Dawn shattered across the peaks, spilling molten gold that bled like lava over the stone spine of Tongling Nation.

  The air in the square was a storm front of anxiety, thick enough to taste. It crackled between the dozens of young mages, a current of sharp whispers and the scrape of boots on stone. Some gestured with hands that shook, their voices thin and sharp. Others stood like statues, but the tremor in their fingertips was a fault line betraying the pressure within. This assessment was a crucible. Today, their futures would be forged or broken.

  Five pillars of spiritual stone clawed at the sky, ringing the square. Their five-colored light bled into the air, weaving a massive Five Elements formation that pulsed with the breath of a slumbering behemoth. Each exhalation sent a tremor through the flagstones, a vibration that resonated deep in his marrow.

  He closed his eyes, forcing the storm in his own mind to quiet. Since the Grand Elder's guidance, his perception had been honed to a razor's edge. With his eyes shut, the world dissolved. The flow of the Five Elements Power became five rushing rivers of force—Water's crushing cold, Fire's searing rage, Wood's relentless growth, Metal's sharp bite, and Earth's grinding weight. They flowed in an ancient, silent rhythm. But this new sight came with a price. He could now feel the fractures in the world, the discordant notes once lost in the noise.

  "Look! The Sacred Tree is watching!"

  A cry ripped through the tension.

  Every head snapped upward. The crown of the Sacred Tree tore through the dawn, a sovereign of jade and light. Its canopy was a cloud carved from emerald, each leaf a shard of sacred fire. The ancient being was a phoenix of living wood, wings spread to shelter all of Tongling City.

  As they held their breath, figures materialized on the high platform.

  Elder Lin stood at the forefront, his thin frame rigid, his white hair a severe, combed crown. He clutched a record book like a weapon. Flanking him were the senior instructors, their faces granite masks. At the very back, a silent mountain in a fluttering blue robe, stood Grand Elder Shizong. His hands were clasped behind him, his presence a steadying weight.

  "Is everyone prepared?" Elder Lin's voice, amplified by the formation, rolled over them like thunder. "The Celestial Perception Assessment will now begin."

  The rules were stone-simple. Use the formation. Read the sky. Predict the celestial phenomena for the next three days. A test of perception, yes, but more—a test of their souls's understanding of the Five Elements.

  He held his breath, casting his consciousness upward like a net into the sky.

  This time, he didn't force it. He let his mind become a still, dark pool of water, reflecting the world above. The pulse of the heavens grew clear.

  A warm current from the south, heavy with the ocean's salt and moisture. A cold draft from the north, wrapped in the ice of the mountains. They met, twisting, churning into invisible vortices. The clouds gave up their secrets: some were stone-heavy with unshed rain, others were thin ghosts. He could feel the pressure shifts, the minute fractures in temperature that foretold the coming hours.

  Then he felt it again. A discordant shiver.

  A piercing, unnatural fluctuation inside the grand rhythm of the world. The balance between heaven and earth has been undergoing subtle changes. His master's words. This was the anomaly. He tried to trace it, to pin it down, but the power was an eel of slick, cold energy, impossible to grasp.

  Suddenly—

  A silent detonation inside his skull.

  Five streams of power erupted in his veins. Water's ice clawed at his lungs. Fire scoured his bones. Wood's vitality choked him, a vine tightening around his throat. Metal's razors sliced through his nerves. Earth's weight tried to crush him into the ground. They warred inside him, a maelstrom of ice and fire that turned every breath to agony.

  Too much. It's tearing him apart.

  A tidal wave of pain crashed behind his eyes. His temples hammered. His vision dissolved at the edges. A violent shudder wracked his body, and a sweat as cold as a mountain spring beaded on his forehead, trickling like icy tears down his cheeks to splatter on the stone.

  His eyes flew open. Instinct took over. He condensed a five-colored sphere of light in his palm. It flared, a miniature sun of impossible power, then vanished into nothing.

  As the light died, the strength in his legs dissolved. The world pitched forward—

  "Ke Munan!" Jin Luo's hands were on him, a rock in the torrent, catching him before his face met the stone. "Are you alright?"

  "I'm… fine…" He gasped, the words torn from his lungs as he fought to find his feet.

  Now he understood. This was the price of a Five Elements Balanced Constitution. To feel all five powers was to bear five times the burden. One slip in control, and the backlash was a storm that threatened to shatter him from within.

  "That sphere of light…" Jin Luo's eyes were wide, his voice a low hiss of shock. "That was Five Elements Unity!"

  A bitter smile twisted his lips. If he could choose, he would take a single power. At least it wouldn't feel like being ripped into five separate pieces.

  The others were lost in their own storms.

  Ya Mei knelt, her silver hair dancing in a pale blue nimbus. Palms pressed to the earth, her violet eyes were half-lidded as she whispered to the stone, the aura of nature swirling around her like a cloak.

