Chapter 55 — Heavenly Tribulation

The extraction team sprinted out of the area. Using the vans would have been too slow in this terrain, and each of them possessed a movement technique to enable quick escapes — this was part of the reason why they had been chosen for this mission. In case of danger, they had a high chance of escaping before getting into serious danger, or at least escaping whilst injured enough to pass on a message for backup.

Lin Che was still frozen in place, and soon only he, Shen Bowen, and Elder Mao remained in a small radius around the portal. Even Yang Zichen had fled with the rest of the team.

The stormclouds darkened as they descended down a winding arc closer to Lin Che, but they were still firmly in the sky. There was a flash of blue before the first bolt came down and struck Lin Che directly in the crown of his head.

He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the wheat field, half-panicking. Swallow Returns to the Nest instinctively activated in an attempt to dodge the lightning strike, but, since some mysterious force locked Lin Che in place, it instead disrupted his emotional regulation and filled his body with misplaced adrenaline that had no way out.

The wheat around him was burning.

“—what.” Shen Bowen’s voice came out very quietly.

Elder Mao stood next to him with his hands folded behind his back, watching Lin Che. His face wore an expression that would have been illegible to most people, save for those who had known him for decades. Shen Bowen read his face and simply nodded.

The second bolt came.

Lin Che’s head dropped slightly at the impact, before he raised it again.

The strike tempered his meridians as the bolt coursed through his entire body. It wove its way directly through each pathway and left its mark in Lin Che’s cultivation base. And then, it began attracting the grain once again, all into one dense amalgamation of goop.

“Is he going to survive this?” asked Shen Bowen.

“The strength of a Heavenly Tribulation is proportional to Qi volume,” replied Elder Mao.

“I am aware.”

“Concerningly, this seems to be his first ever one.”

“This cannot be his first one. The sheer volume alone—”

“Look closely — the boy has no method of defending himself from the strikes. He’s not even attempting to resist… I’m afraid this may be his death bed,” sighed Elder Mao.

“At least we’ve got what we initially wanted out of him,” said Shen Bowen. “Though it’s a real shame since he promised us much more than we expected.”

The crackles in the sky suddenly stopped. The clouds were gearing up for one final attack with whatever remaining strength they could muster.

Lin Che popped back into awareness.

He realised now that the Heavenly Tribulation he was experiencing was a genuine life-or-death moment for him. Each bolt that had struck him injured him both internally and externally. Externally was fine, after all, his physical wounds never looped back with him.

But internally… his cultivation and his memories were the only things that came back with him. If he were permanently crippled by the Heavens, he’d only have his memories to rely on and somehow have to go through everything he’d experienced at a hellish difficulty without any cultivation to defend himself. Or, it could be potentially worse.

He wasn’t sure if his looping ability was tied to his cultivation or not, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to risk any chances.

Lin Che pushed the Hollow Bell Resonance to its absolute maximum diffusion. The principle was sound enough: flood the surrounding air with resonant Qi until it formed a medium dense enough to catch and scatter the discharge. If it then absorbed enough of the impact, his body should hopefully be able to handle the remaining energy.

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The problem was that it cost an extraordinary amount of Qi to maintain, and his reserves were already considerably drained. His meridians, freshly expanding and half-consolidated from the lightning, were limiting his output capacity, as the familiar routes he had were now malformed from the previous two bolts.

The final bolt was much thicker than the previous ones. It looked, instead, like a spear from the heavens or a homing missile aimed directly at Lin Che.

The umbrella of resonant Qi scattered part of the impact, but the remainder hit him in the chest and he toppled sideways into the burning wheat.