The summoning had been a greater success than expected. Dark clouds stretched across the horizon, growing thicker and wider with each breath. Already, the lightning tribulation stretched hundreds of li in every direction. Still, it showed no sign of slowing down. If anything, the speed at which the clouds gathered had increased. A bolt fell from the heavens and obliterated everything, separating it from the shaft.

The fluid left on the ground evaporated as tracks of static rose, and the face of a tiger made of lightning appeared. Formations lit up, and the tiger was quickly absorbed into pocket spaces.

Lui Fang looked shocked as one of the ten lighting-absorbing formations did its job. Atom Newman wasn’t targeted because he was terrible at his job or a drain on the sect. This wasn’t about helping some girl he took pity on to ascend either.

Only two things mattered in life: money and power. Atom had cost him both with his pitiful attempts to leave a mark on the world. His hidden realms could help a Dao Seedling leap over their peers and overturn certain bets on the yearly strongest foundation tournament. Well-researched investments and loans taken for certain returns had ruined Elder Yu.

No creditor would lend him money anymore, and his debt continued to climb. If he weren’t an Elder of the Thunder Eagle sect, a team of Mortal Severing experts would have been sent to apprehend him. Only the sect protected him.

Atom had made the worst mistake of his entire life: He interfered with Elder Yu’s business. It could take centuries to recover. The clouds continued to gather far beyond Elder Yu’s comfort zone. His robes fluttered in the wind as another blast of lightning, this time in the form of a great eagle, flew down the shaft. Its power was that of a blast from a powerful tribulation.

Nets of symbols appeared, forming a wall with a red skull at its center. The eagle of Lightning tribulation battled the sacrificed Atom’s last creation. One after the other, more of the formations joined the first until three worked in tandem to drag the eagle within the skull’s mouth.

A powerful chi swept over the sect, and the Mortal severing pillars turned their attention to the gathering storm.

In a flash, a man with a bushy black mustache and flowing robes stood before Elder Yu. “Jr brother Yu greets senior Genghis.”

His teeth fell on the ground, his jaw cracked, and his tongue lolled uselessly as an unseen blow smashed him into the distant wall. When his eyes returned to focus, Genghis stared down at him. Elder Yu felt his face slowly heal as Chi from a severing realm expert interfered.

“Remind me, what did I say when you pulled this stunt before?”

“That boy stole my fortune.” Elder Yu said.

He pointed to Lui Fang, who held a golden pill with a black speck inside. She was frozen, and the tribulation gathered larger than ever before. Blows struck, but the heavens still gathered their strength.

Genghis looked from the pill to Lui Fang, and his mustache bristled.

“Disciples die when they battle one another over resources and disagreements. Elders don’t attack disciples because they have found a niche where their talents are in demand. Elders don’t orchestrate a tragedy to get revenge on someone who didn’t wrong them. Elders don’t steal the hard-earned wealth given to his lover to help her declining clan pay back their gambling debts.”

“It was a sure thing, and he ruined it.” Elder Yu said.

“This lightning tribulation will devastate the Sect. Your first attempt was clever, especially choosing the time when the day was at its longest. Yang was strongest, and Yin was at its weakest. I doubt the 500 girls you sacrificed over the years affected the tribulation.”

Elder Yu preached at the praise. “What are you getting at? I’m an alchemy genius and know I’ve been praised before. There is no need to lick my ass, Senior brother.”

Another blow nearly made Elder Yu blackout as Genghis stared down at Elder Yu balefully.

“What did you use as the base for the pill? This floor once had liquid souls up to my knees, but now it barely wets my sandals. I doubt you used spirit water for such a concoction.” Genghis said.

Elder Yu straightened up. “What are you getting at? Yin is strong, so I used the souls that remained trapped in the fluid to bolster the pill. They shouldn’t have mattered.”

“Only your ties to the Camio family have spared your life,” Genghis said.

“I am only doing what my nature dictates. You will soon leave this place, and the closest immortal realm to our world is hell. The mighty Genghis will become a demon and join my family as a servant. Better that than an immortal slave.”

“Not if this tribulation kills us all. If both of you survive, then you will need to go with your apprentice once she leaves closed-door cultivation to Blazing Phoenix territory. We must show that we have new, up-and-coming pillars of our sect,” Genghis said.

“So after all that, you won’t dare slay me.” Another bolt descended the mine shaft and tore into the net. Cracks appeared on the formations as six joined in the effort.

“Your actions have consequences, so I have no need to slay you. If you succeed here, the sect will be in shambles, and everyone will know who to blame. Naturally, this story will get out. I would be surprised if her clan lasted the week.”

“All of it is an excuse not to lift a finger, predictable. Even when I used your niece,” a blow caught Elder Yu in the face, but the man only laughed. “I love our conversations, each and every one,” Elder Yu said.

