At the foot of the Transmission Pavilion's white jade steps the disciples were packed too tight to move, heads layered one above another, every one of them tilted back and staring hard at the tribulation cloud pressing black overhead, the noise of their talk rising on all sides.
"Did any of you see it with your own eyes? Five colors of light exploded across the whole testing stone just now!"
"I have lived eighteen years and this is the first time I have ever heard of a spirit test bringing down a heavenly tribulation! Lightning falls at a breakthrough — who does not know that rule?"
"Where did that outsider mortal even come from? Don't tell me he's a devil-seed born of nature?"
"But Senior Sister Qingxue is in there too! If the tribulation strikes into the chamber, can Senior Sister take it?"
The crowd suddenly opened a path, and two outer sect disciples came slowly out half carrying and half supporting Lei Wujie, blood running from the corner of his mouth, bent over and clutching his stomach.
The whole ground went dead silent, countless gazes nailing themselves to him, small gasps of breath rising here and there.
"How did Senior Brother Lei Wujie get hurt like that? He was in high spirits when he went in!"
"Look at the blood at his mouth. He keeps pressing down hard on his dantian — the injury must be bad!"
Every organ in Lei Wujie's body was churning with pain, and being ringed by several hundred people pointing and murmuring sent the anger straight to his head. He raised his voice sharply.
"What are you all staring at? Will gawking help even slightly? Detach four men, immediately, and get to the Elders' Hall at full speed. Report the phenomenon at the Transmission Pavilion to the elders word for word. Half a quarter-hour late and every one of you copies the sect rules a hundred times!"
The disciples below flinched and were on the point of scattering to it when the whole peak abruptly shook.
A vast pale-blue flood of water energy burst out through the stone wall of the testing chamber and spread like a tide in every direction across the twelve peaks. The flowers and grasses of the mountains, the strain and wear in the disciples' own bodies — the gentle energy soothed all of it slowly away.
A young menial put out a hand and caught a thread of the drifting spirit mist, and his eyes went round on the spot. He grabbed the man beside him and shouted.
"Touch it, quickly! This energy — this is Senior Sister Qingxue's own mutated water signature, there is not a second one like it under heaven!"
"That's absurd! How can a Golden Core cultivator's power blanket this many mountains? An ordinary Golden Core at full release covers one training ground at the most!"
"Something enormous has happened in that chamber. Senior Sister has been pushed into releasing her origin power without holding anything back — it must be more dangerous in there than anyone dares imagine!"
A shudder went through Lei Wujie. He wrenched his head around to stare at the sealed stone door, alarm impossible to hide behind his eyes, and murmured under his breath.
"I passed in a single thread of lightning and that boy's freakish physique threw it back and wounded me badly. The strength of the malevolence on him is beyond anything I have heard of — and it has forced Qingxue into using all of her power..."
He struggled to move forward and push the door open, and the moment he called on his dantian a tearing pain swept his whole body, so that all he could do was stand rigid where he was, palms clenched in his own frustration.
At that moment the Ethereal Sect's master, Yun Canglan, sat on the white jade throne, tapping his fingertips idly against the armrest.
Yue Qingshuang reclined on a soft couch at the side, a round fan embroidered all over with violets in her hand, sending him a little breeze one stroke at a time, her voice syrupy and clinging and thoroughly persistent.
"Good Senior Brother. Good Senior Brother Canglan. Can you not indulge me just this once?"
"Let me be Qingxue's own dedicated dao-guardian. Wherever she goes I go, and I will watch over her eating and her drinking and her cultivation."
"Those lunatics of the Harmonic Joy Sect have their eyes on her mutated water root day and night. Last time three Nascent Soul devils laid a death trap and came within a hair of carrying her off. With my late Nascent Soul cultivation at her side, no petty creature would come within three chi of her!"
Yun Canglan's brows knotted tight and he turned his face away, unwilling to look at her, his tone thick with impatience.