  Jin Luo was a hunched gargoyle over a strange, self-made compass, sweat plastering his hair to his brow as his pen flew, scratching out dense formulas.

  Jin Gan stood as if in a trance, his gaze lost in the heavens. But his focus was absolute. His mechanical arm trembled, runes glowing with a faint inner fire as it fed him data. The arm was an extension of his soul, letting him feel the sky not as weather, but as a vast, interlocking machine.

  "Incredible," he murmured, the sound swallowed by the square. "The flow of energy… it's like the workings of a machine! Precision gears, every change following a pattern!"

  Luo Han had his hands pressed to the ground, feeling the deep pulse of the world. A flicker of pain, a lightning strike across his face, revealed the unstable power churning within him. Tiny cracks spiderwebbed through the flagstones beneath his palms as he gritted his teeth, fighting a war he couldn't see.

  Huang Xiaohu stood apart, a golden eagle among crows. His wings were slightly unfurled, a faint, superior smile playing on his lips. For him, this was not a crucible. It was a stage.

  Just then, a clatter. Jin Luo's compass slipped from his grasp.

  In the instant before it shattered, Luo Han's hand shot out, steadying Ya Mei who had swayed at the sound. His other hand remained on the ground as Earth spiritual power bled silently from his palm, forming a cushion of soft soil where the compass was about to land.

  Thud. Safe.

  Luo Han blinked, as if waking from a dream. He pulled his hand back, a flush of heat rising on his cheeks. "Sorry… I didn't mean to…"

  Ya Mei's smile was a sliver of light. She shook her head, patting his arm in a silent thanks that spoke more than words.

  He watched them, a warmth spreading through his aching chest.

  Nearby, Huang Xiaohu glanced over, his expression a mask of ice. The sound, the compass, his comrades—they did not exist. He was alone in his own brilliant world.

  Fifteen minutes later, the hammer fell. Elder Lin began calling for judgments.

  "Ke Munan." The elder's pen was poised over his record book.

  He gathered the fractured pieces of his perception. "Today, the spiritual energy is stable. Water and Wood are dominant. But there is an abnormal power… an infection of unknown origin. It may cause variables."

  Several examiners exchanged glances. Behind them, Grand Elder Shizong's gaze was a physical weight. He saw the memory of last night's starlight in his eyes, the hint of purple in the sphere he had just made. His perception was sharper than he'd known.

  "Continue," Elder Lin prompted, his voice flat.

  "The next three days. The first will be clear. The second, rain in the afternoon. The third…" He hesitated, the feeling a slippery, dark premonition. "The third may have an anomalous celestial phenomenon. He could not name it."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Elder Lin made a mark. "Next."

  The others gave their answers. Jin Luo's was a fortress of data. Ya Mei's was a poem of plant reactions. Huang Xiaohu's was a blade, precise and perfect, with almost no deviation.

  After the last student spoke, a storm of quiet debate erupted among the examiners. The Grand Elder remained a statue, the ultimate witness, offering no judgment.

  "Based on the comprehensive evaluation," Elder Lin's voice boomed, "the recipients of the Grand Elder's medal are: Ke Munan, Ya Mei, Jin Luo, Jin Gan, Luo Han… a total of ten outstanding young mages."

  A wave of sharp gasps rippled through the crowd. Huang Xiaohu's name was not on the list. The prodigy, the golden eagle, had fallen.

  Huang Xiaohu's body went rigid as stone. His golden wings flared, feathers trembling with rage. His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

  "Why?" The question erupted from the crowd. "Huang Xiaohu's prediction was the most accurate!"

  "He was right every time! Fifteen changes in wind direction!"

  Elder Lin's face was impassive. "The criteria were announced. Technical precision is only one part." He fixed his gaze on Huang Xiaohu. "Your talent is a fire, true. But just now, when Jin Luo's compass fell, you stood inches away and did nothing. When Jin Gan's mechanical arm malfunctioned, some offered help, but you…"

  The unfinished sentence hung in the air, heavy as a guillotine.

  Huang Xiaohu's mouth opened, but no sound came out. His throat was a knot of stone. His brilliant wings slowly, painfully, folded.

  Elder Lin snapped the record book shut. "On a battlefield, who would trust their life to a mage blind to his own comrades?"

  Silence crashed down on the square.

  Only then did the Grand Elder speak, his voice a quiet wind that reached every corner. "Young man, the road ahead is long."

  Huang Xiaohu bowed, his body a stiff, sharp angle. "I understand, Elder."

  His voice was calm as a frozen lake, but his fists did not unclench.

  Weeks later, the final selection came. Not a test of power, but a choice made by a power far older than any of them. The Sacred Tree itself. To be chosen was to receive its blessing, a shield for the path ahead.

