Chapter 164 - 36 Lightning Tribulations

Chapter 164: 36 Lightning Tribulations

Seana raised her palm. The crimson droplets around her converged in a blinding spin, forming a dense, rotating blood ring above her head.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The ring shattered on impact. Silver lightning tore through the fragments and slammed directly into her body.

A sharp cry tore from her lips. She was driven backward, her boots carving grooves into the stone. Her knees bent, threatening to collapse under the pressure, but she clenched her jaw until her gums bled and forced herself upright.

The lightning dissipated. Seana gasped for air, blood spilling over her lips, her hands shaking violently.

Yet she stood.

Lothe watched from the ground, his knuckles white against the stone. He wanted to sprint to her side, but he held his ground.

Seana turned her head slightly, offering him a small, stubborn nod.

Lothe nodded back.

Strike four.

The fourth bolt targeted Lothe. He gathered his threadbare spatial Qi into a single, thin barrier. It gave way in an instant.

BOOM!

The silver strike hammered him to the deck, his knees hitting the stone with an audible crack. Blood spilled onto the floor, but within seconds, he pushed himself back up.

Strike five.

A silver lance crashed into Seana. She wove her blood into a spiraling shield, but the strike blew right through it, scattering red droplets across the platform. She stumbled, caught herself, and held her footing.

Strike six.

Lothe attempted a spatial displacement. The technique frayed halfway through; the bolt smashed into his left shoulder, pitching him into a broken column. The pillar exploded into rubble, burying him in stone.

"LOTHE!" Seana took an instinctive step toward the debris.

A bloodied hand rose from the dust, palm outward. "Don’t."

He pulled himself onto one knee, chest heaving, ash falling from his hair. "Keep your eyes on your own sky."

Seana turned back just as the seventh bolt descended. She formed dozens of blood needles and drove them straight up into the core of the lightning, splitting the strike before it hit. The remaining charge scorched her arms, dropping her to one knee, but she rose before the dust settled.

Eight.

Lothe twisted the space around his ribs. The lightning bent, but still caught him full in the chest, throwing him flat on his back. For two seconds, the world went black.

"Lothe!"

He blinked against the glare. "Still here," he croaked, lifting two fingers.

Nine.

Seana met the ninth bolt head-on with a dense blood seal. The detonation hurled her across the stones, leaving her coughing up dark blood at the edge of the platform.

She pushed herself up. "I’m not... giving up."

Nine for Lothe. Nine for Seana. Eighteen down.

Eighteen to go.

The storm paused. The clouds stopped their erratic swirling, pulling inward into a massive, concentrated eye. Silver lightning condensed with violet and crimson residue, forming a twin vortex that pressed down on the entire valley like a falling continent.

Below, Professor Sy’s hands began to shake. "The trial is shifting."

Adrian looked at him. "Shifting how?"

"The remaining strikes are fusing with their residue," Sy whispered. "Heaven isn’t testing their limits anymore. It’s trying to crush the anomalies."

Ten.

A double-thick bolt hammered Lothe. His makeshift spatial shield vanished like paper. The impact cracked the basalt beneath his chest, leaving him motionless for three terrifying seconds before he dragged his bleeding torso back onto his knees.

Across the platform, the tenth bolt drove Seana into the stone, silver arcs dancing across her skin as she convulsed under the discharge.

Lothe tried to crawl toward her, his fingers clawing into the stone. "Seana!"

Her fingers twitched. Slowly, painfully, she lifted her head, blood streaming down her brow. She dragged one knee forward, then the other, and forced herself upright.

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

The bolts fell in brutal, mechanical succession.

On the thirteenth strike, Seana was thrown over the eastern edge. Her fingers caught a jagged lip of stone, dangling over empty air.

Lothe’s heart seized. "SEANA!"

She clamped her teeth shut, forcing a tendril of blood to whip around the ridge, using it as an anchor to haul herself back onto the stone. She rolled onto the platform, gasping, and stood again.

Lothe let out a ragged breath, the ghost of a smile touching his bloody mouth. "That’s my girl..."

