Inside the lightning gap, there was no wind.
There was no heat.
There was no sound.
It felt like the world had been paused between two heartbeats, and even the idea of "before" and "after" was far away. Qi Shan Wei stood on nothing that still felt solid. The space around him was white, but it was not light. It was absence—like the sky had erased everything else so only one choice could remain.
In front of him, Tian Lei stood like a man made from a storm that never ends.
His eyes were calm, but they were not kind. They were like the sky itself looking down at a small creature and deciding if it should be allowed to keep breathing.
"Selection has a price," Tian Lei said again, his voice heavy and slow.
Qi Shan Wei did not bow. He did not act proud either. He simply stood straight, his posture clean and emperor-like, as if he was meeting a ruler from another throne.
"What is the price?" Shan Wei asked.
Tian Lei's gaze moved, just slightly, toward Heavenpiercer at Shan Wei's side.
Then the World Elder looked back at Shan Wei's face, and his voice became even lower.
"Not treasure," Tian Lei said.
A pause.
"Not pills."
Another pause.
"Not armies."
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed by the smallest amount. "Then it is like the Bell."
For the first time, Tian Lei's expression changed—barely. Not surprise. More like agreement.
"Bell collects time," Tian Lei said. "Sky collects truth."
Qi Shan Wei did not speak.
He listened.
That alone made the lightning gap feel strange, because most people could not "listen" in a place where time was thin. They would panic. They would beg. They would scream.
Shan Wei did none of that.
Tian Lei lifted one finger.
A thin line appeared in the white space, like a lightning path drawn by an invisible blade. It did not crackle. It did not roar. It simply existed, and its existence carried pressure that could crush a soul.
"Walk," Tian Lei said.
Qi Shan Wei looked at the line.
He saw it instantly.
This was not normal movement.
This was a path made of lightning gaps—tiny spaces where cause and effect did not hold hands. If he stepped wrong, he would not be injured.
He would be removed.
Like the elder outside the dome. Like a name that never existed.
Qi Shan Wei's calm did not change, but his mind moved fast, clean, and cold.
Heavenstep Flash.
Flashbreak Interval.
He had not fully built them yet, but the truth was already here.
Lightning does not wait for time to approve.
It moves first.
Time only catches up later.
Qi Shan Wei raised his hand and drew one prismatic line in the air. It was small, simple, and controlled. It did not look like a grand technique.
But inside the line was structure.
Logic.
Order.
His formation mastery did what it always did.
It made chaos behave.
He anchored the air around his feet with a thin Heaven-Anchor pattern—not to block lightning, but to give his step a "home" so the gap could not swallow him for no reason.
Then he took one step.
The white space rippled.
A soundless thunder pressure passed through his bones.
For one heartbeat, he felt his blood forget how to flow.
For one heartbeat, he felt his name become light.
Then his foot landed, clean.
He was still there.
Tian Lei's eyes watched him like a judge watching a blade cut.
"Again," Tian Lei said.
Qi Shan Wei took another step.
The gap tried to turn.
It tried to throw him into a place where he would never arrive.
Qi Shan Wei's prismatic line shifted, smooth and calm, like a ruler adjusting a map.
He stepped again.
He stayed.
A third step.
A fourth.
Each step felt like walking over a cliff that did not stop.
Each step demanded that he be precise, not brave.
If he tried to rely on speed, he would die.
If he tried to rely on force, he would die.
He had to rely on understanding.
That was why Tian Lei was testing him.
The last step landed.
Qi Shan Wei stood at the end of the lightning line.
Tian Lei did not praise him.
He only spoke a simple truth.
"You can exist between strikes," Tian Lei said.
Qi Shan Wei replied calmly, "That is why you called me."
Tian Lei's gaze sharpened. "I did not call you."
The white space trembled.
Not from anger.
From reality shifting.
"The Convergence began early," Tian Lei said. "Because something touched time-law in a way it should not."
Qi Shan Wei's eyes turned colder. "The Bell."
Tian Lei nodded once. "Bell remembers. Sky remembers. When law is scarred, other laws wake up to see who did it."
Qi Shan Wei understood at once.
The Court had tried to use Bell-Law like a weapon.
The Thousand Masks Pavilion had tried to sell a "clean kill."