  The ten of them gathered beneath its ancient, silent watch. Sunlight fractured through the dense canopy, dappling the ground in shifting patterns of light and shadow. The trunk was a mountain of living wood, its bark etched with runes that pulsed with millennia of history.

  He stared up at it, and the fortune teller's words echoed in his skull. Listen with your heart, not just your ears.

  A tremor ran through him, a vibration that felt like a whisper from the tree itself. It awakened a memory buried so deep in his soul he couldn't see its face. When he reached for the sound, it was gone.

  Soft footsteps. Ya Mei approached, a shadow in a dark green robe, her silver hair a waterfall of moonlight. Her violet eyes met his, a question burning in their depths. Her slender fingers tapped her heart, then pointed to the tree. Did you hear it too?

  He nodded.

  A faint smile touched her lips. She held up a piece of talisman paper. Floating runes shimmered on its surface: "The Sacred Tree is choosing Its children." She pointed at him, then the tree, and clasped her hands. She already believed.

  Before he could ask, the Grand Elder's voice cut through the air.

  "The Sacred Tree will choose in its own way," he announced, his tone as solemn as a funeral drum. "Be true to yourselves. Do not force it."

  As he spoke, a sound rustled from the tree, a thousand secrets whispered on the wind. An ancient, vital aura bled from the trunk, thick and green.

  Suddenly, from high above, a single golden leaf began to fall.

  It danced on the air, a slow, graceful spiral of captured sunlight. Every breath in the clearing was held captive, every eye chained to its descent.

  The leaf landed on his shoulder.

  The moment it touched him, it dissolved. Not into dust, but into a wave of liquid light that poured into his body. His breath hitched. A warmth like a gentle sun spread from his shoulder, flowing through every vein. On his chest, the golden leaf amulet grew hot, a searing brand against his skin, throbbing in violent resonance with the tree's gift.

  Tears he couldn't explain welled in his eyes. He bit his lip, fighting a tidal wave of emotion that had no name.

  A second leaf fell, finding Ya Mei. She closed her eyes, a serene peace settling on her face.

  The third and fourth found Jin Luo and Jin Gan. Jin Luo nearly leaped from his skin with joy. Jin Gan affected his usual cool, but a flicker of light in his eyes betrayed the fire within.

  Then, silence. The Sacred Tree stilled.

  An eerie quiet descended, heavy and sharp.

  "Is that it? Only four?" someone whispered. In every selection before, at least five had been chosen.

  The Grand Elder's brow furrowed, a crack in his granite composure, before smoothing out. He looked to the top of the tree. Its will had not faded. It was focusing, like a lens gathering sunlight, concentrating its power on a single point. It was calling for something. Or perhaps, forcing it.

  "Do not announce the results," he commanded a nearby mage. "Wait."

  Time bled away. Two hours. Anticipation curdled into a restless poison. Just as the tension peaked, a fifth leaf began its spiral down.

  But it sought no one. It paused in mid-air, its light flaring, before transforming into a spear of golden energy that shot straight for Luo Han.

  The instant the light struck, the air turned to ash in his throat. A dry, scorching heat wave blasted outward. Those near Luo Han scrambled back, fanning their faces.

  The ground shuddered. A tremor ran up his spine from the stone. Dust puffed from the flagstones, followed by the sharp crack of rock splitting under a sudden, oppressive heat.

  "Is this… Fire? Or Earth?" someone stammered.

  He knew. It was both. A fusion. It was magma, possessing the crushing weight of Earth and the devouring heat of Fire.

  Luo Han stumbled, his face a pale mask of shock. The golden light was a key, detonating the violent, unstable power he had chained within himself for so long. He trembled, sweat pouring from him in sheets.

  "Luo Han? Are you okay?"

  "I…" He tried to speak, but his legs buckled. He fell to one knee, his right hand slamming against the ground. A searing pain shot up his arm. The power was a river of magma, and the dam was breaking.

  "Everyone, fall back," the Grand Elder commanded.

  The crowd obeyed, a receding tide, leaving Luo Han alone in the storm's eye. He started forward, but the Grand Elder's hand on his shoulder was an iron bar.

  "Do not go near him." A flash of terrible understanding crossed the old man's face. "This is an Awakening. The Sacred Tree has ignited the fire of his destiny!"

  Around Luo Han's hand, the soil began to change, darkening to a deep, angry red. Wisps of white smoke curled from its surface.

  "Don't resist it," the Grand Elder's voice was a calm anchor in Luo Han's ear. "Guide it. This is your talent awakening."

  Luo Han closed his eyes, swallowed his fear, and let go.

  A miracle. The chaotic power, the raging magma, began to flow. The searing heat of Fire and the solid weight of Earth twisted, intertwined, and fused into something new.

  BOOM!

