The feeling of the wind rushing against his ears filled him with nostalgia. It was an unpleasant feeling, one he wouldn’t normally indulge in, but few things ever made him think of the old days. He’d been craving every bit of those things lately. It was an escape, really, a way to stop his mind from pondering on what must come. It never worked for long, but it gave him a little respite.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips as he felt the familiar energy of the lightning peak. He hated sighing. It reminded him too much of the elders. Made him feel like he was getting old.

He reduced his speed as the peak itself came into view. How excited he was when he first arrived here, awed by the sheer magnificence of the sect headquarters. Looking down at the small city, it was easy to see why he had been impressed.

Sprawling edifices built in concentric rings formed the inner part of the city. The circular pattern continued outward to smaller residential buildings occupied by the less prosperous members of the sect. These buildings, mostly four stories tall, and fairly modest by the sect's standards, were still beautifully designed compared to the boring square houses most commonly seen in the empire. The outer edges of the sect were surrounded by eight towers with spires reaching towards the heavens. Buildings so tall they were impossible to scale without flight.

All these though, were nothing compared to the hulking beast the sect itself called home. The structure was larger than the entire inner circle.

Another bout of nostalgia hit him as he took in the building for what might be the last time in his existence.

The lightning peak in reality was a mountain whose upper layers had been removed to house the sect. The resulting piece of land, which was shaped like a volcano, was used to construct a “home worthy of demigods” as Li liked to put it, with its multiple spires jutting out at different points.

The entire building was a mix of colours with different colours, each of the sect hierarchies represented by its own pigment.

He touched down when he got to the gate. An unnecessary thing given his position, but one born out of sentiment and habit.

“Great Lord,” the guards greeted, bowing in respect. Their badges were purple, which meant they were core disciples. Using core disciples as guards implied that the sect leader was taking no chances. No person in their right minds would try to attack a sect this powerful under normal situations, but this was hardly a normal situation.

“At ease cultivators. Have any elders asked for me already?”

“Great Lord Xiao, the third elder was inquiring about your arrival just a few hours ago.” the first disciple answered with another bow.

“Alright then, thank you. I will be on my way to him then,” he replied.

“That would be unnecessary Lee, the Dragon Lord is the one who requires your attention,” interrupted a low voice from ahead.

Chen Li seemed less like an elder than even Xiao Lee himself did. Mainly because of how young he looked. And the fact that he still smiled. The first elder said time would change that, though it was difficult to imagine him without his smile.

“Chen Li. A pleasure to see you.” Lee greeted, giving a nod in his direction.

“The pleasure is mine, Great Lord. Come, the Dragon Lord awaits,” he replied, with a bow as stiff as it was shallow, and started flying towards the central spire.

Great, Lee thought, he’s still angry.

“You know I must do this Li. It has been decided.” he said, easily catching up to him.

“Has it really, Lee. I remember you telling me we would lead this place together. Or does your word mean nothing to you?” he asked accusingly."

“You know I value my word, but the high council made their decision, and I was the perfect candidate. I cannot refuse the High Council, Lee. Besides, I really was the best choice.”

“You’re making excuses. You’re a Great Lord! The high council can’t force you to do anything unless they want a war. You are simply trying to run away from responsibility. Leaving me stuck here as an elder while you go embrace divinity.”

He wasn’t exactly wrong and that twisted knots in Lee’s stomach.

He decided to try another angle. “My greatest apologies, then. I believed I could control the urge when I became a Great Lord. I was wrong. My will was not great enough to resist.” he said, a little desperate.

“Of course, it wasn’t. You only think about yourself and your stupid cultivation. I thought you’d change. That you could be different. Turns out, you’re not different at all. You’re just as power hungry as every other member of the High Council. It’s all right though. I’ll take care of your mess. Just like I always do. Tell the Dragon Lord I send my regards and I’ll see him later.” He said before flying away.

Lee contemplated following him for a moment before giving up. He'd never been good at apologies. He felt his heart weighed heavily by guilt and a feeling of loneliness overcome him.

He was no stranger to loneliness. This time though, his pillar of support just turned his back on him.

Lee walked into the Dragon Lord’s chambers with less apprehension than before. Surprisingly, the argument seemed to give him both relief and sadness. Relief, because he didn't have to think about Li worrying about him anymore and sadness, for he had none that would worry for him anymore.

There was nothing keeping him tied to this realm if he left.

He felt strangely comforted by this even as he scolded himself for viewing his only friend a burden.

The Dragon’s Lord’s throne room was as sparsely decorated as he remembered with only two chairs and a big throne in the middle. At the edge of the room was an open door leading to a balcony.

Standing on the edge of the balcony, his back towards the room, was a man of small stature. His robes spilled onto the ground in waves of red as if woven for one larger. On his head was flowing white hair that fell to his back, straight and properly groomed.

