Yoshika sat up with a groan, swearing under her breath as she prepared to cultivate. She was a lot more self-conscious of her nudity now that she knew Elder Qin was observing her, but she didn’t have time to waste on modesty.

“Fuck my ancestors, can nothing ever be easy? I swear if I die here, we’re coming back as vengeful ghosts to haunt that perverted old man.”

“I can hear what you are saying.”

Yoshika made a rude gesture towards the sky. She didn’t give a shit about what that lecherous old bastard could or couldn’t hear. She was in a sour mood after being exploded by lightning, and knowing that it was about to happen again was making her testy.

She spared a glance up towards the sky, and saw the swirling thunder cloud gathering energy for another strike. A glowing orb of purple energy in the center that threatened to become another lightning bolt at any moment. She wouldn’t be caught by surprise, this time.

She cultivated as quickly as she could. The lightning strike—and her efforts to defend against it—had left the balance of mana in her surroundings in shambles, but she didn’t have the luxury of being choosey. She greedily absorbed every bit of energy she could reach, more than a little annoyed at the fact that the barrier had limited the reach of her domain. In the blink of an eye, she’d almost completely depleted the nearby mana—mostly lightning element, with some leftover bits of water and earth. Oh well, she’d just have to take the time to correct the imbalance later.

It seemed she had another moment before the lightning would strike, so she took the time to improve on her shield formation. The addition of a mana gathering circle to the array meant that it would draw light mana in from the environment—which would be graciously provided by the lightning strike. By itself, that would result in a shield of radiance which would do very little good against lightning, but if she powered it with her own earth mana—which she was currently overloaded on—it would become a metal-element shield that redirected lightning. Much more reliable and efficient than the destruction element she had been using before.

That had really only been a move of desperation, and she was incredibly lucky that it hadn’t just backfired on her. Just as she was wondering if she could somehow harness the leftover air mana, something caught her attention at the corner of her eye. The barrier that surrounded her—it had withstood the force of the lightning strike completely undamaged, and it was so thorough that it blocked even her domain. The barrier formation was completely beyond anything she could comprehend but—

She took a moment to burn each of the four points of the formation into her memory with Absolute Awareness. They were beyond her understanding now, but she’d be able to perfectly recall them later on for study. A potential asset for later, assuming she survived this trial.

As if to signal that it was ready, a rumble of thunder resounded from the cloud above, and Yoshika got herself into position, preparing to receive the next strike. The bolt flashed down towards her, and even with a fully realized Absolute Awareness, it was too fast for her to follow. Not too fast for her to react, though. She put everything she had into the shield formation, and the lightning bolt scattered as it struck the shield.

Unfortunately, though her clever modification to the formation had made it much more efficient, it wasn’t nearly as effective. While the shield stopped the lightning from invading and damaging her meridians, and redirected most of the heat, it did nothing to stop the thunderous impact of the lightning bolt. Yoshika could hardly believe how much damage she was sustaining just from the sound!

In a desperate attempt to mitigate the sonic force of the lightning bolt, she harnessed the leftover air-element mana and drew the only spell she could think of in the air, praying it would work. It took a few tries before she managed to cast the privacy spell by writing in the air with her own blood. The greyish field of air dampened the roar of the lightning bolt to a manageable level, and Yoshika started circulating her qi in order to heal the most life-threatening injuries.

Her essence was swiftly running dry, and the shield formation was beginning to fail. If the shield faltered before the lightning did, then Yoshika was going to have to take whatever remained of the bolt head-on and hope that she could stave off death long enough for her to get treatment elsewhere. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but prepared herself for the worst. If the shield dropped, then she would let Jia’s body get hit first, since it could stave off the internal damage more effectively.

As luck would have it, the second lightning bolt was weaker than the first, and soon ran out of power. Yoshika fell to her knees, gasping for breath. She cast her gaze desperately towards the heavens, and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw the thundercloud slowly beginning to dissipate, it’s energy spent.

Yoshika was spent, too. She nearly collapsed to the ground, barely keeping her bodies steady by leaning them against each other. Her injuries were a hair’s breadth away from being immediately mortal, and as it stood she would still probably die without expedient treatment. She bled from her eyes, ears, noses, and mouths, and her bodies were scorched. With her last ounce of strength, Yoshika brought a cloth sheet out from her dimensional ring to cover herself with before she slipped into unconsciousness.

Qin Zhao had gotten enough of an eyeful already.

Jia woke up on an unfamiliar cot, blinking in confusion as she oriented herself. She sat up and looked around to get her bearings, causing the cloth sheet she was under to drop—she held it back up to her chest when she realized that she still wasn’t dressed. After a moment, she realized that she was in the medical pavilion and decided to take stock of herself.

With a moment of concentration she found that her internal injuries had completely healed, and her skin was free of burns or blemishes. Her hair was entirely gone, but a bit of Eui’s Tranquility of the Verdant Marsh could fix that—they’d tested it before.

Speaking of which—Jia could sense Eui within her domain. She was in another room and had woken up at the same time as Jia. Eui had not wasted any time whatsoever before regenerating her hair, and Jia felt a little bit jealous.

