The tribulation was a battle on two fronts. I needed to harness the energy the lightning barrage dealt, using it to shatter and reform my Dantian, and I needed to open Dharmic channels that mirrored my platinum spirit root. I had undergone this process to reform my Dantian during each breakthrough so I was sure I could succeed.

But my soul ocean would also be tested, the waves of liquid Qi that had accumulated were more than simply liquid that was reacting to the storm clouds that had formed, they were part of my astral body.

Each wave that formed across those waters represented a memory. The soul ocean the sum aggregate of my experiences. Memories of who I was and how I became the person I coalesced, each drop of liquid Qi forming and collecting into the waters of my inner sea. A reservoir of potential and possibilities.

Normally the waters were still, my thoughts quiet, progressing in a linear fashion, one after the other. But the Heavens would not allow just anyone to survive. It was the reason there were so many Body Refinement Realm cultivators and so few Qi Gathering Realm cultivators. Men and women that didn't have the self-assurance to test themselves against the Heaven's, chancing death, simply didn't make the attempt.

Cultivators would risk facing their tribulation without an Elder to guide and guard them, not by choice, for the vast majority of people the Elder's refused that request. Not because they were capricious or jealous, but because they had tried to guide the individual against making the attempt. They believed the person would fail, not ready to test their metal, so denied them access to the tribulation grounds the Sects and Clans controlled.

There were ways around these restrictions. Metal steles that had been created for wandering cultivators, natural outcroppings that could be visited. There would be no one to protect you as you made the attempt if you visited one of these sites, but the weight of tradition and history made these places sacrosanct, almost consecrated as holy ground. Very few would attempt to interfere with a cultivator facing their tribulation in an area where the Heavens were so active and converged time after time.

Almost no one survived these unguided attempts, but there were enough that hope existed for those cultivators lacking in training and talent to make the attempt. Stories of broken cultivators testing their fortunes and surviving and gaining immense power. The folklore spread and could not be silenced. It drew enough people that the laws of chance meant that for all those that failed, at least a few would prosper.

If I was forced to confront every memory that each wave represented at once, there would be no way to survive. But there was structure to the chaos that was churning before me. The waves crashing into the island of serenity that I had created, those waters breaking and rejoining the ocean's depths. But for those that were large enough to crash over the island, and reach where I was waiting, the memories became more.

I was forced to relive those experiences, but there was a texture to them, a dimensionality that didn't exist when I'd lived originally. Regrets over paths not taken were added, creating nuance that required further examination about and how my life would have diverged if I'd made different choices.

The decision not to attend college. I believed I'd had no real choice at the time. I was pregnant with my first child soon after graduating from high school and had placed the importance of starting a family over anything else. But there had been a way to have both. I could have attended part-time, relied on my parents and a new husband to help with the baby as I earned a degree on-line.

How my life would have diverged if I had taken that path was filled with new memories of stability and resilience. My husband wouldn't have lost his business, my ability to earn enough money to shore up a downturn in the economy would have been enough to see us through those tough times.

If I had continued my education, we could have given our children a better life, ensured that they had a better education, and showed them, by example, what you could do even when times were tough. It would have been demonstrative proof that overcoming adversity was possible.

But that path would have changed the family dynamics and makeup. We wouldn't have had the same number of children. My youngest son would never have been born. His gentle nature would never have had the chance to blossom. My husband would have lived longer, but we would have ended in divorce.

I watched as more and more possible points of divergent timelines demonstrated that the path not taken had its own peril and pitfalls. There was no one perfect life, and a life lived without pain was insular, anemic, and lifeless. You were unable to appreciate the joyful moments in life, no way to grow as a person if there weren't obstacles to overcome and sorrows to share.

Each memory relived brought a new understanding and loosened a knot of emotion that I had buried, pain that had served no purpose, dead weight that was limiting me and my path forward. This phase of the tribulation would see all of those unwarranted emotions cast aside.

I had spent a year honing my body, rebuilding myself on the cellular level, gaining such control over Qi so that it was a part of me, replacing the mitochondria to supply the energy each cell needed to divide and replicate. The Qi further repairing my telomeres, extending a life already fated to last centuries, gaining more time each time I ascended to the next realm.

I cast aside the emotional dead weight, the regrets, and sorrows of my past life until I came to Digi-verse and their betrayal. As I reflected on the outcome of that encounter, if I hadn't signed that contract and undergone the procedure to digitize my soul, I realized I'd had no real choice. I was facing death no matter the outcome of that betrayal.

The Heavens were merciless, and they showed me that I would have died in a matter of days if I'd refused and gainsaid the offer they had made. I would have died in pain and agony as the medicines that I had been taking to arrest and control my condition failed, no longer able to stem the inevitability of death.

Digi-verse had betrayed me, but their betrayal had given me exactly what they had advertised. A new life, one of many, new worlds to explore, new Universal mechanics to enjoy. New friends to make, new people to fall in love with, and new families to give birth to and raise.

Digi-verse had given me the gift of immortality, or at least a close proximity. With time dilation, seconds became days, days became centuries, and weeks became eons. There may come a time when the Artificial Intelligence fails, a time when the platforms that were seeded throughout the galaxy can no longer be repaired and failed. But even if that happened within the next decade, the next century, I would have lived thousands of lives and millions of years.

Their betrayal was behind me, what they did and why they did it, no longer my concern. I had the gift of life and the afterlife that they had promised, even if they hadn't meant to fulfill that promise. And I took some comfort in the knowledge that the chances that I would exist long past Digi-verse's failure were almost certain, and Karmic justice.

I was able to face Heaven's tribulation because I had taken a leap of faith and believed Digi-verse. And my faith may have been tarnished, they may have meant to deceive me from the beginning. But for all their treachery, they had been proven right.

And I was reborn. And there was a chance my Dharmic Body would be realized.

As long as I could survive Heaven's tribulation.