Wang Ben's spiritual sense was expelled from Li Mei's body.
It happened before she moved. One moment, his sense rested along the re-laid nodes inside her meridians. The next, a force closed around it and drove it back through the open seal.
Pain burst behind his eyes. Wang Ben staggered against the treatment bench.
Wang Tiexin's qi and spiritual sense were driven out of the unfinished seal at the same instant. The recoil reached him before he could withdraw either.
Wang Tiexin's body jerked. His back struck the wall hard enough to shake the four-sheet diagram. He coughed up blood as he fell.
"Grandfather!" Wang Ben caught him before his head reached the floor.
Wang Tiexin sagged against him, each breath shallow.
He lifted his head enough to look at Li Mei. "Mei," he said. "What is wrong?"
Wang Ben tightened his hold as blood warmed his sleeve. He looked up at Li Mei, waiting for her to look back.
Wang Tiexin tried to lift one hand. It rose a fraction and fell against Wang Ben's arm. His eyes closed, and he went slack.
Wang Tian knelt beside his father and checked his pulse.
Li Mei's hand pressed against the treatment bench. She pushed herself upright, and the wood creaked beneath her palm. The movement was slow and controlled. Wang Tian rose at once.
The pale formation light beyond the estate wall brightened.
Li Mei's cultivation pressure spread through the treatment room and bore down on Wang Ben's senses.
Wang Tian stopped a pace from her. "Mei?"
Li Mei's eyes passed over him. She gave no answer.
Wang Ben knew his mother's cultivation. She had been trapped at the peak of early-stage qi condensation for as long as he could remember. The pressure filling the room had already passed it.
It rose again.
"Peak late-stage qi condensation," Wang Tian said.
Before Wang Ben could answer, the weight bore down harder. Wang Tian's face went white.
"Foundation establishment."
"How?" Wang Ben asked.
His father had no answer.
Li Mei lowered her feet to the floor.
Wang Tian did not step aside.
Li Mei's cultivation pressure continued to climb. The room grew harder to stand in with each passing breath.
...
At the Quiet Cup, Jin Lang spoke first.
"Attack together."
The broad-shouldered elder landed in the street. Dark red veins rose beneath the skin of his arms and neck as blood qi spread through muscle and bone. Beside him, five hooked claws of the same dark red qi formed over the scar-faced elder's fingers. Behind them, the inner disciples closed through the ruined shopfronts with blood-red qi staining their palms.
The two elders attacked.
The scar-faced elder reached Shen Wuyan first. He hooked one hand toward Shen Wuyan's throat. The blood claws lengthened only when they were close enough to touch. Shen Wuyan caught the man's forearm near the elbow and turned the claws past his shoulder.
The claws collapsed into a red sheen over the elder's fingers. A thin current still rose from him, but his footing held.
The blood-hardened elder was already behind Shen Wuyan. He swept one leg low while two inner disciples closed from the sides, their marked palms reaching for exposed flesh.
Shen Wuyan stepped over the sweep and caught one disciple by the sleeve. He pulled the man across his path. The second disciple pulled his palm back rather than strike his own companion, and the broad-shouldered elder drove a shoulder into both of them to clear the way. The dark veins across his neck swelled at the moment of impact, then subsided.
No one spent more qi than the instant required. No one gave Shen Wuyan room to rest.
Jin Lang remained beyond the fighting. His eyes followed Shen Wuyan's feet.
The next attack came from four directions. Shen Wuyan slipped past the first blood-red palm and turned beneath the scar-faced elder's claws. The broad-shouldered elder's forearm caught the cloth at his shoulder. Dark veins flared beneath the man's skin as he pulled. The cloth tore away when Shen Wuyan twisted free, but the delay left him with the fallen wall of the tea house at his back.
Jin Lang moved.
He crossed the street without releasing his qi. Only when his palm was a handspan from Shen Wuyan's chest did his cultivation burst outward.
The grand formation answered at once. Qi tore away from Jin Lang's arm and rose into the night.
His palm did not stop. He had judged how much the formation would take and released enough to kill with what remained.
Shen Wuyan waited until Jin Lang's shoulder turned with the strike. Then he let the palm pass beside his ribs, caught Jin Lang above the elbow, and turned with the charge. He placed his other palm against Jin Lang's lower abdomen.
He released one narrow pulse of qi.
