The first Trial Ye Jun faced was the Mysterious Techniques one. But it was also the easiest after he did Meihui’s training.

He was sent into a pocket dimension, which he honestly had no clue whether it was just an illusion or reality, where every technique he used gradually lost stability and turned flawed.

The more he relied on memorized forms, the faster they collapsed. To pass, he had to rebuild his techniques from their very foundations and prove true understanding rather than shallow mastery.

If one truly understood their Mysterious Techniques, they could rebuild them even if they were deconstructed to their fundamentals. That was the core of the Trial.

Ye Jun struggled at times even with his high understanding of every Mysterious Technique, mostly because there were simply too many of them. For once, he wondered if it was a bad decision to collect so many of them.

Still, he persisted and managed to clear it when he stopped considering them as named Mysterious Techniques which needed to follow the same form.

He finally understood the key to clearing the Trial.

"Techniques are expressions of understanding, not sacred fixed forms."

Ye Jun stood in a white void, letting go of the spear he had been holding and raised his head, ’It should come anytime soon.’

Nothing changed in the white Void, but in the Physical World, a lightning bolt struck his body and he felt every fiber of his body heat up. The bolt also somehow crossed the beyond infinity to reach the Spiritual Realm and struck his newly forming Soul.

That sent a new wave of pain incomparable to the physical one. He tightened his control over his Soul and endured the pain. There was no other way to get through the Tribulation Lightning.

’Goddamn it!’

The Heavenly Lightning was formed from three aspects, Mortal Lightning which was similar to natural lightning and affected one’s Physique, Spirit Lightning which attacked one’s Soul and lastly the Heavenly Dao mixed in both, changing their very nature to test one’s existence.

’I will endure it. This is nothing.’

True to his words, Ye Jun passed the First Tribulation without any injuries. But he wasn’t given the time to rest as his surroundings changed yet again.

His connection with the outside world was cut off yet again, leaving him all alone in this ever-changing pocket dimension.

’Affinity Trial is starting!’

Ye Jun calmed down, ready to face whatever the Heavenly Dao threw at him. The world shifted around him for a few seconds before it stabilized, throwing him into an ever-burning world.

Before him lay a ruined world beneath a flaming crimson sky where even the clouds left behind trails of blazing flames. The plains seemed endless, pouring lava from the cracks and putting an end to cities, beings and everything that even tried to survive here.

The forests caught fire and grew back. The cities crumbled into ash and rose again from it. Bodies blackened in the heat, fell apart, and stood up whole a moment later. Even the mountains were not spared. They cracked open, poured out fire, collapsed into rubble, then pushed themselves back into the sky.

Nothing here was ever still. Everything burned, and everything came back to burn again.

Ye Jun felt his throat parch, making even swallowing a hard process. Sweat dripped from his entire body, only to turn into steam the next second in this immense heat.

’The Trial of Fire.’

Ye Jun clenched his fists, as cracks formed on his skin. He began bleeding from everywhere as the terrible heat assaulted him from the inside out. Even the heat from the Tribulation Lightning couldn’t be compared to this.

’How...do I clear this?’

He had no clue, but he wasn’t about to give up.

Meanwhile, the pain didn’t fade. Instead, it sharpened.

Ye Jun’s skin split deeper, blood beading along his arms only to evaporate before it could fall. The heat wasn’t simply burning him from the outside, it had crawled inside, settling into his marrow and licking at the edges of his meridians.

His Qi tried to push back, forming a thin protective layer around his body. The fire ate through it in a heartbeat.

’Useless.’

He gathered more Qi, condensing it into a denser shell. Stone Step Footwork shifted under him, his body sinking lower, more grounded, more stable. The shell held for two breaths before flames slipped through every gap and burned hotter than before.

Each time he resisted, the world answered with more fire.

"Aghhh!"

A scream tore from his throat as something deeper began to burn. It wasn’t his skin, neither was it his Qi.

It was a memory.

Him meeting Meihui for the first time, how he threatened her first before asking the same person to protect him. He remembered everything...until he didn’t.

He felt it crack inside him like dry wood and catch flame. The scene blackened at its edges, curled inward, and turned to ash inside his own mind.

’No.’

He lunged for it, tried to hold the memory still but the fire only roared louder.

Another memory surfaced in his mind. The Gale Pressure Chamber, the hours of failed footwork and the first time the attribute bubble for Balance had finally ticked upward.

