The more he looked, the more similar it seemed.
Shen Hefeng lingered at a distance, recalling the divination he had performed before their departure.
A flame roasting an egg, its shell cracked—it wasn’t just vaguely reminiscent of the scene before him now; it was an exact match.
Shen Hefeng chuckled, gloating to himself that at least he hadn’t gone! Otherwise, he’d be getting roasted too, wouldn’t he?
A blessing in disguise—fate worked in mysterious ways!
Hovering around the clearly abnormal area, Shen Hefeng observed the swirling purplish-black currents, finding the whole thing rather bizarre.
The Nether Path was a realm of chaos, a world of unrelenting gray.
His own faint golden hue, Shen Hefeng surmised, was due to his metal-aligned divination cultivation and the fact that he had entered the Nether Path with his spiritual consciousness, granting him color.
But these purplish-black currents had color too.
Didn’t that mean this thing also existed within the Nether Path?
How strange. Truly strange.
Shen Hefeng couldn’t figure out what this thing was, but seeing his five mediocre teammates on the verge of collapse, he took pity and drifted over, slamming straight into the purplish-black current!
The purplish-black and golden currents collided violently in the Nether Path, erupting in a dazzling burst of sparks amidst the gray haze.
The two colors scattered, light particles dispersing everywhere, only to quickly regroup like two immiscible liquids.
The purplish-black current reformed and stubbornly continued lashing at the five gray masses.
Meanwhile, the golden current hovered dumbly in place, as if dazed from the impact.
No—Shen Hefeng wasn’t dazed. He was electrocuted.
Damn it, this thing was heavenly lightning?!
The golden current took a moment to recover, then glared at the pitiful gray masses. Truly, what rotten luck!
As the famed Divine Diviner, to be saddled with these five in this lifetime—nothing could be more unfortunate.
Resigned, he charged at the heavenly lightning again.
This time, Shen Hefeng made sure to stomp on the five gray masses a few extra times for good measure.
While Shen Hefeng was busy bouncing around and crashing into heavenly lightning in the Nether Path, Wen Shuangbai, struggling against the lightning’s force, began to notice something odd.
Why did the heavenly lightning’s intensity keep fluctuating?
What, was the voltage unstable or something?
Just as she pondered this, a hand groped its way from behind her, brushing over her singed hair, forehead, brows… before finally settling under her nose to check for breath.
"..." Wen Shuangbai said dryly, "Thanks, but I’m still alive."
Xie Ziyin relaxed slightly, then casually pulled out a pre-prepared Spirit-Stabilizing Pill from his miraculously unharmed storage ring and popped it into her mouth. "What a shame. Truly, the wicked never die."
"Thanks for the blessing. I wouldn’t mind living a thousand years," Wen Shuangbai retorted, swallowing the pill. The medicinal energy surged toward her spirit bones, slowly repairing the lightning-ravaged damage.
Regaining some strength, she shook her charred head and struggled up from the soft clouds, leaning toward the equally charred Xie Ziyin.
"Xie Ziyin," she shouted over the thunder, exhaling puffs of lightning smoke, "doesn’t this heavenly lightning feel familiar?"
"It does. But it’s much weaker than last time," Xie Ziyin agreed. The aura of this lightning was nearly identical to the strike that had hit them the night they reunited, all because of her careless "bro."
But the power difference was stark. That first strike had been lethal; this one seemed more like a trial—testing whether they could endure. Pass, and they could proceed. Fail, and they’d be tossed aside.
"Cough, cough—" Wen Shuangbai hacked out more smoke. "Where are the others?"
"No idea," Xie Ziyin admitted. He’d gone looking for her as soon as he woke up.
Amidst the serpentine bolts of lightning, the clouds had been blasted apart, mist obscuring their surroundings. The thunder was deafening; unless they were right next to each other, voices were lost in the roar.
"Let’s find them," Xie Ziyin said.
Battling the erratic lightning, Wen Shuangbai and Xie Ziyin trudged through the clouds in search of their three missing companions.
Soon, they stumbled upon Lu Jiayao, unconscious and half-buried in the fluff.
Wen Shuangbai flipped him over, sighing at his comparatively unscathed state. "Lucky bastard. Even the lightning barely touched him."
Xie Ziyin fed him a Spirit-Stabilizing Pill. "Want to carry him?"
Wen Shuangbai: "…?"
In the end, neither of them carried him.
Wen Shuangbai retrieved her unbroken Fire-Plume Whip, tied it around Lu Jiayao, and dragged him behind her as they continued their search.
Not long after, they spotted a particularly violent cluster of lightning strikes—and within it, a charred figure propped itself up on a gleaming crimson sword, the blade glowing fiercer with each bolt it absorbed.
The figure raised the sword skyward, lips moving in what was unmistakably a curse: "Come on, hit me again! Just me! If I don’t get back up, I’ll eat my words!"
Boom! The heavens obliged, striking Li Zhuohua with enough force to char her beyond recognition.
Wen Shuangbai whistled.
If she and Xie Ziyin were "medium-rare," Lu Jiayao was "rare," and Li Zhuohua? "Well-done."