Jin Lang's own momentum carried the force into his dantian. His nascent soul broke before it could leave his body.
The strength remaining in his attack struck the fallen wall. Bricks and charred timber collapsed into the street.
Jin Lang took two more steps and fell among them.
The scar-faced elder shouted. Five blood claws surged from his fingers as he released his cultivation without restraint.
The formation pulled. The claws came apart before he could cross the street, and one knee struck the stones.
The broad-shouldered elder seized his robe and dragged him back. "Withdraw!"
The inner disciples broke away with them. One crawled from the wreckage of the shopfront. Another pulled him upright, and then they were moving across the roofs and out of the burning street.
Shen Wuyan did not pursue.
His breathing was still rough. Even the qi he used to steady it gave the formation something to take. He stood amid the settling dust and looked down at Jin Lang's body.
Shen Wuyan did not know why the grand formation had begun taking qi from Jin Lang and the others.
A different pressure gathered beyond the merchant district.
Shen Wuyan looked toward the Wang Clan compound.
Above it, the stars began to disappear.
...
Li Mei stood.
Wang Tian held his ground in front of her. "You cannot walk away from this."
She took one step.
The pressure around her drove him back. His heel struck the leg of the treatment bench, but he stayed between her and the door.
"If you can hear me," he said, "then look at me."
Li Mei did not.
Wang Ben lifted his grandfather onto the space she had left. Wang Tiexin's head rolled toward him as he lowered the old man onto his side. His breathing remained shallow but steady.
The pressure in the room drew inward.
For one breath, Wang Ben could barely feel it. Then it returned, colder and heavier than before. The shutters slammed against the wall. Frost spread from Li Mei's feet and whitened the floorboards.
Wang Tian's face lost what color remained in it.
"This pressure..." Wang Tian stared at Li Mei. "Early-stage core formation?"
She had crossed the entire foundation establishment realm in the time it took Wang Ben to move his grandfather.
Li Mei walked past Wang Tian.
He reached for her shoulder. His hand stopped before it touched. The air around her had grown too cold to cross. He followed her out instead, close enough to keep trying and too far away to reach her.
Wang Ben looked once at his grandfather, then went after them.
The courtyard was no longer dark. Pale light from the grand formation covered the roof tiles and the stone paths. Clan members had come out of the surrounding buildings, but none approached the woman crossing the yard.
Wang Feng came through the western passage. His gaze moved from Wang Tian to Li Mei, then to the frost spreading beneath her feet.
"What happened?"
"I don't know," Wang Tian said.
Two clan members came through the eastern passage. Wang Ben pointed back toward the treatment room. "The Patriarch is unconscious. Stay with him."
They ran inside.
Li Mei stopped at the center of the courtyard.
The nearest parts of the grand formation brightened. One after another, the pale spans above the rooftops carried that light toward the estate.
Li Mei drew a breath.
The force gathering around her surged.
A series of sharp cracks came from within her body. For an instant, a pale pattern showed beneath the skin at her throat and wrists. It broke apart before Wang Ben could trace any part of it, and every fragment went dark.
The burst that followed threw him from his feet.
Wang Tian struck the courtyard stones beside him. Wang Feng remained standing, one arm raised against the blast. Across the clan grounds, doors tore from their frames. Half the tiles on the western roof slid free and shattered below.
Li Mei stood where she had been. A thin trail of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. She did not wipe it away.
The last stars above the compound vanished.
Clouds had gathered over Redstone without wind or rain. They turned slowly around a point directly above the courtyard, layer upon black layer, until their lower edge seemed close enough to touch the grand formation.
Wang Feng's expression changed as he looked up.
"A tribulation cloud?"
Wang Tian pushed himself upright. "She only just reached core formation."
Thunder answered him.
The sound did not roll away. It pressed down over the compound and deepened as the cloud drew tighter.
Wang Ben had read accounts of first heavenly tribulations. None described a cloud hanging this low before the first strike. None described enough pressure to make a late-stage core formation elder brace himself before the lightning fell.
Whatever the heavens had found in Li Mei, their anger was already plain.
Li Mei raised one hand toward the sky.
Pale light gathered in the grand formation above her. The first bolt struck it.
The bolt filled the space between the cloud and the formation. Lightning spread across the pale structure in branching streams. Much of it raced away over the rooftops. What remained broke through and descended into Li Mei's raised hand.
