The next three days passed in a pleasant routine made significantly more interesting by having a cow that occasionally defecated soup.
Alexei spent most of his time fishing, naturally. What else was there to do?
His treehouse was basically complete now, fully MC-ified, even upgraded slightly. The first floor remained his living space, while the second floor had been expanded into farmland. All he needed were seeds, and he'd be growing wheat like a proper Minecraft farmer.
He'd also solved the mystery of why vanilla mobs were spawning.
It was the assimilated blocks.
He'd personally witnessed a zombie materialize out of thin air on one of the MC-ified planks at his fishing spot. Just pop, suddenly zombie.
Since the mobs posed no real threat and provided free XP plus item drops, he saw no reason to stop them. If anything, he wished they'd spawn faster.
Seven or eight mobs per night was pathetic. He'd briefly considered building a proper mob grinder, some kind of drowning trap or fall-damage farm, but decided against it.
An underground spawner, though... that had potential.
Unfortunately, laziness had won out over ambition, and the underground farm remained theoretical.
As for the mooshroom, he'd set it up in a newly hollowed-out adjacent treehouse. The cow was remarkably well-trained, it went back to its shed every evening without prompting, like it had an internal clock.
Sadly, no other neutral mobs had spawned. His system had probably classified this location as a mushroom biome, which meant only mooshrooms would appear.
It could've been worse. At least mooshrooms were useful.
Currently, he was fishing with yet another new rod.
[Fishing Rod:
Mending I
Lure III
Luck of the Sea II]
He'd pulled this beauty out of the water last night and had been so excited he'd barely slept.
Lure III was insane. With this rod, he could reel in a catch in as little as three minutes. Even the slowest catches took under ten.
He'd also finally acquired an iron bucket, one ingot from a zombie-dropped iron shovel, two more from deconstructing tripwire hooks.
Progress. Real, progress.
Except... he still had no idea what to do besides fish.
Mining? There were no ores.
Exploring? His body was still too fragile for that.
Building? He'd already built everything he needed.
Which left fishing. And farming. The universal fallback of every sandbox survival player: when in doubt, become a farmer.
BOOM.
Thunder rolled across the sky.
"Hm?"
He looked up, squinting against the sunlight.
The sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in sight.
"Where did thunder come from when there's no—"
The sky darkened.
Not cloud by cloud. All at once, like someone had flipped a switch. The brilliant blue turned grey, then purple-black, as if the sun had suddenly decided to clock out early.
Wind picked up immediately, strong enough to send leaves spiraling into the air.
"What the hell?!"
The mooshroom, which had been peacefully eating grass nearby, bolted for its shed like its tail was on fire.
Alexei stood frozen, fishing rod still in hand, trying to decide if he should run inside or...
"My mother always said never stand under a tree during a lightning storm. I'm literally living in a tree. If lightning hits, I'm dead."
Then again, if he went inside, he'd miss out on the 20% increased bite rate that rain provided.
He sat back down and cast his line.
Three hours later, he was starting to regret that decision.
No rain had fallen. Not a single drop. But the thunder had gotten worse, so loud it hurt his ears. The sky was now a purple-black that looked like the end of the world.
It was mid-afternoon, but he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Only the occasional lightning flash illuminating the landscape gave him any visibility at all.
"This is fine," he muttered, reeling in another cod.
CRACK-BOOM!
Lightning struck somewhere close, so close that the light was blinding.
And in that split-second of illumination, he saw a person floating in the air.
Another flash. The figure was still there, suspended mid-sky, maybe a hundred meters up.
Another flash. Still there.
Seven more lightning bolts, each one hitting the exact same spot. Each one clearly showing a human silhouette.
"Is someone getting hit by lightning on purpose? Oh right, I nearly forgot this is a cultivation world…"
His brain, which had been marinating in Minecraft mechanics for days, struggled to process what he was seeing.
Heavenly tribulation. He'd read enough cultivation webnovels to recognize the trope. Cultivators had to face tribulation lightning when advancing to higher realms. The heavens tested them by trying to blast them into ash.
The lightning changed color.
What had been brilliant purple-white was now tinged with gold. And with each strike, the gold became more prominent.
He kept fishing, because apparently his hands had decided that a cultivator's heavenly tribulation was no reason to interrupt the grind.
His eyes, though, never left the sky.
The lightning was pure gold now. And behind the cultivator, a massive phantom had formed.
A fox.
Made entirely of golden lightning, dozens of meters tall, so detailed he could see its internal organs glowing through translucent flesh.
"That's the most metal thing I've ever seen."
Another bolt. The fox solidified further, growing golden fur.
"That cultivator's going to make it. Good for—"
Something else appeared in the sky.
A grey mass shot out of nowhere. It slammed into the cultivator with enough force to send them tumbling through the air.
"Oh, come on! That's just unfair! You can't jump someone during their lightning trial! There have to be rules!"
