The officials and Dave stepped onto their swords and took off in a westerly direction. After only a few minutes of flying, they landed and formed a loose circle around the sect master.

The sect master sat down to cultivate, while the others waited. Soon a spark warning appeared and everyone perked up. Moments later a bolt of lightning fell from dark clouds that had appeared overhead. It was as thick as a telephone pole. Hitting the sect master unchecked would have been bad, instead, it was weakened by the sect master’s qi before it reached his head.

Little tongues of lightning flickered along the shield of pure qi the sect master had erected around himself. The first bolt of lightning had still knocked him over and he looked disoriented, having trouble getting to his feet. When he stood again, the second lightning bolt lashed out at him. Dave watched in silence as the sect leader was hit again.

This time his qi-barrier was noticeably thicker and it shone a clear white as the lightning flowed along it and into the ground. The sect master looked resolved as he stood and waited for the third bolt of lightning. Dave wondered if a Faraday cage would help with a heavenly tribulation or if it would simply be obliterated since the lightning itself seemed like it was even supposed to interfere with the soul of a cultivator when ascending to the nascent soul realm.

His own tribulation had hit all around him with a multitude of strikes with very little time between every strike. The sect master’s tribulation was far more orderly, with every strike hitting only the sect master and there being several seconds between every time the lightning fell.

Xun had mentioned that interfering with someone else’s tribulation would be punished harshly by the heavens. With both the interloper and the original subject receiving a harder tribulation and worse tribulations in the future.

The sole exception was if someone attempted to murder the subject of the tribulation, in which case the murderer would be hit by the very same tribulation meant for the subject.

A tribulation would leave the cultivator in question very vulnerable, both during and after the lightning strikes.

Which was why the sect master had asked him and the other elders to observe at a distance. They were not simply witnesses in case the sect master succumbed to the tribulation, they were also bodyguards in case an enemy infiltrated and attacked during the cultivation. Attacking the sect leader during his trial would mean certain death for anyone in the core formation realm and below, but suicide attacks to weaken a sect were far from uncommon.

It was simple arithmetic, you sacrificed an elder stuck at a bottleneck to ensure that a neighboring sect did not get too big for its britches.

Luckily it seemed that all surrounding orthodox sects had figured that there was little value in spying on the Lone Mountain sect, or at least the Deep Verdant had decided that, since they did not know of Dave’s arrival, even though the emergence of a knew holy land of cultivation in the crater of the volcano would have ordinarily been news of extreme significance.

Dave watched as another bolt of lightning hit the sect leader and dissipated along his barrier. The sect leader looked worn out and on the brink of falling asleep, with big bags under his eyes.

Maybe it had to do with how the nascent soul tribulation interfered with the subject’s soul.

Finally, the seventh and final bolt of lightning struck home and everything went silent. The sect leader looked incredibly haggard and he was swaying side to side on his feet.

There was very little damage to his body, but his hair had already been burned away by the very first bolt of lightning.

He fell over and lost consciousness as it became obvious that he had survived the tribulation. Very few words were spoken afterward. Dave carefully loaded the sect master onto the back of his new sword and they brought him back to his office.

He had no idea where the sect master lived on the daily, but he found a blanket in a closet along the wall, so he covered the sect master up and left for home. They would celebrate when the sect leader regained consciousness, it would be silly to hold a celebration when the sect master could be unconscious for days.

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Dave walked back to his little house near the artisan’s quarter. He was greeted at the door by Mo when he let himself inside. “How has Lydia been behaving?” Dave asked Mo.

“She is extremely energetic and my eyes can barely keep up with her whenever she moves around. She is going to be a real menace once she can run.” Mo said with a little smile.

Dave spotted a second hammock hanging across the room from his own. “Did you bring your own hammock for watching over Lydia?” Dave asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, that hammock was already there when I came over to watch Li di ya.” She answered while rubbing her head.

“Huh, I wonder where it came from,” Dave said, nursing a headache he continued, “Anyway, your grandpa survived his tribulation, he is currently unconscious in his office, if you want to go see him?” Mo answered, “Thank you for watching over him, I will be back tomorrow.” She left in a hurry, accidentally slamming the door on her way out. “She’s lively isn’t she, Lydia?” Dave said as he picked up Lydia and petted her head.

Lydia had grown a full head of hair already, there was definitely something going on with her growth rate, maybe she was accelerating it somehow.

It could also still be an effect of the weird tribulations they had both gotten by the heavens.

Dave let Lydia down on the ground again, then he began her arduous training regime. Teaching her how to walk was always a joy, she seemed to want to insist on walking on four legs, which was perfectly understandable, since she used to be a wolf. However. If she wanted to have a human form she needed to learn how to walk on two legs, it would not help her remain undetected if she kept crawling around on her hands and knees even into adulthood.

Dave walked her around the house, before deciding that it would maybe be a good idea to show her the benefits of having only two legs.

He put on his baby-backpack, carefully strapped Lydia inside and set course for the training area near the back of the sect, towards the volcano.

Lydia cooed and aww’d from behind his back as he carried her through the street. Dave decided that he should probably do it more often since she seemed much happier than when she was locked up inside. Maybe he should let Mo carry her around like this, so neither of them would become bored of sitting around at home.

They reached the training area and Dave saw two core formation disciples having a swordfight. He took off Lydia and put the swaddled baby next to himself on the stands of the small arena. She sounded mighty impressed as she watched both of the disciples dance around.

They were drilling both qi-reinforced fencing and mortal movements for whatever reason. Their reinforced movements were quickly churning up the ground of the arena, with them darting around and leaving waves of sand in their wake, trying to catch each other’s backs.

Then they would change it up, slowly moving around at mortal speeds and using the now uneven terrain to drill their footwork, in what to them would seem like slow-motion.

It seemed that whenever one of them exceeded a mortal’s speed during that segment of the fight, that person would lose a point.

Dave did not see the immediate benefits of fighting like this, but maybe it was to drill footwork or training for an upcoming tournament that was designed so even mortals could participate.

The cultivation-reinforced segment of fighting, as an outsider, looked like two hamsters on speed chasing each other to the death, while the mortal sword fighting afterward made their swords look like floppy noodles.

They carefully engaged each other on the craters left by their own movements. Lydia seemed most impressed whenever they chased each other using movement techniques. Which was probably due to her being able to see all their movements thanks to her wandering immortal-grade vision.

Soon the duo had tired themselves out or they had gotten bored.

They left, letting a group of foundation establishment and one core formation cultivator into the arena. The young foundation establishment cultivators grouped up at one end of the round arena and the core formation cultivator stood alone on the other end.

The foundation establishment group did something odd with their qi.

They seemingly merged it in some way outside of their bodies, when the construct finally stabilized the core formation teacher fired a large fireball at them.

It was remarkably ineffective, the ground around the group was scorched into dirty glass, but the young cultivators were fine and without even singed hair.

Dave was very interested in what they had done, but it would not help strengthen him personally, since there was only one other cultivator at his stage of cultivation and she was currently babbling in his arms.

Dave decided that it had been enough for one day and walked back home with Lydia strapped to his back. He took down the second hammock of unknown origin and decided to use the rest of the day for learning a beam attack for the core formation realm.

He wanted to see if he could adapt it into something he could use with his ice affinity and his icy domain.