The sky above the Silent Path Pavilion was no longer a part of the natural world. It had become a swirling maw of bruised violet and obsidian clouds, rotating with a predatory hunger. The weight of the atmosphere pressed down on me, so heavy that the stone tiles beneath my boots began to spiderweb. I stood in the center of the training grounds, the same place where I had dismantled Wu Qinglan, but the audience of disciples had long since fled to the safety of the reinforced bunkers. Only the Elders remained, huddled under the eaves of the Great Hall, their faces pale reflections of the lightning above.
I looked up, my eyes defiant. My obsidian-black Core spun in my Dantian with a low, rhythmic thrum, vibrating in harmony with the approaching storm. I had cheated the Heavens by skipping the Upper and Peak stages of the Meridian Foundation, and now, the Heavens were coming to collect the debt.
The first strike didn't fall; it erupted.
A pillar of violet lightning, wide as an ancient oak, tore through the sky with a sound that shattered every window remaining in the courtyard. To any other cultivator, it would have been a blur of lethal energy. To my Heaven-Piercing Demon Eye, it was a slow-motion descent of structured threads.
Veilbreaker Sight.
The blinding glare of the lightning vanished, replaced by the truth of its composition. The pillar was not solid it was a braided cable of celestial law and raw elemental fury. As it plummeted toward my head, I saw the flaw, a "knot" in the energy weave where the three main strands of the bolt overlapped to maintain its downward momentum.
I didn't draw a weapon. I didn't summon a shield. I channeled the dark, dense Qi of my newly formed Core into my right index finger, the tip glowing with a light so black it seemed to swallow the violet glare. I lunged upward, meeting the lightning halfway.
Insight of Ruin.
My finger struck the knot.
The impact felt like my entire skeleton had been turned into glass and struck with a hammer. A shockwave rippled through the courtyard, blasting the stone tiles into dust and sending a cloud of debris three stories high. But the violet pillar did not incinerate me. By striking the knot, I had caused the energy to "unravel." The lethal pillar shattered into ten thousand harmless sparks that washed over me like a freezing rain.
I felt my meridians groan as they absorbed the residual celestial energy, my black Core greedily drinking the lightning to stabilize its own erratic spin.
"He... he broke the First Strike," Elder Wei's voice carried over the roar of the wind, sounding frail and tiny.
The Heavens did not appreciate the defiance. The storm vortex contracted, the violet clouds turning a sickly, glowing white. The pressure doubled. My knees buckled for a fraction of a second before I forced myself to stand. My right red eye began to leak a steady stream of blood, the strain of reading the "technique" of the sky pushing my brain to the brink of a seizure.
Then, the Second and Third strikes came simultaneously.
They weren't pillars this time; they were two serpents of white-hot fire, twisting around each other in a double helix. They moved with a jagged, unpredictable rhythm designed to confuse the senses.
I pushed the Heaven-Piercing Demon Eye to its absolute limit. My vision fractured. I saw the serpents, but I also saw the Fate-Threads connecting them. These weren't two separate bolts; they were a single executioner's noose. If I dodged one, the other would snap into the space I moved to.
"Not this time," I hissed through gritted teeth.
Instead of defending, I went on the offensive. I used the Nine-Fold Void Compression to surge forward, my body a blur of lean muscle and dark Qi. I dove directly into the heart of the helix. As the white-hot serpents closed in to crush me, I saw the intersection the point where the two bolts shared a single grounding thread.
I struck the ground.
I didn't hit the lightning; I hit the earth at the exact geometric center of the serpents' path. I dumped half of my Core's reserves into the stone, creating a massive "void" of Qi that acted like a lightning rod.
The serpents reacted instantly, drawn toward the vacuum I had created. They collided with the ground inches from my feet, the explosion throwing me backward like a ragdoll. I crashed into a stone pillar, the air leaving my lungs in a bloody mist.
My vision swam. My left eye was clouded with dust, and my right eye felt like a hot coal was being pressed into the socket. My obsidian Core was flickering, drained of its initial power.
The sky went silent. The storm vortex stopped spinning. For a moment, I thought it was over. Then, the center of the clouds opened like a giant, lidless eye. A single, thin needle of black lightning began to form.
The Final Strike.
This wasn't just energy this was the something more, something that was designed to delete anything that dared to be "Forbidden."
I struggled to my feet, my breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. I looked at the black needle forming in the sky. I knew I couldn't break this one. I didn't have the Qi, and my meridians were already near their breaking point from absorbing the first three strikes.
"If I can't break it," I whispered, the red light in my right eye flaring with a final, desperate brilliance, "I'll let it in."
I stood tall, opening my arms wide. I lowered all my internal defenses. I focused my Eye on my own obsidian Core, finding the "Void" at its very center the point where the nine folds met.
The black needle dropped. It didn't make a sound. It moved faster than thought.
It struck me directly in the chest.
Pain ceased to exist. There was only a cold, infinite weight. I felt the Black Tribulation lightning tear through my chest, heading straight for my Dantian. It was going to erase my Core.
But I had prepared the trap.
As the lightning hit the center of my Core, I initiated the Tenth Fold, a technique that wasn't in the manual, one I had deduced by seeing the flaws in the Nine-Fold structure. I used the Core's own spinning momentum to wrap the Black Tribulation lightning around itself.
I wasn't absorbing it; I was weaving it into the structure of my soul.
The courtyard vanished in a dome of black and violet light. I felt my consciousness slipping away, my body being rewritten by the very force that was meant to destroy it. My red eye burned with a heat so intense it felt like it was melting out of my head.
Then, absolute silence.
The clouds vanished instantly, leaving behind a clear, starless night sky. The training grounds were gone, replaced by a massive, glassy crater.
I lay in the center of the pit, my clothes long since burned away, my body covered in a network of glowing black scars that pulsed like veins. I was alive. My obsidian Core was no longer just black; it had a single, violet spark of Heavenly Law trapped at its center.
I had reached the Lower Core Condensation Stage, and I had stolen the fire of the Heavens to do it.
I tried to lift my head, but my body refused to move. Through the haze of my fading vision, I saw four figures approaching the edge of the crater. They weren't the Elders. They wore porcelain white masks, with a single black eye painted on the forehead.
The Heaven's Gaze Pavilion.
They had felt the Tribulation. They had found me.
"The vessel is ready," one of them whispered, his voice like dry leaves. "Collect him before the sect realizes what he is."
I tried to reach for my Qi, but my Core was dormant, recovering from the Tenth Fold. I was helpless.
Just as the masked figures began to descend into the crater, a sudden, bone-chilling frost swept across the grounds. The air turned into a blizzard in a matter of seconds.
"I believe," a familiar, cold voice echoed from the shadows, "this one is already spoken for."
Shen Yuerin stepped out of the darkness, her ice-blue eyes glowing with a lethal light. But she wasn't alone. Behind her stood a tall, hooded figure who radiated a pressure so immense it made the air itself scream.
The Intervention had arrived.