At Colorful Cloud Peak, dense clouds spread like spilled ink, and droplets of mist fell like rain.
Inside Clear Thought Hall, Wen Si'an was restless, worry creasing her brows. Her supple figure reclined sideways in a yellow rosewood folding chair, and she kept glancing outside.
"Why is it taking so long?"
Gao Xia's breakthrough had dragged on rather too long. Unable to rest easy, Wen Si'an had gone to her seclusion chamber several times, but Gao Xia had not activated her jade pendant to signal distress, so she could hardly barge into the cave dwelling.
"I only hope nothing goes wrong."
She had only this one disciple and cherished her dearly, almost as her own child. Too anxious to sit still, she rose and walked outside the hall.
Tall, stately pines and cypresses stood beside a deep pool of still emerald water. Colorful Cloud Peak was the foremost of Green Luo's peaks, its scenery exquisite, but Wen Si'an had no heart to admire it now. She focused her gaze on a cave dwelling farther down the peak.
"Ji Earth fears yang fire. Our lineage follows the path of the Bing Sun; fire parches and earth cracks. I summoned rain early and exhausted myself transforming it into nourishing moisture, yet it still fell short."
Wen Si'an had cultivated under her father since childhood and read many Daoist texts in the temple. She understood these principles of mutual generation and restraint between lineages and had naturally prepared suitable weather for the breakthrough well in advance. She had thought everything foolproof, only for complications to arise after all.
She knew Gao Xia's breakthrough into Qi Refining was all but certain, yet she still hoped her disciple's path would be smooth.
Halfway up the peak, inside a cave dwelling, Zhang Gaoxia had reached the