Inside the storm, Lord Lei Zhen prepared the official charge.
He was the Seventh Divine Arbiter of the Southern Heavenly Tribulation Bureau. For ten thousand years, he had punished cosmic threats across thirty-six mortal planes.
Lei Zhen stood nine feet tall, with indigo skin and silver thunder armor. In one hand, he held the Grand Nine-Heavens Thunder Drum, made from a sea monster’s skull. In the other, he carried the Ancient Calamity Hammer, a weapon heavy enough to flatten mountains.
Today’s order came from the highest authority.
The celestial mirrors had detected an unregistered stellar core in the Canglan plane. Its gravity was already pulling at the region’s spirit veins.
Lei Zhen parted the clouds and looked down.
He saw a timber cabin and a black courtyard. On the porch stood a young man in faded hemp trousers, eating roasted peas.
“Mortal vessel containing an unshielded star,” Lei Zhen declared. His voice rolled across the sky. “By order of the Heavenly Council, you are a threat to this plane. The Nine-Turns Violet Demon-Slaying Tribulation will erase your name from the registry of souls.”
He raised his hammer and drew in the storm’s power.
***
On the porch, the hair on Austin’s arms stood up.
The air tasted like wet pennies. Static made his sleeves stick to his elbows, and yellow sparks snapped around his sandals.
He set down his peas and looked at the clouds. They hung so low that they almost touched his roof.
“Typical. One stray lightning strike hits the cedar shingles, and my whole cabin burns. Nobody reads NFPA 780 anymore. Lightning protection isn’t optional. It’s code.”
He went behind the shed and picked up a thirty-foot moso bamboo pole he had cut the week before. It was dry, straight, and strong. Then he found a spool of heavy copper cable salvaged from his construction work.
Austin wound the bare wire down the full length of the pole in a tight spiral. He kept the turns even and pulled each one snug against the bamboo.
Next, he drove a copper-clad iron stake four feet into the mountain.
THUMP. THUMP. CRACK.
Beside it, he arranged six hollow black stone chests. He had built them over the last two evenings, filling each with quartz crystals, mica sheets, and copper plates. They were crude storage cells, designed to hold a large electrical charge.
He connected the pole to the grounding stake and then to the storage bank. Finally, he lifted the bamboo spire into the base he had fixed in the courtyard.
THUD.
Its copper tip pointed straight into the center of the storm.
Austin returned to the porch and dusted off his hands.
“Ben Franklin would buy me a beer. A clean path into storage. Go ahead, sky. Hit a proper ground.”
***
Five miles east, Gu Qing and the Grand Elders clung to the marble balcony beneath the storm’s pressure.
“The Nine-Turns Violet Tribulation!” Elder Zhao cried. “It hasn’t fallen since the second dynasty! The sect is finished!”
“Wait.” Elder Mu dragged himself upright. “He has raised a copper pole. He means to draw the lightning away from the buildings!”
BOOM!
Lei Zhen struck the thunder drum with his Calamity Hammer.
A pillar of violet lightning twelve feet wide burst from the clouds. Three hundred million volts turned the sky white-purple across three kingdoms.
The bolt dove straight for Austin’s roof.
Ten yards above the shingles, it found the copper pole.
Lightning followed the easiest path. The dry wooden cabin offered resistance. The thick copper line leading into wet bedrock offered almost none.
SNAP.
The bolt bent sharply in midair and struck the pole. The current spiraled down the copper coil and poured into the six stone storage cells.
BZZZZZT—CLACK—HUMMMMM.
There was no explosion. No crater. Not even a broken shingle.
The cells glowed violet as they drank in the power.
A blue screen appeared.
Austin grinned and slapped his knee.
“Full on the first hit? Free power for a month! Come on, storm. Do it again. I have three more empty bins behind the woodshed!”
Above him, Lei Zhen stared with his mouth open.
He grounded the Nine-Turns Tribulation with bamboo and copper wire? And he wants more?
“INSOLENT LEECH! I AM THE JUDGE OF HEAVEN! DIE UNDER ITS LAW!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
He struck the drum eight more times.
Eight enormous violet bolts fell toward Sunset Peak. Every one bent toward the pole and vanished into the storage bank with a steady bzzzt-thump.
By the ninth strike, the stone cells gave off a warm lavender light and purred softly.
Lei Zhen collapsed to his knees on his thunder chariot. His divine dantian was empty. His armor was scorched and bent, and tears of humiliation ran down his indigo face.
“This is no mortal. It is an ancient parasite from beyond the stars. It drinks the wrath of Heaven like tea.”
He gathered what remained of his storm and fled toward the upper realm.
Within seconds, the clouds broke apart. Morning sunlight returned to the valley, and finches landed on the cabin roof.
Austin walked to the humming storage bank and patted one warm stone.
“Now I can wire an electric cooktop and build an automated workshop lathe.”