Ning "Currently Being Struck by Lightning" Ruan was feeling downright refreshed!
Nowhere to run.
Nowhere to hide.
So she simply gave up, hugged her sword casket with both arms, and lay down on the spot.
Strike or don't. See if she cared.
Actually, a few strikes in, it hurt considerably less than before.
Her whole body had gone pleasantly numb.
Who knew how long the lightning went on.
At last the thunder began to ebb.
And beside Ning Ruan's ear came a middle-aged man's voice — indifferent, threaded with surprise:
"Light-element? How can this be light-element?"
"No... this sword casket. It's being tempered as well?"
Confusion and disbelief churned through the man's mind.
At that moment.
In the gray-black void overhead.
The seething weave of thunder suddenly gathered into two bolts thick as bowl-mouths and speared straight down at the puddle of girl below.
"Again?" The puddle's eyes snapped wide.
She grabbed the sword casket beside her and swung it up as a shield in front of her.
"Don't block it! Thunder-tempering of the body — the benefits to you are immense!" the middle-aged man — a Sect Master, no less — blurted urgently.
Ning Ruan heard him perfectly well. She did not react in the slightest, casket firmly raised.
The Sect Master's legendary indifference collapsed entirely, urgency flooding his voice:
"Move the casket aside, quickly! It's swallowing most of the thunder — you can't temper your body like this!"
"I stand here myself; no harm will come to you. You do not need that casket to block the lightning."
He'd worked out, more or less, how the frailest class of all — a light-element spirit master — was tanking the most violent thunder in existence.
It was overwhelmingly thanks to that black sword casket.
The casket was eating most of the lightning for her.
Ning Ruan's lip twitched. Her arms didn't move an inch.
Body tempering was great for other people. For her? Utterly redundant.
Her body had been tempered past the point of temperability back in Longevity Village, courtesy of that crowd of dads.
Getting struck now was getting struck for free.
Unless it could bump her cultivation up a realm, no sale.
The thunder continued crashing down over Ning Ruan with apocalyptic fury.
Under the Sect Master's despairing, iron-won't-become-steel glare, the casket drank the lion's share of the lightning, tempering away.
While Ning Ruan lay flat on the ground, savoring the tingle of the trickle that got through.
Time blurred.
Eventually, no more thunder cracked beside her ear.
When she opened her eyes again —
she was lying on the nine hundred ninety-ninth step of the Thousand-Step Stairs.
Beside her stood a stern-faced middle-aged man in black robes.
"Do you have any idea what you just threw away?"
The Sect Master's voice erupted, positively thunderous itself.
Ning Ruan climbed to her feet, shouldered the casket, and tilted her head, uncomprehending:
"Threw away... more lightning to the face?"
"You..." The Sect Master jabbed a finger at her, then flung his hand down and ground out through clenched teeth:
"Kneel. Take me as your master."
Ning Ruan: ...
Grumpy old thing, wasn't he.
"No. I already have a master."
Granted, Invincible Peak had a slight oversupply of weirdo senior brothers — but as the only normal person on the peak,
she wasn't about to abandon them.
The middle-aged man before her visibly froze — then seemed to recall something:
"Light-element. The Thousand-Step Stairs... Your master wouldn't happen to be Liu Yun?"
Coincidences that convenient didn't just happen, did they?
Sure enough.
The next thing he saw was the girl with the sword casket nodding vigorously.
The Sect Master: ...
He should have guessed.
This generation of Invincible — pah — Xueyang Peak recruited exclusively from the freak show.
The entire peak couldn't produce one normal human being.
He gave Ning Ruan a long, deep look.
The next moment.
His sleeve swept out.
The world smeared past Ning Ruan's eyes.
By the time her feet found the ground, the familiar scenery of Invincible Peak stood before her...
...
Tianshu Peak. Changyun Hall.
The Sect Master who had vanished into thin air reappeared in the hall just as abruptly.
The Crimson Heaven Sect leadership, still mid-squabble, cut off as one and turned toward the black-robed man on the dais.
"The Sect Master returns!"