"Impeccable as always, teacher." Lee said, bowing at the waist.

"As is fitting for my station, student. And I've told you before, Great Lords do not bow low," he replied. "We give short bows to equals and none to lessers."

"Indeed teacher. I bow not as Great Lord, but as a student. To show gratitude for your teachings. Leave it to you to lecture me just minutes before my ascension. And on etiquette no less!"

"Ah," the Dragon Lord said, turning to face him. "It is a teacher's duty to lecture his student, is it not? Ascension or not."

"Indeed, teacher." Lee humoured him, taking in his features properly.

The Dragon Lord was as impressive from the front as he was from the back. He was very finely built – a requirement, given millennia of tempering. His chiselled frame was obvious even through his robes. Said robes came open at his chest, revealing it to all who looked.

The bane of women, that view was oft often called. His face, though harsh, was as smooth as jade, the wrinkles and sometimes scars that Great Lords liked to keep absent on his face. In that regard, they were both outliers.

The Dragon Lord, so old as to be called ageless, was the epitome of physical perfection, as always.

"It is a title I bear with honour, Lee, to be called your teacher. I am pleased with how you turned out. It is every teacher's dream to have a student that surpasses him." he said, his voice thick with pride.

"Is it? I would think the opposite given how many teachers kill their students to keep their supremacy and all the student-organised coups. I believe you are an exception to the norm, teacher. I know how many Great Lords would give anything to be in my position." Lee replied.

"There are many indeed. But I have been Dragon Lord for millennia. I could not imagine myself having to start at the bottom of any realm, even if it is the higher realms. I hope you are prepared for that Lee. You would not be Great Lord Lee anymore. You will be a no name weakling." He spoke the last word with a slight grimace, as if the concept of being a weakling was painful to him.

"I've been above the bottom of the chain for less than two decades. I don't think I'm that averse yet. It would be unpleasant though." Lee said, stomach turning at the thought. He'd been trying to avoid thinking about that.

"Alright. It is time, I think. Do you have any unfinished business?" His teacher asked, expression turning grave.

It would probably be prudent to see Liu, just to say goodbye. Their relationship had been strained for a while, but it wouldn't hurt to say goodbye, would it?

"No, teacher, I do not."

It was sad that he had to leave broken relationships behind, but he couldn't quite muster the emotional strength to fix anything.

Maybe it was for the best. They would think about him less when he was gone.

"Then we should go. Time is of the essence. The peak won't stay open forever." The Dragon Lord was already gone when the words reached his ears.

The Dragon Lord's residence had a spire that extended much higher than any other thing in the city. At the top of the spire was a cultivation pod.

Cultivation pods were common enough in the empire and were usually attuned to individual elements. While they were good for cultivation in general, they lost their effectiveness as cultivation levels increased. Even the most powerful versions couldn't do much after the core formation stage.

This one though, was the only one in the entire realm capable of assisting a Great Lord. It was in fact the true reason why the sect was called lightning peak. Wars had been fought over it in the past but while it was still much coveted by Great Lords, the Dragon Lord was a good enough deterrent.

"It really is more magnificent from up close. Especially when it's finally powered on." Lee commented.

"Indeed, it is," the Dragon Lord replied, his tone impatient. "And that power took millennia to gather. It would not do to waste it. Now get inside."

"Okay, I'm going in," Lee replied, taking a few steps before pausing. "And thank you master. For all your teachings. I will be forever grateful."

"Get inside, Lee," was the stern reply he got and then the Dragon Lord was gone.

Typical. His master had a habit of changing moods quickly when it came to his best prodigy.

Lee pushed the thought out of his mind as he walked towards the pod. It was a wonderful piece of engineering. Like regular pods, it was shaped like a cone and had glowing symbols and lines around it, a telltale sign of its empowered state. Unlike regular pods though, the energy released was unnerving.

Once he crossed the threshold of its influence, he felt waves of lightning qi so powerful that it formed ripples in the air. Sparks of lightning crackled all around it and his core felt invigorated even without cultivating.

It was no surprise that it needed millennia to recharge if it possessed this level of energy.

He took a little qi from his core and sent it to one of the symbols on the pod. He felt its qi pulse, recognizing a Great Lord of the lightning Dao, as it was built to, and opened up for him to enter.

The interior of the pod was completely dark, the entrance locked with an unfamiliar seal. The darkness was not a problem, any cultivator worth his qi was unaffected by it.

The seal, though, meant that he couldn't leave the pod until its energy was exhausted. It was disconcerting, to say the least. He might not have been planning to break out of it, but he was still a Great Lord, and the concept of being trapped had become foreign to him.

