The Heavenly Firmament stretched into the misty distance, wind and rain raging.
Bimo stood in a stretch of nothingness.
Sky-blue and bright blue thunderbolts seemed endless, all but drowning her. Each bolt of sky thunder weighed as heavily as Mount Tai, pressing down until she could barely stand upright. "I am... Lin Qingmo."
The boundaries and meaning of her existence were dissolving rapidly. Rather than her merging into sky thunder, sky thunder was devouring her. Once she forgot who she was, she would become a bolt of thunder here, damned beyond redemption through myriad calamities.
Bimo began desperately recalling her past, from the first time she had accompanied her father to pay homage to the founding patriarch as a child, to when she had truly succeeded as sect master of the Upper Firmament Sect. All of it was far too insubstantial.
The weight of her entire life was merely a grain in the vast ocean of sky thunder's history, incapable of stirring even a ripple.
The thunder seemed disappointed and receded little by little. Darkness enveloped the place.
She walked forward, gradually catching sight of a gleam.
It was the Dharma Form of a Daoist, spanning heaven and earth.
His features were indistinct, talismanic scripts circling his body. Dressed in a sky-blue Wind-and-Thunder Dao Robe, he sat upon the ground, seemingly manifesting boundless vigor and burgeoning life around him. Spring thunder sounded ceaselessly here, shaking the darkness and resounding through the Heavenly Firmament.
The Daoist spoke:
"Succeed to my Dao, and ascend at once to the fruit position."
Reverence and terror immediately welled up in Bimo's heart, driving her to kneel against her will. She barely resisted the crushing pressure, her body splitting inch by inch as azure blood gushed out.
"No."
"Why?"
Bimo said nothing.
Then a middle-aged man