Apparently there weren't rules, because the grey mist thing kept attacking. The cultivator fought back, their battle clearing portions of the storm clouds, but they were clearly on the defensive now.
Another golden lightning bolt formed. And instead of waiting for the fight to finish, it struck anyway, hitting the nearly-complete fox phantom dead-on.
The cultivator dropped dozens of meters.
The grey mist pressed its advantage.
What had been a one-sided fight in the cultivator's favor turned into a brutal beatdown. Three more lightning bolts hit while they were vulnerable, and the golden fox phantom regressed to its earliest state.
A massive explosion of lightning erupted from the cultivator. It caught the grey mist, blasting it apart into scattered fragments.
The backlash from the explosion sent the cultivator flying.
Straight down.
"Don't land on—"
CRASH.
The ground shook. Trees bent. Something hit the earth maybe fifty meters away with enough force to leave a crater.
Alexei looked up at the sky. The storm clouds were already dissipating, sunlight breaking through gaps. The grey mist, though scattered, was slowly pulling itself back together, hanging in the air.
He looked in the direction of the crash.
Then back at his fishing rod.
Then at the crash site again.
He reeled in his line and stood up.
"I should... probably check on them? That's the right thing to do, right? Even if they're dead, they probably have cool stuff. Cultivators always have cool stuff in the stories."
He grabbed his shield and sword, more out of habit than any real belief they'd help against someone who could fight while being struck by lightning.
He started walking, then paused.
"Why am I talking myself into this? I should be running away. Cultivators are dangerous."
But curiosity had already won. He knew that in situations like these, timing was everything. And judging by how fast the grey mist in the sky was pulling itself back together, he only had a little while before whatever-the-hell-that-was reformed completely and came looking for round two.
A little while to loot... help. A little while to help the downed cultivator. Because he was a good person. Definitely not thinking about inheritance rights or cool magical artifacts.
Although, realistically, the thunder tribulation had probably scared off every living thing anywhere near the impact site. Meaning the crash area should be relatively safe.
Should be.
The mooshroom watched him as he jogged past it toward the forest.
"If I'm not back in four hours, assume I'm dead and eat my corpse!" he called back.
The mooshroom continued chewing grass, completely unbothered by this declaration.
The crater wasn't hard to find.
For one thing, it was massive, easily ten meters across and several meters deep. For another, the path of destruction leading to it was pretty obvious. Splintered trees, scorched earth, and what looked like impact craters from the aerial battle.
He approached carefully, shield raised, scanning for threats.
Nothing moved except leaves settling in the air.
He reached the edge and looked down.
---
Deep in the Silkspore Basin, at the bottom of a crater that hadn't existed five minutes ago, Qingxue coughed up blood.
She'd succeeded in her tribulation. Technically. The lightning had stopped. She'd survived.
But "survived" was a generous term for her current state.
She couldn't move. She couldn't even lift her hand. Her spiritual veins were shattered throughout her entire body. This was an injury that would take a decade or more to heal, assuming she lived that long.
And she wouldn't. The grey evil spirit wouldn't give her that time.
Her face showed a trace of despair. She couldn't remember offending anyone from the Ghost Sect. She had never even met them! Yet they'd sent an assassin specifically to kill her during her tribulation, when she'd be most vulnerable.
She'd gotten lucky with the Radiant Lightning Talisman her sect master had given her, caught the evil spirit off-guard and shattered it temporarily. But grey evil spirits could regenerate endlessly as long as their controller lived. Destroying the spirit itself was meaningless.
She had minutes at most. Maybe an hour if she was lucky.
Once the spirit reformed, she'd die.
Her mind drifted, consciousness fragmenting. Memories surfaced, playing out in her mind's eye like a film...
---
Qingxue's mother had been an ordinary village woman, not a cultivator. Just a kind, gentle person who'd fallen in love with the wrong man.
Or rather, the wrong fox demon pretending to be a man.
He'd taken the form of a scholarly gentleman in white robes, courted her with poetry and promises, and then vanished the moment she became pregnant. No goodbye.
Carrying a half-demon child had nearly killed her. The pregnancy alone had been agony, a mortal body trying to nurture something inhuman. And after the birth, when Qingxue emerged with white fox ears and a tail, the village had turned on them both.
Her mother had endured three years of accusations, and isolation. She worked herself to exhaustion trying to provide for a child that everyone else wanted dead. And on Qingxue's fourth birthday, her mother had gone to sleep and simply not woken up.
Heart failure, probably. Or just the accumulated weight of too much suffering.
Qingxue remembered not crying. She'd been too young to fully understand death, had just stared blankly as the villagers wrapped her mother's body in a straw mat. Their faces had been complicated.
After that, they'd been kinder to her. Not friendly, never that, but they'd made sure she didn't starve or freeze. They kept her at arm's length while providing just enough charity to ease their consciences.
