The sects painted Heavenly Tribulation as a blade hanging over a man’s head. Elders taught their disciples to meet it under expensive shell umbrellas and jade screens, then wait for the lightning to pass.
Pei Jing saw the storm differently. He had gathered enough qi to bend the field around Thunder Cliff. The charge needed somewhere to go. If he could take a share of it, the astral fire could cleanse his marrow in a way no alchemy furnace could.
He’d set the array before the ten-day brew and checked it again during the pauses at the hearth. Twelve copper rods stood around his mat. He had bound the array to the mountain’s earth veins and tested it with his own Gang Qi. When the bolt came, the array would lead most of it away. His body had to take the rest.
Thunder cracked over the summit.
The five-mile storm drew tight and sent a fork of violet lightning down into Thunder Cliff. It struck an iron seam where it showed on the upper cliff face, well below the summit. The seam ran through the fifty feet of rock between the face and the cave ceiling. Moisture inside that rock turned to steam. The mountain burst from within.
