She endured the pain and mobilized her vital essence, sending it coursing through her meridians. The vital essence struck every acupoint, squeezing the explosive lightning embedded in her meridians, bones, and blood out, then wrapping it up and carrying it back to her Dantian...
She continuously drew the lightning out of her meridians, bones, and blood. Once she had tamed a batch, her vital essence wrapped it up, carried it back out, and pressed it into her bones and blood again.
From the outside, blue-white fragments of lightning flickered now and then across Pan Yun's face, neck, and arms, only to be swiftly dragged back beneath her skin.
Pan Yun's seclusion lasted three months.
The officials at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau were fine with it. Half had come from Daoist backgrounds, and even those who had not were deeply familiar with the field. They knew astronomy, geography, Daoist arts, and mathematics inside out.
So no one found it strange. Every day, they placed a bowl of rice in her room at a fixed time. If no one ate it, they simply took it back and cooked it into porridge for a midnight snack.
The Emperor and his ministers, on the other hand, could not help worrying.
Why had the Imperial Preceptor been so quiet after undergoing her tribulation?
Could the lightning have struck something wrong with her, yet she was too proud to admit it and endured in silence?
If Miao Zhen and the other two had not repeatedly assured them that she was fine and merely in ordinary seclusion to consolidate her cultivation, and if the three of them had not seemed so relaxed every day—either studying at the Ministry of Works, studying at the Imperial Medical Academy, or leaving the palace to tell fortunes and treat illnesses, fulfilled