For three years, she'd lived like a ghost in that village. Present but not acknowledged. Existing but not alive.
The world had been grey then... Until an old man came.
---
Qingxue had been seven years old, crouched by a rabbit hole with her tail swishing behind her, when a white-robed old man descended from the sky like something out of a legend.
He'd smiled at her, and asked if she wanted to learn cultivation.
She hadn't known what cultivation was, but hadn't cared. She'd only asked, "Will it keep me from being hungry and getting beaten?"
The old man had nodded, and she'd agreed immediately.
Later, she'd learned he was the founding master of the Aureate Summit Sect. And she'd become his eighth personal disciple, his last one.
He'd given her an ancient jade pendant to hide her fox features, told her to keep her half-demon heritage secret, and raised her like she was his own daughter.
She'd never understood why. Why would a powerful cultivator take in a half-demon child from a nowhere village? Why risk his sect's reputation for someone like her?
The answer, when it finally came years later as he lay dying, had been simple:
He had been nursing a broken heart for years, having spent half his life pining after someone who ultimately married his sworn brother. After much thought, he decided to leave everything behind and start anew, determined to carve a path for himself rather than dwell on the past. To distract himself and give his life new purpose, he founded the Aureate Summit Sect, pouring his energy into its growth. And one day, while returning from a failed disciple-recruitment trip, he'd passed through her village and seen a small fox-eared child with her rear end in the air, tail wagging, trying to dig herself into a rabbit burrow.
He'd thought she was adorable. So, he decided on the spot that if he couldn't have the person he loved, he might as well skip straight to raising a daughter instead.
So he'd taken her home.
The fact that she'd turned out to be a cultivation prodigy, her spiritual root test had literally exploded the testing stone, had been a complete accident. He'd kept it secret, knowing that powerful families would kill to steal spiritual roots from talented children. His sect was too small to protect her if word got out.
He'd named her Qingxue, "pure snow," because the first time he'd seen her, she'd been a small white fox hunting in the snow beneath an evergreen tree.
She'd called him Master, but he'd been more like a father.
---
Lying in the crater now, dying slowly, Qingxue felt a tear slide down her cheek.
There was a faint smile on her face.
She'd lived a good life, all things considered. She had been loved deeply, and she had loved in return. And if she had to die, then at least she would meet the end with a smile.
Though she wished she could've said goodbye to her senior brothers and sisters in the sect. They'd worry and blame themselves. She didn't want that.
Her decision was made: the moment the grey evil spirit reformed, she'd detonate her qi sea. Self-destruct. It wouldn't kill the controller, but it would scatter the spirit again and maybe buy enough time for someone to find evidence of who'd ordered her assassination.
Her consciousness started to blur. Ten minutes since the spirit had been scattered. Not long enough. She tried to force herself to stay awake, but her body wasn't listening anymore.
Spiritual power in her qi sea began to ripple, building toward the release that would end her life.
Then something appeared at the edge of the crater.
A head with messy silver-white hair, peering down at her.
A hand reached toward her face, checking for breath.
Her boiling spiritual power immediately calmed.
She was dying anyway. She didn't need to take a the mortal with her.
Through her fading vision, she couldn't make sense of it. A mortal? Here?
She only hoped they'd leave... Before the evil spirit returned.
---
"Still breathing."
Alexei crouched at the edge of the crater, one hand hovering near the woman's nose, feeling the faint puff of air against his palm.
She was alive.
Which was both good and bad.
Good because he wasn't the kind of person who could just loot a corpse and walk away. Well, he could, but it would bother him. Conscience was inconvenient like that.
Bad because now he had to decide what to do with a potentially dangerous cultivator who might wake up and decide he knew too much.
His ideal scenario, if he was being completely honest, had been to find a corpse. Inherit whatever cool stuff cultivators carried around, avoid any moral complications, get on with his life.
He looked at her.
White fox ears, white fox tail, both matted with blood. Her face was pale, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, but even half-dead she was striking.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I don't know her. For all I know, she's evil. Maybe she deserved to get jumped during her tribulation. Maybe she's a mass murderer or a kitten kicker or—"
He stopped himself.
The grey mist thing had attacked her. And in every cultivation story he'd ever read, grey evil spirits were explicitly a villain technique. Evil sect stuff. The kind of thing used by people who tortured souls for fun.
Which meant this woman, whoever she was, had enemies in the evil sect. Which meant she probably wasn't evil herself.
"Enemy of my enemy and all that," he reasoned, mostly to convince himself.
He paused.
"Then again, that grey mist isn't even my enemy…"
Another pause.
"Blyat... I'm going to help you."
Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. It was deeply unsettling.
"Okay, first things first, you're creeping me out with the dead-eyed stare. Let me just..."
He pressed her eyelids closed with his thumbs.
"There. Much better."