Chapter 10: The Calm Before the Thunder
Six days.
Lin Qiu spent them quietly.
The Violet Heaven Palace tried to drown him in luxury: a floating pavilion of violet jade suspended above the recruitment island, servants who bowed so low their foreheads touched the clouds, manuals of thunder arts that lesser disciples would kill to glimpse.
He accepted a single room with a window facing the mainland, dismissed the servants, and locked the door.
Then he sat.
Not cultivating. Not training.
Just sitting, legs crossed on the cold stone floor, watching the tricolored sphere in his dantian spin in perfect silence.
The Heart no longer felt like a foreign thing inside him. It was him. Or rather, he was becoming it.
Memories that were not his drifted across his mind like clouds: an ancient battlefield where a man in dragon-scale armor swallowed an entire heavenly tribulation to save his sect; a woman with silver hair laughing as she turned a rival's Nascent Soul into ash with a flick of her finger; the first Thunder Monarch standing alone on a shattered star, daring the heavens to strike again.
Lin Qiu watched them all without attachment.
He was borrowing their foundation, not their lives.
On the third day, Su Ling found a way in.
She bribed a disciple, climbed the outer wall, and slipped through the window like a thief.
Lin Qiu didn't open his eyes.
"You're going to starve," she said, setting a food box on the floor. "Or turn into a statue. Whichever comes first."
He exhaled slowly. "I've eaten enough lightning to last a lifetime."
Su Ling sat across from him, folding her legs. "The city's going mad. Half the rogue cultivators have left—they say there's no point competing when a monster already cleared the pagoda. The other half are forming alliances to try and drag you down in the joint examination."
"Let them."
She studied his face. The childish roundness was almost gone now, burned away by tribulation. His features were sharper, eyes deeper.
"You're different," she said quietly.
"I'm the same boy who couldn't light a candle a month ago," he answered. "Just… louder."
Su Ling opened the box. Steam rose from spirit rice and glazed thunderbird wings.
"Eat anyway. Monsters still need mouths."
He ate.
They talked about small things: the way the city smelled of incense and fear, how her father was negotiating marriage offers for her that she had no intention of accepting, the rumor that Blood Flame Valley's Holy Son had broken through to early Core Formation in rage after hearing about the pagoda.
Lin Qiu listened more than he spoke.
When she left, he felt lighter.
On the fifth day, Lei Wujing came alone.
The sect leader knocked once, then entered without waiting.
He carried no gifts, no ceremony. Just a plain wooden box.
Inside was a single jade slip and a torn half of an old sect token—the twin to the one Grandmother Lan had given Lin Qiu.
Lei Wujing placed it on the floor between them.
"Your grandfather's," he said. "He broke the other half off and fled with it the night he chose a mortal woman over the sect. We never forgave him."
Lin Qiu picked up the broken token. The edges still fit perfectly.
"He died protecting the village," Lin Qiu said.
"I know." Lei Wujing's voice was rough. "I was the outer disciple sent to drag him back. I arrived too late. The demon beast had already taken his heart."
Silence stretched.
"I hated him for years," the sect leader admitted. "For choosing weakness. Now I look at you and wonder if he chose strength instead."
Lin Qiu met his eyes. "What do you want from me?"
Lei Wujing laughed once, sharp. "Everything. Nothing. The elders want to bind you with oaths, make you the next sect leader, parade you as proof we are still favored by heaven."
He leaned forward.
"I want you to surpass me. Break my records. Shatter my techniques. Make me chase you the way I once chased ghosts."
Lin Qiu closed his fist around the token halves. They fused seamlessly, whole again.
"I don't chase ghosts," he said. "I make them."
Lei Wujing stood. "Good. Then tomorrow, when the joint examination begins, don't hold back. The other three sects have prepared traps specifically for you. Jade Lotus wants your essence. Burning Skyreach wants your formulas. Blood Flame wants your corpse as a trophy."
He paused at the door.
"Show them why thunder never asks permission."
The door closed.
On the sixth day, Lin Qiu finally moved.
He walked to the highest peak of the recruitment island and stood at the edge, wind whipping his plain violet robe.
Below, Qingyun City spread like a jeweled map. Beyond it, the Azure Cloud Continent stretched endless—mountains full of demon beasts, forbidden zones where immortals had fallen, ancient ruins whispering of greater tribulations.
He raised one hand.
Far away, in Cloud's Rest village, a new pine sprouted on the blackened stump. Its needles were violet at the tips.
Grandmother Lan looked up from her garden and smiled, tears on her cheeks.
Lin Qiu lowered his hand.
The tricolored sphere in his dantian pulsed once—steady, patient, hungry.
Tomorrow the four sects would open the true examination grounds: the Secret Realm of Nine Heavens, a shattered small world where heavenly laws were thin and anything could happen.
Ten thousand geniuses would enter.
Only the worthy would emerge.
Lin Qiu turned and walked back down the peak.
Su Ling waited at the bottom with a new cloak—simple gray, no embroidery, the kind a wanderer wears.
"You're not wearing sect robes," she observed.
"I'm not a disciple yet."
She fell into step beside him.
"Will you be after tomorrow?"
He looked at the sky, where clouds were beginning to gather without wind.
"We'll see which sect survives me first."
Thunder rumbled in the distance, soft as a promise.
Six days became none.
The storm was ready.
To be continued…