After a moment, he let out a sigh and floated back to give Wuxian some space.
“Did you have a dream?” Big North asked.
Blinking himself awake, Wuxian nodded, letting out a subdued groan as he did so.
“Yes, how did you know?”
The artifact spirit ignored his question, replying with another.
“Did you die in your dream?”
Wuxian felt slightly alarmed as he began to realise that something serious had happened. The alarm sent a shock through his body, causing all fatigue to clear away and a sense of sobriety to return.
“Yes, I did. What’s going on? Is that a cause for concern?”
Big North frowned. Seeing this, Wuxian gave him time to think. After waking up, it had become plainly obvious that he had not travelled back in time, despite the abnormal level of realism that he had experienced within the dream. Every moment he’d spent inside felt real. He could feel the breeze on his skin, the sun on his back and the sores and aches after training, completely unlike any other dream he’d ever experienced before.
But what was strangest to Wuxian was that after waking up, he felt a sense of relief. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he hadn’t truly died, or because he woke up to find himself in the future again, but following that came guilt. This whole time, the fates of Mian Ji and Xiao Chong had been a scar on his heart, but once again a brush with death, regardless of whether it was real or fake, had revealed his true colours.
A ‘good’ person’s first instinct in his position would be to worry about his friends’ safety first before his own. They would then be gripped by concern. Wuxian, on the other hand, worried about his own safety first and then felt relief after.
He cleared these thoughts. Now wasn’t the time for self-doubt. Quickly, he diverted his attention to his spirit body.
‘While it’s unlikely my cultivation has disappeared, like it had in the dream, I won’t feel at ease until I know that it’s still there. At the same time, it is important that I familiarise myself with the changes that have occurred after my breakthrough.’
As he peered inwards, he was instantly greeted with an astonishing scene. His three dantians were beating like hearts, each pumping qi through his meridians. All three elements were being mobilised at once, shuttling across his spirit body in a circular pattern. After watching the qi move for a while, Wuxian realised that each stream was following the same pattern that he’d used to break through to Qi Condensation.
The cycle had been running autonomously for the entire duration of his sleep, as such, all of the qi within his body was condensed thoroughly. As his qi was condensed and compressed further and further, the volume it took up decreased accordingly, resulting in his dantians having a lot of free space.
It seemed that while asleep, not only had his body automatically continued compressing qi, but it had also proactively expelled unrefined qi from his body. This was good rather than bad, since if volatile unrefined qi was introduced to the ongoing qi condensation cycle within his body, he’d probably end up suffering from qi deviation.
‘Just how long was I asleep for? Going from experience, it takes a lot of time to condense a dantian’s worth of qi. For the volumes within each of my three dantians to be compressed down just to approximately 20%, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was asleep for five days or even ten.’
“Junior.” Big North called, prompting Wuxian to retract his senses back to his body.
Seeing light return to Wuxian’s eyes, Big North spoke.
“I believe you have just experienced an inner demon tribulation.”
Puzzled, Wuxian couldn’t help but inquire.
“I’ve heard master mention that term before. What does it entail?”
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Big North folded his arms. “During a breakthrough, cultivators become extremely prone to the manipulation of Heaven’s will. While Heaven’s will is incapable of directly manifesting its power normally, during a cultivator’s breakthrough when they are at their most vulnerable, it is able to send down tribulations. It’s not known exactly how these things work, but the various types of tribulation have been recorded and categorised by previous generations.”
He gestured to Wuxian with one hand.
“Cultivation is an act which defies the rules of Heaven and nature. By gathering supernatural power into one individual, gaining the ability to move mountains and seas, prolonging your lifespan, all in hope of achieving the ultimate goal of immortality, you destroy a system which is balanced around reducing surplus and replenishing deficit. To cultivate is to create surplus, which is why Heaven’s will sends its tribulations down to punish you.”
“But as previously stated, Heaven’s will is unable to act freely. While it is omniscient, it is not omnipotent. Nobody knows exactly for what reason this is, but ultimately, it is to our favour. Now, the tribulations it employs against cultivators can be destructive or subtle, or even both. Do not be fooled by these labels, for in the end, both destructive and subtle tribulations aim to kill.”
“Now, the inner demon tribulation is subtle and treacherous. Rather than sending down curtains of tribulation lightning, it exploits a pre-existing mental weakness and uses it against you. While destructive tribulations require Heaven’s will to expend more power, subtle tribulations are often more deadly, since they are intrinsically a part of you, only, it is amplified several times over. And as you might have guessed from your dream, a death experienced within an inner demon trial will damage your spirit body, reflecting onto your physical body. Your first few deaths might manifest as headaches or temporarily losing various senses such as touch or sight as a result of disharmony between the physical and the spiritual, but eventually, a death in the trial will occur in reality as well.”
