I mean, I get that. It's going to make a difference in maybe two or three tribulations a year, since any cultivator with sense should be reading up on their likely tribulations beforehand.
But if you had sense you'd accept your place beneath heaven.
I get what you're saying, but this situation is a pretty good demonstration of why even a cultivator who has read up on likely tribulations could benefit from a book being present. If they're not sure what's going on, they can just look at the book. If it's an unfamiliar type of tribulation, they can skim the basics; if it's a familiar one, they understand that they've misread the situation.
The book doesn't have to be read by everyone present to be useful; even with common tribulations, if it helps just one bystanding cultivator who's confused or ignorant, it was worth worth setting up. And if it teaches that cultivator to look for a postmaster with a book when they're facing a genuinely obscure tribulation, all the better!
Fuck. What that snippet about what lucky-boy stopped... the Heavens are using him and his luck as a wrecking ball to cultivators in general, aren't they? Knock out the pillars, swipe the treasures/manuals/artifacts and whisk them out of reach.
If he comes across every high tier resource in the land, shoves it all in his pocket realm, and then ascends into heaven, suddenly that's a massive amount of Qi removed from mortal hands.
Just have him Hoover up every transcendent item or resource, and suddenly they don't need to worry about anyone pushing their limits for the next few thousand years.
If he comes across every high tier resource in the land, shoves it all in his pocket realm, and then ascends into heaven, suddenly that's a massive amount of Qi removed from mortal hands.
I love the little tripod. They put the book in a place the cultivator undergoing tribulation can see it, as if they'll have the free headspace to read along as heaven does it's best to crush them.
I think the little tripod and book is for all the passerby cultivators who are coming to help. Some of those could take a moment to read the appropriate page before setting up their defences to help the tribulating cultivator!
The black void of death hung above her head, chittering and squeaking, rats growing in number second by second. Qian Shanyi paced below it, flicking her sword left and right to warm up her wrists. Seconds ticked by painfully slowly, stretched as they were by the adrenaline and stimulants in her blood.
Too far away to attack. Not yet.
They fell like water from an upturned bucket, a mass of flesh, tails and teeth, squeaking on the way down. Rats, the cleverest of the twelve heavenly beasts, tricksters and trapmakers, ready to drown her in a flood of flesh. Some of them would die from the fall, but most would survive - and then they would swarm her, biting and clawing until she couldn't hold out. With only her flying sword, she couldn't hope to compete - one needed a wide technique, something like Wang Yonghao's sweeping cuts and bursts of fire, but he said out loud he would not interfere. Other cultivators might have - but by the time she called on them, it would be too late.
A perfect weapon, aimed straight at her throat… Or so the Heavens must have thought.
Qian Shanyi grinned, opened her mouth, and Cursed.
Air warped in front of her face, and then a wave of force sped off towards the swarm and smashed into it, pulverizing their little bodies, crushing bones and tearing flesh. The force of it split the swarm apart, revealing the rats further behind, and she Cursed again, shattering it into pieces.
By the time the rats reached the ground, only a few were left breathing. Her sword danced above her head, batting aside the corpses falling down on her as the rain of blood and viscera drenched her robes. She grabbed one of the few still living ones out of the air with her free hand. It struggled futilely against her fingers.
She bit the rat's head off and drank the sweet blood straight out of the neck stump, shuddering in bliss as the dense spiritual energy within flowed into her meridians, refilling them after the curses. Water-type: not ideal for her metal constitution, but not too harmful either. Dimly, in the back of her head, she heard cheers from other cultivators around the hill.
"One down," she growled, tossing the empty corpse aside, and wiped most of the blood off her face with a careless gesture, "eleven to go."
What few black bastards survived her attack huddled down on the ground, false life leaving their bodies almost at once. Spiritual energy circulated between the little corpses scattered all across the hill, and she closed her eyes, reaching out with her senses. Her left hand quickly tied her rope to the handle of her sword.
The attack came from directly behind her, because the Heavens had no imagination. The world tilted, and she tossed her body to the side, rolling across the blood-soaked grass to get out of the way. An enormous ox, taller than her head and the color of ochre clay, burst out of one of the rat corpses, eviscerating it into dust in the process. It shook the ground as it landed, chuffing and mooing, loud as a trumpet. Its head was adorned with a pair of razor-sharp ivory horns, ready to gore any who would dare approach.
Even a single hit from this beast would shatter her spiritual shield and smear her across the grass.
Yet for all that the ox was strong, it was not agile. She turned her roll into a sprint, gaining distance while the dumb beast stomped around, slowly turning in her direction. Her sword sliced through the air, flying up and encircling the flagpole in the middle of the hill, tying her rope a dozen meters above the ground, before returning to her hand. She switched the rope to her left and gripped it tightly.
The ox was soon after her, hooves thundering against the ground like an avalanche. She did not look back, sprinting away, careful of the length of the rope in her hand. When the beast was mere meters behind her, bright like a sun to her spiritual energy senses, she turned to the side, and used the rope and her momentum to fly upwards, carrying her above the ox. It passed so close to her that she could smell its sweat, and she swung her sword at its neck, slicing clean through the spine in one strike.
The beast fell to the ground, dead, and she swung back to the ground, making her rope untie from the pole and pulling it back around her waist.
Two down, and she wasn't even winded. Her spiritual energy reserves had dipped, but the rat's blood filling her stomach was quickly refilling them.
Unfortunately, she knew that the others would be much, much worse… and the Heavens only needed one good hit to kill her.
The emerald-green tiger's claw burst out of the oxes stomach, and it crawled out as if from a damp cave, drenched claw to fang in blood, yet eerily quiet. Wherever it stepped, a bamboo stalk appeared out of the ground, quickly growing to twice her height and as thick as her elbow. It circled around her, keeping its distance, fangs dripping with rage and blood.
The temptation to send her flying sword at it was there, but that would be a mistake. This beast was deceptively quick, and her aim with the flying sword was still lackluster - she could not guarantee a kill. It would be nothing more than a waste of her spiritual energy, and leave her without a good weapon. Instead, she held her sword high with both hands, carefully stepping towards the center of the hill, where the ground was flatter, easier to move on.
Through her sharp focus, she could dimly hear more and more people gathering - shouts and cheers, and a quiet murmur of speech. She pushed them out of her mind. The postmaster would know how to select the ones who could help - her job was to slay the tribulation, not worry what she would do if she failed.