She glared at him weakly through the smoke. "Don’t... start."

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

On the sixteenth strike, Lothe’s shoulder dislocated under the raw kinetic weight. He didn’t even have enough Qi left to numb the nerve endings; he simply slammed the joint against a standing block of stone until it snapped back into place.

Seana took her sixteenth strike internally, drawing her blood into her own meridians to reinforce her core from within. When the lightning cleared, she was coughing up crimson bile, but her stance remained unbreakable.

Thirty-two strikes total.

Four remained. Two for him. Two for her.

Seventeen.

The seventeenth bolt struck Seana first. She wrapped a thin film of blood around her heart and lungs, letting the rest of the shock hit her bare flesh. The blast dropped her to her hands and knees, but she dragged herself back onto her boots.

Then the seventeenth bolt fell on Lothe.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

A sickening crack echoed through his ribcage. He was thrown ten yards, his skull bouncing off the flagstones.

Silence fell.

Lothe lay staring at the churning clouds. His vision was swimming in gray static; his hearing had faded into a dull, high-pitched ring. His meridians were torn in dozens of places. He couldn’t feel his legs.

Get up, he told himself. Just get up.

His arms collapsed under his chest. He fell back down.

"Seana..." his lips moved, but almost no sound came out.

Across the clearing, through the haze of smoke, their eyes met.

Seana was trembling so violently she looked like dry grass in a gale. Her face was drenched in blood and soot, her robes hanging in tatters.

Yet she was looking straight at him.

"I was afraid," she whispered into the wind, her voice somehow carrying across the quiet space between them. "I was terrified I’d always just be the one you had to pull out of the fire."

Lothe stared at her, his vision clearing just enough to catch the tears cutting through the ash on her cheeks.

"I don’t want to stand behind you," she repeated, her voice finding its steel once more. "Besides, I’ve always been strong."

Lothe’s chest hitched. He wanted to tell her she had never been behind him. That from the moment they had walked out of that academy library, she had been the only reason he kept moving forward.

He couldn’t speak. So he gave her a single, firm nod.

Seana smiled through her tears.

Lothe forced his elbows under his ribs. With a ragged, broken gasp, he dragged his weight upward until his knees locked beneath him.

"Then... stand, Seana," he rasped, his voice cracking on the syllables. "One more."

The sky went dead silent.

The eighteenth strike gathered.

The clouds pulled back, revealing two massive pillars of silver fire rimmed with dark violet and bloody crimson. The air pressure became so intense that the floating platform began to groan, stone crumbling into dust under the sheer weight of the descending will.

Below, the family heads stood paralyzed. Professor Sy took an involuntary step back, his breath trapped in his chest.

One bolt for the boy.

One bolt for the girl.

The final judgment of Heaven.

Lothe stood straight. He had no Qi to build a barrier. He had no techniques left to divert the blow. He had only his flesh, his bones, and his will.

Across from him, Seana gathered the last few droplets of blood circling her fingers, holding them before her chest like a tiny, fragile rose.

The sky tore open.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The final two bolts fell together, drowning the entire floating island in blinding silver light.

Lothe took the strike full in the chest. His defenses were gone; the lightning ripped through his flesh, scouring his meridians, burning through his marrow. Blood burst from his pores. His knees buckled, but he refused to hit the ground. He locked his joints, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth cracked, and stared right through the blinding glare.

Beside him, Seana was engulfed in silver fire. Her scream was swallowed by the thunder. The flagstones beneath her feet pulverized into ash. She dropped to one knee, her palms hitting the dirt, but as the silver fire tried to grind her into the bedrock, she drove her heels into the stone and forced herself back onto her feet.

The light flared to an unbearable, blinding white—

And then it died.

The thunder ceased.

The clouds fractured, drifting apart like burning paper in the wind. The silver arcs faded into the mist, and the suffocating pressure lifted from the basin like a heavy hand being drawn back into the heavens.

Thirty-six strikes had fallen.

And on the shattered stone platform, battered, bleeding, and barely clinging to life.

Both of them were still standing.?