Chapter 9: The Nine Tribulations Pagoda
The floating island of the Violet Heaven Palace recruitment grounds hung above Qingyun City like a stormcloud that had forgotten how to rain.
Chains of real heavenly lightning—each link forged from a tribulation that had killed a Nascent Soul cultivator—bound the Nine Tribulations Pagoda to the island's heart. The tower was black, windowless, nine stories tall, and older than the empire. No one knew who built it. Everyone knew what it did.
It broke people.
And then it taught the pieces how to become thunder.
Lin Qiu arrived at dawn, walking across the sky on steps of condensed lightning. Su Ling followed ten paces behind on a flying sword borrowed from her father, pale but determined.
At the edge of the island, a thousand outer disciples in violet robes formed two silent lines. No one spoke. No one needed to. Every eye tracked the barefoot boy with three-colored lightning flickering in his irises.
At the foot of the pagoda stood Sect Leader Lei Wujing.
He was not what Lin Qiu expected.
No flowing white beard. No benevolent elder smile. Just a man in his thirties, lean and sharp, with a scar that split his left eyebrow and eyes the color of stormglass. Peak Core Formation pressure leaked from him like heat from a forge, but it was restrained, curious.
He looked Lin Qiu up and down once.
"You're smaller than the stories," Lei Wujing said.
Lin Qiu met his gaze without flinching. "Stories add weight. I travel light."
A ripple of laughter escaped the disciples before they remembered discipline and choked it back.
Lei Wujing's mouth twitched. "The pagoda has nine floors. Each floor is a tribulation drawn from the life of the first Thunder Monarch. No one has cleared the ninth in ten thousand years. Not even me."
He stepped aside, gesturing to the iron doors carved with nine screaming dragon faces.
"Enter alone. Bring nothing. The pagoda will give you everything you need—and take everything you owe."
Su Ling started forward. "Wait—"
Lin Qiu shook his head once.
"I'll see you on the other side," he told her.
Then he walked through the doors.
The world vanished.
First floor: Endless Rain of Tempering.
Lin Qiu stood in a gray void as water fell upward. Every drop was liquid tribulation iron, heavy enough to crush mountains. It hammered his skin, seeking to forge or shatter.
He let it.
The drops struck and sank in, merging with flesh and bone. Pain like being flayed alive, then rebuilt stronger. His Body Tempering, which had skipped straight to lightning refinement, finally caught up in the span of a hundred breaths.
When the rain stopped, his skin glowed faint violet, tough as spirit jade.
A staircase of lightning appeared.
He climbed.
Second floor: Forest of Ten Thousand Blades.
Blades of wind and thunder grew from the ground like trees. They sang as they sliced the air, each edge sharp enough to cut meridians.
Lin Qiu walked through them barefoot.
The blades kissed his skin and shattered. He reached out and plucked one from the air, turning it over in his palm. It became a thread of qi that he wove into his second silver star.
The forest bowed as he passed.
Third floor: Sea of Karmic Fire.
Flames that burned sins, regrets, attachments. Most disciples saw the faces of those they had failed. The fire fed on guilt.
Lin Qiu saw Cloud's Rest. Grandmother's face. The sacred pine burning.
The flames roared higher, hungry.
He stepped into them.
"I have no regrets," he said quietly. "Only debts."
The fire tried to consume him.
He consumed it instead.
The karmic flames turned violet and flowed into his third black star, making it grow until it eclipsed the others in density.
Fourth floor: Mirror of True Self.
A single mirror floated in darkness.
Lin Qiu looked.
The reflection was not him.
It was a cripple—thin, hollow-eyed, kneeling in the rain while children laughed. The boy he had been before the lightning.
The reflection smiled with broken teeth.
"You are still nothing," it whispered. "All this power is borrowed. Stolen. When the Heart realizes you're unworthy, it will devour you from the inside."
Lin Qiu stared for a long time.
Then he reached out and touched the mirror.
"I was never nothing," he said. "I was waiting."
He punched through the glass.
The reflection screamed as it shattered.
Fifth floor: Battlefield of Fallen Thunder.
Thousands of spectral cultivators in ancient Violet Heaven robes charged him, wielding thunder arts that shook the void. Former disciples who had died in the pagoda, their wills trapped to test the next generation.
Lin Qiu fought.
Not with overwhelming power—he could have ended it in one strike—but with technique.
He used only the First Form, Heaven-Defying Spark, threading needle-thin lightning through gaps in their defenses. Each spark struck a dantian and dispersed the specters without cruelty.