The Silent Bell envoy had arrived to "collect debt."
And now the sky itself had come to make sure the world did not break.
But the sky was not here to save people out of kindness.
It was here to protect the system.
Tian Lei lifted his hand.
A thin thunder mark appeared above his palm, spinning slowly like a small storm trapped in a circle.
"This is the selection," Tian Lei said. "The sky wants a manager."
Qi Shan Wei's voice stayed calm. "A manager for lightning."
"Lightning hates control," Tian Lei said. "But it respects laws that do not lie."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"It respects systems that do not bend."
Qi Shan Wei did not answer immediately.
Because he heard something else.
Not sound.
A pressure at the edge of the lightning gap.
Like someone knocking on a door that should not exist.
Qi Shan Wei turned his head slightly.
And he felt it.
The bell.
Even inside the lightning gap, the bell's "memory" was reaching in.
It could not enter fully.
But it could listen.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes hardened. "The Bell is hunting me even here."
Tian Lei's voice did not change. "Bell hunts a name."
Qi Shan Wei's fingers tightened around Heavenpiercer's grip. "Not my present name."
"Not your mask," Tian Lei said.
Then he looked at Shan Wei with the first true warning he had given.
"If Bell takes your true name," Tian Lei said, "you will not die."
Qi Shan Wei's calm voice turned colder. "I will be rewritten."
Tian Lei nodded once.
Outside this gap, that rewriting would not only affect Shan Wei.
It would affect everyone connected to him.
His puppet.
His dragon.
And the six consort threads that were trembling above the Court platform.
Tian Lei spoke again, slow and heavy.
"The sky will not let Bell rewrite the manager," he said. "Because then lightning becomes someone else's tool."
Qi Shan Wei's gaze sharpened. "So you want me to accept the selection before the Bell can steal the right to claim me."
Tian Lei's eyes did not blink. "Yes."
Qi Shan Wei understood the hidden trap.
If he accepted lightning authority now, he would become a piece of the sky's system.
That would protect him from being rewritten.
But it would also put a crown on him that the heavens could "recognize."
A crown that other ancient laws would react to.
A crown that would pull bigger enemies out of sleep.
Qi Shan Wei stayed calm anyway.
Because he did not fear bigger enemies.
He feared losing what was his.
He spoke one clean question.
"What is the price?" Shan Wei asked again.
Tian Lei lifted two fingers.
"First," Tian Lei said, "you will take a thunder mark."
Qi Shan Wei's eyes stayed steady.
"Second," Tian Lei said, "you will pay the Convergence."
Qi Shan Wei's voice stayed level. "With what?"
Tian Lei's eyes turned slightly downward, as if he could see through Shan Wei's chest and into the lines tied to his heart.
"Years," Tian Lei said.
"Memory."
"Threads."
The same three.
The same list the Silent Bell envoy had spoken.
Qi Shan Wei did not move, but the air around him felt heavier.
So the sky and the bell were not truly enemies.
They were different hands of the same giant system.
One collected time-debt.
One collected truth-debt.
And both would demand payment.
Qi Shan Wei's voice stayed calm, but it cut.
"I will not pay with her thread."
Tian Lei stared at him. "Her?"
Qi Shan Wei did not explain. He did not need to. His intent was clear.
No thread would be taken.
Not Ling Xueyao's.
Not any of the six.
Tian Lei's eyes narrowed like thunder sharpening into a blade. "Then choose."
The white space shook.
The thunder mark above Tian Lei's palm spun faster.
Then the gap flashed—
And Qi Shan Wei saw something.
Not a vision like a dream.
A memory that was not his.
He saw a battlefield of glass mountains.
He saw lightning hunting down people mid-thought.
He saw cities burning under storm law.
He saw a dragon screaming at the sky, furious and proud.
He saw a puppet army moving in thunder-timed bursts.
And he saw himself standing above it all, calm, serious, with a crown made of prismatic thunder.
Then the vision snapped away.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes stayed steady.
"I choose years," Shan Wei said.
Tian Lei's eyes narrowed. "How many?"
Qi Shan Wei's voice did not shake. "One."
The white space paused.
Even Tian Lei's thunder pressure hesitated.
