NOVEL NEXT 160: An Anxious Held Breath
Settled into position, Lin Songmei sat a fair distance away from Yan Mingqing. Not too close, but also not too far. If it was inside, they’d be across the room from each other. Facing each Mingqing, Songmei gave a small smile and wave as they waited for Liu Xueli to give them the signal.
As a couple minutes passed, Songmei and Mingqing craned their necks and watched as another vehicle flew over. Descending and landing on the ground with a soft hiss, two new figures walked out: Xiao Feng and Yuan Muyun.
Surprised, Songmei did a bit of a double take. She wasn’t opposed to having more people hang around. The party later, on the other hand, was organized by Xueli, so she could invite whoever she wanted.
Songmei was more surprised they even showed up. Watching some disciples go through their tribulation didn’t seem like ultra-exciting entertainment after all.
With Xiao Feng and Yuan Muyun joining Han Youhong, Wang Taigang, and Zhao Liying at the table Xueli had set up, Xueli walked back over. Standing on a small rock equidistant from the two areas Songmei and Mingqing sat in, Xueli let out a long sigh and looked at the two of them in turn.
Giving the two a thumbs-up each, Xueli backed off towards the table of food and mouthed “you two got this!” as Songmei and Mingqing closed their eyes and focused inward.
“Doing them at the same time, huh...” Yuan Muyun commented as Xueli came back within earshot. “It’s rare to see. Any specific reason?”
Spinning on her heel and disappearing, Xueli reappeared in one of the seats at the table facing the two disciples. “Intuition told me too. You might not know, but these two do... almost everything together.”
“Really...?” Yuan Muyun raised her eyebrows, nodding with an intrigued glance at the clouds now gathering overhead. “I haven’t heard too much about these two, Taigang do you have any thought-... Taigang? What’s wrong?”
With Youhong, Taigang, and Liying all suppressing the urge to laugh, Yuan Muyun looked back towards Xueli and Xiao Feng with bewildered eyes. Xiao Feng, with a shrug and a knowing glance, raised his hands. “Don’t ask me. I only know a little more than you.”
Placing his hand on his master’s shoulder, Taigang interrupted while trying to speak between laughs. “We just... find it funny. To us, Songmei and Mingqing go through daily life attached at the hip. They’re literally always together, so it’d only be natural for them to go through the tribulation together.”
Hesitating before glancing over at the two girls once more, all Yuan Muyun could say was “Interesting,” before falling silent.
“Well,” Xiao Feng continued the conversation, patting Youhong on the back a few times. “Watching this will be good for you. Once you see it once, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. The atmosphere, the power, and more. Of course, the strength will vary from person to person, the heavens decide that on their own.”
“The classic thing you see in novels? Where having a stronger cultivation leads to a stronger tribulation?” Youhong looked up at the sky, furrowing his eyebrows as clouds continued to gather and darken. He didn’t have much experience with tribulations—exactly zero, in fact—but the clouds really were taking their time gathering.
“Yeah, you got it,” Xiao Feng agreed. “Cultivation novels have made our jobs so much easier these days. I barely have to do any explaining.”
“Please keep explaining things.” Youhong rolled his eyes as Xiao Feng leaned back and put his hands in his pockets.
“Just watch and you’ll see,” Xiao Feng laughed as arcs of lightning began to appear in the sky.
With the tribulation taking its sweet time before getting started, everyone in the area fell silent as the faint sound of buzzing filled the area.
It wasn’t long though before it started. The first bolt fell with a crash. Appearing without any warning or signal, the tree trunk-like bolt disappeared as fast as it came, leaving the ground below lined with faint cracks.
With the bolts jumping around and forming in the clouds, the bolts began falling in a rhythmic heartbeat. Each subsequent bolt fell with more and more power while lasting for longer and longer.
Looking over at Xueli who had her eyes glued to the scene, Yuan Muyun nodded with a knowing expression. Having guided a number of disciples in the past, Yuan Muyun was well aware of the anxiety a master would go through as their disciple went through a tribulation.
Yuan Muyun, herself, still teared up and looked on in worry every time, even after close to a dozen disciples.
Passing some tissues, Yuan Muyun motioned for Xueli to dab her red eyes of the tears beginning to form. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry, I can tell, your disciples will be fine.”
Clenching the tissues in her hand, Xueli chewed on her bottom lip as another lightning bolt fell. Yuan Muyun’s words were great, but Xueli couldn’t stop the emotions no matter how she tried. Worry just plagued her like a mosquito on a hot summer night.
Not to brag or anything, but Xueli had one of the more powerful first tribulations recorded in the sect’s history, not top of the top given the history of the sect, but still up there. Xueli had also been around to witness some of the other most powerful recent tribulations—a recent example being the crazy bonkers one Yan Mingliang had.
Even having seen those, though, Xueli’s mouth dried and hands clammed as she watched Songmei and Mingqing’s tribulation. As far as Xueli could tell, there was an aspect of additive force going on, where their tribulations were feeding off each other, but they were both... strong. Heart-rumbling, blood-rushing, type of strong.
Without the power to stop the heavens though, Xueli could only sit there, counting the bolts, dabbing her eyes, and clenching her fist as the shower of blinding lightning continued to fall.
Counting out the last few bolts, Xueli looked up, shaking her head and furrowing her eyebrows as the last bolt geared up to fall. Her two disciples already looked worse for wear, Xueli hadn’t seen any blood yet—which was good because blood on the first tribulation never boded well for a disciple’s future—but she could tell they were roughed up a little with their clothes getting a little ripped up.
If anything, the heavens were kind as to how they let the lightning bolts fall. If anything, they were just floods of Qi to test a cultivator’s body and internal system with an added dosage of pain. Unlike normal lightning, tribulation lightning didn’t cause fires, incinerate clothes, or torch a person’s hair.
Seeing a pair of twin white-gold dragons coiling in the sky with sparks arcing across their scales—one for Songmei and one for Mingqing—Xueli inhaled as it screamed towards the ground with an earth-shattering roar. Crashing down on top of the disciples, each dragon’s head disappeared as the rest of its body followed suit.
With the last bolt falling, Xueli and the rest of the party squinted their eyes as each dragon began emanating a blinding, white-hot, radiant glow.