…

Lui Fang was terrified out of her mind. Each bolt crashed down harder than the last, with the will to extinguish her very soul. She managed to swallow the pill and circulate her chi as the storm above raged on. There was something there, a presence that she couldn’t reach and an overwhelming pressure. A bolt reached through the threads protecting her, and something batted it aside.

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She felt better immediately after that. The pressure was Atom. He was finally doing what he should have been doing all along. Finally, Atom would be useful for something.

Then something wet fell down her chin. At a touch, she saw blood on her hand. The pressure continued to move through her body, expanding and shifting like mold spreading through rice. Her bones crunched as her spirit art Thunder Bird Wings failed against the unending pressure. It wasn’t fast. It fell through her from the pill. When it reached her brain, she felt emotions running through the pressure and vomited.

A tangible black rage strung a note through the pressure deep and in the background. It strummed a steady beat while a weak, selfless feeling almost out of place led an offbeat band. There was love, but it was blinding in its hesitation. All the emotions were so wrong, and the pressure felt alien. It stretched, but something heavy remained in her stomach, unlike Elder Yu's description.

His spirit was supposed to envelop her, almost like the chi of her soon-to-be-nascent soul. It was supposed to expand to form a protective barrier around her, defending against the lightning until he was used up.

Every bolt would have filled the shaft's ground with liquid produced by combining the tribulation with the pill’s effect. Instead, it felt like something completely foreign observed her from within her body, and it had no intention of putting itself in danger.

…

The soul stretched out its pressure lazily as it reviewed the record of its life. Slowly, it made sense of the memories, thoughts, and emotions. The context passed through it as it absorbed countless screaming souls condensed in the pill. It presumed itself to be Atom Newman or an approximation of him without the messy hormones and programming that came with living.

I reviewed the record repeatedly and couldn’t understand how this situation happened. Every possible exit ramp had been laid before me, and I chased after Lui Fang with nothing to show for it. Anger was expected, but it didn’t come. There was only the feeling of an imbalance. I was owed compensation for my time, energy, and resources. A single pill and a kiss were not equal to my efforts.

My pressure expanded as chi, with no place to go, fell endlessly into my soul space. I was like an endless powerplant with no city to power. Giving it to Lui Fang wasn’t happening.

Lui Fang cornered me like a hawk does the limping mouse and laid claim on me in front of everyone. I was weak but busy with some prospects and some younger outer disciples. She ended that and gave me no choice but to be with her. Even the taverns in the sect refused my spirit stones. All I had was six months of a loveless, sexless relationship.

Did I fall into the sunk cost fallacy and continue investing more in hopes of gaining something? 41,000 mid-grade spirit stones were gone and wasted. If I had hands, I would rub my face in frustrated despair.

My pressure spread as my fragments mingled within my soul space, bathing in more chi than ever. I couldn’t move my body but this bitch had to shit eventually.

I extended my pressure. With no other senses, I could only focus on my spirit pressure. I could feel Lui Fang’s organs and my pressure wrap around her bones as I climbed through her body experimentally. Thoughts of using her like a marionette would be exciting but were abandoned. Elder Yu would catch on, and then who knows what he would do.

There was still my soul arrow.

Something heavy slammed into my pressure, and I sucked it into my soul space on reflex. A whole bird made of lightning flew around in my soul space. Its form was easy to feel through the pressure within to where I could count its feathers. The creature flew for miles, zooming faster than lightning around my slowly expanding soul space.

When it neared my soul arrow, it shied away.

My pressure ran through her body completely. I could count the ovum she had left in her ovaries, the number of cells in her body, and even how many of her neurons fired a second. When my pressure touched the fluid on the ground and found the remaining screaming soul shards, I gulped them down. My soul remained dutifully compressed. I continued expanding my real estate and gaining a better worldview.

…

Lui Fang felt like she was being groped all over, even as the clouds above gathered deeper and thicker. It felt like fingers of force pressed through her deepest secrets. A lightning bolt streamed and broke apart before touching the ten full tribulation absorption formations.

Her head felt like she was sitting in the depths of a great lake. Small pathways opened from the pressure to the depths of her stomach, where the lightning flowed in without ever touching her. More bolts crashed, and this wasn’t protection, as Elder Yu described it.

She felt like hands slid over her body and inspected her from the inside out. A gaze was on her free of pity and lust; she was only a plaything to it. This was a sign that something had gone wrong.

“Get ready. It's about to start.”

Her eyes widened. This hadn’t been the tribulation. The last hundred bolts, each more powerful than the last, were only some kind of warm-up.

“There will be nine, and the first is coming soon.”

…

Genghis watched as hundreds of thousands of dragons made of lightning descended on the sect. He had severed his desire to protect his fellow members and didn’t lift a finger to protect them. He had accepted that the sect was not his to defend any longer. Genghis was no longer Lord Protector of the Thunder Eagle sect. He was merely a pillar of the sect waiting to ascend.