Suddenly, the tiger pounced at her, baring its fangs with a roar that pierced through the air.
She didn't even blink, keeping her breathing even, her steps small and careful, ready to strike.
Five meters away from her, the tiger pulled to the side, and retreated back. It circled her again, and then pounced again, roaring and snarling. Her eyes were glued to it, attention not wavering even for a second. It wanted to make her flinch, but this wasn't her first dance with death.
For the third time it pounced, and for the third time she kept steady. The flagpole - and her second sword - was only five meters away now, and with it in hand, she could perhaps consider sending it out as a flying sword - even if she missed, it wouldn't be much of a loss. Her knives were too short and wide for the technique to take.
The fourth time the tiger came at her, it did not stop. It moved so fast, she could have missed it with but a blink - but it committed, going for her throat. If she shied away, ran - its claws would have snapped her neck for sure.
When the tiger was in mid-jump, she stepped twice towards it, and sliced down, aiming for the neck. For a moment, she saw surprise in the vertical slits of its eyes. It twisted its massive body, trying to avoid the attack, but up in the air with nothing to push against, there was little it could do. For all its efforts, her sword still went through its shoulder, cutting in deep.
At the same time, the tiger's right paw slammed down on a shoulder of her own. Her spiritual shield held, but the impact still brought her down to her knees. The tiger flew past her, yowling in pain, and she heard it roll on the grass behind her.
It still lived.
She rolled to the side, but reeling as she still was from the first hit, she was too slow. Three hundred kilograms of tiger muscle slammed into her side, and sent her flying off down the grassy hill, breath driven out of her lungs. She skipped over the ground much like a stone over a lake, rolled, and finally brought herself to a stop, her arms and legs splayed awkwardly. Her side stung like hell, but thankfully her spiritual shield only broke after she bounced off the ground, and no bones were broken.
The tiger was bouncing after her, but her hit got its mark too - it was a lot slower now, its left paw hanging limply at its side. She still had mere moments. As she rose to her feet, she pushed spiritual energy into her sword and sent the blade flying into the tiger, reconstituting her spiritual shield at the same time.
The sword hit its mark, slicing into the tiger's stomach… but it would still live long enough to kill her. Just before the tiger slammed into her again, she reached behind herself and drew one of her knives, and then they barreled down into the grass in a tangle of limbs and claws.
She came out on top, and heaved the tiger's heavy corpse off herself with a push of her legs. She had to burn one of her protective talismans to survive, but that was to be expected. Her knife was stuck deep in the tiger's neck, cleanly separating its spine, and she yanked it out alongside her sword, spinning them through the air to flick the blood away.
Perhaps she should have felt terrified - but instead, the sound of her heart pushing blood through her veins was like music to her ears.
Three down… Is this the best you Heavens have? "Annoying bastard." She spat on the ground, reeling from another strike to her stomach. "Stay still so that your grandmother can slaughter you properly!"
The little brown rabbit did not have the strength of the ox, or the claws and ferocity of the tiger, but it more than made up for them with its speed. It rocketed between the stalks of bamboo left all over the hill by the tiger, accelerating with each bounce, and then slammed into her before she could bring her sword up. Each hit may have been individually weaker - though still strong enough to crack bone, should her spiritual shield fail again - but they added up.
The first principle of gambling was to trust yourself, and not flinch in the face of danger. But the second principle was to always know when it was time to grab the money and sprint out the door.
She could kill this rabbit, but it would take most of her spiritual energy to do it. It was time to change the game.
Really, she had already pulled it a bit close with the tiger. But slaughtering it with her own hands felt so good…
At the edge of her perception, she felt several cultivators moving around, keeping their distance as the fight shifted around the hill, never coming close enough to interfere. Wang Yonghao was there too, somewhere, though she had lost him in the confusion, and she needed all her focus just to keep pace with the damn rabbit.
She whistled two short notes, calling for help, and felt one of the cultivators sprint towards her, sent over by the postmaster from among the volunteers. Coordinating was his job, after all.
The rabbit bounced left, right, left, then left again. They've played this dance half a dozen times by now, and she still could not guess right, only scoring glancing hits. She held one of her knives in her left hand - putting more weapons in front of her seemed like a good idea, at least.
The rabbit's hind leg slammed into her stomach, and she hissed, her spiritual shield flickering, but holding. She sliced off one of its ears for her trouble, but it bounced off -
- and right into the path of a large, two-handed sword, the move perfectly placed and leaving it no choice but to be sliced in half.
The rabbit spun around in mid air, and pushed off the blade, sacrificing one of its legs to bounce back at her with the other. She was ready this time, but for all that her perception was so sharp that the flow of time felt like dripping honey, her muscles, still only in the middle of the refinement stage, could not keep up. She missed the damnable beast by a hair's width, and it bounced off her chest with it's last leg and down to the ground, ready to flee -
- and was met with the same sword, losing its head in a single strike.
In the sky above them, she heard the sharp crack of thunder as a new bolt of lightning struck the flagstock at the top of the hill. The flash of it turned the grass white for a brief moment.
Qian Shanyi breathed out, sheathed her knife, and raised her eyes to see a cultivator holding a two-handed sword with a wide cross guard, wearing a familiar cloth and leather breastplate.
She arched her eyebrow in surprise. "Fellow cultivator Jian Shizhe?" she said, quickly pulling a bottle of pills out of her bandolier and tossing it to him. It was drenched in blood, much like the rest of her, but he didn't seem to care.
He nodded at her curtly, and spun his sword through the air, flicking the blood off, pulling the cork out of the bottle with his teeth.
She kept her eye on the rabbit, but it was not transforming. Perhaps the Heavens wanted to hit them from two directions at once.
Together, they raced towards the middle of the hill, pulling on their black goggles as they went. The glass was so dark she could barely see anything through it, moving mostly by memory and the feel of dense spiritual energy in the blood soaking into the ground. "I am thankful for your help," she said, glancing up at the sky, and racking her brain for what she could recall of his almanac entry. It did not speak of cultivation directly, but she was fairly sure all his duels were with the sword, at the very least. "What techniques do you have?"
He motioned with his enormous sword, held casually in one hand. "I have my sword," he said, swallowing the healing pill and quickly snorting the stimulant, clearly familiar with both. "It will be enough, or this here cultivator is not worthy of the name Jian!"
