No matter easy Elder Shadow explained the process of initiating a tribulation was, the process itself was anything but. I tried everything I could think of to use the Qi I had condensed and stored in my Dantian to initiate a breakthrough, but nothing worked.

I had even stopped meditating once to question Elder Shadow about the mechanics, but he had entered his own meditative trance, and either couldn't hear me or refused to answer. My frustration grew as I continued to flail about until I started to wonder if I was doomed to fail my tribulation before it even started.

There were a few cultivators that simply weren't gifted and talented enough to gain Heaven's notice. People that never managed to find that spark that kindled the metaphysical release of energy from tribulation.

I'm not sure if it was frustration or resignation, but I stopped approaching this process as a breakthrough. Instead of battering against the walls of my Dantian, trying to shatter them so that they could be rebuilt, I attempted to absorb more world energy. My Dantian had barely been reformed from my last breakthrough, and the Qi stored and condensed was lacking. I didn't have the gathered Qi necessary to shatter my Dantian, no matter how I flailed about.

I needed more energy, so I tried something I'd never done before. I tried to collect the Qi from my surroundings the same way I would use my meridians, absorbing the energy directly, instead of through the prism of my meridian network.

It shouldn't have worked, and it didn't last more than a micro-second before the Qi that I'd absorbed escaped. But that event, the mechanics of collecting then release, worked the same as if you were attempting to prime a pump. It created a vacuum, a void that began drawing in more and more of the world's energy, unfiltered Qi gathered that hadn't been filtered or attuned through the process of cycling [Transcend the Heavenly Footpath].

This was the reason for the atmospheric disturbance when a cultivator faced their tribulation. The void that formed, collecting more and more Qi, initiated weather patterns that would produce lightning. Those blasts of plasma would strike the cultivator, transfusing them with the Qi energies of the Heavens.

Now that the pump had been primed, and my Dantian was filling, the array that had been created activated. Each array, beginning with copper gathering and funneling nature's fury into the platinum platform I had selected to meditate at. A stabilizing field was created to enfold and surrounded me, a dome of trapped Heaven's wrath, created and constrained by the array to direct the energies that the Heavens would release.

Lightning could get in, the array acting as lightning rods, and the energy would be contained. Nature's fury would assail breach my protections, shatter my foundation, and I would either absorb and control those attacks or be bombarded and seared by that power until I inevitably succumbed and died.

Once the process started, once the pump was primed, I was able to regain my focus. The energy pouring in needed to be contained and directed. The only method I had that would do that was to cultivate [Transcend the Heavenly Footpath], and so I embraced that familiarity. I couldn't afford to be anything but calm and focused, any deviations in form or pattern would result in failure, but I had mastered [Transcend the Heavenly Footpath], the year I had spent marshaling my control was second nature by now.

At any other time, a failure or deviation while cultivating would result in burned or charred meridians and channels. Those burned channels would require time and energy to heal, but they could be healed. I would survive the outcome if I made a mistake cycling Qi while cultivating using [Transcend the Heavenly Footpath]. It would be painful and tedious to rectify, and it would put my cultivation back by months, but it was repairable.

But a mistake, a deviation during a tribulation? There was no coming back from that. If I made the slightest mistake at this point, there would not be a second chance. The intense energies that Heaven had gathered would rip me apart. That mistake. That deviation would be a death sentence.

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As I began cycling the Qi that I was quickly absorbing, my Dharmic body began to expand, giving substance to the ghost-like shape that I had constructed to mirror my physical body. No longer contained within my inner sea, the Dharmic body grew until I was enmeshed within. For those that were observing my tribulation, it would seem as if there were two of me, one ethereal, my soul made manifest and encapsulated my physical form.

The layered images, physical and spiritual, were exact copies of each other. They breathed in tandem, their chests expanded and collapsed in tandem, even the movement of eyes behind closed lids were synced in harmony. From my perspective, my Dharmic body expanded my world view. My Qi perception that I had trained extensively became more.

I was able to see much farther than I ever had before. Notice details that would have escaped my attention. Create a detailed picture from the information I was able to process that gave dimensionality to what I was able to collect and process.

My perception had expanded far enough that I watched in stunned awe at the beauty and perfection of nature. The cloud banks forming as the storm gathered. Localized, certainly. But black rolling storm clouds. Nature's fury contained to an area not much more than a radius of a thousand feet.

I had heard stories of tribulations that extended miles, but this was my first tribulation, and I wouldn't need the kind of energy from a storm that vast to fill my Dantian. The power that those kinds of storms would unleash were reserved for later advances, the size of Heaven's tribulation intensifying as I gained realms.

The training I had undergone, the ability to split my focus and mind so that I could multi-task allowed me to continue cultivating [Transcend the Heavenly Footpath] and watch as the storm grew in strength until finally the energy coalesced and lightning was released in one giant barrage. An electric discharge that followed the path I had created between Dantian and the surrounding atmosphere.

The Body Refinement Realm was a foundation stage, the stage where the body was tempered. A time to hone bone, sinew, muscles, and organs. The realm focused on the physical, forging meridian pathways that were robust and strong enough to channel an ever-increasing amount of Qi.

Stepping into the Qi Gathering Realm changed the priority of advancement and growth. This realm dealt more with the Dharmic, the soul space that comprised my inner sea. The lightning that struck, filled my Dantian to overflowing, blasting open my meridian channels. It followed the path of [Transcend the Heavenly Path] I was desperately attempting to maintain until it arrived in my soul realm.

That place of tranquility and calm became the focus of the tribulation. A force of nature that had taken on intelligence. As lightning elemental energies formed, the cloud bank that had formed above the Four Elements Sect was channeled so that it could regrow within my inner sea.

That one barrage of lighting created a path between the real and the ethereal. The energies growing into a storm, a tempest that lashed the ocean that comprised my inner sea, until those still waters were whipped into a frenzy. Great towering waves crashing against the one small island of stability that I had created. The [Dao of Movement] beginning to act as a lightning rod, to ground strike after strike of lightning as the storm raged.

My Dharmic body existed in two places. The one that had manifested as Astral, the layer coating my physical form, and another that sat in lotus beneath the pillar of the [Dao of Movement] reflecting on my significance in a universe where such unbridled power could be unleashed to test my determination to advance. To live.

The living storm raged in fury, uncaring and dismissive of my significance to the Universe at large. The storm was primal, the goal to test and transform. It would rage, not caring how or if I could withstand nature's fury.

I might have been lost to the splendor and power the storm represented, but I was not alone in my soul space. The Roc that I had named Storm, hopeful that she would come to share my affinity with lightning spread all four of her wings, screaming her disdain for the power that was being unleashed, and took flight.

Her Dharmic and physical form resonating with the storm's fury. She began the process of metamorphosis, accepting the power of lightning as her own, and transforming to be born anew. No longer simply a Roc, she had been accepted as a vehicle for the storm and was now Storm in truth.

She who had just recently fought free of the egg to brave the world was now transubstantiated. A lightning elemental. A Roc that could shape Heaven's tribulation.