The courtyard shook. Wang Ben caught himself against the treatment-room doorway as a crack ran through the stones between his feet.
Li Mei lowered her hand. Smoke rose from her sleeve, but her cultivation pressure continued to climb.
The clouds above her convulsed. Thunder broke again before the first echoes had faded, and the next bolt gathered twice as fast.
Wang Feng stared upward. "The formation interfered with the strike."
The second bolt was wider, and it came down harder.
Again the grand formation caught it. Pale light flared above the courtyard, and the force passed outward through every visible span. A rooftop to the north buckled around the base of a formation flag. The flag remained upright, burning brighter than those beyond it.
Then the rest of the lightning reached Li Mei.
Every window facing the courtyard shattered at once.
Wang Tian covered his head as glass swept over the stones. Wang Feng stepped in front of him and struck the falling shards aside with his sleeve.
"Get inside!" Wang Feng shouted to the clan members around the yard. "Away from the roofs!"
They ran.
Between one strike and the next, Li Mei's pressure rose again. What had felt like the beginning of a breakthrough to mortal shedding grew heavier before Wang Ben could adjust to it.
The cloud answered her rise. Its outer layers spread across Redstone while its center tightened above the courtyard. Lightning crowded the underside until the darkness could no longer contain it.
The third bolt fell.
For an instant, Redstone turned white. Roofs, walls, towers, and the people braced beneath them stood without color. When the light passed, they dropped back into shadow beneath a sky that held neither moon nor stars.
The grand formation shuddered.
The northern rooftop shook hard enough to lift its tiles. The formation flag there bent toward the courtyard, straightened, and bent again as the pale light around it swelled.
The pattern was plain. The first strike had already carried more power than it should. Each time Li Mei's cultivation rose, the cloud gathered more. Each time the grand formation turned aside part of the lightning, what followed came faster and stronger.
Wang Ben knew that rooftop.
He had seen the flag kindle through the treatment-room window when the grand formation first rose. It stood on a rooftop a few streets north of the estate.
Another bolt formed inside the cloud. It thickened while Li Mei's pressure climbed beneath it, brighter and wider than any that had fallen before.
The grand formation was still drawing qi from Redstone. The pale light above the city brightened whenever Li Mei's cultivation rose. Now the formation was placing itself between her and the tribulation. Each strike it caught spread through the formation above Redstone. The northern flag bent while the others Wang Ben could see remained upright.
He pushed away from the doorway.
Wang Tian caught his sleeve. "Where are you going?"
"The rooftop north of us." Wang Ben pointed as the fourth bolt struck the grand formation. "I don't know if that flag can hold."
The ground beneath the estate lurched, and a section of the courtyard wall collapsed outward. The northern flag bent almost to the tiles before dragging itself upright.
Wang Tian's grip tightened.
His father looked at Li Mei.
She stood beneath the falling lightning with her face lifted to the cloud. Blood had passed her chin and darkened the collar of her robe. One sleeve hung blackened at her side. Smoke rose from the cloth, and the hand below it trembled between one strike and the next. Nothing in her expression recognized either of them.
Wang Tian released his sleeve.
"Go."
Wang Ben ran for the northern wall.
...
The fifth strike hit the formation before Wang Ben reached the estate gate.
White light covered the rooftops. The ground lurched beneath him, and he caught himself against the gatepost. Behind him, thunder crashed over the courtyard. The pale formation above Redstone flared, carrying the force away from the compound.
The light around the northern flag flickered.
Wang Ben ran through the gate and turned north.
As soon as he pushed qi into his legs, something caught the circulation and pulled upward. Wang Ben stopped circulating. The pull vanished. He glanced at the pale formation overhead, then kept running on his own strength.
Broken tiles covered the road, doors hung open, and people crouched in doorways as tremors passed through the ground. Wang Ben crossed the first street and ran the length of the second. When he turned into the third, the flag's pale light was bright enough to wash the nearby walls white.
The rooftop was directly ahead. The flag at its peak bowed until the cloth brushed the tiles, then rose halfway and stopped.
At the foot of the building, Wang Ben gathered qi in his legs and jumped. The pull returned at once. He cut off the circulation, but most of the strength had already left his leap. He caught the eaves with both hands. Tiles slid beneath his forearms as he climbed onto the roof.
The flag stood ten paces above him. Cracks spread through the tiles around its pole. Each time the grand formation flared, the pole leaned farther toward the Wang Clan compound.
