The moment the skiff slammed into the gap between thunderstorm fronts,
Ji Bochuan was convinced he was about to die.
Not from lightning.
The pale-gold lightning ward was still holding—barely—its flickering barrier stretched thin as it wrapped the small boat in an unstable cocoon of light.
No.
What threatened to kill him was something far worse.
Pressure.
The air itself had thickened into something viscous and electrically charged, like breathing through molten resin. Each inhale scraped his lungs raw, as if a rusted pump were forcing iron filings straight into his chest. His exposed skin prickled endlessly—thousands of needle-like stings—as free-floating lightning-aspected spiritual particles attempted to bore into his pores and invade his meridians.
And that wasn't even the worst part.
The real danger lay against his chest.
The Dao-Spirit Jade Pendant—the artifact he had worn since childhood, normally warm and placid, glowing only in rare moments—was now searing hot.
It burned like a brand pulled straight from a forge, pressed tight against his skin. Worse still, it wasn't merely emitting Dao resonance anymore. It was reacting violently—like a drop of water thrown into boiling oil—colliding head-on with the storm's rampant lightning-aspected Dao field.
This wasn't harmony.
This was two incompatible laws tearing into each other at point-blank range.
At the edge of his blurring vision, Ji Bochuan almost thought he could see it: concentric ripples of muted blue-gold radiating from the pendant, invisible to the naked eye but undeniably real. Every time those ripples brushed against the purple-white lightning saturating the air, sparks exploded with sharp crackles, disrupting the surrounding storm and making the lightning even more erratic.
Deep within his consciousness, the pages of the Cosmic Ledger began flipping at an unprecedented speed.
Crimson warnings flooded his mind.
[WARNING: Extreme environmental Dao pressure detected.]
[Lightning-aspected Dao concentration: Grade C—Upper (rapidly increasing; projected to reach Grade B—Lower threshold within thirty breaths).]
[Dao-Spirit Jade status: Autonomous activation detected.]
[Current Dao nature: "Chaos — Unformed" (moderate, adaptive bias) in violent conflict with environmental attribute "Lightning — Destructive."]
[Result: Local storm stability compromised.]
[Lightning energy density increased by 37%. Trajectory volatility increased by 52%.]
[EMERGENCY RECOMMENDATION: Sever resonance link immediately OR introduce compatible Dao attributes to mediate.]
[Failure may trigger unpredictable cascading anomalies.]
Sever it?
Mediate it?
Ji Bochuan let out a bitter breath.
He barely knew what the pendant was, let alone how to control it. Right now, it felt like a frightened child thrown into a battlefield—lashing out blindly at everything around it.
BOOM—!
A bolt of lightning thicker than a tree trunk tore down beside the skiff, grazing the edge of the ward. The sea erupted in blinding white light as water vaporized instantly, scalding mist exploding outward.
The barrier flickered violently. Its thickness visibly thinned.
No more waiting.
Ji Bochuan yanked out the crude lightning-resistance pill Old Four had given him and swallowed it without hesitation. The pill dissolved instantly, spreading a muddy, earthen taste mixed with faint coolness. Low quality. Full of impurities.
But it worked—just enough.
A thin insulating layer wrapped his core meridians, keeping them from rupturing under the storm's pressure.
Still, it was nothing more than a temporary patch.
At most, the lightning ward would last less than a third of an incense stick.
Faced with death, Ji Bochuan did something unexpected.
He forced himself to calm down.
Closing his eyes, he abandoned all attempts to see the lightning and instead sank fully into the circulation of the Heart-Refinement Art.
A plain, unremarkable mental technique from the Mahā Academy—yet at this moment, it revealed a hidden edge.
As his mind descended into near-emptiness, the chaos outside faded.
In its place, he heard something.
A rhythm.
Not thunder.
A vast, ancient pulse—the heartbeat of destruction itself.
Like a colossal heart pounding across heaven and sea.
Every nine long breaths, energy swelled to a catastrophic peak and discharged.
Between those peaks, three violent aftershocks rippled outward.
And between those…
There were gaps.
Brief. Fleeting.
But real.
The storm had a tide.
And within that tide lay his only path to survival.
Ji Bochuan opened his eyes.
They were cold. Focused. Calculating.
Ahead, the twisting corridor of the storm flickered in and out of existence. Some regions crackled densely with lightning nets; others appeared deceptively calm.
But seen through the storm's rhythm—
The most dangerous zones entered momentary weakness just before the next surge.
The "safe" zones were often death traps waiting to ignite.
He needed precision.
Down to heartbeats.
Without hesitation, he plunged his consciousness into the depths of the Cosmic Ledger.
Pages glowed faintly as data flooded in.
Every lightning bolt within a hundred meters—its thickness, brightness, trajectory, energy density. Airflow patterns. Dao-particle vectors.
The Ledger simulated.
Rejected.
Recalculated.
Again and again—
Until one narrow, twisting route emerged in his mind, marked with exact timings and turning points.
Now.
Ji Bochuan gripped the helm.
The skiff didn't charge forward blindly anymore.
It danced.
A jagged zigzag through death.
He surged through zones that had just gone dark, lightning slamming down behind him an instant later.
He halted in places that looked open—only for thunder to explode moments later where he would've been.
Several times, lightning grazed the ward so closely that static lifted his hair and numbed his limbs. Once, a wave spun the skiff sideways as a massive lightning pillar ripped past the hull.
Yet his hands never shook.
He'd walked this edge before.
Hunting the Windshade Panther behind Qingyan Town.
Escaping the Firecloud Sparrow swarms of Blackwind Gorge.
Running from Nether Wardens through the alleys of Fog Isle.
The difference?
This time, he held a book that bordered on prophecy.
After an incense stick that felt like a lifetime, the skiff burst free.
Not out of the storm—
—but into its eye.
Lightning thinned. The sea calmed.
Ahead, under flickering flashes, a dark island rose from the waves like a sleeping beast.
They had arrived.
Ji Bochuan exhaled shakily, only then realizing his back was soaked through with cold sweat.
The lightning ward was nearly gone.
Without pausing, he crushed his final movement talisman.
The skiff surged toward the island.
Black sand. Metal-sheened stone. Twisted thunderwood trees.
And wreckage.
Barrels. Rusted iron. A skeletal boat half-buried in stone.
This island was no stranger to visitors.
He landed silently.
Then—he stopped.
Watched.
Because in places like this…
Being seen was more dangerous than lightning.