The air itself shudders as the bolt strikes her from the pitch-black clouds above, spreading from horizon to horizon, and possibly even further.

The second before it impacted, I saw three swords materialize around her, with her bringing one of them to block the bolt.

But it wasn’t enough.

Although the swords are artifacts with a considerable amount of power behind them, part of the bolt arcs and still hits Senior Song right in the head.

Just a single blow from it knocks her back onto the tower.

She doesn’t have that much time to waste as more and more bolts are churning within the storm, ready to shoot out.

But she’s caught her stride.

Her stance changes, her legs crossing, and hands folded while moving into a meditative position.

The moment she does this, the fierceness of the storm subsides a little.

However, like a whirlwind, a wind tunnel swirls around the entire tower, causing her to rise into the air.

At this motion, the clouds seemed to make way for her as she continues to rise higher and higher, all until she’s in the middle of the storm.

The position she was in seems to be one that allows her to regulate how the tribulation affects her.

Although the violence of the tribulation has subsided a bit, that doesn’t mean its strength has. Now that she’s in position, I can see the bolts regain their former strength and strike at the same time towards her with a massive crash.

In the distance, other elders and people approach from the horizon, curious about the massive tribulation occurring.

I can pick up their words and seem to be.

“My God. Can you see the size of that tribulation cloud? What kind of talent could generate such a volume?”

“You fool, look where we are. It could only be Elder Song. Though, you raise a good point. Even if she is finally ascending to Nascent Soul, I haven’t seen a cloud this large before. Has her talent achieved a breakthrough?”

“… if so, then this isn’t good. Tribulations like this aren’t easy to surpass. I hope we don’t lose an elder today.”

“Watch your words. You don’t want to offend the wrong people here.”

Right after these words, that are like a curse towards a person in this culture, I see the man who worried about Elder Song get struck down by a bright light. It quickly became apparent that it was Elder Gu, one of the elders that wanted me as their disciple.

More importantly, he seemed to have the greatest connection to Senior Song.

He doesn’t even look down at the man he threw to the ground, only looking towards the clouds where Senior Song is. The others around follow his lead, albeit warily, and look towards the skies. The man on the ground, who struck the side of one mountain, picks himself up and flies on a sword away from the area in disgrace, mostly unharmed as it was a warning strike.

However, his words stick with me and I focus my scan on Senior Song’s state.

… She’s okay.

For now.

However, these simultaneous and consecutive strikes will take a while. And my scan informs me that the larger the cloud, the longer it will go for.

It could even go for a whole day.

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Automatically, I use my scan to determine how long this would take and if she could make it.

Unfortunately, my fears are confirmed. It would last for a full day, and while she might have been able to make it if she was having a normal or even her previous tribulation amount… with her increased talent from my healing, she won’t be able to survive since she didn’t prepare correctly.

The strangest part about this is that normally you would trigger the tribulation yourself, on purpose. The only answer that comes to mind of why it would spring suddenly, as it did for her, was that the change was so significant that it triggered automatically. She was already so close already to breaking through, and this was like increasing it by several times its amount.

But that still leaves the fact that she won’t be able to make it through this. Not without help, at least.

As I look around, I try to find anyone that would intervene and capable of surviving such a thing. There’s none. While I highly suspect elder Gu might try to step in, I don’t believe he could survive such an action.

Which leaves only me. Of course.

I’m unsure that I’d be able to make it through the tribulation. If it’s only a single strike, I should be able to regenerate from it.

However, a hopeful thought comes to mind regarding my mana and whether the tribulation would detect it.

But that’s quickly squashed by my scan, as there is a difference between the people of this world, and the world itself. The world contains mana and can tell when it’s being used. While people using qi to detect things may not know, the level of existence that a tribulation comes from can.

If I use this, I should expect retribution.

Which means I need to use this at the right moment. To be specific, the last moment.

Right when she’s about to fall, I need to pour in a lot of healing energy both into her and myself. Based on what my scan is telling me, I should get struck at immediately once I intervene.

She’ll be raised back to full health, and I will be vaporized. What I’m gambling on is that there will be enough of me left to regenerate.

… This will be the first time that I’m ever brought to this state. Of basically dust. Though I’m still banking on at least having a smoldering piece of flesh left.

Even my scan can’t tell whether I’ll be able to come back from this. Not every tribulation bolt is the same.

If I can actually survive this… that will open its own can of worms.

As she will certainly be able to tell that I helped her, and since I’ll be hiding in the tower behind the shields, she’ll be the only one that knows.

Supposedly.

Especially with all the attention she’s drawing over here. I highly suspect the elders and maybe the higher-ups of the group are keeping their eyes on the situation.

I won’t be getting out of this one easily.

With my decisions in order, all that’s left to do is just wait.

Senior song seems to be deep into the meditative position, just trying to collect as much as she can from the tribulation, while surviving it.

Hours pass.

Despite the time passing, no one has moved from their position. They may talk and discussing other things in the meantime, but they keep their eye on this situation in case there’s any big changes.

The only person who stared unwaveringly at the situation, has been Elder Gu.

I can see hints of regret, guilt, and other emotions on his face. Based on his actions thus far, I’d say it’s pretty easy to tell. He used to be an old lover of hers. But when she turned into her elderly form, he couldn’t be with her anymore.

What I find strange is that he appears to be the same age as what she should be

But as I’ve discovered, looks can be very deceiving.

…

Time seems to crawl as we wait.

I use that time to work my scan on how I can improve my chances of survival for this.

The first thing I do is tell the spirit beasts on my body to move to another room.

Obviously, using them as a shield would increase my survival, but would defeat the purpose of why I’m doing all of this, anyway. They would be vaporized and I’d be sacrificing my allies and friends for my own benefit.

That’s not how I do things.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have other options, though.

I look through my bag, which contains some items I had bought previously from the market and a massively reduced price than they normally would have been. Mostly because the people using it didn’t realize the true value of them.

The item I’m searching for is quickly found.

Small silver plate, not unlike those that you would see inside the home of a noble. Certainly, something that could be sold for a decent amount, but nothing too large.

It’s true value, however, lies in the fact that it’s actually a shield. One with a tiny formation built into it.

This reveals its true purpose. It was meant to be slotted into a hidden compartment on the chest, directly over the heart. It’s able to take the attack from a core formation specialist.

I’ll be using this on my feet.

My thought process is that as the tribulation bolt goes through my body, it’ll likely hit my head first and travel down through my body. I’ll be orienting the shield in a way that it can slightly redirect the bolt elsewhere.

The next item and last, I bring out, are some explosives.

My thought is that I just might blow up my body enough that it could escape the bolt radius. If so, I’ll be left in a state similar to that of when the assassin had attacked me.

Giving me a chance to regenerate normally.

The only issue is that some tribulation bolts will chase you down, and needing you to strike them down, if you’re not going into a meditative state.

I can only hope that’s not what will happen to me.

It doesn’t always happen, so there’s still a chance.

All I can do now is wait until it’s time, since all the preparations I can have happened. And if I survive this, that it’ll give me some resistance to the bolts in the future.

Well… probably not, but still a small hope.