If something seems too good to be true, it most likely is. Pretty soon Leo was forced to realize he had severely underestimated the effectiveness of cultivating below the lighting trees. Obviously it only sped up the inevitable, but he was not that keen to die yet.
Almost as if it had found its true home, the purple lightning within his dantian joyfully danced and the lighting bolts darted all over the Qi pathways in his body. It would’ve also been fine, but no matter how much Qi Leo released through the extremities, the next morning he had accumulated even more. And that happened also when he decided to do an experiment – he went back to the forest and spent a night up on a tree! If it hadn’t happened, he would’ve left the lightning lake and the grassland no matter how beneficial it was for the cultivation, but since there was no big difference he decided to stay, at least for now.
From the looks of it he had reached a certain threshold and had to increase his own cultivation level, but had no clue how to do it or what it actually meant. All Leo knew was that just like every other cultivation stage, the Foundation establishment had three stages – early, middle and late, with some mentioning the peak stage as well, but this knowledge didn’t help him one bit.
Up until now he somehow ‘went’ through the stages without actually knowing how to properly cultivate and was guided by the feel and lucky coincidences. He would’ve loved to ask for an advice on how to advance, but there was no one around.
In addition, master Shaw said to report to him if Leo actually managed to step into the Core formation stage, but the youth had no clue how far in the Foundation establishment he was – the guys in the Golden city only mentioned he had reached it without a further explanation and Leo was too ashamed to ask. He knew it could not go on like this forever, but there was nothing he could do – apparently once again he somehow had to ‘wing it’.
Soon Leo had another troubling observation – indeed, in the morning he usually felt full of energy, as if fully recharged, but for his Qi pathways not to rupture he continuously discharged the excess Qi. The problem was that in the evening his pathways were slightly damaged, especially in fingers and toes, but the strangest thing was that the next morning the Qi pathways were healed again.
At first he couldn’t figure out why. On one hand it kind of made sense since his body rested and rejuvenated during the night, but at the same time the pressure of Qi in the pathways grew since he didn’t release the excessive amount of it at all times. On the other hand, during the day he mostly spent the energy and the pressure was constantly reducing, but for some reason that was the period when his pathways became damaged.
Leo wrecked his brains for quite some time not being able to solve this mystery until one day he managed to kill one of the snake-headed beasts that had only one head left. When he began to cut the beast apart and store the meat pieces in the amulet, he noticed that on the spots where he had previously cut off heads – days, maybe even a month ago, there were signs of new heads growing.
It was something he had never heard before, but at the same time he had never seen creatures with several heads either with each containing its own beast core. Leo was not the smartest guy in the world, but he immediately guessed that the mysterious overnight healing was due to the large amount of the snake-headed beast meat and eggs he consumed.
From what it looked like all he had to do was to continue to hunt and eat and if the healing of the Qi pathways would increase, he would’ve found a way to survive longer.
There was another discovery he made that prevented Leo on performing the genocide on the snake-headed beasts. In the stomach of the same one he killed, he found remains of a couple of the hateful greenlanders! This forced him to soften up to the ‘big, good guys’ and from then on he did his best to not kill them, but rather slice off their heads leaving at least two – just so they could eat more greenlanders, of course.
Soon one could observe him running around grasslands, chasing the snake-headed beasts with the Cleaver in hand and pulling the cut off heads to the lake in order to cook. Fortunately the beasts didn’t decide to migrate either because they loved the grasslands too much or couldn’t comfortably live in the forest.
With a ton of time on his hands, Leo began to experiment with the lightning more often. Of course, during the day he continued to practice the Lightning dash, punches and kicks, but the new addition was during the night when he tried to compress the liquid Qi in his dantian so it would take up a smaller volume and as a result damage the pathways less.
The first part was rather hard, but no matter how much Leo managed to compress the Qi, the damage to pathways at the end of the day didn’t decrease. To him it didn’t make sense, especially since he felt how his abilities constantly developed, but at the same time there was no one around to consult.
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Of course, if any expert was around they could’ve told him that by increasing the pressure on the liquid Qi in one part of the body, in Leo’s case – the dantian, the pressure will inevitably increase around all the Qi pathways as well. And even if he managed to decrease the volume of the Qi, its density would increase while the amount of Qi particles wouldn’t change.
Unfortunately the uneducated youth was oblivious to the fact and stubbornly continued according to his own limited understanding.
After a few months of experimentation to Leo’s great delight the fruits on the Divine tribulation tree began to ripe one after another. This time he didn’t rush and ate them only after he made sure they were definitely ripened and, truth to be said, from what he remembered the taste didn’t differ much.
