48th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  Finally alone in his room, Newt stood from his bed and sensed something off. He stopped and examined himself, but failed to find the source of his discomfort. Newt made a careful step, but his leg jerked too fast, too far. He panicked and froze, one leg up, just about to touch the earthen floor.

  What the?

  He looked at the pitcher of water on his nightstand and carefully lifted it. Three pints of water amounted to barely any weight to him ever since he had entered the second realm, but they seemed lighter than he remembered. Much lighter.

  He looked at the table, but decided not to lift it.

  I might break something.

  Instead, Newt hopped in place. He exerted his muscles to just barely lift himself off ground, but jumped over two feet, nearly hitting the ceiling.

  All right, I’m stronger. Much stronger.

  He moved a bit, striking air with his fists and chopping with his palm before reaching a conclusion.

  It’s like I’ve advanced a realm, but my mind and senses didn’t keep up. Is that because I was unconscious while the change happened, or is there another reason? What’s my realm?

  New closed his eyes, but found his realm unchanged.

  That’s strange, my body got stronger without my cultivation advancing? I’ll check it later.

  After confirming that fact, Newt did simple, safe exercises. By the time he left the room, he was mostly used to his body, free of jerks and displays of dichotomy between his senses and muscles. He went to the northern training area and found it identical to how he remembered it.

  Several disciples and most elders shot him curious glances when they thought he could not see them, but nobody said a word as he entered an empty training ring. The outside sounds disappeared, and he spent his time jumping, doing flips and handstands, slowly pushing the limits of his body to get familiar with it.

  The session lasted an hour, and by the time he finished, Newt was confident he would not cause any incidents with his outbursts. And since he did not want to manipulate spiritual energy without his master, he headed for the Chamber of Tomes.

  “Greetings, Elder,” he whispered and bowed to the old librarian, who nodded in acknowledgement but remained silent.

  Newt went to search for the information on the topic which interested him the most, the Blood Cult, but he quickly found there was no mention of demonic cultivators or their techniques on the shelves of the index room. He bit his lip, then went to see the librarian again.

  “Elder,” he bowed respectfully, “I wish to see any information on the Blood Cult we might have.”

  The air in the room turned solid, and the welcoming, warm old lady turned into the edge of a razor-sharp sword.

  “Why do you require such information?”

  Newt’s shoulders were stiff, and he had the need to shrink his neck as he gulped. “My master mentioned them, and I want to know what she was talking about.”

  The tense atmosphere thawed.

  “I guess I’ll need to have a chat with Leucaena. As for you, young man, there’s no reason to worry about the Blood Cult at your realm. They are bad people, doing bad things, and once you reach the fifth realm, you will learn more. Until then, ignorance is bliss.”

  Newt nodded. Elder Thunderwing had said nothing new, if members of the Blood Cult were demonic cultivators, siphoning blood from people to cultivate, they were definitely bad people. The only new bit of information she revealed seemed irrelevant, yet Newt mulled it over.

  Why the fifth realm?

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  He bowed and thanked her. Just as he was about to turn around and leave to find another book, Newt decided to ask the question he was itching to ask.

  “Do you know what happened to me, Elder?”

  Elder Thunderwing stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head.

  “I saw what happened, I can even tell you what happened, but I don’t know why it happened. As far as I know, this was a unique incident. Don’t waste your time searching for other instances, we have no recordings of anything similar. I checked.”

  Newt bit his lip. “And about the changes to my body?”

  The odds were she did not know, but it did not hurt to ask. Much to his surprise, the old librarian answered without a hint of surprise. “Search for ‘Heavenly tribulation,’ and ‘Spiritual body reformation’.”

  Newt bowed and followed her instruction.

  Three index books later, he sat in the reading room, focused on the first book he had checked out.

  Heavenly tribulation was a phenomenon that happened to man and spirit beast alike upon reaching the sixth realm and those beyond. Starting from that realm, the amount of spiritual energy drawn by a single individual grew too much, and the world wished to obliterate the cultivator to preserve its energy.

