When the heavens passed judgement upon the wicked and faithless, they did so with the immaculate radiance of lightning.


    No matter where one was, no matter how quickly they ran, lightning would always find its target. Flee as you might, hide as you desired, the gods were always watching, and the world was always telling the tale of your acts. The winds would carry your deeds to the Four Cardinal Kings who would record your valour and failings with the Thunder Agency.


    This was a truth of the world, a part of the laws that governed everything beneath the canopy of stars. So said Scripture. Liao Hua had known this since she was old enough to read the Clan Scripture and she had learnt it again and again as she became a Cultivator. The Thunder Agency would always know your sins and they would always account for them.


    But, if one dared, one could wield an imitation of heaven’s judgement. The fire of an Alchemist’s Cauldron was a greater flame than that which lit the hearth or spread relentlessly across a plain. Just the same, sparks of lightning born from Qi were not as great as Heaven’s retribution, but they were distant kin, and there was power in that relation. A certain kind of sympathetic resonance.


    There are eight Trigrams that represent the foundational condition of our world, laid down by Sovereign Fuxi who observed the rhythms and flows of the place humans inhabited. To us with the name Liao, one Trigram reigns supreme above all others. Know it by the true name:


    Zhen.


    Thunder, that which shakes the world after the Heavens lay down their judgement. The Trigram Zhen is formed when two parts yin and one part yang are rejoined together into a singular whole. Control the precise speed and time in which they are joined, and one can do great things. A correctly formed Trigram will reveal the true form of our elemental Qi. It will no longer be like lightning; it will be lightning itself. The form of the thing and not merely its nature. Wield it well and slaughter our enemies.


    Those were her grandmother’s words, taught to Hua through her honoured father, who sat her down in the great prayer room where the Liao Clan’s Scripture resided. They were words Hua would tell her own children one day. She had learnt those words so well that they were a part of her very being.


    And so, on the day the world broke and a bolt of celestial lightning fell from the heavens, aimed at Qing, Hua was ready.


    Before she consciously understood it, Hua was forming the trigram. Meridians lighting up like stars, dantian glowing bright in her mind’s eye. She had only unlocked five of twelve. Against celestial lightning, it was less than an illusion of a thing. Nothing close to the legends of immortals. Hua would force it to be enough.


    True lightning was pure yang. The earth was pure yin. In the path between Heaven and Earth was Qing. There were many things that Liao Hua, daughter of lightning would allow, and she would never let Qing be harmed by lightning, no matter the source. She could not be struck by lightning, heavenly or otherwise. Hua would not let it happen.


    She flared the spiritual aspect of her Qi, suppressing the physical, and became a great beacon of yin Qi. Yin was stillness and so Hua became still. Yin was space and so she became the space between Heaven and Earth. For a moment, she felt that she was all the yin in the world.


    It was enough, just barely, to slot herself between yang and yin, lightning and earth, and form a Trigram of herself and the world.


    Zhen, that which Shakes, she declared, and Zhen she formed.


    Earth. Hua. Lightning.


    Yin. Yin. Yang.


    There was light unending. Power unyielding. Judgement passed upon her soul, her body, all that she was in this life and the next and all those that came before. A moment where she saw as the Heavens saw, the wheel of karma revealed to her, the true nature of the dharma.


    It took seconds, years, and lifetimes for the revelation to pass. And when it did, when Hua returned to her body and became one with mortal senses, she knew that all the pains of her life had been as ash on snow and mist before dawn, immaterial and transient.


    Her nerves now lit up, a storm of pain that lived beneath her skin. Her spine howled in agony as her body became a conduit for lightning. Maybe she screamed as raw power made a home in her body. It was short, that much she believed, because so long as the agony ended, it would always be shorter than eternity.


    In the most distant parts of her awareness, she recognised the aftereffects of her actions.


    She could not keep this great power. Her body was a vessel too small to endure it. It needed to go somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t her blood or bones or skin or strained meridians. Anywhere but a mortal cauldron. She sent it where she could. Downward, outward.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    The ground shattered as the full force of lightning was converted to raw force. Stone crumbling, earth breaking force. Power never wielded by a mortal, the kind that was used in the Age of Heroes. The ground shaking violently at the command of the Trigram Zhen. The displacement of air like a thousand whips cracking.


    Qing, blown away, but that was fine. Qing was tough. She could endure that which broke the earth. Hua tried to keep track of Qing, but it proved too great an effort. Before she knew it, the sky took up her vision. On the ground. She had fallen to the ground.


    What she witnessed across the vastness of the sky was horrifying. There was lightning partitioning the great span of the Heavens. Tendrils like ice growing across the surface of a pond, spreading ever outward, splintering and splintering ever onwards. Heaven has a wide net, yet though its meshes are wide, nothing slips past. This was that wide net, revealed now in lightning that folded upon itself to grow larger, wider. Past the horizon where it somehow fell upward to envelop the divine and the mundane, the sky and the earth.


