"When the heavens strike, and you still live, you are no longer a man—they call you a curse."
Three days passed.
Li Fan lay in a stone chamber carved into the side of the clan's Spirit Peak. His body was wrapped in thick vines soaked in spiritual dew, his bones rattling beneath layers of scorched muscle.
He should've been dead.
But with every breath, his flesh trembled, then reformed.
The Fourth Cauldron had settled deep within his solar plexus, rotating like a vortex of wind and lightning. Unlike the others, this cauldron didn't simply temper—it moved. It reacted. It watched.
Each nerve in Li Fan's body now pulsed with electric clarity. He could feel ants crawling along the outer wall. Hear a squirrel blink in the pine tree outside.
He sat up, groaning.
A familiar voice snorted from the shadows. "Took you long enough."
Li Fan blinked. "Mu Qiu?"
The alchemy elder tossed him a skin of wine. "Drink. It won't help, but it'll hurt less."
He sat on a mossy rock, one leg crossed, puffing on a crooked pipe. "So. You fought the heavens. And you didn't die. That makes you a problem."
"I didn't ask for tribulation," Li Fan muttered.
"Exactly," Mu Qiu said with a grin. "That's why it came."
He leaned forward, serious now. "Boy. This path you walk… has enemies you can't yet see. Tribulation is not just a test—it is a warning. And there are those in the higher realms who do not like mortals escaping their boxes."
Li Fan looked at his hands. "Then I'll break the box."
The elder chuckled. "Good. You'll fit in perfectly with the next madman I want you to meet."
Li Fan raised a brow. "What madman?"
Mu Qiu stood, flicked his pipe, and said only:
> "His name is Wu Jiang. He broke his Seventh Cauldron… and lived."
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🌑 Scene Break – That Night
Li Fan left the clan under nightfall, as whispers spread like wildfire.
> "The lightning was real—he survived Heaven's wrath."
"He didn't use Qi. Not even once."
"They say he punched lightning."
But Li Fan didn't hear them.
He had one destination now: Frostpine Gorge, a forbidden region on the edge of clan territory where "traitors and failures" vanished into exile.
It took him two days of climbing, through winds that shredded robes and shadows that whispered doubt. But deep in a cave lined with ancient cauldron fragments, he found him.
---