  That was one theory. Another stated that the heavens feared the rise of an ultimate being, who would subject them to his or her will, sending tribulations to smite the cultivator when they were at their most vulnerable, at the embryonic stages of their new realm. Each tribulation was stronger and more fearsome than the last, and anyone who intervened would suffer a tribulation of their own, only hurting the person undergoing their trial.

  Some authors, on the other hand, thought it a trial, a test of the heavens for the right to advance to the next realm. The last option sounded absurd to Newt, but the whole topic helped him understand some things better.

  How it was possible for wealthy clans to decline. Being rich was a requirement for cultivation, but it was far from being the only requirement. Several failed tribulations were all it took to sever a clan’s inheritance.

  Like always, danger came hand in hand with opportunity. Heavens dealt the tribulation using the cultivator’s element and surviving it reinforced the body and its affinity to the element in question. Newt also finally discovered why there were only four elements. The tribulation came in four different elements, mixing them to smite the cultivator with their own element, thus giving birth to the orthodox division of elements.

  Huh? I bet Dandelion doesn’t know this, or at least he didn’t know it when we discussed cultivation for the first time.

  Newt kept reading and found a section mentioning a hypothesis that the enhancement of the physique during a tribulation happened naturally as spiritual energy over-saturated the body. Another interesting bit of trivia was that spirit beasts suffered from stronger tribulations than humans of equal realm.

  Then things turned grim. Cultivators needed absolute safety when undergoing tribulation, since it was their most vulnerable time, and hostile organizations often employed assassins to target their rivals during these periods of weakness.

  Newt flipped the pages in fascination, finding references to accounts of the Explorer’s Gate’s elders undergoing their tribulations.

  Newt read booklet after booklet in which long-dead elders first introduced themselves, their element, and their techniques before explaining the trial the world put them under. No two accounts were alike, and the intensity of tribulations varied within the same realm, but some elements were common.

  The world or the heavens, authors disagreed on who was meting out punishment, always used their element or an approximation of it. The tribulation involved the techniques the cultivator themselves used, polished and often improved, serving as the base for the cultivator to advance the technique and make it truly their own.

  And then, in the fifth account Newt read, he found what he was looking for.

  ‘The sensation truly is odd. Good, but odd. Like waking up in someone else’s body, or wearing clothes that don’t fit. I took the better part of an hour to get used to the changes.’ Elder Hail Shiningstar mentioned towards the end of her account.

  Newt closed the book and gazed at a distant spot ahead.

  So, I have experienced some sort of tribulation. The heavens testing, punishing, or blessing me, depending on who you ask.

  Newt returned the books and went to find Obsidian, still deep in thought, considering all the implications of the unique event.

  This is definitely related to Magmin, but is it because I used his cultivation technique or something else? Dandelion said he emulated my technique for his own cultivation. Did the sun smite him as well?

  Newt wanted to write a letter to his friend, but he had no idea where Dandelion was. The chances that he was still in the imperial city were slim, he mentioned he would move deeper into the empire, searching for better libraries, better resources, and better opportunities.

  Senior is extremely competent, but I don’t think he can survive what happened to me if he needs the protection of a tenth realm master. I hope he’s alive, and that this has nothing to do with the cultivation technique, but what else could it be?

  Newt quickly arrived at another possible reason. His spirit roots were anomalous. Humans consumed the spirit beast cores when forming their spirit roots, but Magmin’s still existed as a separate realm.

  Maybe heavens want to destroy me because I’m faulty or maybe some limit which should exist doesn’t exist on my spirit roots? Maybe they can’t tolerate the duplication that happened?

  Newt did not know, and he had a feeling he would take decades or even centuries to find the answer.

  I hope this was a onetime thing.

  He reached his dorm and found light under Obsidian’s door. Whatever it was, it would have to wait. He had a duel he had been postponing for long enough.