During the last two months of her seclusion, Lin Zhiyue dug out all the resources she could use.
When she put on Ode to the Frozen Frost, the circulation speed of her ice and wind spiritual energy was clearly twenty percent faster than usual.
The passive effect of Ice and Snow Affinity removed a lot of resistance when she ran ice-attribute cultivation techniques, making it so smooth there was almost no friction.
Before each meditation session, she would put on Jinyao Fairy and change out of it after a moment—although the koi-fish constitution did not directly increase her cultivation level, that subtle, fleeting boost in luck at least ensured she did not encounter any unexpected setbacks at the critical juncture of her breakthrough.
One morning at the end of the second month, she felt the barrier inside her dantian thinning layer by layer from its depths.
She was in no hurry to ram against it, simply circulating her energy through her meridians as usual.
At the moment the barrier shattered, she thought it would be as quiet as when she reached the Foundation Establishment Stage last time. However, the sky above her head suddenly darkened immediately after.
Within a few breaths, purplish-black tribulation clouds gathered from all directions, pressing down heavily directly above her courtyard. Tiny arcs of electricity surged along the edges of the clouds, as if something deep within their core was brewing the next strike.
Qi Yan landed in her courtyard at the second breath after the tribulation clouds appeared.
He did not knock. The courtyard door was pushed open with slightly more force than usual, the door panel hitting the wall before bouncing back.
He walked over to her and squatted down, taking items out of his cloth bag one by one and placing them by her hand—a dark red jade pendant, a small shield engraved with complex formation lines, and a roll of yellowed talisman paper.
After arranging everything, he looked up at her, as if to confirm whether she needed anything else.
Lin Zhiyue said, “It’s enough.” He did not ask any further, standing up and retreating to the edge of the barrier.
The spot where he stood was neither too far nor too close, just barely outside the range of the lightning tribulation, but still closer than he usually stood.
When the first purple lightning bolt struck down, the lightning illuminated the entire courtyard as bright as day.
The jade pendant shattered into two on her chest. The moment the pendant split, a wave of warm spiritual energy surged out, enveloping her whole body for an instant.
That touch of warmth felt as if someone had supported her from behind, or perhaps it was just an illusion in her dazed state. Before she could figure it out, the second bolt of lightning had already fallen.
The small shield rose to meet it. Its formation lines flashed brightly for a single breath, then immediately dimmed.
Fracture lines spread from the center of the shield to its edges, covering the entire shield like a spiderweb. She heard the sound of the shield cracking, sounding like breaking bones.
Her wrists were jarred to the point of numbness, and a wave of soreness surged up her arms. Gritting her teeth, she suppressed the sensation and stood firm, though her knees had already begun to stiffen.
The third bolt of lightning followed closely behind.
Under the pressure of the lightning pillar, the barrier held up by the talisman paper caved inward. Cracks along the edges extended along the pathways of the technique, making a screeching sound like tearing paper.
She swallowed the metallic taste of blood welling up in her throat. Her spiritual energy was already like water that could not be held, slipping through her fingers. She wanted to raise her hand to mend the crack, but her fingertips trembled violently.
She knew she could not hold out much longer. The ground beneath her feet had already cracked, and the stray hairs on her forehead were plastered to her brow bone by sweat. She was not even sure if she could withstand a fourth strike.
But she knew she could not fall here.
She bent her knees slightly, lowering her center of gravity, and poured all of her remaining spiritual energy into the formation eye beneath her feet.
Just as the talisman paper burned to ashes and drifted down, she saw that Qi Yan was already standing by her side. One of his hands pressed against her shoulder, transmitting a wave of warm spiritual energy from his palm.
The tribulation clouds slowly cracked open directly above her, and the first ray of sunlight that filtered through fell right onto the ashes on her knees, as if tracing the edges of those fragments with light.
It was over...
Qi Yan looked down at the jade pendant split in two by her hand and the shield covered in fine cracks.
Only after a moment did he speak, his voice slightly softer than before. “Scared?”
Lin Zhiyue looked up, meeting his gaze, and then replied, “No.”
Qi Yan nodded.
Quiet returned to their surroundings. Lin Zhiyue looked down at the pile of shattered jade fragments on her knees and the dimmed formation lines of the shield, gathering them together.
Lin Zhiyue did not know the grades of those three items.
The jade pendant, the small shield, the talisman paper—she had assumed they were just ordinary magical items Qi Yan had casually dug out from the storehouse to serve as a basic defense before her breakthrough.
She did not know that the jade pendant was an ancient jade of the Half-Divine Artifact grade, with only a handful of them left in the entire Sanglan Realm.
She did not know that the formation lines on the small shield had taken a Soul Transformation Stage artifact refiner over half a year to engrave, using an entire block of ten-thousand-year profound iron as its base.
And she certainly did not know that the roll of talisman paper had been drawn by Qi Yan himself; he had drawn seven in total, ruining six before successfully completing that single roll.
Tiance Palace was dozens of miles away from the place where she was in seclusion.
The seclusion spot Qi Yan had chosen for her was originally an abandoned spiritual vein site, hidden deep within a dense forest in the back mountain. It was surrounded by isolation arrays, so ordinary disciples could not sense the spiritual energy fluctuations there.
But when the lightning tribulation descended, neither the arrays nor the distance could stop the spread of that pressure.
When the purplish-black tribulation clouds blanketed the entire sky, the disciples practicing swordplay on the main peak of Tiance Palace suddenly stopped. Standing at the edge of the field, they looked up at the sky. The distant sky was unnaturally gloomy, and the sound of muffled thunder seemed to rise from deep underground, causing the soles of their feet to tingle slightly.
Inside the main hall, Xiao Sheng, who was in the middle of discussing matters, set down his teacup and walked to the doorway to glance at the distant sky.
Chu Zhixun sheathed his sword and stepped down from the martial arts field. Standing on the stone steps, he gazed toward the tribulation clouds for a long time and asked, “Who is breaking through on that mountain over there?” The person beside him shook their head, saying they did not know.
Cen Xi'er ran out as well, her hem still stained with dust kicked up during her sword practice.
The entire Tiance Palace was enveloped by that overwhelming lightning tribulation pressure for nearly half an hour.
Everyone could feel the heavy sense of spiritual energy pressure in the air surging like waves, receding, and then surging again—with every bolt of lightning that fell, the pressure grew a layer heavier.
Ordinary defensive magical items probably would not even be able to withstand the outermost edge of the first lightning strike under such pressure.
Qi Yan stood at the absolute edge of the lightning tribulation’s range, watching the churning tribulation clouds and the three falling purple lightning strikes land in the direction of her seclusion spot one by one.
After the tribulation clouds dispersed, the sky in the direction of the back mountain once again revealed its blue-gray background. Sunlight leaked diagonally through the cracks in the clouds, illuminating the scorched ground.
The pressure that had persisted inside Tiance Palace for nearly half an hour finally receded slowly, and the disciples on the martial arts field gradually snapped back to their senses.
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