Over the next month and a half, Jaquan remained within the pocket realm, tethered between cultivation and companionship. The Dominant Celestial Thunder Technique had reshaped him during its first phase, but a subtle message embedded in the glyphs had revealed more—a second phase awaited. The scripture indicated its emergence after forty-five days of internal refinement. Not a call to rush, but a warning: the next trial would not spare him.
So he waited.
He tempered.
He spent his mornings submerged in qi meditation, circulating thunder through his veins. At night, when Lara sang her quiet lullabies in the strange tongue of her ancestors, he studied the formation glyphs etched into the podium, decoding their cadence. Each glyph pulsed with ancient purpose, and slowly, Jaquan began to align with them.
But electricity was not his only companion.
Lara became part of the rhythm. She moved with ease, cultivating beside him, foraging the edges of the realm's lightless paths, and crafting remedies to ease his recovery. Their bond, born from survival and quiet gratitude, evolved in stillness.
No promises were made.
No futures were planned.
Yet something between them shifted.
The tension had been soft but growing—carried in glances that lingered and silences that spoke. Less than two weeks into their quiet rhythm, something shifted.
It happened one night, beneath the flickering lantern light Lara crafted from beast bone and spirit wax. Their hands brushed—brief, hesitant. Neither moved away. A moment passed. Then two.
And then—contact became embrace.
Jaquan didn't claim her.
Lara didn't possess him.
They simply leaned into the warmth—one Jaquan hadn't known since the battlefield stripped him of everything, since Jalen mother left him. And Lara, never known at all.
That night unfolded gently.
One night became many.
Conversation gave way to closeness. Breath mingled with silence. It wasn't long after that first night that Lara felt the shift—subtle at first, then unmistakable. Her qi harmonized with something new, something stirring inside her. She knew then: life had taken root.
She didn't speak of it at first—just held her belly quietly, smiling more often, lingering longer beside him.
Even Jaquan noticed her energy shift. The frost qi she used was softer, more radiant. When he asked about it, she brushed it off with a knowing look. Not denial. Not confirmation. Just patience.
Jaquan smiled and returned to his training.
Then, on the forty-fifth day deadline, the thunder glyphs flared again.
The podium pulsed with blue-white energy. The second phase had arrived.
Jaquan stood before the lightning-shaped altar, his body aching from cultivation but steadied by resolve. He placed his hand upon the carved groove, and the thunder answered—not as a strike, but as a pull.
A current seized him. His consciousness was lifted, spiraling into a celestial corridor formed of lightning threads and spectral glyphs. This was no illusion—it was the true beginning of Enlightenment.
In three months time he arrived in the Garden of Tranquility.
Every cultivator entered this realm before their breakthrough—but the Garden never greeted them gently.
It reflected the soul.
And Jaquan's soul was a storm.
The skies above split into jagged arcs. Thunder roared not across the horizon but through cloud-formed memories. The mountains curled upward like serpent spires, absorbing lightning and spitting out fragments of his past. His worst fear was losing his son. His worst fear—losing his son. His crushing disappointment after his defeat by Valrec and the moment his core shattered. And the heartbreak when his ex-wife walked away, precisely when he needed her most.
Jaquan faced each memory, each wound, and each illusion. Not with fury. Not with denial. But with breath. Presence.
Pain didn't come from the wounds they dealt—but from the truths they revealed.
His trial lasted three days, though time flowed strangely here.
Only when he stopped resisting—when he embraced the storm inside, rather than rejecting its chaos—did the Garden shift.
Stillness spread.
Lightning condensed into gentle mist, rising from the marrow of his being. His qi did not crash. It harmonized. It pulsed like a tide drawn by a steady moon.
Then came clarity.
The Garden didn't speak—but it acknowledged him.
Jaquan's body lifted into a spiral of pure lightning, and when he awoke, he was back in the cavern—collapsed beside the podium.
Even in stillness, lightning threaded through his veins—completing what pain had started. The Thunder Physique was no longer forming. It had arrived.
Lara found him the next morning, his skin cold, pulse fragile. She cried when he didn't wake that day, or the next, or the next.
She whispered to him that night, forehead against his brow, as thunder murmured faintly in his chest: "Come back to us. We need you."