  The ground beneath his palm shattered, fissures spreading like a black spiderweb. But from those cracks surged not destruction, but the breath of new life. Crimson light erupted from the earth's core, bathing him in a bloody glow.

  The next moment, a tender, crimson sprout of condensed magma broke through the soil. It grew, its pace unnatural, impossible, becoming a small tree in an instant. One half was the heavy brown of earth; the other was the glowing red of hot iron, covered in fiery patterns. Atop the tree, a strange fruit took shape—half earth, half fire, radiating an aura both scorching and steady.

  The Sacred Tree responded. It trembled, its emerald leaves rustling like a storm. Another leaf drifted down, this one half the brown of soil, half the red of flame. It descended, landing lightly on the two-colored fruit. The small tree, its purpose served, dissolved into motes of light, leaving only the unique leaf to float down and settle on Luo Han's shoulder.

  "Fire, at its end, becomes Earth. Flame and Earth share the same origin." The Grand Elder's voice was thick with awe. He helped the exhausted Luo Han to his feet, his eyes burning with admiration. "Child, you possess the rare Flame-Earth Body. The elements in you are magma and land, forever generating and merging with each other."

  Luo Han managed a weak, trembling smile. "I… I didn't know…"

  "This is destiny," the Grand Elder said. "The Sacred Tree sensed it. It was merely waiting for the right moment to guide your awakening."

  He stepped forward, taking Luo Han's other arm, feeling the residual heat radiating from his skin. "How do you feel?"

  "Much better," he said, his voice rough but grateful.

  "That's amazing!" Jin Luo rushed over, his face alight. "A Flame-Earth Body! That's a legendary constitution!"

  Ya Mei handed him a recovery potion, her gaze gentle. Jin Gan stood by, a silent pillar, and gave a single, approving wink.

  The five of them stood shoulder to shoulder, bathed in the ancient light of the tree.

  The next morning, he went to see the final list, posted on the announcement board. His eyes found the names, a neat column of black ink on white paper. Ke Munan. Ya Mei. Jin Luo. Jin Gan. Luo Han. A feeling of rightness, of balance, settled in his chest. Five points of a star.

  Then his eyes caught the sixth name.

  Huang Xiaohu.

  The name was a discordant note, a fracture in the pattern. Confusion warred with a cold knot of dread in his gut. Why? He failed. He was rejected.

  He scanned the crowd until he found him. He stood frozen before the board, his golden wings trembling. He had never imagined a second chance. His arrogance was gone, burned away, leaving something harder in its place.

  "I will prove myself," he murmured, a vow spoken to the stone. His fists were clenched so tight the knuckles were white.

  Then Luo Han walked over to him.

  "Welcome to the team."

  Huang Xiaohu flinched, startled from his reverie.

  Luo Han's smile was simple, honest as the earth itself. He extended his thick hand. "I'll be counting on you."

  Huang Xiaohu stared at the offered hand as if it were a serpent. He hesitated, a storm of pride and disbelief warring on his face. Then, slowly, he reached out and took it. The handshake was firm, a pact sealed in the morning light. "Let's look out for each other."

  He watched them from a distance, a faint smile touching his lips. A team of six. This journey was already more complicated than he had imagined.

  The air in the Elder Hall was heavy as stone, thick with the silence of centuries. It was the eve of their departure. A solemn bestowal ceremony was underway.

  The six of them, dressed in formal robes embroidered with the sigil of Tongling Nation, stepped forward one by one. The fabric was stiff, the weight of expectation in every thread.

  "Huang Xiaohu."

  He strode forward and knelt, his movements precise, sharp. The armor of arrogance he once wore had been stripped away, tempered into the keen edge of a blade.

  The Grand Elder handed him an exquisitely crafted mechanical bird, its golden feathers gleaming. "This is the Golden Swallow," he said, his voice echoing in the vast hall. "It can transform into a mount to carry you through the skies. It is as swift as a stream of light and can withstand the impact of high-level spells."

  The Grand Elder's gaze swept over all of them then, pausing on Luo Han, then on Huang Xiaohu. "The Sacred Tree chose a shield," he said, his voice low but carrying a new weight. He understood then. He was explaining the sixth name on the list. "Luo Han is that shield, stable and reliable. But a shield is not enough to win a war. The team still lacked a sword—one sharp enough to cut through the coming darkness when all else fails."

  His eyes found Huang Xiaohu again. "Sometimes, offense is the best defense. And you, Huang Xiaohu… you are a sword. Though you still need polishing, your sharpness is precisely what this team needs." He let the words settle, a judgment and a charge. "Six people will go. Luo Han is the strongest shield, the Sacred Tree's choice. Huang Xiaohu is the sharpest sword, the elders' choice. But you must learn to cooperate."

  Huang Xiaohu bowed his head, the golden wings trembling slightly. "I will not fail."

  The promise was a stone dropped into the silent hall.