While it was spacious, the pod was not bigger on the inside. An expected choice, considering how well spatial manipulation worked with such large quantities of energy.

He sat cross legged in the centre of the pod, the sheer force of his qi keeping him afloat, and opened up his mind to cultivate.

The amount of lightning qi present in the pod was even more mind-blowing than he thought. Large particles of qi so pure that it baffled him, flowed into his core. He suspected this level of purity could only be found in the Greater realms.

As he fell deeper into cultivation, the speed of absorption increased to the point where he could barely keep up with it. He was absorbing more energy than he had in his entire life.

It wasn't enough, though. He knew all the energy in the realm would not help him ascend.

It was true comprehension of the Dao that would determine whether he was worthy of passing the tribulation. The runes on the pod thankfully, were built to give enlightenment on the Dao of lightning.

He expanded his senses to feel the runes, trying to comprehend them. He felt concepts of lightning so complex he couldn't have possibly figured them out on his own and yet he began to understand immediately he felt them.

To achieve perfection, his mastery and control of his path needed to be complete. And complete mastery only came with comprehension. That holy mantra given to him by his teacher was the guiding force that had directed his path to the peak of cultivation.

On this realm at least.

LIGHTNING WAS POWER.

That was the central truth upon which he had built his cultivation path. It was an undeniable truth without a doubt, but was it the whole truth?

He’d always known that the way he viewed lightning was very narrow and one-dimensional. Even acknowledging it's vastness, he had never bothered to expand the scope of his comprehension. Specialisation was the quickest way to get to the peak after all.

And he couldn’t afford to slow down.

Now though, he had to expand his horizons. Lightning was power without a doubt, but it was also speed. He knew people whose paths were built around that.

He had also met lightning cultivators who used it to seize the muscles and lock enemies in place. Even stranger were stories he’d heard of cultivators who used lightning to control the brain and parse thoughts. He had not believed at first, but further research confirmed the possibility. The brain functioned using lightning qi after all.

Even with his comprehension of lightning enhanced as it was by the pod, to achieve complete mastery of lightning in its entirety was a task he was incapable of in less than a century.

Thankfully, he did not need complete mastery of lightning to break the mortal coil, only of his path. Though the pod’s ability to provide prodigious amounts of energy and speed up comprehension were enough to make it a heavenly grade artefact, it was not the true reason for its incomparable value. It was the strands of intention, gathered from all the cultivators that ascended before him, that made it so valuable as to make Great Lords consider going to war.

Etched into the very fabric of the space around him, he felt the strands of ancient willpower suspended around him. The will of a Great Lord, condensed into intention and left for centuries in incredibly rich qi, could act as a repository for knowledge. And the many strands of intention around him, containing the experience of ascended Great Lords from the beginning to the end of ascension, were easily among the most valuable things in the entire sect.

Even as he was quickly gaining comprehension in the entirety of lightning, a part of his mind ran through the intention, gleaning hidden secrets and untold truths. While the ascension process was different for every cultivator, he quickly found patterns and similarities between each process.

He did not know how much time he spent there, the majority of his focus on comprehending the lightning. The small part of his mind that was free was making plans to deal with the actual tribulation that would determine his success.

The tribulation was close, he knew. He could feel echoes of the divine lightning that accompanied it at the edge of his mind.

Divine lightning was by far the most difficult form of lighting to comprehend. Not only had he never encountered it outside of tribulations and world rifts, even the strands of intention he parsed provided little help.

Even though he was not so foolhardy as to consider taming the divine lightning of tribulation, gaining comprehension of the most exotic form of lightning in the entire plane was an attractive thought. Such comprehension, no matter how little, could prove a boon when he ascended.

He felt the first strand of divine lightning less than a second before it manifested. Though it was a small strand, too weak to affect him physically, it was the single most distinctive strand of lightning on the mountain.

It was decades since he could not influence every spark of lightning around him. Even the strands that controlled thoughts, though he could not fully control, still fell under his general influence.

The divine lightning, no matter how hard he tried, was absolutely resistant to his influence. Even his sacred sphere, impervious to even another Great Lord's intrusion, posed no obstruction to its existence.

He felt more strands come into existence around him, defying planar laws and bypassing his sacred space as easily as the first had. The knowledge he gained from the intention had, thankfully, prepared him for the next step. The presence of the lightning meant he had sufficient comprehension of his primary element.

That, it turned out, was the easy part. He drew in a deep well of qi to ease the tension in his meridians as he mentally prepared for what came next.

CHILD OF HEAVEN

He felt a distant echo of a voice, as alien as it was powerful, reverberate the word until it sunk deep in his soul. The divine lightning around him, from those barely larger than a needle to strands as thick as his torso, turned towards him in an instant and struck him. Then his tribulation began.