“Don’t be silly, Jia. Here—”

Yoshika quickly circulated some of the wood qi from Eui’s dantian through Jia’s body, sprouting a shaggy mop of white hair that went down to her shoulders. Jia blinked, then cocked her head and frowned.

“Eui, can you hear me?”

“Of course, what’s the matter?”

“What just happened?”

Eui frowned, rubbing her own chin as she considered it before shrugging.

“We fixed your hair. Well, regrew it anyway. Properly fixing it can come later.”

Jia smiled, looking forward to having Eui take care of her hair. It had been kind of a pain at first, but she’d grown fond of their routine. She shook her head—she was getting distracted from the matter at hand.

“I meant the way we just kind of became Yoshika for a second without even thinking about it.”

Eui cocked her head to the side.

“We did?”

“Eui, stop messing with me, I know you remember it. You were there.”

Eui cackled as Jia called her out.

“Okay, you got me. I don’t know, it just kind of felt natural.”

Jia sighed and shook her head. It really did feel natural—for that matter, so did the fact that she was talking to Eui telepathically from another room...or the fact that she could vividly feel every movement that Eui made—and also see through her eyes now that she thought about it. Yoshika lifted Eui’s arm experimentally, then realized that her mind had become one again when she did so. Jia and Eui both frowned. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.

With a sweep of her domain, Jia sensed that the medical pavilion was almost entirely empty except for her and Eui. She sensed another student in the reception area, fiddling with some alchemical concoction. That wasn’t unusual—the medical pavilion was mostly just a place where medical supplies were kept and students of alchemy and herbalism could practice their craft. There weren’t really doctors or healers on staff—just whoever happened to be volunteering. The medical supplies were free for anyone to use.

That worked just fine for her, as Jia got out of bed and withdrew a change of clothes from her dimensional ring. Some simple undergarments went with a pastel pink skirt over a light green jacket. Eui smirked as Jia dressed herself.

“Aw, and here I was hoping you’d just stay naked for a bit.”

Jia blushed bright red.

“Stop looking!”

“They’re your eyes—you stop looking!”

Jia huffed indignantly. It was far from the first time Eui had seen her naked, but Jia wasn’t accustomed to being ogled—least of all through her own eyes. Eui hung her head a bit.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”

“I know you were just teasing, Eui—it’s fine. We already knew we wouldn’t have any privacy from each other and you are my g—my girlfriend. It’s fine.”

Jia finished dressing and made her way to Eui’s room. She summoned another set of clothing.

“Here, it’s a Qin style dress, but it’s all I’ve got left.”

Eui accepted the clothes and started dressing with no regard for modesty.

“Where is everyone?”

Jia shrugged, trying—and failing—not to blush. She couldn’t even avert her eyes, since she’d just see everything through Eui’s anyway. It felt silly—she’d had no problem bathing with Eui before, so why was it different now?

“I don’t know, but I’m guessing the instructors are going to want to have words with us again.”

Eui chuckled sardonically.

“It’s not our fault that heaven itself tried to smite us.”

Eui paused as she fastened the last part of her dress. It had a pleated red skirt with an orange floral brocade pattern in a stripe around the hem, and a yellow jacket with the same floral brocade pattern over top.

“How seasonal. Where did you get this?”

“I stole it from Yue back when she was using my wardrobe.”

Eui snickered and shook her head.

“I thought it felt a bit loose in the chest.”

Jia rolled her eyes. The dress fit just fine—Jia had already adjusted it ages ago.

“Let’s just go get this over with. I hope Elder Qin isn’t too mad at us for...”

She trailed off as she remembered cursing and gesturing at him. Eui froze, a grimace forming on her face.

“Oh, fuck.”

The two emerged from the pavilion, startling the poor student manning the front entrance. A half spirit boy with the features of an otter.

“Oh! You’re awake. Uh, I was told to inform the deans if you regained consciousness. If you could wait here, I’ll just go get—”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Elder Qin’s imperious tone cut the boy off as he materialized out of nowhere in his usual fashion.

“Miss An, Miss Lee. Congratulations both on your breakthrough, and on the survival of your first heavenly tribulation. Follow me—there are some matters that need to be discussed.”

Jia and Eui exchanged worried looks and sighed with resignation as they followed Elder Qin to their inevitable doom.

‘Doom’ turned out to be nothing more than a debriefing about what had happened during and immediately after Jia and Eui’s breakthrough. Their breakthrough had been highly unusual and the deans felt the need to confirm a few things. First, they all agreed that they had not somehow skipped the third stage and gone straight to the xiantian realm, since they still couldn’t fully sense or manipulate divine essence—though Hwang grumbled that he’d rather spend the time doing some proper tests before coming to any conclusions.

Elder Qin also noted that though the first bolt was excessively strong even for what a normal xiantian breakthrough would experience, the second was much more typical. The most unusual thing about their tribulation—aside from the fact that it happened at all—was the number of strikes.

“For example, a typical breakthrough into the xiantian realm would experience nine strikes of strength approximately equal to the second strike you suffered.”