They hurried over to stop Li Zhuohua from further provoking the heavens. While Xie Ziyin treated her, Wen Shuangbai scouted nearby and found Yin Xuan—lying motionless, utterly resigned to his fate.
And yet, despite his passivity, he was even more charred than Li Zhuohua.
Wen Shuangbai: "…"
Once the group reassembled, Lu Jiayao soon regained consciousness.
Sitting amidst the lightning, Wen Shuangbai studied the pattern of its fluctuations.
The intervals between the weaker phases were growing longer.
At first, the lightning would ease for a minute every three minutes. Then, it became a minute every five…
Though she didn’t know why the lightning weakened periodically, they needed to move fast.
If she was right, the entire cloud staircase was within the lightning’s range. To escape, they had to climb to the top.
The vines below had already been incinerated by the heavenly flames. There was no retreat—only forward.
"Let’s go," Lu Jiayao muttered, shivering in his "medium-rare" state. He kept glancing around, unnerved. "Don’t you guys feel that? Like something’s… jumping on my head?"
Wen Shuangbai: "Nope. You’re hallucinating."
"Exactly!" Li Zhuohua declared righteously. "How could ghosts exist under heavenly lightning?"
Yin Xuan, half-conscious, mumbled incoherently: "I can smell my own flesh roasting."
"......" After finishing his attempt to assist the thoroughly charred corpse, Xie Ziyin offered a rather eerie suggestion, "You could take a bite of yourself to find out."
Yin Xuan: "......"
Well... never mind. He wasn’t that desperate.
The four of them chatted among themselves, taking advantage of the weakening heavenly thunder to leap onto the second cloud-step without delay.
Lu Jiayao scrambled to follow, his steps quickened by sheer terror.
He swore something was there—a malice that clung like maggots to bone. It was terrifying. He just wanted to go home, wuwuwu...
Meanwhile, deep within the Nether Path, Shen Hefeng glared at the five sluggish wisps of gray energy that hadn’t made much progress despite being struck by lightning multiple times.
What a joke. Even a tortoise could crawl faster than this!
Might as well let them all die—screw this, screw their ancestors eighteen generations back, nobody gets to live!
---
The cloud-steps numbered one hundred and eight in total. Wen Shuangbai and the other four trudged onward, pausing and advancing under the relentless barrage of heavenly thunder. It took them a full day to finally ascend to the summit and step into a vast sea of stars.
In the end, human potential knew no bounds. By the time they reached the top, the five had grown numb—even accustomed—to being struck by lightning.
The moment they left the cloud-steps and set foot on the starry expanse, the heavenly thunder ceased.
Back in the Nether Path, Shen Hefeng thought, Finally, those heartless tortoises made it up there. He was exhausted.
But before he could catch his breath, Shen Hefeng watched in horror as the persistent purple-black lightning currents—previously focused on his teammates—suddenly shifted direction and charged straight for him.
"............"
Without hesitation, the pale golden energy bolted toward his physical body’s location.
In the Nether Path, Shen Hefeng fled, and the heavenly thunder pursued.
He was struck five or six times in the process, but through sheer determination and a series of dazzling maneuvers, Shen Hefeng’s soul finally whooshed back into his body!
"HAHAHA!"
In the weed-choked pit where the Divine Tree once stood, the baby-faced Taoist suddenly stirred.
He threw his head back and laughed wildly. "Is this all you’ve got? As expected of—!"
Before he could finish, thunder flickered across the sky. Bolts of lightning, writhing like serpents, seemed to lock onto his presence.
BOOM—BOOM—
In an instant, the entire Star-Moon Valley was engulfed in howling winds and crackling thunder.
One after another, the heavenly bolts descended with unerring precision, striking directly at Shen Hefeng in the Divine Tree pit—each carrying an unmistakable, vengeful fury!
Shen Hefeng took the full brunt. THUD! He collapsed mid-sentence, his final words crackling with residual electricity: "I—I—I—......"
The little hair he had left was singed black. Even the Soul-Devouring Banner planted beside him was split in half by a stray bolt, its remnants collapsing onto the turtle shell he clutched.
Under the relentless barrage, the banner and the turtle shell fused together.
Shen Hefeng, meanwhile, was left charred and flayed, nearly ascending to the heavens in the literal sense.
He had planned to tough it out—after all, if those five could endure a whole day of this, how could he possibly be worse?
But this heavenly thunder seemed to hate him with a passion, its power beyond anything he could withstand.
Discretion was the better part of valor.
Twitching and scorched, the Taoist mustered his last strength, crushed the Sacred Summoning Token in his hands, and vanished from Star-Moon Valley.
---
Far above, in the sea of stars, Wen Shuangbai and the others were cautiously exploring when they felt the Mystic Heaven Mirror vibrate.
Wen Shuangbai pulled it out and read:
[Your teammate Shen Hefeng has voluntarily crushed his Sacred Summoning Token and left. Please be advised.]
[Qingling Mountain has lost one member this round. Five remain.]
Wen Shuangbai: "???"
Wait—their insurance policy, the one they’d left safely behind in the Divine Tree pit—how had he been eliminated before them?!
Senior Sister Li Zhuohua erupted in fury: "Which bastard did this?! The Violet Flame Sect?!"