"Of course." She nodded absently, as they reached the pole. "A flying sword, I presume? I have one as well, and curse techniques for medium range."
"I can slice even the winds with my sword," he said, "but I have not practiced a flying sword technique. It will not be necessary - my sword skills should more than suffice."
"I see. And… Besides that?" she asked slowly, confusion and worry leaking into her voice.
He stayed silent, taking out a piece of strangely glittering cloth to polish up his blade. It shined even through the black glass.
"You do not have a flying sword," she said, with dread in her heart. He didn't contradict her.
What beasts were next?
The dragon, the snake, and the horse.
The dragon swam through the air, and the other two breathed fire.
With a pure swordmaster at her side…
"Nobody else volunteered," he said shortly, looking up into the sky. She could hear disappointment in his voice.
Above them, a second lightning strike flashed, slamming down into the flagpost.
She grit her teeth. Time for plan C. "Yonghao, get your ass over here!" she shouted, looking out over the hill, for all that she could barely see through the blackness. Where was he?
"That honorless wretch least of all," Jian Shizhe scowled next to her, readying his sword to break the third lightning bolt. "No wonder you two are not married, if he leaves you to face a tribulation alone."
Her head snapped to look back at him. "Honorable cultivator Jian," she said in a cold tone, "I would have expected someone like you to know better than to question how someone else faces a tribulation."
She felt Yonghao approach through her spiritual energy senses, and turned to face him - for all that she spoke in his defense, for a moment she did worry that he fled entirely.
"So it is now that you finally show," Jian Shizhe said. At least his voice sounded contrite, after her admonishment.
Wang Yonghao ignored him. "You sure about this, Shanyi?" he asked, coming closer, "three at once, right away?"
"No choice," she said, shaking her head, "Honorable cultivator Jian has no way to kill anything more than a couple paces away. I'll need you to handle the dragon while I deal with the rats."
"I can deal with the rats," Jian Shizhe scowled at her, "I do not boast of my skill lightly."
"Before or after they eat me alive, fellow cultivator?" she scowled right back. Pride she could take, but not stupidity. "I am aware of your skill. This is no ordinary tribulation - the Heavens seek to kill me, and so I expect them to focus their wrath on me, and away from you."
"What?" he said. She did not bother to clarify.
Another lightning struck down - still at the flagpole, not at Jian Shizhe. Not intended for him, then. Once Wang Yonghao came closer, he had already interfered - though unless her senses deceived her, his lightning seemed quite a bit weaker than theirs.
She turned back to Yonghao. "Why didn't you tell the postmaster you were ready to help?"
She heard the wince in his voice as he glanced over at Jian Shizhe. "The Heavens control the beasts, right? I thought if I kept my intentions quiet, they would play fairer. But then when you whistled, he ran over before I could react…"
That…
Okay, it wasn't a bad idea. They had no plan in place for every particular tribulation - with well over seventy possibilities, she had no hope Yonghao could memorize all the options - and as improvisation went, it was a good one.
Well, perhaps it would end up killing them all, so in that sense it was bad, but there was logic to it.
Another weak lightning strike fell down on the flagpost, thunder barely even shaking the ground. She could feel the heat coming off the pole from all the energy it had already absorbed.
"Especially after your rant," Wang Yonghao sighed, covering his face with one hand. A careless move for an ordinary cultivator, when lightning could strike at any moment - but with his luck, she supposed there was no real chance of him missing it. Unlike him, Jian Shizhe kept his eyes on the sky, sword at the ready. "Did you really have to do that? You just made them a dozen times angrier!"
"I am a cultivator, Yonghao," she snorted, "what kind of coward would I be, if I challenged the Heavens and didn't even tell them how I feel? One must face death with a clear heart!" She grinned. "I hope your hearts are clear, fellow cultivators?"
Jian Shizhe growled, glancing at Wang Yonghao, but said nothing. She supposed it would have to do.
Wang Yonghao just sighed, and unsheathed his sword, slicing above his head casually. With an echoing honk of a goose, a razor-sharp blade of light flew off his weapon and up into the sky.
Two lightning bolts struck down at once. One, weak and feeble, was scattered by Wang Yonghao's careless sword strike before it even finished forming. The other one, as strong as any she had ever seen, slammed down on Jian Shizhe. He leaped towards it, his form perfect, and when his sword met lightning, the bolt came out lesser for it.
She pulled her goggles down and raised her naked eyes to the sky, where two black voids were already starting to form, chittering once again echoing out over the hill. She hummed a tune, warming up her vocal cords. Cursing down two swarms at once would push her up to her limits, but she could handle it - it was the fight after that worried her.
After all, any time a cultivator interfered in a tribulation of another, they would immediately face the exact same tribulation.
Three cultivators, and three tribulations, all at the same time.
She licked her lips, and giggled. Stimulants in her blood, beast blood in her stomach, fear and adrenaline in her veins… It all mixed together until even she couldn't tell what she was feeling.
To face down three tribulations? Surely it was madness?
Bah!
Triple the danger, triple the fun!
She spun her sword through the air, and prepared to spit in the face of Fate once more. The postal hill burned all around them.
A scarlet heavenly horse, its mane of smoke and glowing ashes, galloped around them in a wide circle, its breath of flames setting fire to grass and bamboo all over the hill. Wang Yonghao dashed after it into the thick smoke, and she lost sight of them behind one of the corpses of an enormous oxen.
She had her own beast to deal with.
Qian Shanyi spun through the air, bouncing between the two oxen corpses lying close together on the grass. She dodged the snake leaping at her by less than a foot, liquid fire dripping off its scales and igniting the grass below. Its body was as thick as her thigh, half of the scales as black as smoke, the others glowing like hot coals.
As she passed the snake in the air, her blade slid harmlessly across the scales. Her feet touched the ground, and she leaped after the beast, hoping to strike true this time, but the fires flared, and forced her back.
Jian Shizhe's sword was humming in the air mere meters behind her, batting away the attacks of another rabbit. Alone, he couldn't force a killing blow so far - but she couldn't deny his skill at keeping it away from her.
She clenched her teeth to stop them from clattering. The fires dripping off the snake's scales were bad enough, but it was the aura of fear that surrounded it that was the real danger. A voice in the back of her head, questioning her decisions, making her hesitate and miss her strikes. Her mind was already a mess, and this just made it worse.