    It was awesome.


    It was terrible.


    It was far too much for one person to comprehend.


    She could feel her mind cracking, A mortal vessel reflecting the magnitude of heaven. It could not endure. Hua could not endure for all that she had been born with lightning sparking in her veins.


    Qing took Hua’s hand.


    The familiarity of the touch shocked her, grounded her to the present. There was a reason she had channelled heaven’s wrath through her body and it was for that touch. The world that mattered held her hand and just as she grounded the divine lightning to earth, Hua grounded herself through Qing.


    With great effort, she craned her neck, tore her gaze from the heavens. Qing’s brown eyes were worth more than all the heavens combined. It was in seeing Qing’s fear that Hua could focus one more. Protect Qing. Whatever else, this was what she would do. Keep her safe. Worry about the heavens later.


    “I have you,” Qing said, pretending to be brave when she was terrified.


    Hua was on the ground, she realised moments later. She’d been struck by lightning and survived. Saved Qing against the cruelties of heaven. She forced herself to sit up, teeth clenched. Qing supported her and she needed it, truly needed someone else. Her nerves were still firing painfully, dantian aching like it was a bell and a thousand monks were hammering it. Her Meridians, even those she had not awakened, felt like they were conductive rods in the violent lightning storm occurring within her. Hua breathed, cycling her Qi, discharging lightning with instinct borne of a lifetime of practising.


    Qing was staring intently at Hua, meeting her gaze with wide eyes. Seeing something on Hua’s face that she obviously couldn’t see. Then Qing hugged her, crushed Hua to her chest. Hua returned it desperately.


    “Don’t ever do that again!”


    “Sorry.


    They stayed like that for a while, just breathing. Ozone and petrichor, the two of them joined together. Lightning and earth, Qing and Hua. The steady thud of Qing’s heartbeat steadied her. So long as they were together, it would be enough.


    Slowly, Hua recognised that she sat in a crater formed from the power of lightning she had directed. It stretched further than she could comfortably leap and was deeper than she was tall. The edges of the crater had an odd sheen which she recognised as glass slag eventually. She had done this, somehow. Through luck and instinct and perhaps even talent, she had done something great.


    For this great feat, one of her Meridians had opened. Liao Hua had reached the Sixth star of Qi Condensation. Halfway through the greater realm. But even more than that, those six standard Meridians felt greater than ever before. Truly felt like the stars they were called.


    “Focus. Hua, I need you to focus.”


    She blinked slowly. Qing was shaking her. Time lost. How much, Hua had no ability to tell. Seconds hopefully, likely minutes from Qing’s furrowed brows.


    “I’m here. I’m good, I promise.”


    Qing helped her up, legs shaking as sparks of lightning continued discharging from Hua. She clung to her best friend, her oldest friend, drawing strength from her.


    “I thought I’d lose you. Do you think I could have lived with myself if you died here?”


    I love you, she almost said, barely biting down on the words before she betrayed herself.


    “I won’t. Die, I mean. I won’t ever die. I’ll be the first Immortal just for you.”


    The sky underneath Heaven’s Net was yellow. The colour of pus and disease. Like something truly great was dying and the sky had absorbed its runoff.


    Below, one layer lower, was the smoke. Another gout of smoke rose like an inverted lantern ribbon, thick grey holding up the sickly sky. Fire. Her home was burning.


    Even as she turned, the number of fires never seemed to change. There was always another in the distance. She focused and slowly filtered in the sounds around her—the overwhelming boom of lightning and thunder had deafened her. Children crying. Fathers shouting orders, mothers screaming out the names of their children. The thud thud thud of crowds of people running. The clop of horses and the thump of cattle. Birds shrieking, a thousand wings flapping as they fled and realised nowhere was safe.


    The immensity of this destruction was like the stories from the Age of Heroes when gods still roamed and immortality flowed as bountifully as the Yellow River.


    “Hua, what’s happening?” Qing asked, shock stealing the blood from her face. Ashen as the smoke. “Can you feel that Qi?”


    She was trying not to. There was Qi bubbling up from the earth. Falling from the sky like droplets. It was everywhere and nowhere at once. More Qi than Hua had ever thought possible to just float freely.


    The atmospheric Qi was a bright flare to her senses. If things weren’t so maddening, she would be tempted to use the free-flowing Qi for her own Cultivation even if it wasn’t attuned to Lightning.


    Could Yu Clan diviners have foreseen this and kept it to themselves? It was something those treacherous bastards would do. Leave everyone to die if it gained them even one drop of advantage.


    “Hua, focus.”


    “Sorry. Sorry, I’m here. Do you trust me?”


    “Always.”


    “We need to get to my home. The Formations there will keep us safe. Safer,” she added as a building on the shore collapsed. “Keep us safe from Heaven. Hide us from Heaven’s Net.”


    “What are you talking about? I don’t see any net.”