Wang Ben climbed to it and pressed one hand against the pole where it entered the roof. He sent his spiritual sense into the inscriptions on the flag.
The force carried by the formation filled his perception. His spiritual sense reached no farther than this flag. One pulse entered through the broadest connection, crossed the inscriptions, and left through another. Before it cleared, a second pulse forced its way in through one of the smaller connections. The flag trembled as both passed through it.
The System compared the pulses passing through the flag. At first, each had cleared the inscriptions before the next arrived. As the cloud gathered again, the gap narrowed.
Above the courtyard, the cloud tightened. Li Mei's pressure rose again beneath it. Wang Ben felt it from three streets away, cold and vast enough that his spiritual sense wavered inside the flag.
The sixth bolt tore out of the cloud and struck the formation above the compound.
The tiles shifted beneath him. Wang Ben flattened himself against the roof as the flag bent over his head. Pale light rushed through its inscriptions. The broad connection darkened. Two smaller ones brightened in its place, but not together. Power entered through the first. Before it cleared the flag, the second sent another pulse into the same inscriptions.
For one breath, the inscriptions at the base went dark while those above them remained bright.
Then the order corrected itself, and the flag dragged upright.
The opening had not appeared in the earlier cycles. On the sixth strike, it lasted no longer than the gap between two pulses, and lightning was already gathering for the next.
Wang Ben kept his palm against the pole.
The seventh strike came before the thunder of the sixth had faded. Lightning crashed into the formation. The flag bent, and the inscriptions at its base went dark.
Wang Ben sent a trace of qi into the lowest inscription. It brightened early. A pulse from the smaller connections reached it a heartbeat later and collided with his qi inside the flag.
The pole snapped at its base.
Pale light reached the next rooftop before its flag had brightened. The flag flashed once and went dark. A third did the same. Then a fourth.
The failure ran outward. Across Redstone, the grand formation broke apart. The pale spans above the streets separated one after another. Light peeled away from the sky, thinned over the rooftops, and vanished.
The pull on Wang Ben's meridians stopped. The formation flag fell beside him. Its cloth struck the tiles and did not rise again.
Above the Wang Clan estate, lightning gathered with nothing left beneath it to turn the strike aside. It fell in a single white column.
Wang Ben could not see the courtyard beyond the roofs. Light swallowed the compound, and the thunder knocked him onto one knee. Tiles split beneath him. He kept his hand against the roof until the shaking passed.
When he looked up, the pale formation was gone. The center of the tribulation cloud was breaking apart. No more lightning gathered beneath it.
Li Mei's pressure remained. It filled the dark, cold and vast, after the formation light was gone.
Wang Ben left the broken flag and ran back toward the compound.
...
Wang Ben pushed qi through his legs as soon as he reached the street.
Nothing pulled it away.
He ran back through the three streets he had crossed without it. People were coming out of damaged houses now, calling names through the dark. He did not stop. Li Mei's pressure lay over the northern district, cold and steady, no longer rising but still too vast for him to judge.
He reached the compound gate and found one door hanging from its upper hinge. Beyond it, dust moved across the courtyard. The last strike had split the stones around Li Mei, leaving her at the center of a crater. Smoke rose from her robe and loose hair. Blood darkened the front of her collar.
She remained standing.
Wang Tian faced her from the treatment-room steps. Wang Feng stood farther to one side, his sleeve torn and one hand braced against the courtyard wall.
Li Mei lowered her face from the empty sky. Her spiritual sense swept across the compound. It passed over Wang Ben and through the surrounding rooms before he could pull his own sense back. The contact lasted only an instant. Cold ran over his skin.
Li Mei turned toward the family quarters. Wang Chen began to cry inside the house. For the first time since she had opened her eyes, Li Mei's gaze fixed on something. She stepped out of the crater and crossed the courtyard.
"Chen," Wang Tian said.
Wang Ben ran.
Li Mei reached the family rooms before him. The door had been shaken open by the tribulation. His grandmother, Chen Shuwen, stood inside with Wang Chen held against her shoulder and his blanket wrapped around him. She backed toward the wall as Li Mei entered.
Li Mei looked at the child. Her expression did not soften. Her eyes narrowed, and the stillness with which she had ignored every person in the courtyard changed into attention. She reached for him.
Wang Ben caught the doorframe and threw himself between them.