At least it also affected the other beasts - for of course, all three of them were going after her at once, just like she expected. They ignored Wang Yonghao almost entirely, and only engaged Jian Shizhe when he got in their way.
The snake slithered in the charred grass, rearing up for another leap. She breathed out, steadying her nerves. It was neither fast nor hard to hit, she just had to ignore her limbic system telling her otherwise.
She heard the squelch of split flesh behind her, and a moment later, Jian Shizhe's voice. "Rabbit down! Going for the dragon."
The snake lept before she could respond, and she spun aside, slicing her sword horizontally, and this time she struck true. The blade caught the snake on the edge of the jaw, and she immediately turned her slice into a stab, sliding her sword directly into its brain. The pressure on her mind vanished at once, and she laughed, dancing away from the fires that briefly flared around the corpse. The acrid smoke in the air obscured her vision, but up close, it wasn't so bad.
"Snake down!" she shouted, "Prepare for the second horse!"
Behind her, she heard the flesh tear as the dragon emerged, and a clang of metal on ivory. The dragon roared in triumph, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw its long, bone-white, sinuous body slither up into the air. No kill. "Dragon's up." Jian Shizhe hissed behind her, "Wang, it's yours!"
The sound of Wang Yonghao's curses, mixed with the whine and bellows of the first horse warmed her heart a bit. "What do you mean, it's mine?! You two think I have a second pair of arms?!" he shouted, but Jian Shizhe did not respond. He joined her next to the corpse of the snake, holding his two-handed sword high, while she took a low stance, pulling the fly whisk off her belt with her left hand.
The best time to kill the beasts was just as they emerged, after all.
The man's skill with the sword was honestly absurd. As soon as she scattered the twin rat swarms - her throat hurt, but she managed - he hobbled one of the oxen, cut open its belly, and without stopping for even a moment, decapitated the tiger before it could crawl out in full. By the time Wang Yonghao brought down the first dragon that emerged from her rabbit, they already had a second one ready for him to deal with.
And now, a third.
The world tilted around them, and a second horse emerged a meter away, snorting a great gout of flame towards the two of them. The Heavens wisened on to their tricks quickly enough.
Jian Shizhe stepped in front of her, and spun his great sword in a wide circle, forming a shield for the both of them and batting the fire aside as if it was nothing. At the same time, she pushed her spiritual energy into the sword of her own, sending it flying just above the ground and towards the horse.
The beast leaped to the side, and she scored merely a shallow gash across its flank. It galloped away into the dense smoke, off to join its partner. She sent a gust of wind from the fly whisk after it, blowing the smoke away and hoping to catch a glimpse of it and skewer it properly, but no such luck.
She clicked her tongue in disappointment, recalling her sword back to her hand. It was no real surprise she missed - she only had a couple weeks of training with the technique, after all.
"Dragon or horse?" Jian Shizhe asked, staying close, holding his sword in a guarding stance. They learned quickly that since the beasts sought to kill her first, the best place for him was at her side, keeping her safe.
"Dragon," she said, leaping onto one of the oxen corpses to gain some ground above the smoke. Jian Shizhe leaped right after her. She would have climbed the flagpole instead, but one of the oxen broke it in its rampage. "Can't see shit through this smoke, won't find a horse until it comes for us."
There was so much spiritual energy in the air, all mixing together, that she couldn't even rely on her spiritual energy senses anymore. Damnable heavenly beasts.
A distance away, she saw Wang Yonghao, standing on air and pulling the fire and smoke apart into a cyclone to reveal the horse below, sending slashes of light down at it. His amazing fire-type cultivation law certainly came in handy - without him, they'd have been lost for sure.
"Yonghao, where's the dragon?" she called after him.
"I lost it," he grumbled, focusing on the horse.
"Dragon approaching low, west of Qian!" She heard the postmaster shout from down the hill. He must have found some cultivator whose senses could pierce through the smoke. The Heavens, in their blindness, did not consider advice to be interference.
Jian Shizhe spun around, swapping places with her as if in a dance, feet steady on the muscled side of the ox, and swung his sword. The dragon burst out of the smoke mere meters away from them, its jaws open wide, and breathed out a rain of bone shards, each as large and fast as an arrow. Jian Shizhe parried most of them, and she sidestepped the rest, sending her sword out to retaliate.
"And then what, after the dragon?" Jian Shizhe asked as she kept her eyes on the dragon, its body of bone trying to dodge her flying sword. She handed him the fly whisk with her free hand, in case it would dive into the smoke again, still tied to her waist. Out of the two of them, he needed his spiritual energy less, but she needed the vision more. "They'll cook us alive if we stay on this hill. Run away, like cowards?"
"Is it not cowardice to stick to your pride, even as it kills you?" she asked mildly. Her flying sword scored a hit, stabbing into the dragon's long tail, and she reversed the thrust, pulling it back out. Bright blue blood dripped on the ground below. "Retreating out of a bad position is nothing to be ashamed of."
Out above the forest, her eyes spotted a long-awaited movement, and she grinned. Just in time. "Besides… My solution to our horse problem will be arriving soon."
"And what would that be?"
Her sword stabbed directly into the dragon's body this time, and it roared, twirling in the air and heading straight for them.
"Yonghao, goose this dragon!" she shouted, and the dragon aborted its charge, forced to climb above an arc of sword light sharp enough to decapitate it, but her sword was already there, ramming through its eye and into the brain. It dropped down into the smoke, and she managed to recall her sword just before it vanished from sight.
At the very edge of her hearing, a faint, distant whistle grew, accompanied by a strange, droning sound.
"You'll see it now. Sky drop, west, safe, two seconds!" she shouted, bracing herself against the corpse she stood on.
The faint sound turned into a shrill cry of air being torn apart, and then an explosion blew dirt a dozen meters up into the air at the edge of the hill as an enormous pale snake crashed down from the sky. The shake of the ground almost threw Jian Shizhe off the ox, and she had to grab him by the lapels to keep him steady.
"Fellow cultivators, I hope you don't mind if I join?" Hui Yin shouted from his perch on top of Curls, as the great snake found its bearings, and quickly slithered into the smoke. It's head whipped down, and then came back up, tossing one of the horses high into the air. The horse whined, great gusts of flame blowing out of its nostrils, but the snake's jaws snapped shut, and Curls swallowed it in one gulp.
