Lightning Is the Only Way

Lasar successfully negotiated with the tree. It agreed to provide Life Lightning to everyone, but at a cost, of course. It took quite some time for Lasar to successfully explain to it why they couldn't give it Life Lightning so easily. The only sources of Life Lightning were Gravis and the Freya Clan. With Gravis being more than full, giving it Life Lightning completely rested on the Freya Clan.

The only thing that they can give it were corpses of beasts. Of course, only with that, the Tree wouldn't have agreed to anything. Lasar also had to promise that, after some amount of healing, the Sect would invite someone from the Freya Clan over to give it Life Lightning.

All in all, the Lightning Sect promised to keep the tree topped-up on its storage of Life Lightning by giving it enough beasts, while someone from the Freya Clan would come in regular intervals. With this, the Lightning Sect finally got an easy way to heal their disciples.

Right after successfully negotiating, the number of missions for hunting beasts skyrocketed. Normally, only villages, towns, and cities requested the hunting of beasts, but these new missions came from the Lightning Sect itself. After all, they were going to put the tree to work, and they needed a lot of beasts for that.

Of course, such hunting missions weren't given to everyone. It was not because so many disciples were too weak, but because they were too strong. There was already an influx of missions, so they might as well use these for tempering.

The strengths of the beasts were described on the mission notice, and it also showed an upper limit of strength and numbers. For example, a mission to kill a low-grade Spirit Beast allowed a maximum of five people at the initial stage of Spirit Forming or only a single person at the Seed Stage. After all, if a single person at the Spirit Forming Realm went out and hunted a bunch of Energy Beasts, they would steal a prime opportunity for tempering from other disciples.

While the disciples of the Lightning Sect went crazy with accepting missions, two elders and Lasar started working on the Lightning Tower. There was no protest about the Lightning Tower being closed down for a week since the storm clouds needed to regenerate anyway. Gravis had absorbed way too much lightning.

Old Man Lightning was also living at his new home again. The Lightning Sect had furnished everything in less than two hours after Gravis had finished building it. They were used to this task since Old Man Lightning regularly destroyed his home.

Meanwhile, Gravis had nothing to do but wait. It would take a week for the Lightning Tower to be modified, and he had nothing else to do. He stood in the middle of the Sect and watched everyone else scrambling around. Some were still busy cleaning up the plaza and rebuilding the essential buildings. Others were running out of the Sect in swathes, hunting for beasts.

"It's weird," Gravis muttered. "I'm not used to having no goal."

Gravis released a deep breath. 'While being part of the Greys, I was, at least, waiting for an enemy to pop up. But now, I'm not even waiting for that. There's just… nothing. Is this going to happen more frequently from now on? Am I just supposed to wait for my Realm to increase?' Gravis thought.

Gravis kind of felt antsy and nervous, even though there was no danger in sight. To him, it felt like every second that he was not tempering himself, he was wasting valuable time. He felt like, by being relaxed, everyone else would overtake him. After all, every hour of him doing nothing would be an hour of tempering for someone else.

"Should I also go hunt some beasts?" He asked himself as he looked at the mission board with his Spirit. There were a lot of open missions for Spirit Beasts, but there was an issue.

'Low-grade Spirit Beasts are too weak already. Middle-grade Spirit Beasts have the strength of around one Sapling Stage cultivator. A Sapling Stage cultivator would work as, at least, some tempering for me, but a Spirit Beast wouldn't. Humans are smart enough to flee when they see my Lightning Bomb, but beasts? I doubt it. If I could safely kill my enemy with an attack, it wouldn't be considered tempering.'

Gravis had a worried expression on his face. 'I don't even need to think about high-grade Spirit Beasts. A Sect Master is the only person that can hunt them, and I am definitely not strong enough to face a Sect Master yet. Hunting such a beast would be suicide.'

Gravis then looked at another mission board. While the mission board for the hunting missions was brown, this one was black with an ornamental lightning bolt going through it. 'Should I sign up for the war of the Sects? That could work.'

Gravis started reading through the notices on the mission board. Surprisingly, there weren't exactly missions on there, but dates and appointments. As Gravis read through those appointments, he furrowed his brows. 'They have set times and places where they battle? That's weird. I thought this was a war. By the way, why are they even warring?'