"One year," Tian Lei said, slow. "From your life."
Qi Shan Wei's tone stayed calm. "Take it."
Tian Lei's gaze sharpened. "You are not afraid."
Qi Shan Wei answered honestly, without drama. "I am not paying with what belongs to others."
That answer carried weight.
It was leadership.
Not speech.
Not slogans.
A choice that costs him, not them.
Tian Lei lifted his hand.
The thunder mark moved.
It did not fly like an attack.
It simply appeared on Qi Shan Wei's chest, right above the place where the bell's prismatic lines had tried to sink in.
A thin lightning crown-shape.
Small.
Clean.
Terrifying.
Qi Shan Wei felt something leave him.
Not blood.
Not qi.
Time.
It felt like a door inside him closed, and behind it was a year he would never walk again.
His face did not change.
But his eyes became sharper.
Because when time is taken from someone like him, the remaining time becomes more precious.
Tian Lei spoke.
"Primordial Lightning Authority: Seed."
The words pressed into Shan Wei's bones like a law stamp.
Qi Shan Wei felt the sky "recognize" him.
Lightning no longer felt like an element.
It felt like a road.
A road he could walk.
But the moment the sky recognized him—
The bell recognized him too.
The white space trembled.
A thin silver line appeared at the edge of the lightning gap, like the Time-Debt Ledger was forcing itself to be seen even here.
Letters formed in ancient light.
PAYMENT REGISTERED.
Then, a second line formed under it.
NAME REQUIRED.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
Tian Lei's voice turned colder. "Bell is not satisfied."
Qi Shan Wei's grip tightened on Heavenpiercer. "It wants more."
Tian Lei nodded once. "It wants your true name to lock the debt forever."
Qi Shan Wei's calm became heavier, like a mountain lowering onto the world.
"No."
The word did not echo here.
But it shook the white space anyway.
The ledger letters flickered, like an offended judge.
NAME REQUIRED.
The letters sharpened.
The lightning gap trembled as if time and sky were pulling in opposite directions again.
Tian Lei's gaze turned sharp. "If Bell forces the name open, the dome will suffer. Your people will suffer."
Qi Shan Wei understood.
Outside, the Court barrier would weaken.
The bell would pull on threads again.
Ling Xueyao would be dragged closer to awakening.
Drakonix would push his thunderflame too hard.
Zhen would overload.
And the world would watch.
Qi Shan Wei did what he always did.
He did not beg.
He did not roar.
He built a system.
He lifted Heavenpiercer.
Then he moved—
Not faster.
Not stronger.
Not louder.
He moved between moments.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, his body vanished from the place where time expected him to be.
He did not "teleport."
He stepped into the Flashbreak gap he had just learned.
Heavenpiercer's tip touched the silver line of the ledger.
Not the words.
Not the paper.
The rule behind it.
Tian Lei's eyes widened for the first time.
The bell's line screamed without sound.
Qi Shan Wei's blade did not swing wildly.
It drew one clean line.
A prismatic cut.
A cut that said:
If you want my name, you will have to fight the law that protects it.
The silver line cracked.
The ancient letters shook.
Outside the lightning gap, thunder roared.
Inside the gap, Tian Lei's voice became very low.
"You are cutting time-law," Tian Lei said.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes stayed steady. "I am cutting theft."
The ledger line trembled again.
Then the bell answered—
Not with sound.
With a new sentence stamped into the white space, sharp like a final order.
IF NOT NAME… THEN CONSORT THREAD.
Qi Shan Wei's pupils tightened.
Because the bell was not bargaining.
It was changing targets.
Tian Lei's gaze snapped outward, toward the dome.
"Too late," Tian Lei said.
The lightning gap split.
The white space tore open like a door being ripped off its hinges.
And Qi Shan Wei felt it—
The bell's hook had moved back to the battlefield.
Back to Ling Xueyao's Frost Thread.
Back to the place where she was holding on with pure will.
Qi Shan Wei's calm became absolute.
In the same heartbeat, he stepped again—walking where lightning had already been—
And the world snapped back.
The lightning gap spat him out like a storm coughing up a blade.
He appeared inside the dome—
Right as the Frost Thread above the Court platform began to tear again.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2026
All rights reserved.