"What took you so long, honorable cultivator Hui Yin?" Qian Shanyi laughed, waving to him from on top of the ox. She worried she misjudged his motivations, and he wouldn't come - or that he left town already - but in the end, it all fell exactly into place. "The party is halfway over!"
He squinted at her, not stopping playing his strange instrument for even a moment. Above them, thunder cracked the skies once more. "That you, lady? Small world!"
Suddenly, Curls curled up on herself, and stuck her long tail above Hui Yin's head. Qian Shanyi had just a moment to pull her black goggles back on.
Lightning struck down, and Curls hissed, the sound as loud as a storm gale while sparks danced across her scales.
Jian Shizhe pursed his lips, giving Curls an admiring look, though it was hard to tell through the black glass. "You knew a beastmaster of this strength would come? That is why you said we should target the dragon?"
Curls turned its head over, keeping Hui Yin sheltered under her wide skull. "Beastmaster?" he called out to them, keeping himself anchored, standing upside-down. "I am an immortal musician, fellow cultivators!"
"Didn't know he'd come," Qian Shanyi said, "only suspected. It was only natural that a snake of this size would pounce at an opportunity to eat its fill of the heavenly beasts. But I am surprised that you are taking this as calmly as you do, honorable cultivator Jian!"
All of a sudden, she heard the beasts approach. This time, they decided to attack while they were blinded - either by the lightning, or by the goggles they wore to protect against it. She heard Wang Yonghao shout as he followed after.
"And why is that?" Jian Shizhe said, his voice darkened, even as he spun his sword to block out the fire from the other, surviving horse. It was bright enough that she could see it clearly through the goggles.
"To interfere in the tribulation of another, with no request or prior warning?" She laughed, stepping to the side to dodge the leap of a snake, trusting the spike in her sense of terror to tell her where it was. "Any one of us might die today! Is this not as if fellow cultivator Hui Yin had stabbed you in the stomach?"
She couldn't see his reaction through the goggles, but his voice was clear enough. "Have your Elders taught you nothing?" He sneered. "To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens! If fellow cultivator Hui Yin dares to rebel, who am I to stand in his way?"
"Well said!" she laughed again.
"Can you two focus?" Wang Yonghao shouted at them, "the tribulation is still here!"
"Is your wife always this reckless?" Jian Shizhe said.
"It's pretty common for her," Wang Yonghao grumbled.
"Oh shut it," she cut back, "what kind of cultivator doesn't have time to debate Dao in the middle of a tribulation? Have neither of you read any classics?"
Thunder roared, and the beasts pounced on them once more, with claw and bloody tooth.
Author Note: If you'd like to read five chapters ahead, or read other works I write, you can find me on patreon.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. Want to talk about the Heavenly tribulation? It's the best place to be!
The art in this chapter is heavily based on this image, and is likewise distributed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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"Oh shut it," she cut back, "what kind of cultivator doesn't have time to debate Dao in the middle of a tribulation? Have neither of you read any classics?"
Thunder roared, and the beasts pounced on them once more, with claw and bloody tooth.
My headcanon is that like IRL classics, 99% of the grand monologues and mid-battle "discussions between Greats" in these classics are entirely made up. In trying to live up to the classics, Qian Shanyi might be being a massive drama queen !
This version of tribulations is SO cool. I'm assuming the postmaster is out there figuring out which of the local cultivators has skills that make them particularly well-suited to fighting wave after wave of divine beasts and sending them in at strategic intervals?
Also, does Heaven need to commit more energy to create additional instances of the same tribulation? I wonder if you could just keep chaining together these kinds of tribulations by waiting until almost everyone has completed their tribulation then sending in a few more cultivators to "interfere" and trigger more tribulations. Could be a good way to drain Heaven's apparently limited stores of power.
If all these corpses stay around afterwards they are going to have the most amazing barbecue to celebrate surviving. Good thing Shanyi has been studying immortal cooking!
"Didn't know he'd come," Qian Shanyi said, "only suspected. It was only natural that a snake of this size would pounce at an opportunity to eat its fill of the heavenly beasts. But I am surprised that you are taking this as calmly as you do, honorable cultivator Jian!"
All of a sudden, she heard the beasts approach. This time, they decided to attack while they were blinded - either by the lightning, or by the goggles they wore to protect against it. She heard Wang Yonghao shout as he followed after.
"And why is that?" Jian Shizhe said, his voice darkened, even as he spun his sword to block out the fire from the other, surviving horse. It was bright enough that she could see it clearly through the goggles.
"To interfere in the tribulation of another, with no request or prior warning?" She laughed, stepping to the side to dodge the leap of a snake, trusting the spike in her sense of terror to tell her where it was. "Any one of us might die today! Is this not as if fellow cultivator Hui Yin had stabbed you in the stomach?"
My headcanon is that like IRL classics, 99% of the grand monologues and mid-battle "discussions between Greats" in these classics are entirely made up. In trying to live up to the classics, Qian Shanyi might be being a massive drama queen !
It's seemingly always loners powerleveling, which is seemingly what the protagonist wants to do, but the cooperative aspects kf the setting are beautiful.
"To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens." Is something I have read variations of in a bunch of stories, but your the one who has acctually acted on the phrase. Cultivators working together in rebellion. It's not just set dressing. The heavens are acting in order to prevent cultivation (with one Himbo-Shaped exception).
I just love it. I love your world, I love the character.
She bit the rat's head off and drank the sweet blood straight out of the neck stump, shuddering in bliss as the dense spiritual energy within flowed into her meridians, refilling them after the curses.
The sound of Wang Yonghao's curses, mixed with the whine and bellows of the first horse warmed her heart a bit. "What do you mean, it's mine?! You two think I have a second pair of arms?!" he shouted.
[...]
By the time Wang Yonghao brought down the first dragon that emerged from her rabbit, they already had a second one ready for him to deal with. And now, a third.
She couldn't see his reaction through the goggles, but his voice was clear enough. "Have your Elders taught you nothing?" He sneered. "To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens! If fellow cultivator Hui Yin dares to rebel, who am I to stand in his way?"
"Well said!" she laughed again.
"Can you two focus?" Wang Yonghao shouted at them, "the tribulation is still here!"
