Chapter [B4] 26 — Emperor
The heavens roared and the world shook around me. The bolt of lightning crashed through my body, and I could distinctly feel the ground underneath me cracking from the force of the strike, as the power passed through me. I could feel the surge, like a million hot daggers poking in my stomach, all trying to claw their way out. Immediately a powerful pulse of pain shot through me and I found my sense of self separating from myself, watching the events from a distant place as I focused all my attention on absorbing the power from the tribulation lightning before it seeped into the world around me.
My core greedily sucked in all the heavenly Qi, feeding onto it, as if it was the nectar of the gods. In some ways, it truly was, and I drew in the golden Qi, pushed them together till they formed droplets of liquid gold that I flowed through my core. The roots of the divine tree sucked up those droplets, a deep seated hunger rising from the tree as it began to demand more and I worked hard to condense the surging tides of heavenly Qi inside of me into those droplets of pure, distilled energy and life. Unfortunately the heavenly Qi did not simply sit around while I worked hard to convert it, and neither did the tribulation just end as I felt more and more power gathering around in the heavens, preparing for the next strike.
From experience, I knew the next one would be even harder and so I began to use some of my attention to try to heal myself. That was a surprisingly difficult task. The moment I let my attention slip even a little on the torrent of heavenly Qi inside of me, the pressure began to threaten to rip me apart from the inside, and so I had to force my mind to work two separate processes in tandem without dropping either. It was more mental juggling than I’d ever done but I found the process shaping my mind as well, like my spirit was a blade and the process of cycling Qi a whetstone upon which I grinded my focus more and more. But time was finite, and even as I found myself getting lost in the process, the heavens were coming down to judge me, and so another strike of lightning landed down on me, this one even more powerful than the previous one.
My nerves erupted, catching fire from the blinding strike. Or at least, that’s how it felt. I could not tell, my mind entirely occupied with the task of healing my injuries and recovering while also trapping and converting the flood of power that had just entered my body. It felt and was quite literally a bolt of lightning zapping around in my spirit, trying to wreak havoc. I drew on it’s strength, drew on the power that flooded me and began to absorb it. The world fell away from me by this time as I fell into a rhythm.
I pulled in the energy, converting it into those golden drops as I would nourish the divine tree with it. I would use some to heal my body, as the force of life seeped into my bones and flesh, turning me into something more, and letting me withstand the next strike. I sharpened my spirit on the whetblade of the task, the heavenly Qi surging through my mind and spirit, expanding it from within.
And then the next strike of the heaven would come down, and I would be closer still to the brink of death, as the process began anew.
I quickly lost count of how many times this happened, of how many times I inched closer and closer still to oblivion. My mind frayed, and each little moment of distraction nearly cost me everything, and then I would return, and clarity would give way to the liquid of life itself, and I would find the path ahead.
The process continued, as I sank into the depths of a deep trance, the world fell away from me, there was just me, and the heavens, and the power they bestowed upon me. Though I did not think in this moment, in a subconscious way, within a deeper part of my spirit, the part where people did not think in words or feelings but truths, in knowing one’s reality and the world to be what it is, that part of my spirit began to notice the changes. I was being forged, quite literally. My body was growing, molded into a vessel which could harbor this power, my spirit was being sharpened, able to control the authority, and my Qi was being expanded, feeding into the divine tree and nourishing it with life.
And yet, as I did this, I soon felt a strange resistance within me as well. It took me a few moments to realize what was wrong, and then I found it. I was unbalanced, the cycle of Qi and Gu had been thrown off. The heavens imposed their own path onto me, they made me walk onto the path that they knew of, but that was not my path was it? I’d already broken free of it once free, free of the chains of the heavens that seemingly guided the lives of all that lived under it, and so why should I let myself be chained again?