"Yue Qingshuang. You are the Master of Purple Sun Peak, and you spend your days in the main peak's hall wheedling and playing the brat. If word of it gets out, what are the disciples of the twelve peaks to say? If you have nothing to do, go back to your own peak this instant and see to its affairs, and stop badgering me."
Yue Qingshuang slid forward and brought herself right up to the jade throne, peach-blossom eyes wide and swimming and fixed on him.
"I do not care who sees to peak affairs. Qingxue is the one person I cannot set my mind at ease about. Who in this whole sect understands water techniques better than I do? Who could keep her safer? The dao-guardian can only be me!"
"The choice of a dao-guardian will be settled by common discussion later, and it will certainly not be you." Yun Canglan's face darkened, his tone leaving no opening. "The Sect Grand Tournament is one month off. If Purple Sun Peak's disciples cannot produce a showing worth looking at, I shall cut thirty percent from every water-attribute cultivation resource for the year, and you need not come to me weeping about it then."
The delicate softness vanished from Yue Qingshuang's face in an instant. She snapped the fan shut, planted her hands on her hips, and spoke in a temper.
"Well then! So Senior Brother has taken to holding peak resources over my head? Before Master went into seclusion he charged you a thousand times over to be patient with me and look after me, and you turn straight around and threaten me with resources?"
"Fine — I shall simply wash my hands of Purple Sun Peak. Whoever wants the peak master's seat may sit in it, and you may take away every pill and every spirit herb for all I care!"
"I shall go and squat outside Master's seclusion cave and wait for him to come out, day and night, and when he does I shall tell him every last thing about how badly you have treated me today!"
Yun Canglan braced his forehead and let out a long sigh, a headache all over his face.
"Yue'er, that temper of yours truly was spoiled out of you by Master from childhood. You speak to me without the slightest sense of rank or measure."
"Enough. I shall give a step. I will not settle the guardian question directly. When I find the time I shall ask Qingxue herself; if she is willing, I shall permit it, and if she shows the least reluctance, then I cannot force a person against her will. Does that content you?"
Yue Qingshuang gave a light snort and was opening her mouth to keep on bargaining when a vast, deep surge of spiritual power came rolling in from the east and the ground of the whole main peak trembled faintly.
She opened her Nascent Soul spirit-sight on the instant, her vision passing through layer on layer of cloud sea to fall on the Transmission Pavilion, and her expression snapped taut.
"Senior Brother! East, toward the Transmission Pavilion — the sky is full of churning tribulation cloud. Who dares call down a heavenly tribulation at the Transmission Pavilion without leave? Did you approve this beforehand?"
At that, Yun Canglan swept up his long white beard, his face torn between heartache and fury.
"How could I possibly permit anyone to undergo a tribulation at the Transmission Pavilion! That high-grade testing stone is a treasure I walked every auction house in the world to find and paid a full twenty thousand mid-grade spirit stones to win. If the tribulation damages it I shall drag out whoever began this and shut them up on Reflection Cliff for ten years!"
The two of them steadied themselves and tasted the spreading energy carefully, and in the next instant both their faces changed utterly.
"No. This energy is wrong."
"The power of a tribulation is savage and destructive, and this water energy is warm and gentle. Even the dead wood at the roadside is putting out new shoots. This is plainly the top-grade energy that nourishes all living things."
Yue Qingshuang's voice went straight to alarm and she came off the couch in one movement.
"It is Qingxue! Only her mutated water root has that quality! She is releasing every bit of her power without reserve — has some high-realm enemy been lying in ambush in that chamber? Is she in mortal danger?"
Before the words were done Yue Qingshuang's fingers set a seal, she gave one light call, and a snow-white spirit beast of a rabbit, enormous in body, came bounding out of the hall on the air, all four hooves throwing wind as it made straight for the Transmission Pavilion.
Yun Canglan could sit still no longer. The sword at his waist left its sheath of its own accord and hung before him; he touched a toe to the blade and rode it hard after the rabbit, and the two of them, one before and one behind, went racing to the Transmission Pavilion's aid.