Jia paled at that—there was no way she would have been able to survive nine of those bolts in a row, not even if they were all as weak as the second one. She looked between the stoic faces of her instructors.

“Why does that happen? I thought I must have offended some lightning god because of my Lightning God Transformation style.”

Ienaga held a hand up to hide a smirk, but Hwang was much more open about laughing. Jia flushed with embarrassment, but Elder Qin answered her with a straight face.

“The true reason is not known, and it is the subject of much debate among immortal communities. My venerable ancestor, the God-Emperor, claims that it is the cleansing fire of the heavens purging the impurity of mortal flesh and mind, and testing the strength of the pure soul.”

Magus Hwang audibly scoffed, and Qin shot him a cold glare before returning his attention to Jia and Eui.

“As you can see, not everyone agrees. Even within the empire, there are those with their own ideas of what the divine tribulation might be. In truth, while there are patterns that can be observed, very little is known about the phenomenon.”

Magus Hwang nodded.

“On that, at least, we can agree.”

After that, the discussion mostly turned to explanations for the girls’ benefit. They had been meditating for three weeks before the cloud began to form, then another two before the bolts struck, and finally a week of recovery afterwards. Jia was surprised that their recovery had taken so long—though considering just how severe both her internal and external injuries had been, it was already lucky they had survived at all.

Eventually, they were dismissed, and sent back home. It all felt a little bit anticlimactic, to just wake up after all that and then go back about their business as if nothing had happened. Then again, it had already been a week since their breakthrough, and Jia supposed that their friends had probably gotten back to their own routines by now—

“Jia! Eui! You’re back!”

Her thoughts were interrupted by Rika tackle-hugging her the second she stepped through the door. Despite Rika being so much taller than her, Jia didn’t even budge.

“Wow! You’ve gotten strong!”

Jia didn’t really know what to say to that, but Eui just stepped up and flicked Rika in the forehead hard enough for her head to snap backwards and send her stumbling.

“Hands off!”

Jia knew that Eui wasn’t actually feeling any jealousy—this was just their way of being playful. Rika rubbed her forehead.

“Ow! That one really hurt! I guess you really did break through, huh?”

Eunae and Yue appeared from around the corner, and Yue scoffed at Rika.

“Of course they did! Do you think they’d have survived that tribulation otherwise?”

Rika shrugged.

“Honestly wouldn’t even put it past them at this point.”

Eunae covered her mouth with a sleeve and tittered playfully.

“True. They really have been quite remarkable.”

Jia blushed a bit, scratching her cheek, while Eui regarded Rika critically.

“Speaking of remarkable, it looks like you made some pretty good progress of your own. Congratulations on your own breakthrough and your domain, Rika.”

Rika put her hands on her hips and stuck her chest out proudly.

“Ahaha! My new style is starting to show results too. I’ll be catching up to you in no time!”

“Maybe if we go into a coma for a year.”

The girls all giggled before moving into the living room and catching up on everything that had happened over the last month and a half. Dae was still in closed door training, which was a little worrying when the tournament was set to start in a month and a half, but Jia had confidence in him. The other teams had made significant progress as well, and Hayakawa had been even more invincible than usual after her breakthrough. Apparently she had at one point taken on her entire team and Yuuko’s at once in a spar and won. Hopefully, over the next month and a half, Jia and Eui would have enough time to explore their own new capabilities and overcome her strength.

As the afternoon turned to evening, eventually Rika and Eunae excused themselves for the night. Jia and Eui saw them off at the door.

“See you tomorrow! We’re going to have to seriously ramp up the training to get ready for the tournament!”

Jia chuckled at Rika’s enthusiasm but nodded in agreement.

“Definitely! Oh, I almost forgot—what were you guys doing here, anyway?”

Eunae cocked her head as she answered.

“Actually, we meant to check on you at the medical pavilion, but you weren’t there. We must have just missed you, so we thought we’d wait for you back here.”

Rika laughed loudly.

“Haha! Yue’s been calling on us to go visit you every day, and she practically begged us to stick around when we found out you were awake.”

Yue’s face turned red as she put her hands on her hips and pouted.

“I did not!”

That just made Rika laugh even harder until Eunae dragged her off by the ear, bowing a polite farewell. As they went back inside, Yue had her arms crossed, still pouting. She glanced at Jia briefly before biting her thumbnail. Jia looked askance at her.

“Is something wrong, Yue?”

Yue sighed before turning to face Jia.

“I thought I explicitly told you not to destroy my garden with a heavenly tribulation.”

Jia scratched the back of her head and chuckled awkwardly—she was pretty sure that wasn’t what was on Yue’s mind, but she wasn’t about to pry.

“Well—”

Before she could say anything more, Yue surprised her with a tight embrace. It only lasted a second or so before she stepped back again, looking off to the side and red as a beet.

“I—I’m glad you’re alright.”

Without another word, Yue hastily retreated to her room and closed the door behind her, leaving Jia behind in stunned silence. Where had that come from? Eui stepped up beside Jia with her hands on her hips frowning.

“Where’s my hug?”

“Snrk!”