The attendant remained frozen long enough for everyone to understand what had happened.

  Ice clung to his brows and sealed his sleeves to his sides. His breath fogged weakly against the thin crust of frost locking him in place. Guards hovered at a cautious distance, unsure whether stepping in would protect their prince or worsen the humiliation. Merchants no longer pretended to be busy. They stared openly now.

  Whispers moved through the crowd like wind through dry grass.

  The merchant who had demanded compensation earlier looked from the frozen attendant to the prince. Something hardened in his eyes.

  “You used my beast,” he said quietly. “This was arranged.”

  He did not need to shout. The accusation settled heavily enough on its own.

  The prince clicked his tongue.

  The ice cracked.

  With a subtle pulse from Zhi Yuan, frost splintered into glittering fragments that scattered across the stone. The attendant stumbled forward, soaked and pale, then dropped to one knee without instruction.

  “You embarrass me,” the prince said.

  He did not raise his voice. He did not look angry. That made it worse.

  Without sparing the kneeling man another glance, he turned lazily toward the merchant. “You will be compensated. Send the invoice to the Third Treasury.”

  The merchant bowed, though it felt less like respect and more like retreat.

  Then the prince’s gaze shifted to Li Wei, irritation arranged neatly across his features.

  “Next time you freeze someone, try not to do it somewhere expensive.”

  The tension thinned — not gone, just stretched thinner.

  Above them, the clouds loosened. The weight pressing against their lungs eased. Guards straightened their armor. Merchants began righting carts. A horse shook ash from its mane and snorted.

  The prince rolled his eyes dramatically and brushed dust from his sleeve.

  It should have ended there.

  Just as he drew breath to speak again—

  The air tightened.

  Not above one person.

  Everywhere.

  It began subtly — a metallic taste at the back of the throat. The hairs along arms lifted. Iron fittings on carts hummed faintly. Qi, which had only just steadied, trembled inside meridians like a string plucked too hard.

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  A guard swallowed. “It’s not done.”

  The sky did not gather into a single descending bolt.

  It tore.

  White veins ripped sideways across the clouds, branching and splitting until the horizon itself seemed cracked.

  The first strike came without warning.

  Stone erupted into shards. A wagon wheel disintegrated in a flash of heat. A roof beam snapped and plunged downward. Someone screamed. Someone else dropped to their knees and began praying.

  This was no measured tribulation.

  It felt… imprecise.

  Lightning crawled again across the fractured sky — and lingered over Li Wei.

  The pressure above him thickened, heavy enough to press breath from his lungs. He felt it. Everyone did.

  The boy who had said “Freeze.”

  The sky answered.

  The bolt fell.

  The prince moved before the thunder reached them.

  He seized Li Wei by the collar and drove him sideways with brutal force. They hit the ground hard, sliding across stone as white light slammed into the place Li Wei had stood. The earth split open. Heat roared upward. The shockwave knocked guards from their feet.

  For a single heartbeat, the prince forgot to smile.

  The amusement was gone. The irritation was gone.

  His expression was sharp. Controlled.

  And furious.

  Not at Li Wei. Not at the chaos around them.

  At something higher.

  Then it vanished.

  “Idiot cultivators!” he snapped, scrambling to his feet. “Triggering tribulation at city gates!”

  He brushed soot from his sleeve and barked at the guards to restore order, as though he had not just thrown himself into the path of lightning.

  Zhi Yuan watched him closely.

  There had been no hesitation.

  No weighing of advantage.

  He had simply moved.

  The sky split again.

  And this time it spared no one.

  Lightning scattered wildly across the gate district. Stone shattered near a merchant, sending him sprawling. A child froze in the middle of the road as a burning beam tilted toward her.

  Li Wei’s fire burst outward, reducing the beam to splinters before it could crush her. Ru Yan struck her palm into the earth, guiding a surge of current downward before it leapt into clustered carts. Feng dragged two panicked horses aside as sparks snapped through the air around their hooves.

  Zhi Yuan lifted his hand. Aero compressed and released, slicing a falling trunk just enough to deflect its path.

  Through it all, the prince’s voice cut cleanly through the noise.

  “Disperse! Into stone buildings! Move!”

  There was no brat in that command.

  He caught a stumbling merchant and threw him clear of a descending arc. He shoved a guard flat just before lightning scarred the air where the man had stood.

  Silk and coarse cloth alike were shoved aside without thought. Rank meant nothing beneath a breaking sky.

  They did not plan. They did not speak.

  They simply acted.

  Then the clouds convulsed once more.

  Two arcs formed — branching, twisting — converging.

  One toward Li Wei.

  One toward the prince.

  Zhi Yuan felt the calculation fracture in his mind. He could anchor one vector. Not both.

  There was no time for elegance.

  “Exit.”

  The world folded like paper creased too sharply.

  Li Wei and the prince vanished from the road and reappeared behind the corner of a stone structure just as lightning obliterated the ditch where the beast’s corpse lay. White light consumed it. The blast sent dust and heat roaring outward.

  The sound faded slowly.

  Smoke drifted through the gate district. Burn marks scarred stone and wood alike. Guards coughed. Merchants clutched one another, too shaken to argue or accuse.

  For a moment — brief and fragile — everyone beneath that sky had stood equal.

  The clouds thinned. Not gently.

  As if something had taken note and moved on.

  The prince straightened, ash clinging to his sleeves. His gaze flicked toward Zhi Yuan, something unsettled flickering behind carefully maintained composure.

  Curiosity. Awareness.

  Then he exhaled and dusted himself off.

  “I will be billing Heaven for damages,” he said irritably.

  But the mask had slipped, and some had seen what lay beneath.

  Later, when the smoke cleared and the sky stretched wide and deceptively calm, someone looked up.

  Not in defiance. Not in prayer.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  A quiet breath.

  “Strike me.”

  What did you think of the prince’s reaction?

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