From the blackest cloud where winds blew sharp enough to rip even his skin free from his bones, a genuinely massive dragon measured in Li instead of his hands curled through its home. It wasn’t an approximation like the others. Genghis could count the scales, see the color in its eyes, and feel the presence of a heavenly beast. This was the first of 9 tribulations. The heavens had made a weakened clone of Calamitous the Sky Serpent, and it descended toward the shaft.

Smog mountain crumbled like a stone worn under a river, and over hundreds of years, it melted before his eyes.

…

The sheer density of the chi within my soul space slowly broke the thunderbird down, separating and diffusing it over hundreds of miles. My space expanded slowly as the tribulation lightning slowly became my chi as more continuously poured in.

Something massive touched the edges of my pressure as it ripped open the shaft as it descended. Rock turned to dust and blasted high as the dragon descended. I pushed against it with all my might as it crushed my will and slammed into Lui Fang.

The worst of it scattered, destroying the cave around us until Lui Fang froze at the sight. I condensed my pressure because there was no choice. There was no technique or finesse; my vast pressure became a blind human arm. I reared back and punched where I thought the dragon was. Something impacted my fist, and a dragon roared. Lightning flew down my pressure arm and into my soul.

I screamed as pieces of me broke off and scattered as tribulation lightning focused on me before inflicting its wrath on Lui Fang.

With a force of will, I opened my soul space and dragged the dragon inside before clamping my soul space shut.

That pain woke me up to something. Why was I helping her?

With that, I took on a new approach. My pressure compressed down until it stopped just above my soul.

…

Lui Fang could no longer feel Atom’s soul. It was gone after the first strike from the heavens, and with nine more to go, she felt far less confident. From her spatial ring, she pulled free an amulet covered in runes radiating ancientness. It was a treasure her father found in a hidden realm said to be able to take any four blows from the heavens themselves. She had wanted to wait longer, but she wasn’t confident in taking any of those hits.

A white tiger made of lightning struck her just a moment before it was supposed to fall. One moment, she knew it was coming, and the next, it had already struck. Her amulet glowed, and one of its four lightning bolts went out.

The heavens lasted furiously and dumped a mantis on another mountain and a massive rooster on another.

“Adding a few decoy lightning rods was a good idea. Five more to go, and if two more strike elsewhere, you’ve won.”

…

Within her body, her guts clenched around me as her stomach flipped. Her body pushed me through a sphincter into her muggy depths. Pressure awareness was a double-edged sword. Feeling her guts gurgle and clamp down on me while she struggled against the heavens themselves was a terrible feeling.

I zoned out and began slowly rotating my chi around the dragon, pulling it apart strand by strand by its heavenly lightning.

…

After the 5th tribulation, the time between strikes extended as the heavens ruthlessly gathered their power. Two days after strike 8, the last of her amulet’s lights winked out, and the amulet crumbled. She was on her last legs. Golden chains lashed out from the heavens as something massive was pulled from the sky.

Three heads covered in the most brilliant golden scales Lui Fang had ever seen were shown in the bleak darkness of the tribulation. The mountainous sect had been squashed flat. A once celebratory place had become a mass grave, and the mountains were soon to be known as planes. Ore veins filled with lightning chi covered the landscape as even the edges of bunkers revealed themselves, and the auras of the severing experts emerged.

She expected they would assist at some point, but they looked on without pity. Elder Yu had long since found a safe place to hide and wait out the tribulation. She was left alone against the flapping of massive wings, and a dragon she recognized as the great Horus Zues—or a copy, in this case—emerged. There was no intelligence in the great beast's eyes or mercy of any kind.

It flapped its great leathery wings and laws almost fit for immortals gathered into a vast lightning storm. In moments, lightning struck everywhere but where she stood for hundreds of li. She stared in awe at the creature that would be her doom, the 9th and final tribulation. She would either survive and become a legend or join Atom in death.

…

In the depths of Lui Fang, I pulled the last strand of heavenly lightning from the beast and felt my soul space expand further than ever before. By the gurgling of Lui Fang’s body, she probably wasn’t dead, and I was passing through just fine. Occasionally, I directed pressure in the form of tiny, spindly legs and shifted my soul. As I moved within her, I started feeling better about my pressure.

I planned to sprout spider pressure legs and scuttle off the moment I was out.

Before that, I sensed something. A radiant chi spilled against my pressure, forcing me to pay attention to it. I extended a small tendril out of Lui Fang like a dousing rod. Something was high above, and it made the dragon I swallowed look like a duckling. I licked my metaphysical lips.

With no hormones, my only joy came from watching my soul space grow. If I consumed and digested this, then I could see a massive jump in my growth.