Wuxian nodded, feeling slightly shaken. It turned out that his headache and numb body were due to his death within the dream. He shuddered as he considered the next trial- how was he supposed to survive in the dream as a mortal incapable of cultivation?
He cleared these doubts quickly. Going off of Big North’s words, it made sense that had received an inner demon tribulation, since matters regarding Mian Ji and Xiao Chong were a sore spot for him, to the point where he had isolated himself from the people around him to some extent.
“And unlike destructive tribulations which finish once Heaven expends its power, subtle tribulations can last for the duration of one’s entire lifetime.” Big North explained. “But ironically, Heaven’s will is confined to its own rules and regulations. It cannot wantonly punish someone without providing benefits should the target of its tribulations survive. For the lightning tribulation, the cultivator usually receives an enhancement to their physical body, becoming more resilient. In rarer cases, the cultivator might instead become partially attuned to yang energies, giving them an aura that wards off yin spirits and various misfortunes. In the rarest scenario, if they are a so-called ‘Child of Heaven’, meaning extremely fortunate, they could become attuned to heavenly tribulation lightning and gain the ability to convert the power of Heaven itself into qi.”
“In a vein similar to your Nine Revolutions Earthfire art, this tribulation lightning qi is refined from the cultivator’s own innate qi, providing them with the ability to not only harness Heaven’s power, but to use their own qi simultaneously should they choose to do so.”
Wuxian couldn’t help but suck in a breath of air in astonishment. While the news that his inner demon tribulation would remain with him until he either died or somehow overcame it, the possibility of receiving a special boon for doing so made him feel less nervous and more expectant. As the saying goes, animals die for food while men die for wealth. Of course, the risk of dying was never good, but being recompensed for his troubles placed things into a new light.
“Then what about the inner demon tribulation? What kind of rewards would a cultivator receive for conquering one?” Wuxian asked keenly.
“They receive peace of mind.” Big North replied.
“…That’s it?”
“Ah, they also get to stay alive. How silly of me to forget to mention that.” Big North watched Wuxian’s initially expectant expression become slightly downcast before letting out a telling grin. “Just kidding.”
“Where’s your soul orb? Let me crush it this instant.” Wuxian demanded jokingly.
“Heaven is impartial and fair. Similar to the lightning tribulation, the inner demon tribulation provides various different rewards too. Unlike the lightning tribulation, the inner demon tribulation’s rewards are almost solely focused on one’s mental capabilities, usually taking the form of ‘talents’. Upon overcoming their inner demon, a cultivator might suddenly realise that their ability to multitask has improved tenfold and that they are able to control five flying swords at once rather than just one. There are also more niche talents, such as the ability to read intent, by extension, detect hostility, or the ability to make divinations with unerring accuracy.”
“Records of inner demon talents are few, since unlike those granted upon surviving the lightning tribulation, talents are less obvious. If a talent-wielding individual wishes to conceal it, it is almost impossible for another person to find out.”
‘While inner demon talents seem less flashy, to me, they are more interesting. Tribulation lightning qi sounds cool at first, but since it’s so rare, it’s unlikely for there to be many cultivation techniques and manuals focusing on it as the cultivator’s primary qi, so everything from there on would require experimentation on the cultivator’s part. On the other hand, not only are talents powerful in their unique ways, from the examples senior North provided, they are immediately accessible and no less impactful than the rewards from a lightning tribulation.’
But this led onto another question. While the prospective rewards he might receive were great, the risk associated was no trifle either. After all, while killing a Golden Core cultivator and looting their interspatial rings would ascend Wuxian from rags to riches, that was under the premise that he had the ability to kill the Golden Core in the first place and then had the capability to protect himself from the soon-to-come vengeance from said Golden Core’s network of interests.
“How does one overcome an inner demon tribulation?” Wuxian asked.
Big North shook his head slowly, causing a sinking feeling to well up from the bottom of Wuxian’s stomach.
“Each inner demon is unique to the individual, so the precise method to overcoming one depends not only on the inner demon itself, but on the individual too. There have been many cases where the cultivator becomes so powerful that their inner demon cannot sway them any further, but in this way it is not resolved, only sidelined for eternity, so the cultivator does not receive Heaven’s bounty. The more traditional method to overcome the inner demon is to directly resolve it. If it has arisen due to one’s secret love for another, then directly confessing may cause the inner demon to resolve on the spot.”
Wuxian frowned, pinching his chin.
“That is to say, if I want to resolve my inner demon traditionally, I’ll have to figure out its root cause and then treat it?”
Big North nodded affirmatively.
“Let’s say that the knot in my heart is the fate of someone who has been long dead for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The way to resolve my inner demon in that case would be simply to find out, right? But what if there is no record left about them? Would that mean that my inner demon is forever unsolvable?”