When the last one fell, they bowed in unison before fading.
Sixth floor: Silence.
No enemies. No trials. Just absolute, crushing silence that pressed on the soul.
Most went mad here, screaming until their voices broke.
Lin Qiu sat cross-legged and listened.
In the silence he heard the heartbeat of the Thunder Monarch's Heart—ancient, vast, lonely.
He placed a hand over his chest.
"I'm here now," he told it.
The silence softened, became companionable.
The staircase appeared again.
Seventh floor: Choice.
Two doors.
Behind one: a vision of ultimate power. Lin Qiu as an immortal emperor, heavens kneeling, every enemy reduced to ash.
Behind the other: Grandmother alive and well in Cloud's Rest, the village prosperous, Su Ling laughing beside him, a simple life of quiet strength.
The pagoda's voice, the first it had spoken directly, echoed in his mind.
Choose. Power or peace. You cannot have both.
Lin Qiu looked at the second door for a long time.
Then he turned his back on both and walked straight at the wall between them.
Lightning exploded from his body, three stars fusing into a single tricolored storm.
He punched the wall.
It shattered like cheap pottery.
The vision dissolved.
Eighth floor: The Monarch's Wrath.
A figure waited.
Ten meters tall. Armor of black iron and violet jade. The same ghost that had guarded the sacred pine, but whole now, alive with power.
The remnant will of the first Thunder Monarch himself.
It raised a spear.
"Prove you are worthy to carry my heart."
Lin Qiu smiled.
And attacked.
They fought for what felt like years.
Spear against bare hands. Tribulation against tribulation.
The Monarch's will used every form Lin Qiu had glimpsed, perfected them, turned them into art that could end worlds.
Lin Qiu learned as he bled.
He lost fingers and regrew them. Died a dozen times and came back angrier.
At the end he stood panting, clothes burned away, body covered in wounds that sparked with three-colored lightning.
The Monarch's will lowered its spear.
"Enough. You fight like a man who has nothing left to lose."
It knelt.
"And everything left to gain."
The spear dissolved into pure essence and flowed into Lin Qiu's chest.
The three stars fused completely into one perfect sphere—tricolored, nine-petaled, flawless.
Ninth floor.
There was no floor.
Only a throne of lightning floating in a starless void.
And on it sat… himself.
Older. Crueler. Eyes burning with imperial violet fire. Robes of stormclouds and conquered heavens.
The future Lin Qiu if he let the Heart rule him.
The figure on the throne smiled.
"Sit" it said. "Become me. Become perfect."
Lin Qiu looked at the throne.
Then at his own scarred, bare feet.
"I'm already becoming something," he said.
He raised his hand.
The tricolored sphere in his dantian spun once.
And detonated.
Lightning of every color, every tribulation he had ever endured or devoured, exploded outward.
The throne shattered.
The future self screamed as it unraveled.
Lin Qiu stood in the pieces and spoke to the void.
"I will not be your echo.
You will be my foundation."
The pagoda trembled.
Cracks ran through every floor, every chain.
Outside, the heavenly lightning binding it to the island snapped one by one.
Lei Wujing looked up sharply as the entire tower began to collapse inward, folding like paper in fire.
Su Ling's flying sword wavered. "No—"
Then the pagoda exploded.
Not in destruction.
In ascension.
A pillar of tricolored lightning shot into the heavens, punching through clouds, scattering tribulation essence like rain.
At its center floated Lin Qiu.
Naked. Unscarred. Hair long and wild, streaked with violet, silver, and black.
The nine-petaled sigil on his chest blazed like a second sun.
He opened his eyes.
The heavens answered with thunder that shook the continent.
Lin Qiu looked down at the stunned crowd, at Lei Wujing's wide eyes, at Su Ling's tears.
And smiled.
"The pagoda broke first," he said, voice carrying to every corner of the city.
Then he descended gently, lightning folding into a simple violet robe around him.
Lei Wujing was the first to kneel.
Not in ceremony.
In genuine awe.
"Welcome home… successor."
Behind him, every disciple of Violet Heaven Palace followed.
Lin Qiu stood in the ruins of the pagoda that had never been cleared, barefoot on shattered tribulation iron.
And for the first time since swallowing the Heart, he felt it beat in perfect rhythm with his own.
Not as master and vessel.
As partners.
Six days until the joint examination.
The city held its breath.
The storm had found its name.
To be continued…