It was gone, eaten away by the flames, leaving a hollow space behind his eyes.

’Stop. STOP!’ Ye Jun roared in anger.

He poured Qi outward in a wide arc, trying to push the flames back from himself. The crimson sky rippled with what almost felt like amusement.

The fire surged in response, climbing his legs, his chest, settling against his throat like a hand.

A third memory burned.

His first meeting with Song Liangxue, the moment where the woman had impressed him and given him a second chance to live. The day his lover came into his life. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

It crumbled.

Ye Jun staggered. His knees struck cracked earth that immediately split open beneath him, lava bubbling up around his calves. He didn’t feel the burn anymore. All he felt was the loss.

’It’s taking everything.’

His memories, his emotions, everything was burning away, turning into nothing but ashes.

Around him, the world also kept its rhythm.

A forest two hundred meters away blackened, fell, and pushed green shoots up through its own ash within the space of a single breath.

A mountain in the far distance cracked, spilled its molten heart, collapsed into rubble, and rose back into the sky whole.

A figure of ash, vaguely shaped like a man, stood up from the ground beside him, took one step, and crumbled apart.

Renewal followed destruction here. Always. It was the law of this eternally burning world.

Ye Jun’s eyes burned, and not from the heat this time, ’I’ve been fighting it wrong.’

The thought formed quietly, beneath the roar of the flames which reached his mind too. He had been treating this trial like every other obstacle he had faced.

He just had to endure. Endure. Push back. Build a wall. Hold the line until the threat passed. Just like with the Heavenly Tribulation Lightning.

But this fire didn’t pass. It wasn’t an enemy to outlast to begin with.

’Fire isn’t here to kill me.’

He looked at the burning forest, watched the new shoots break through the ash, untouched by what had come before, unburdened by it. The old trees had burned because they were finished. The new ones grew because there was now space to grow.

He looked down at his own hands. The cracks in his skin had spread, the flesh underneath glowing faintly red, but his Qi Tempered Physique held. The fire had burned away skin and would burn away more. It hadn’t broken him.

It was clearing him.

’Memories. Fears. The shape I’ve been holding onto.’

His chest rose and fell. Each breath drew flame into his lungs. He stopped flinching from it.

’I’ve been afraid of losing who I was.’

He thought of all the techniques he had collected, all the forms he had memorized, all the moments he had stitched together to call himself Ye Jun. He had clung to them in the Mysterious Techniques Trial too, until he had finally let them go and understood that the form was never the point.

The same lesson but in a different shape.

Ye Jun closed his eyes.

Then he stopped resisting.

The Qi shell around him collapsed. The fire poured in, and for a single agonizing moment it felt as though every nerve in his body had been turned against him. He didn’t scream this time. He let it happen.

A memory burned. He let it go.

Another. He let it go.

Elder Han. Their fight with the Lord. The Gale Pressure Chamber. The Crows. The pride. Meihui. Song Liangxue. Their love. The fear of being weak. The hunger to prove himself. The grudges, half-formed, that he had carried out of habit. The shape of a younger Ye Jun who had still flinched at his own reflection.

All of it caught flame. All of it burned.

He didn’t fight to keep any of it.

And in the space the fire opened, something new began to settle, a version of himself that did not need to hold so tightly to his past that he couldn’t see the future.

The pain didn’t leave. It still ran through every fiber of him, but it no longer felt like an attack. It felt like heat moving through metal in a forge, shaping rather than destroying.

He could feel his Soul, bright and aching in the Spiritual Realm, settling into a steadier shape. His Physique, cracked and bleeding, was knitting itself back together with each breath, the new flesh subtly different from what had come before.

Ye Jun opened his eyes and took a step forward.

The cracked ground hissed beneath his foot and the flames climbed higher around him. He took another step, and another, and walked deeper into the burning world. He did not flinch. He did not raise a shell. He let the fire have him, and the fire let him pass.

Around him, a forest burned to ash and grew back green. A mountain fell and rose. A body of cinders stood up, walked, and crumbled.

He understood them now.

’Destruction isn’t the end of anything. It’s the space that lets the next thing begin.’

The crimson sky rumbled, and somewhere beyond it, something vast seemed to acknowledge him.

Ye Jun walked on through the flames, lighter than he had ever been.

"Fire is not just destruction."