"Sect Master — did a disciple truly pass the thousandth step?"
"Was the child a summoner?"
"How many summoners could pass the thousandth step? It will be one of our sword cultivators. Certain to be."
"Like hell! You Suiyun Peak lot just want first pick of the disciple pool!"
"And if we do? If the child is a sword cultivator, then entering the tutelage of our Peak Lord Lu would hardly waste their talent."
"..."
Regarding the roiling argument below — the assembled elders, plus the only three Peak Lords not currently in seclusion — Sect Master Shen Ling finally spoke:
"You are all too late.
The disciple has already entered the tutelage of Peak Lord Liu of Xueyang Peak."
He paused. Then, expression flat as ever, twisted the knife:
"Mm. It is that same girl from the morning's farce with Suiyun Peak's direct disciples.
And she is no summoner, nor a sword cultivator. She is a light-element spirit master."
"What? A light-element spirit master? How is that possible?"
The words had barely left Sect Master Shen's mouth before someone was already sputtering in disbelief.
Sect Master Shen remained a portrait of indifference. "I witnessed it personally. There is no mistake."
The Suiyun Peak elder who had been so certain the disciple was a sword cultivator went ugly around the eyes:
"In the entire history of the Crimson Heaven Sect, no light-element spirit master has ever passed the thousandth step."
Sect Master Shen drew a long breath, tone complicated: "There is one now."
And not merely the first light-element spirit master to pass the thousandth step.
Also the first light-element spirit master to trigger the Thunder Illusion Realm.
And, above all, the first person in recorded history to get into the Thunder Illusion Realm and then devote her entire stay to dodging the body tempering.
...
In Invincible Peak's poverty-scoured main hall.
Ning Ruan and Liu Yun sat on little folding stools of lightning-struck wood.
Viewed from behind, the posture was practically indistinguishable from squatting.
Liu Yun held the voice-transmission paper crane sent personally by the Sect Master.
She stared at it for a long, long time.
Then finally had to look up at Ning Ruan:
"...So you triggered the Thunder Illusion Realm. And then declined the body tempering."
Ning Ruan looked back blankly. "The thing that kept zapping me — that was the Thunder Illusion Realm?"
Liu Yun stared at her and enunciated each word:
"The Thousand-Step Stairs. Nine hundred and ninety-nine steps.
The thousandth step is an illusion realm.
The Thunder Illusion Realm is one of them.
There is also a Frost Illusion Realm, a Blazing Sun Illusion Realm, and others.
Only a vanishing few ever earn the chance to trigger an illusion realm upon completing the nine hundred ninety-ninth step.
And every single person who does trigger one walks away with enormous gains.
The Thunder Illusion Realm's body tempering, for example.
It's called the thousandth step, but truthfully, it is a reward for those few."
Ning Ruan: ...
That impressive, huh.
No wonder the old grump who'd slapped her back to Invincible Peak had been in such a mood.
Liu Yun's gaze was scorching. She stared for a long, long moment. Then:
"Little disciple. Admit it. You're a sword cultivator, aren't you?"
"I am a light-element spirit master!" Ning Ruan tightened the straps of the black casket on her back, expression grave.
She, Ning Ruan, was going to be the world's number one healer, thank you very much.
Liu Yun's eyes narrowed:
"Which illusion realm you trigger is intimately tied to the element you awakened.
Even if a light-element spirit master could trigger one, it would never be the most violent realm of all — the Thunder Illusion Realm."
Ning Ruan: ...
The King of Heaven himself could come down and ask. She was light-element.
Healer or bust.
If she couldn't be a healer, she'd be incomplete as a person.
Heaven had given her this glorious light-element talent. Wasting it would be a sin.
"I am a light-element spirit master!"
Liu Yun: ...Light-element, my foot. Delinquent!
She should never have trusted her own eye for disciples.
She'd thought she'd finally picked up a normal light-element disciple this time — a normal person at last.
Instead: congenital contrarian.
A perfectly good sword cultivator, hell-bent on playing a healing-only light-element spirit master!