Also, does Heaven need to commit more energy to create additional instances of the same tribulation? I wonder if you could just keep chaining together these kinds of tribulations by waiting until almost everyone has completed their tribulation then sending in a few more cultivators to "interfere" and trigger more tribulations. Could be a good way to drain Heaven's apparently limited stores of power.
Pretty sure the animals are made of heavenly energy rather than matter, hence why Qian could absorb it from the Rat rather than just being a mouthful of blood.
My headcanon is that like IRL classics, 99% of the grand monologues and mid-battle "discussions between Greats" in these classics are entirely made up. In trying to live up to the classics, Qian Shanyi might be being a massive drama queen !
Plus history generally is pretty long and there have been history nerds that whole time. So, a statistically significant amount of extremely extra nerd is what my money's on
Ha! I called it! Snake was a nasty piece of work even after the dragon, given it has a fear-effect. So there's goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig left. Can't wait to see what their gimmicks will be. I'm sure they'll be appropriately challenging!
Ha! I called it! Snake was a nasty piece of work even after the dragon, given it has a fear-effect. So there's goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig left. Can't wait to see what their gimmicks will be. I'm sure they'll be appropriately challenging!
Looking at the illustrations the goat appears to have some kind of invisibility or maybe the ability to merge into the ground, since it's marked as earth-aspected. Monkey is metal and appears to have multiple arms wielding multiple swords. The roster is rainbow colored and appears to be covered in metal spikes, which may mean that it has razor sharp feathers or something similar. I can't see any obvious hints to the dog or pig's abilities, though the pig might have water powers since the rats didn't show any.
Looking at the illustrations the goat appears to have some kind of invisibility or maybe the ability to merge into the ground, since it's marked as earth-aspected. Monkey is metal and appears to have multiple arms wielding multiple swords. The roster is rainbow colored and appears to be covered in metal spikes, which may mean that it has razor sharp feathers or something similar. I can't see any obvious hints to the dog or pig's abilities, though the pig might have water powers since the rats didn't show any.
Ground-merging goat kinda makes sense. It's different than the other threats.
The rooster's "spikes" might just be an artistic depiction of feathers. I wouldn't be surprised if they were razor-sharp feathers or something, though.
I assume the first part of the Tribulation is a "flood" of rats. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Pig had more direct water magic.
Ground-merging goat kinda makes sense. It's different than the other threats.
The rooster's "spikes" might just be an artistic depiction of feathers. I wouldn't be surprised if they were razor-sharp feathers or something, though.
I assume the first part of the Tribulation is a "flood" of rats. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Pig had more direct water magic.
I just zoomed farther in on the rooster and a lot of the grey spikes appear to be dripping blood. So I think there is going to be something razor sharp or spiky about them, it's not just feathers.
Chapter 47: Transcend Or Fall, Hope Not For Other Fate
Author Note: Sorry for the chapter being late - I was traveling over the weekend, and mismanaged my time last week. Perhaps watching Dune 2 was a wrong move. I would say more, but it will surely happen again, so I won't.
The blood flowed, the swords flashed, and the slaughter filled the air.
The trouble with the zodiac tribulation was that each of the twelve heavenly beasts fought differently, and there was no chance of any one cultivator being a great match against all of them. They were making a good show of it, and yet they were still being ground down, even with the four of them making up for each other's weaknesses. The beasts gave them no chance to rest, to recover.
Would they crack first, or would the Heavens?
Qian Shanyi was all out of talismans, and down to a fifth of her spiritual energy reserves. Jian Shizhe, for all his great skill, was down to two fifths, and if not for her pills, would have been doing a lot worse. The blood of the beasts helped, but not fast enough.
Curls, in contrast, needed no help - a mount fitting for a beastmaster in the building foundation stage, let alone a refinement one. There was a reason Hui Yin felt confident in butting into their tribulation without announcing himself in advance. Yet even the great snake still struggled, held back by having to protect its rider, and further constrained in its movements by the much more fragile fellow cultivators fighting on the very same hill. It was used to making great leaps, falling on its prey from the height of a mountain and at the speed of the wind, and struggled to deal with the beasts coming at it on all sides, ready to take a bite out of its long tail. Chipped scales, cuts, and burns were adding up.
A test of all their strengths.
Except for Wang Yonghao, who could fly, the lucky fuck, and thus could approach all but the dragon and the rooster at his leisure, and even those with only the mildest concern.
The goats were the most annoying of all, dripping in shadow and haze, their black fur blending in with the smoke still rising from the grass after the rampage of the horses. Even spiritual energy senses could not detect them. Silent killers, stalking the weak and going in for the kill - and so much worse for it than the rabbit, for at least it did not try to hide.
With the pair of goats absent, they were faced with a horse and a tiger, Jian Shizhe doing his best to keep her safe from the gouts of flame, while Curls and Wang Yonghao tried to box them in for the kill. The beasts have learned from their mistakes, and ran circles around Curls, always staying just close enough to her to stop Wang Yonghao from striking out with the Honk of the Solar Goose, yet also moving erratically, throwing off the great snake's aim. She sent out her flying sword to help out, aiming for the horse -
And things went wrong almost at once. The tiger pivoted, sprinting at her and Jian Shizhe, who stepped in the way -
- only for one of the goats to leap out of the smoke, crashing into him from the side, tossing them both away from the tiger's path -
- who charged at her, spit and rage flying, even as she tried to recall her sword back, knowing she would not be fast enough. Wang Yonghao rushed after it, already sending out blades of cutting light, but the tiger's claw slammed down on her chest just a moment before his strike cut its head off. Her spiritual shield crackled, but held -
- and immediately shattered, twin black horns piercing her chest from the back, her ribs cracking to make way. The pain of it made her lose control over her flying sword technique entirely, and she saw it plunge down into the ground, a good five meters away.
She grabbed one of the horns poking out of her chest to stop it from being pulled free, ripped a knife off her back with her other hand, and blindly rammed it into the throat of the goat behind her. She felt muscle and bone tear, and the beast stilled.
Sneaky bastards.
She fell to the ground, barely keeping enough presence of mind to push out with one hand and avoid dislodging the horns. There were now two massive holes in her lungs, and these damnable horns were the only thing plugging them up. Blood gushed into her lungs anyways, flowing around the wound, and her breathing seized, as she fought against her instinct to cough - for it would only damage her lungs more.