The thing that was different though, was the soothing effect on the Qi pathways after he consumed the six fruits one after another. From what it looked like, the Qi pathways became more resistant to lightning and got damaged less and, of course, in the evenings Leo had to endure less pain.
Unfortunately it led to more experiments. And while most of them increased his combat prowess, as soon as he started ‘the grand project of shrinking the dantian’, it all went downhill.
At first Leo didn’t notice he had bitten off more than he could chew. As always at nights he continued to cultivate, but during the daytime practiced Lightning techniques while releasing the excessive Qi. The problems began one night when Leo realized he had to release the excessive Qi while still meditating under the three trees. It became so bad he pressed both palms to the ground and directly released the Qi, but the only result he got was the piercing pain in his fingers.
Slightly panicked, Leo clenched his teeth and focused on compressing the Dantian even more to the point where the Qi almost naturally began to leak through the fingers and toes, along with the blood, of course. The result made the youth more confused and even somewhat dizzy.
He could not understand what went wrong, but soon he realized he could not stop either – the thick mass of Qi continuously revolved within the dantian while his whole body resonated with the flashes of lightning between the branches of the three Divine tribulation trees. For some reason it made him naturally absorb even more Qi along with the purple lightning and no matter how much he compressed in the dantian, he had to release increasingly large amounts through the palms and feet as well.
The worst thing about it was that he couldn’t get up and physically escape either – it felt like if he stopped even for a split moment, his extremities would simply explode. It was like a closed loop – the more he released the Qi, the more he was absorbing and the more he had to compress it. If just for a moment he would’ve thought of stopping the compressing process and focusing only on releasing the Qi in any way or form, he would’ve been more or less fine, but unfortunately this simple thought didn’t come to Leo’s mind.
Instead, he went on, perspired all over, face distorted with pain and both feet and palms bloodied.
‘I got cocky!’ Was the only thing that came to Leo’s mind and, no matter how one looked at the situation, he was the one to blame.
No wonder master Shaw told him to report in case he stepped into the Core formation stage – it obviously was something impossible. Currently he had not even gotten to the mid Formation establishment, at least according to his understanding, and even worse – he had no clue how to do that!
Suddenly Leo had another idea. If the main problem of his mutation could’ve been solved by making the body resistant enough, why couldn’t he use the body’s strength to forcefully suppress the damn lightning Qi within? He had practiced for years in the Dreadlands realm and he guessed it has been a year or more in the Greenland realm as well! It can’t be that his body was ‘that’ weak!
With this thought he fully focused on the dantian. The damned purple lightning continued to happily dance around, but now Leo tried to add pure physical suppression to the process he previously performed. He was not fully certain how one should do it, but it seemed logical to strain all the muscles in the region below the navel and direct as much blood as possible to the organs there as well.
There is a reason why people learn and use cultivation and combat techniques – they have been researched and developed for centuries, or even thousands of years and the young cultivators don’t have to invent or discover anything by trial and error, harming themselves in the process. Unfortunately, even though there were no known lightning cultivation techniques, Leo at least could've asked for an advice at a later date and now his impatience led to the ‘error’ part of the discovery – it didn’t take long until his inner organs couldn’t take the pressure and simply began to bleed even more than his extremities.
The strange part was that it seemed that the lightning within the dantian almost felt the surrounding organs bleeding and began to uncontrollably ‘reach’ out as if trying to devour them. At this point Leo couldn’t care less for his bloodied extremities. His whole efforts were directed in keeping the previously shrunken dantian in the size of an orange in check.
With moments passing by Leo realized it was not enough and began to revolve the liquefied Qi within the dantian faster and faster. For a while it alleviated the pressure, but then, as if triggered by some suction force, bolts of purple lightning began to intensely jump between the three trees and occasionally strike Leo.
Theoretically he could bear the pain – this level of torture was nothing new, but the influx of the lightning Qi increased the panic by directly proportional amount.
It was way too late to stop now, but Leo realized that most likely his life was similar to a spark that could die out any moment. Despite that he stubbornly continued to revolve the Qi within the dantian while still trying to suppress the lightning and ignoring the pain.
What he didn’t notice were the dark clouds that suddenly began to appear above the island. For few breaths they remained still, but then slowly began to rotate as if resonating with the Qi in Leo’s dantian, continuously increasing in speed. What’s worse, bolts of purple lightning began to flash between the clouds and it didn’t take long before the first one struck down.