"Give him to me," Wang Ben said.
Chen Shuwen put Wang Chen into his arms. Wang Ben drew his brother against his chest and turned his body between the child and Li Mei.
Wang Chen's crying broke into short, frightened breaths. One small hand caught in Wang Ben's robe.
"Mother." Wang Ben backed away. "Stop."
Li Mei came after him. He could not read anything in her face. He saw his mother's features, the blood at her mouth, the burn along her sleeve, and eyes that passed over him to the child he held.
Her hand closed around his wrist. Cold drove through his arm. His fingers went numb, then opened despite everything he did to hold them shut. Li Mei slid one arm beneath Wang Chen before his grip failed. She drew the child against her unburned side. The blanket slipped from Wang Ben's opened arms and fell at his feet. She placed her free palm against Wang Ben's shoulder.
The push lifted him from the floor.
His back struck the low table. One leg collapsed beneath him, and the edge drove into his ribs before he fell among the broken wood.
Chen Shuwen retreated through the doorway as Wang Tian reached it.
"Mei." He stopped when he saw Wang Chen in her arms. "Put him down."
Li Mei turned toward him. Wang Tian stepped into the room. "That is our son." He reached for her free arm. Her pressure struck him before his hand came close. Wang Tian slid backward across the threshold. Wang Feng caught him from behind, planted both feet, and was driven into the opposite wall with him.
Neither man fell. Neither could move forward.
Li Mei walked toward the door.
Wang Ben pushed himself off the broken table. Pain caught beneath his ribs, but his legs held. He stepped in front of her again.
She stopped.
Wang Chen rested against her unburned side, clear of the hand she had left free. Wang Ben reached slowly, keeping both hands open.
"Chen," he said. "Come here."
His brother was too young to understand. His fist remained tangled in the fold of Li Mei's robe.
Wang Ben took one more step.
Li Mei shifted the child higher against her side. Her free hand rose.
Cold gathered across her palm. Frost raced over the floorboards between them and climbed Wang Ben's boots. The pressure locked his knees before he could move away.
Her palm drove toward the center of his chest.
At the last instant, her arm jerked aside.
The palm passed beneath Wang Ben's raised hand and struck the wall beside him. Frost covered the wood in a white sheet. The wall burst outward, scattering frozen boards into the courtyard.
Li Mei's hand remained extended into the opening. Her fingers trembled once. Then they closed.
Wang Ben reached for Wang Chen.
Li Mei's pressure drove him to the floor. It pinned Wang Tian and Wang Feng against the opposite wall and held Wang Ben on one knee while she stepped through the broken side of the room.
She did not look back at the hand that had missed him.
Wang Ben forced his foot beneath him. The floorboards cracked under his heel, but he could not rise until Li Mei had crossed the courtyard.
Then her feet left the ground.
Her robe stirred around her as she rose above the broken wall, Wang Chen held against her chest. No roof or hidden support lay beneath her feet.
Wang Feng stared upward. Wang Ben broke free of the pressure and ran into the courtyard. Li Mei was already above the roofs. He gathered qi and jumped onto the fallen section of wall, then to the nearest eave.
It brought him no closer.
"Chen!" Wang Tian's voice followed him from below.
Wang Ben reached the rooftop as Li Mei crossed beyond the estate walls. She continued into the night without turning, carrying Wang Chen beyond the rooftops and out of sight.
...
Wang Ben remained on the rooftop after Li Mei disappeared. The cold pressure thinned across the clan grounds, then was gone.
No pale light returned above Redstone. No more lightning fell.
Wang Ben lowered himself to the eave, then to the fallen section of wall. Each landing pulled at his bruised ribs.
He crossed the courtyard and entered the family room through the wall Li Mei had broken.
Wang Ben sat in the only chair still standing, his hands resting on his knees.
Wang Chen's cradle stood empty against the far wall.
Through the open treatment-room door, two clan members remained beside Wang Tiexin. A basin and folded cloth had been set near his head. His breathing was shallow, and he did not wake.
Frost melted among the broken boards and the remains of the low table.
Beyond the missing wall, people emerged beneath the damaged roofs. Buckets passed from hand to hand toward the rising smoke. Others gathered the wounded from the streets.
Somewhere outside the clan grounds, someone shouted that the formation was gone.
A ragged cheer answered from farther across Redstone.
Wang Ben did not move.