No time to panic. Work the problem.
She focused on her inner senses, hurriedly squeezing fat, skin and muscle against the horns to plug the gaps, seal the blood vessels, and manually pump blood out of her lungs and into her stomach with her spiritual energy. Her control over her own spiritual energy stated to slip, and a little and very annoying voice in the back of her mind started to tell her how well and truly fucked she was.
Her lungs were damaged, and they were linked to the lungs meridian. Without functioning lungs, she could not properly circulate energy through it.
The lungs meridian. Yin and metal, the most important one in her entire body. Her spiritual energy recirculation was already going awry, fucking up the delicate work of keeping herself from dying. If she slipped and let the blood gush out, she would bleed out and die. If she let it fill her lungs, she would drown and die. Yet the more she used her spiritual energy to force things into place, the higher the chances her spiritual energy recirculation would destabilize entirely, overload one of her dantians, and blow it clear out of her body.
Her breaths were shallow, each one an agony as blood frothed out of her mouth. Dimly, she was aware of Jian Shizhe standing over her, fighting off a six-armed monkey, each hand holding a crude steel sword. It came to finish what the goat started, but she had no presence of mind to think of that. One problem at a time.
With shaking hands, she tore open a pouch on her bandoleer, and drew out one of her spare bottles of healing pills. She pressed it to her lips, and inhaled the red, swirling pill within, fighting against her instincts begging for air.
The healing pill dissolved as soon as it reached her stomach, flooding her chest with heat, and she felt the skin around the wounds pull closer together, regeneration accelerating further and the flood of blood slowing. There would be a reckoning, taking a double dose in short sequence, but fucking up her eyes sure beat dying.
Alright. Now what?
If she could survive until the tribulation ended, she'd get help… But she was barely holding on as she was. Without spiritual energy circulation, she had no spiritual energy shield, and could die to a sneeze by any one of the heavenly beasts.
Almost half of the tribulation was still left. She couldn't rely on Jian Shizhe to guard her body through the rest of the chaos.
With the horns stuck in her lungs, she couldn't properly recirculate spiritual energy - even the healing effect of the pills inside of her was severely weakened. That meant she had to pull them out. There was no other option.
Unfortunately for her, they were also the only thing stopping the blood from flowing freely.
She would have to pull them out slowly, giving the pill in her blood time to work. All the tissue - skin, muscle and bone - was still there, so perhaps if she pulled the punctures closed they could heal up enough for her to stand. Thankfully, her robes had somehow remained whole, and wrapped around the horns like a bandage, keeping the surface of the wounds relatively smooth. Masterful craftsmanship, truly.
Qian Shanyi closed her eyes, and tried to keep her breathing deep and even. Despite her best efforts at pulling blood out of her lungs, she was starting to feel light-headed, and she'd need all the air she could get.
Or perhaps it was the blood loss - her fingers did tingle slightly.
Gritting her teeth, she reached behind herself, and grabbed the goat's head by the ears, preparing to do the one thing she was expressly told never to do, when she learned first aid back in her sect.
She didn't get the chance. A strong hand seized her by the wrist, and she felt cold air all over her skin, pleasant after the heat of the fires and the acrid smoke. Raising her eyes, she saw Junming, kneeling on the grass right next to her, naked from the waist up. They were spinning spiritual energy in a complex pattern above their palm, before bringing that hand to her chest. She shuddered from the piercing cold as ice spread across her skin and through her lungs, blood freezing in place and sealing up the wound.
In the skies above, thunder rumbled.
She tried to speak, and instead coughed, spurting blood foam instead of words. Closing her mouth, she raised her hands, and signed. <Why come?>
Junming glanced down at her face. Their face showed no emotion, but that was no surprise.
"Don't like seeing cultivators die," they said. "Stay still. Hard to work."
<I liked lungs.> She signed instead. Her body shook - though she couldn't tell if it was from stimulants, fear, pain, or bloodloss - but her fingers were steady. Mostly. <My best organ.>
Junming pulled the horns a bit further out of her back, and her spine arched. Definitely pain, this time.
"So chatty," Junming said, "Can fingerspeak now?"
<Learn fast,> she signed. <Make me good grave, ok?>
She had planned how to pretend to be worse at fingerspeaking than she was, to only use a limited set of words, not the couple hundred she actually knew. Somehow, it didn't feel that important in the moment.
She felt the lightning about to strike, and shut her eyes, burying her face into the ground. With a thunderous clap, it struck, and yet she felt no shock. Cautiously, she raised her eyes, and saw Wang Yonghao, his sword raised where it split the lightning aimed for Junming's head.
"Too young for grave," Junming said, not even looking up from their work, "keep still."
She did as she was told, hiding her face in the ground from the lightning. Yonghao blasted the rat swarm apart with a great gout of fire, and Curls snapped the back of the ox in half with the strike of her enormous tail. Slowly, the goat horns left her body, and she pulled her tissues back in place, letting the cold seal up the gaps. Junming helped her, quickly bandaging up the wounds with a gauze they brought along.
She rose up on her knees, her body still shaking from the shock. Junming's technique didn't heal her - merely stopped the damage, giving the healing pills in her blood time to work. Even now, she felt air whistle slightly out of the holes, and had to force it out of her chest cavity with spiritual energy, lest it collapse her lungs.
But her spiritual energy recirculation had stabilized, so it would have to do.
"Status?" she croaked, trying to keep her lungs from staining too much. They still bled, though not enough to worry her. The pills would replenish her blood. Junming helped her get up on her feet, and grabbed a large lantern, waving it through the air. A dozen shimmering swords of ice formed all around them, spinning in circles, giving them a moment's reprieve. A small pile of corpses surrounded them - the goat that almost killed her, one of the snakes, and many others. Not even a single spot of grass was free from the blood.
Jian Shizhe's robes were torn up, his skin bleeding from multiple wounds. Even Wang Yonghao had a large gash across his face. Their spiritual energy was low - she could feel that easily. They kept her and Junming safe, but paid dearly for it - and the tribulation was far from over.
"Rooster, Monkey, Monkey, Snake, Rabbit" Jian Shizhe said, his voice clear despite the wounds. He wiped off his face, taking a breather, and rested his enormous sword on the ground. "I am down to a fifth of my reserves. Wang is at half." She could see the monkeys stalking around the circle of ice blades, and heard the rooster battle with Hui Yin somewhere in the smoke, its deadly, confounding crowing neutralized by some musical technique.
