Chilly threads of rain shrouded the Azure Cloud Monastery.
Incense curled through the monastery, pale smoke rising from the burners and mingling with the rainy mist until the two were indistinguishable, slowly drifting into the mountain woods.
The entire monastery lay quietly in the rain, as though the mountain rain and the mortal world had both slowed down.
Some wealthy pilgrims with time to spare waited for two days, drinking tea in the monastery by day and lodging in the town below at night. Their eyes kept straying toward the summit, but alas, the cloud-wreathed heights remained silent.
A hundred li away, a mountain ridge like the spine of a colossal beast nearly brushed the black sea of clouds.
Towering trees covered its foot, growing sparser farther up, until only shrubs and broad meadows remained at the summit.
The sky was dark, thick clouds pressing overhead. Bolt after bolt of lightning struck the summit meadow without fail, their relentless flashes bathing the mountaintop in a ghastly white. Black Snake slithered and thrashed, tempering his scaled body with lightning and stubbornly enduring it. Whenever he misjudged the force, pain sent him twisting wildly.
His scales had scraped the summit meadow beyond recognition, tearing grass up by the roots and exposing dirt and broken stones, as though the ground had been plowed.
He had to deftly evade the lightning's fiercest edge while staying close enough.
Every bolt set his heart on edge.
As he risked his life absorbing lightning power, he made new discoveries about lightning.
Black Snake pondered them.
Some lightning seemed to be clouds and earth rushing toward each other. Before the blinding light illuminated the sky, there came a kind of invisible probing and locking on. Then everything lit up in an instant, forming the lightning visible to the