The heavy pull of a sigh escaped him before he even opened his eyes. It was the sound of a man accustomed to the gravity of his own name.
Another day, Taiyang Leilong thought, shifting beneath silk sheets as the first bruised purples of dawn bled into gold over the jagged horizon. Let's see if the heavens have anything original planned for once.
He rose and crossed the cool stone floor to the window. Before him lay the Hundred Peaks Immortal River—the ancestral heart of the Nine Profound Thunder Sect. It was a kingdom of verticality; jagged mountains pierced a sea of roiling white mist, their slopes scarred by the elegant architecture of pagodas and training halls carved directly into the living rock.
The morning sun began to gild the highest spires, but the valleys remained drowned in shadows, where the river shimmered like a discarded silver thread.
Even after a lifetime, the scale of it hit him in the chest. My home. My burden. He watched the mist drift lazily between the peaks like unspooled silk.
"Beautiful," he murmured, the word faint against the glass. His violet eyes—the unmistakable mark of the Leilong bloodline—traced the silver veins of the water below. It looked peaceful, but he knew better. Peace was an illusion maintained by power. Behind that tranquil mist lay a thousand hidden arrays and ten thousand whetted blades. In this sect, even paradise was a testing ground.
A rhythmic tapping broke his reverie.
Knock. Knock.
"Young Master? The Spirit Bath is drawn," a soft, familiar voice drifted through the wood. "The Madam requests your presence. Immediately."
Leilong stepped back from the window, his expression smoothing into a mask of calm. "Yanruo? Come in for a moment."
The door creaked open, admitting a flood of morning light that seemed to catch on Yanruo's skin, giving the girl a faint, ethereal shimmer. She wore the plain, functional robes of a high-ranking servant, every pleat sharp and disciplined. Her black hair was pulled back with surgical precision. She kept her gaze fixed on the floor, her movements quiet and practiced.
Leilong let a small, genuine smile tug at the corner of his mouth. "You know, Yanruo, I was just looking at the peaks. I thought they were the most beautiful sight I'd see today. Then you walked in."
He reached out, lightly patting her head in a gesture that was half-affection, half-authority.
Yanruo's ears tinted pink, though she didn't raise her head. "Young Master shouldn't say such things. It... it isn't proper."
"Maybe not," Leilong chuckled, withdrawing his hand. "But it makes the morning interesting. Lead the way."
As they stepped into the outer courtyard, the sect was already humming with the kinetic energy of a thousand lives. Novices moved in synchronized blocks, their wooden swords whistling through the air as they practiced basic lightning-stepping arrays. Senior disciples blurred past them on the higher walkways, their auras humming with the static of refined Qi. Every stone beneath Leilong's boots felt heavy with the weight of centuries.
He followed Yanruo down the winding mountain paths. The crowd parted like water before a prow. Servants and disciples alike snapped into deep, respectful bows.
"Good morning, Young Master Leilong."
He returned the gestures with a practiced nod, a subtle tilt of the head that acknowledged their respect without slowing his stride.
They reached the edge of a sheer cliff overlooking a plummeting valley. The air here was different—crisp, smelling of pine needle and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. Yanruo paused, drawing a jade token from her sleeve. It was etched with the sect's emblem: a mountain wreathed in violet lightning.
Leilong glanced at the carving and scoffed under his breath. "A clumsy depiction. It lacks the teeth of the mountain. Thunder isn't just a loud noise, Yanruo; it's the silence before the strike. I really should sit down and carve a proper one."
Yanruo didn't argue. She simply raised the token.
The air before the cliff face rippled like a disturbed pond. Reality bent and shimmered, peeling back a veil of concealment to reveal a hidden sanctuary. A waterfall, dropping thousands of meters into the abyss, roared with a sound like continuous masonry collapsing.
Suspended in the air above the spray were two women. Their robes caught the light like oil on water, shimmering with shifting iridescence. They looked like reflections of one another—oval faces, flawless skin, and long black hair. But their violet eyes told different stories.
The elder woman, his mother, stood with a terrifying stillness. Her presence was heavy, a calculated weight that demanded the air around her submit. The younger, his sister Leiyun, stood with a restless, vibrant energy. Her eyes danced with a mischief that even the sect's rigid decorum couldn't suppress.
Leilong ascended, defying gravity as he rose to their level. Yanruo followed a respectful distance behind. He cupped his hands and bowed.
"Mother. Senior Sister. A fine morning for a baptism."
"Long'er," his mother said, her voice like the low roll of distant thunder. "You're late. Again."
Leilong offered a charming, unrepentant shrug. "The world was looking particularly sharp today. I decided to take the long path and appreciate the view."
"Hmph. You always did treat the world like your personal garden," she scolded, though the hardness in her eyes softened just a fraction.
Leiyun giggled, leaning in toward him. "Still taking 'the long path,' little brother? Or were you just busy charming the help again?"
Leilong glanced at Yanruo, then back to his sister. "I'll have you know it was a sincere compliment. Though perhaps I should commission an array for my room—privacy seems to be a foreign concept in this family."
Leiyun smirked. "If she's the most beautiful sight you've seen, where does that leave Mother and me? Third and fourth?"
"Enough," their mother interrupted. The word wasn't loud, but it cut through the banter like a blade. "We aren't here for jests."
She turned her gaze fully on Leilong. "Your father is attending the Ancestors' sermon. He has entrusted the ritual to me. The Thunder Bath is at its peak. Are you ready for what comes next?"
Leilong's playful demeanor vanished. He felt the hair on his arms beginning to rise. "I am."
"Then follow."
They ascended to the absolute summit, where the atmosphere was so thick with ozone it tasted like copper on the tongue. In a natural stone basin lay a pool of bubbling, violet liquid. It glowed with an internal, rhythmic light. Arcs of white-hot lightning skittered across the surface like water-striders.
Seven silk flags, marked with the trigrams of power, snapped violently in a wind that only blew within the ritual circle. In the center of the pool stood the Thunder Gathering Pole—a spire of black metal etched with the Zhen symbol. It climbed so high its tip was lost in the swirling charcoal clouds above, a needle designed to prick the skin of the heavens.
"Prepare yourself," his mother whispered.
Leilong took a breath, clenching his fists to still the slight tremor of anticipation in his fingers. He stripped away his robes, the cold mountain air biting at his skin, and stepped to the edge.
He didn't hesitate. He dived.
The moment he hit the liquid, his world turned white. A numbing, bone-deep shock buckled his senses as the lightning began to map the pathways of his veins. He fought through the paralysis, dragging himself through the heavy violet water until his fingers locked around the freezing metal of the Gathering Pole.
His muscles seized. His teeth ground together so hard he tasted salt.
He looked back at his mother through the rising steam, his eyes burning with a fierce, violet light. "Start... it."
She nodded, her hands blurring through a sequence of mudras. Spiritual pressure erupted from her, slamming into the formation.
The change was instantaneous. The snapping flags went dead-still. The sky above turned from gray to an abyssal black. Storm clouds spiraled inward, groaning with a sound that vibrated in Leilong's very marrow.
The pole began to glow. First dull red, then a blinding, screaming violet.
Leilong threw his head back and let out a roar that was swallowed by the first strike of raw heaven-thunder. The baptism had begun.