Wang Yonghao gave her a look. They discussed the possibility of sending her into his world fragment, hoping the tribulation couldn't follow, if things went badly enough. She shook her head. They couldn't just leave the others here to die. "Can you even fight?" he asked, pursing his lips.
"Yeah, I am fine." She coughed up blood. Her lungs felt like a noodle strainer. "Never been better. In fact, I have a plan."
Wang Yonghao cursed loudly.
"Brat." She scowled at him. "Just for that, you have been elevated to be its key part."
"And what do I have to do?"
She reached for her hip, picked up the fly whisk, and tossed it to him. He grabbed it out of the air, looking at her curiously. "Bring me that snake -"
"Sure," he said, raising his sword, and waving the fly whisk in a seemingly random direction. The smoke billowed outwards, and revealed the snake, about to pounce at them between the ice swords. Wang Yonghao raised his sword, and Junming stepped around to his side, covering the flank.
"- alive," she finished, clapping Wang Yonghao on his ankle to stop his strike.
He glared at her briefly. "What do you mean, alive?!"
"I'll teach you all about the dao of life and death later, junior." She coughed up blood again. Her lungs have really seen better days, huh. Well, she'd just have to grow new ones. "We need something to balance the scales - I will tie it up and use its fear like a weapon."
Jian Shizhe gave her a considering look, pursing his lips. In his eyes, she could see something approaching respect. Wang Yonghao scowled at her. "Tie it up? It's on fire!"
She scowled right back at him, and grabbed the goat that almost killed her by the neck, its horns slick with her own blood. "Who is the seamstress here, me or you? Go, get me the damn snake! I'll worry about how to tie it up myself."
She pulled her knife out of the goat's throat like a cork out of a bottle of spirit wine, and lifted it above her head, sucking the blood out. Earth spiritual energy, the best she could hope for, in her condition. Jian Shizhe stepped closer to her, readying his sword, and Junming waved their lantern, sending half of the ice swords into the smoke.
Wang Yonghao sighed, and went after the living snake. On the way there, he pulled her sword out of the ground, and tossed it back to her.
Tossing the empty goat aside, she knelt next to the corpse of the dead snake at her feet, readying her knife.
"I will need a minute," she said, "honorable cultivators, I hope you can manage without me."
Junming warbled something, waving their lantern again. More swords appeared, these ones spinning closer to them. Jian Shizhe gave her a dark look, but said nothing.
With her knife, she sliced into the snake, carefully peeling the skin away from the flesh underneath, and cutting it into a long ribbon. It didn't have to be perfect, as long as it didn't tear. The scales of the snake resisted the fire, and her sword could not cut into them - the knife only managing with great difficulty, by cutting from the inside out. Three Obediences Four Virtues noted the skin of the heavenly snake as an excellent sewing material, tough yet elastic - and even though she had no way to properly treat it in the middle of a fight, she hoped it could serve its purpose raw.
Less than a minute later, she held a long ribbon of snake skin, her rope control technique threading through it, bringing it into motion. Just in time, too, as Wang Yonghao tossed the living snake towards them. Terror rose in her mind, but at this point, it barely even registered. If anything, it felt invigorating.
Junming blasted the snake with ice and cold, and it slowed, fires on its body dying out for just a moment, letting her get the impromptu rope around it, tying it into knots. The snake hissed, and flared more fire from its skin, but it was all for naught - where any rope would have been burned to cinders, the skin of its own kind survived. Caught, yet kept alive - and now the tribulation was five on four.
"The Heavens want to kill me, fellow cultivators," she laughed, wheezing air out of her wounds. "So let the other beasts come. Let them make mistakes, terrified of their own Heavenly weapon. Unlike them, we are cultivators. What is a little terror to us?"
She grinned, raising her sword defiantly in the air.
"All we have to do is slaughter them like the cattle they truly are!" Her sword flew through the air, and ripped into the eye of the last fat, bloated pig, its snout dripping with drool and blood. It fell to the ground, dead, and Qian Shanyi called her weapon back to her, just barely managing to not fumble the catch. She breathed heavily, resting her hands on her knees. She felt more drained than she ever was in her entire life, and yet her soul sung in triumph.
Next to her, Jian Shizhe was standing, his hands resting calmly on the pommel of his sword. For all that he was covered in cuts and bruises, and she knew for a fact that his left arm was broken, he looked as if he had expected their victory all along. His left foot was missing, bitten off by one of the pigs, though he had cut open its stomach right away to retrieve it - with any luck, healers should still be able to reattach it. She was the one to apply a tourniquet after the fact.
Curls had curled up in a wide circle, sucking on the tip of her own tail. Here and there, her scales have been chipped and blackened - and Hui Yin was walking down her body, inspecting the damage. Out of them all, he was the most well put together.
Wang Yonghao stood on her opposite side, looking around nervously, not knowing what to expect. Junming just seemed tired, but when she gave them a look, they smiled, very slightly and deliberately. All around the hill she could see expectant faces, the smoke having long ago cleared by now.
Up above them, thunder sounded one last time, one crack after another, each louder than the one before it. Fifteen in total, for the fifteen bolts of lightning that had descended down upon them all.
And with the last crack, the sky had brightened once more.
All around the hill, cheers rang through the air. Cultivators, ordinary people, men and women, even children, all knew what it meant.
They had transcended the tribulation. Today, the Heavens had lost, and cultivators won.
The postmaster ascended the hill at a jog, followed by an unfamiliar cultivator and a pair of ordinary people - wearing the white robes of healers, carrying a large bag and a stretcher. She waited for them to come, not moving from her spot - after what she went through, they could be the ones to exert their legs.
"You see, Yonghao?" she said quietly, inclining her head in his direction, "Is it not satisfying?"
He looked at her strangely, but she could see he liked the adoration of the crowd too. "And now what?"
"Now?" she said, stretching out her arms and back. "Now, I get to see a proper healer… And then, we celebrate. Get as drunk as you want - today, you deserved it."
Author Note: Want to find out what the other heavenly beasts do? You can find a patreon-exclusive article about the tribulations written in one of the cultivator journals on my patreon, as well as four more chapters of the story.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. Want to talk about the Heavenly tribulation? It's the best place to be!
Thanks for reading!