Gravis rubbed the side of his head and then looked at Old Man Lightning's house with his Spirit. This time, he could see Old Man Lightning, lounging on a comfy couch beside his fire.

"What is it?" Old Man Lightning sent to Gravis as soon as he felt Gravis' Spirit. After all, inspecting the home of someone else was kind of a breach of privacy. If Gravis looked into the house, he probably wanted something from him. Though, Old Man Lightning sounded way more relaxed than usual. In actuality, he sounded more like a kind grandpa instead of the cursing, always angry old shit that Gravis knew.

"Sorry to disturb you, but I have a question. Why are the Sects warring with each other?" Gravis asked. If the old man was nice, for once, then Gravis could also be nice.

Old Man Lightning looked to be a little surprised by the question. "Well, we don't really war with each other," he said. "We are just fighting to temper ourselves. We hold appointments for the battles and send the same number and level of cultivators. Like that, it would be a fair Life and Death battle. Our Sects are actually all pretty united."

Gravis furrowed his brows. "Then what was up with Byron's scheme?" Gravis asked.

Old Man Lightning sneered. "Yeah, he's an exception. Those greedy darkness cultivators want to swallow everything. They don't care about fairness or others. While we have no issue with the Earth and Water Sect, we do have a personal beef with the Darkness Sect. So, while the whole war is not an actual war, our Lightning and their Darkness Sect are ACTUALLY at war."

Gravis rubbed his chin. "Interesting. So, if there is no war, why is the Wind Sect staying neutral?" Gravis asked.

Old Man Lightning sipped from a small cup of tea. "Because they have their own, special way of tempering. They don't need this war."

Gravis lifted an eyebrow. "Oh? What way?"

Gravis also noticed something else. His lightning was about to reach the threshold again, so he quickly put 10% of it into his Spirit.

Old Man Lightning saw this and smiled. "Finally remembering, huh?" he said in a friendly tone, drinking another mouthful of tea. "As for their way of tempering. You know that the Wind Sect has a lot of beasts, right?"

Gravis nodded.

"It's rather simple," Old Man Lightning said. "The beasts need meat and combat experience while the cultivators need tempering. So, they create duels. The combatants are at roughly the same power, and they fight until one of them dies. If the beast wins, it gets battle experience against a human and their corpse, and if the cultivator wins, they get some tempering. The beast's corpse will then be broken down into valuables, and the remaining beasts eat the meat. They simply don't need the other Sects for tempering."

"That's pretty smart," Gravis said. "With this, they also don't need to rely on others. With high-grade Spirit Beasts, they also have tempering for their Sect Masters. If they have it so easy with tempering, why don't they have anyone at the Self Stage?"

Old Man Lightning laughed a little at Gravis' question. "There is no high-grade Spirit Beast that's interested in a fight. Spirit Beasts can't ascend, and the high-grade is the last level that they can ever reach in their lifetime. There is no possible way forward, so there is also no sense in fighting anymore. As soon as a Spirit Beast reaches the high-grade, they will simply relax and make tons of babies."

"Oh, right," Gravis said. He had forgotten that beasts weren't able to ascend in an Elemental World. They were only in these worlds as fertilizer for humans. Now, if they were in a Natural World, this would be something else. After all, the highest world also required powerful beasts, and many of those came from Natural Worlds. Due to Natural Worlds existing only for raising beasts, there were no humans in there. Like this, those worlds would become a beast factory.

"Yeah, that makes sense, actually," Gravis said.

"While we're talking," Old Man Lightning said. "How come beasts can't ascend? Do you know that?"

Gravis thought about the impact that his answer would have and decided that it couldn't hamper the old man's cultivation path. "It's because Heaven only wants human cultivators. I can't tell you the reason for that since Heaven doesn't want its secrets exposed, but just remember that it only cares about humans. Heaven created beasts only so they could function as tempering for humans. Therefore, they don't need to ascend."

Old Man Lightning looked intrigued. "Interesting. That would explain everything." With that said, Old Man Lightning trailed off.

"By the way, can I sign up for the war?" Gravis asked.