He barely held back a scream as lightning he could not control ran through the length of his body, seizing up his muscles in pain. He struggled to gain control of the lightning and was surprised to feel his influence slowly extending towards the strands racking his body. The pod's runes must be working better than he thought. Even the pain was fading away as his body adapted to the lightning much faster than his mind.

He focused his senses on his body, observing as the lightning passed through and remade flesh. He saw the lightning tear apart his meridians and touch the edges of his soul, reforging every bit of him. Everything that was changed was filled to the brim with the raw and unrestrained power of lightning down to his very cells.

Understanding flowed into him as he realised what was happening. The divine lightning was not simply a different aspect of natural lightning. It was something entirely new. Lightning that did not exist naturally in this world. It was lightning formed as a manifestation of a path at the cusp of the divine. His divine lightning was unique to him.

That didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt him though.

He briefly wondered why he hadn’t seen this in one of the strands of intention still floating above him— he definitely couldn’t have been the only one to form unique lightning, considering the cultivators who’d ascended with the pods were all on lightning paths. Only briefly though.

He refocused on the lightning, finally pushing through and exerting his will enough to stop it from ravaging his body. He lost control immediately after, leaving the lightning to disperse harmlessly around him.

Though he’d been expecting it, he still felt a little disappointment at losing control so quickly. He brushed the feeling away. He had only attained the most basic understanding of the lightning. He’d have all the time to truly master it after his ascension.

He ran his perception through his body and found it completely changed. He’d hoped for more obvious effects, but he’d make do with what he had. Relief coursed through him as he felt some tension leave him.

He was done with his tribulation.

REFLECTION

When the voice boomed around him for the second time that day, Xiao Lee was ready.

While the actual details of the reflection always changed, the basic concept was always the same. So, when he found himself in an endless void, face to face with a mirror as tall as him, he was prepared

Even when he was assaulted with a stream of memories plucked from the dark recesses of his mind, dark things placed in hidden depths and left to fade away, he did not falter.

While the tribulation was completely unique and thus unpredictable, he’d gotten enough from the strands of intention to get a relatively accurate model of what to expect from the reflection.

The reflection was, at its core, a test of identity. It needed him to come to terms with the truth of his existence. The mirror variation was, in his opinion, by far the easiest variation of the test for any true cultivator with a proper foundation.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror for a moment. It was gaining depth. He knew instinctively that it would consume him if he failed.

Perhaps if he was a lesser cultivator, one who was not instructed by the Dragon Lord, he would be worried.

But he was a proper cultivator. And every proper cultivator had been taught to acknowledge their identity from the moment they could talk.

So, as he stared at his reflection in the mirror, a smile tugged at his lips. The reflection would fail to devour him as it had failed to devour those before him.

Because no true cultivator would be devoured by a mirror of themselves.

With his lips still stretched in a bitter smile, he spoke his core truth.

I ADVANCE

The space shook as memories flowed around him and replaced the darkness.

He saw himself as a child pushing beyond all his peers, enough to be accepted into the legendary Lightning Peak Sect.

He saw himself again, barely older, the only Core Formation cultivator in the midst of foundation disciples older than him. His name was called, and he was promoted to an inner disciple after only three months, a new record. Yet standing among the crowd looking at him in awe, he only wished to go back to cultivating.

More memories played out around him, each with the same story. He broke a new record and was celebrated, yet he only wished to keep cultivating.

Then the Dragon Lord found him. He watched as the talented but inexperienced young boy was moulded into a true cultivator under the guidance of a master

The Dragon Lord had other apprentices who he eventually formed friendships with and together they were the stars of the sect. Yet it soon became clear that even they could not keep up with him.

He did not wish to leave them on his path, so he made efforts to bring them along. It worked for a while, and they continued together. But even the greatest geniuses of his generation could not keep up with him. He left them on his path.

Then the memories shifted, and then there were three. Three friends who promised to reach the top of the world together. So, they did.

He watched as the whole sect held a welcoming ceremony for them. Great Lords before thirty, the first in history.

He watched as his friends settled into their new lives in the sect. They’d reached the top so there was no need to keep advancing. It broke his heart when he realised it.

He watched as he tried to explain why he couldn’t stop, but they didn’t understand. No one ever did.

He watched as he grew more distant from them, from all the world. But he drifted further and further till only one thing filled his life.

The memories cut off all of a sudden and he felt his spirit changing, advancing. He blinked and found himself back in the pod, his spirit transformed.

Tension drained from him as he reached into himself. He had advanced again.

* * *

The new god glanced around at his surroundings and spoke:

I ASCEND.

And the world listened.

And as he left the world of his birth, Xiao Lee, youngest ascendant in the history of Xenus, couldn’t help but wonder why his ascension was so easy.