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The skyship soared high above the clouds, cutting through the wind with quiet determination. Its silver body hummed with power, formations etched into its hull glowing faintly as they pushed against the storm-laden air. Inside, only a small group manned the ship: Ruan at the controls, her calm expression focused yet relaxed; Qingling beside her, overseeing the formation matrices and weathering systems; and at the front of the vessel, on the narrow tip of its prow, stood Feiyin.
He was not alone. Baiyu, the elegant white snake with crystalline scales and a long, graceful body, lay coiled beside him, her body rising and falling in tandem with the gusts of wind. Her golden eyes watched him silently, worry evident in her posture.
Feiyin stood barefoot on the cold metal, the outer protective formation ending just a few steps behind him. Here, the storm was unfiltered. The air screamed with wind. Shards of hail, like knives of frozen glass, tore through the sky. Lightning cracked and roared in the distance, illuminating the churning darkness with electric white.
He shivered as the cold bit into his skin, but it was less from the storm, and more from the anxiety clawed at his chest.
He had only one week left.
This was his final push- his last chance to complete what had become his cultivation path: the eight natural elemental intents. Otherwise, he will have to step into the next cultivation phase while feeling incomplete.
His breathing was shallow at first, heart pounding against his ribs. What if he couldn't do it? What if this storm passed and he remained incomplete, all his progress scattered like dust?
The storm howled, drowning his thoughts… until a soft voice called to him.
"You're already closer than anyone I've ever seen," Qingling said gently, her voice carried through spiritual whispering. "Don't lose yourself in anxiety. You've always moved forward, haven't you?"
At the same moment, Ruan appeared from below deck, stepping to his side. Words were not her forte, so she didn't speak. She simply placed a hand on Feiyin's shoulder while having a faint smile on her face.
Then Baiyu raised her head and booped his arm with her snout, her soft scales brushing his skin.
Feiyin exhaled slowly. His eyes closed. The breath steadied.
He smiled faintly.
"Thanks," he whispered, watching them step back with encouraging smiles while going back to steer the ship
He opened his eyes again and reached for his guqin, seated it across his lap, and settled into place. The storm raging in his heart had calmed down, leaving only the one in front him. And this one, he would step in head on.
They had set their heading for the coast, toward the ocean where a great storm was brewing. It was late autumn, the cusp of winter, and the seasonal clash had birthed a monstrous tempest. Winds lashed the sky, lightning crackled across the heavens, and great chunks of hail fell like celestial fury.
This was where the elements bared their truth.
Feiyin let his senses open fully. His oscillation sense rippled outward, catching the subtlest shifts in pressure, in vibration, in the song of the world. His spiritual sense stretched into the distance, tracing the flows of essence through cloud and rain and current.
He sat cross-legged, guqin before him, and began to play.
The strings hummed.
For six days.
Ruan and Qingling took turns steering the skyship and keeping its formations running. They checked on him often, but never interfered. Baiyu never left his side, her scales frosted from the cold, tail wrapped protectively around his foot. Her presence reminded him he was not alone.
They sometimes lowered the skyship to witness the storm from the ground, to feel how lightning impacted the earth, how hail shattered stone and trees groaned beneath the wind.
Feiyin never stopped playing.
Wind answered first.
It danced along his notes, fluttering with his melodies. He felt it- how wind moved between all things, how it carried seeds for wood, fanned flames across dry fields, how it carved valleys through mountains and oxidized minerals. It drove the ocean into waves, dragged clouds into place. In his oscillation sense, wind was a swirling motif, a piercing whistle intertwined with the rhythm of all life.
He played on.
Ice followed next.
It was slower. Distant. Reserved.
But when it came, it resonated deeply. He saw it forming in the clouds, freezing the mist into snow and hail, drawing fire's warmth from the vapor and silencing the world. Ice didn't destroy- it subdued. It tamed and preserved everything it covered under its white canvas. He saw how it stilled wood's growth, sealed earth beneath a crystalline shell, strengthened metal by halting corrosion, even dampened fire's reckless fervor. His oscillation sense shivered with its tones- cold, precise, pure. It was the song of ice, the music of quiet survival and accumulation, like a plum blossom tree's buds shaking off hail and snow and blooming after a long winter.
Then came lightning.
It didn't arrive so much as crash into him.
A bolt ripped the sky in half not twenty meters away, lighting up the ship in a wash of violent white.
Feiyin gasped but kept playing.
Lightning was a paradox: It started with fire boiling water in the ocean, rising into the sky and cooling with ice into dense clouds, then followed with wind current gathering them with friction, and was later guided by minerals into the ground. It was destruction. But also rebirth. It struck trees down, split stone, seared the earth- yet also heated the air to transform its gases, nourishing the soil, and triggering the growth of hardy life. Lightning was the arbiter and spark of destruction and life.
In his oscillation sense, it was a shriek that splintered harmony before fusing it anew, a chord that tore through silence and rewove the world behind it.
He didn't eat. He barely drank. His hands blistered. His eyes grew bloodshot. His senses pushed to their limit.
But he saw.
The five elements- fire, water, earth, metal, and wood- were the foundation.
The pillars of the world.
But alone, they could fall into chaos. They could either head into a cycle of mutual growth, or go down a path of mutual destruction.
And so they gave rise to three others.
Wind served as the connector.
Ice as the moderator.
Lightning as the catalyst.
He saw it. In every interaction. In every moment.
They were not separate. They were part of a grand system.
The eight natural elements did not simply coexist- they completed each other.
His guqin sang louder.
On the seventh day, the storm reached its peak.
Feiyin sat at the bow, soaked, fingers raw and bleeding, yet still persistently playing. Baiyu lay silent, head tucked into his shoulder. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, fixed on the storm.
The music had changed. He could feel his musical and elemental intents working in tandem, connecting with something deeper.
It was no longer about mimicking the elements through the oscillations he perceived.
It was becoming them.
His strings roared with thunder.
They whispered with frost.
They soared with wind.
He felt the five elemental seeds within him- the ones he had nurtured since he stepped into the elemental infusion phase- begin to spin. And around them, three new seeds formed, each glowing with vibrant light:
An icy-white seed, like a snowflake carved from crystal.
A cyan one, light and ever-shifting.
And a deep violet one, pulsing with raw charge.
They formed a triangle, orbiting the pentagon of the five.
And then… they collided.
All eight seeds spun together, not in discord, but in resonance. Their rotations aligned. The oscillations melded.
A flash erupted in his mind.
A new orb took shape.
No longer eight separate seeds, but one brilliant orb.
A multicolored sphere of light, shifting like a prism in a storm, flashing with every color of the elements.
His elemental intent… had awakened.
Not just as a single intent.
But as a complete, unified natural elemental intent.
Feiyin's hands fell from the strings. The storm raged on.
He leaned back, soaked, cold, utterly exhausted.
Then he laughed.
He laughed like a man set free. His voice rang into the storm, rising above the thunder, echoing into the sky.
Tears streamed down his cheeks. His eyes glowed faintly, filled with light, understanding, and release.
He had done it.
He truly understood.
The world had always been a symphony he wished he could play and share, and now, he could finally play its first piece.
Baiyu uncoiled and slithered closer, pressing her cold snout against his cheek.
Feiyin reached out and stroked her head gently, his smile still trembling.
"I really did it..." he whispered.
The wind howled in answer, no longer simply as noise, but as harmony.
***
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