Zhen Xue, who had been kneeling with her eyes shut in deep concentration, slowly rises to her feet. Her entire being exudes the energy of the late Heaven's Gate Realm as well, but it's calm, steady, like a river flowing smoothly. She opens her eyes, and they gleam with an almost predatory sharpness.
"It's as if my limits have been erased," she says, her voice filled with a quiet intensity. "There's no more bottleneck. The qi flows freely now. We've all broken through."
Feng Lan, standing nearby, grins wildly, flexing his arms as the metallic sheen of his new form glimmers in the dim light. His body, too, exudes the late-stage Heaven's Gate aura, the qi swirling around him like a storm ready to break loose.
"To think we'd leap forward like this," Feng Lan says, his tone full of disbelief. "I was stuck for so long... now this? This is power."