Looking at the spark of lightning flowing through his fingertips, Ning was happy. At least, he found it hard to keep the grin on his face from growing.
Lightning Qi: Acquired.
Ning played with his newfound ability, carefully analyzing it in the process, finding something peculiar. Channeling his lightning Qi, he noticed a streak of purple in the Qi.
"An advanced form of lightning Qi?" Ning mumbled, taking a deep breath, his eyes shining brightly at this revelation.
Yes, one could comprehend different levels of the same type of Qi. After all, just like he had said before, would it be a cultivation world if everything were not divided into various tiers?
From the various records he had read about lightning Qi, Ning deduced that the Lightning Qi he had comprehended belonged to the upper tier at the least. He could feel the raw destruction hidden beneath it as if wanting to strike down anything below it.
"As expected, shaping my lightning Qi in the image of the heavenly tribulation was the right move indeed."
Ning based his comprehension of Lightning Qi on the various novels he had read. And the most common type of lightning in those novels was undoubtedly the Heavenly Tribulation.
In the beginning, Ning had a hard time visualizing the thunder qi. He did try the watermill method to visualize it, but it just didn't have the spark, pun intended. As for things like Tesla coils and cages, he would have liked to build them, but his senior blacksmith brother refused to work with them. Partly because they were weirder than all of his previous requests, and partly because he was busy. Well, he could always try to build one later to advance his lightning qi to form lightning intent, but his current cultivation couldn't support it.
So Ning made the spontaneous decision to choose a day when he could observe the sheer force of nature that was lightning.
Thankfully, his patience really paid off—the image of the lightning tearing apart the sky above was indeed the final piece of the puzzle that just made everything click into the right place.
So, taking the Heavenly Tribulations he had read about as inspiration, the red lightning carp as his springboard, and the image of the destruction in his heart, Ning had indeed found the formula to piece together an advanced form of lightning Qi on the very first try.
"With this, I finally have a piece to have powers surpassing my realm."
Anyone who could comprehend a trace of any type of Qi in the Qi condensation stage could be called a genius in this world. It was simply because it allowed cultivators to battle across realms and lay waste to even those above their realm.
So, it was not wrong to say that Ning finally had the qualification to be known as a genius. Especially since what he had comprehended was not only a rare Lightning Qi but also a higher level of the same Qi.
"The amount of things I could do with this..." Ning's thoughts turned wildly. With only this lightning Qi, Ning already had a multitude of ideas—be it improving his reaction time by reinforcing his nervous system, or simply overpowering others using a railgun.
As a connoisseur of anime and novels, the number of references regarding the stuff he could do might as well be limitless.
"It's only a matter of time before I smite others with a freaking lightning dragon. I could almost see it. Heuheu..." Ning's eyes darkened, clearly envisioning the success of his eventual nefarious plots...
After a few more seconds of indulgence, Ning eventually came to his senses as the sudden increase in the rain reminded him of the time.
"Well, it's time to return," Ning mumbled, gazing at the tumultuous rain that had no sight of ending and entirely seemed too much for a mere umbrella to handle.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Thankfully, he was prepared.
Ning took out a metallic object from his space pouch, raised it above his head, and made a run for it.
What else could it be but a frying pan?
After all, it was a versatile tool that could be used not only as a frying pan but as a drying pan as well. Clearly, a certain rock-type gym leader was onto something...
...
Over the next week, Ning familiarized himself with the Lightning Qi and digested the excessive amount of spiritual energy he had gathered from the red lightning carp.
After all, it was an ancient relic, said to be extinct in this region. The spiritual energy contained in it was unimaginable.
"Status." With a thought, the panel materialized in front of him.
[
Name: Ji Ning
Spiritual Root: Mid-grade Spiritual Root
Attributes: Five Elemental Attributes
Talent: Extreme Space-Time Sensitivity
Realm: Small Circle of the 5th Stage of Qi Condensation
Intents: Lightning Qi.
Cultivation Method: Golden Heaven Stream (2nd Floor: 102/200), Clear Soul Technique (1st Floor: 15/1000), Pure Qi Technique(Mastery)
Martial Arts: Bone Forging Fist (Mastery: 600/600), Shadow Steps (Mastery: 600/600), Turtle Breathing (Mastery: 600/600), Eyes of the Hawk (Great Accomplishment: 563/600), Heaven Shattering Fist (Starting: 259/300), Spiral Arrow (Starting: 56/200), Flame Controlling Technique (Starting: 67/200), Wood Spring Nurturing Technique (Starting: 59/200), Lightning Palm (Great Accomplishment: 518/800)
Buff: Blessing Of Heavenly Dao. Cultivation speed increased by 99%, Comprehension increased by 99%. Duration: 2 days, 9 hours, 23 minutes, 30 seconds
Specialty: Soul Ferrying Scripture
]
Ning had improved his cultivation to the small circle of the 5th stage. It was an improvement of a full realm.
"This improvement rate is quite scary." Ning glanced at his realm, feeling it had finally stabilized.
This drastic improvement was undoubtedly linked to the huge amount of spiritual energy he had ingested. But the other major contributing factor was the Golden Heaven Stream.
With an ancient heaven and earth material like the red lightning carp, it was as if the Golden Heaven Stream grew wings and flew high in the sky. At least the number certainly went up drastically...
From this experience, Ning learned one thing.
Golden Heaven Stream was a pay-to-win type technique.
Previously, he was obstructed by the lack of heaven and earth material, so he couldn't progress in this technique. But now, only ingesting the carp directly allowed him to break through to the second floor of this technique.
It was truly shaping up to be a nightmare for his wallet. Fortunately, with this experience, Ning also finally found the true strength of this technique.
Cultivation techniques inherently differed from each other, with each technique providing different benefits; some may grant high attack power, some strong defense, and even some may directly increase the lifespan of the cultivator.
The benefit of Golden Heaven Stream was that Ning could add various attributes to his innate pure Qi depending on the ingested spiritual energy.
Since Ning ingested a huge amount of lightning spiritual energy to break through the next realm, he found that the inherent quality of his innate Qi had mutated. It seemed to possess the attribute of destruction as if wanting to crush everything in its path.
In simpler terms, his pure Qi now possessed a base attack multiplier of 1.5, a significant upgrade from its previous state.
His pure Qi inherently held more attack power, and when channeled into various techniques, it resulted in more firepower.
In fact, such multipliers were not rare. Other cultivation techniques might possess similar or even greater effects. But those techniques were inherently specialized for a single attribute.
With the Golden Heaven Stream, Ning could keep on adding more attributes to his innate Qi—be it in defense, offense, movement, or stealth—according to the ingested spiritual energy.
This technique was the path of a jack of all trades, master of none. But even then, it would undeniably overpower any other single specialization cultivation techniques in the market.
"No wonder once advanced to the final floor, it is said the Golden Qi could suppress any other type of Qi." Ning finally felt that his gamble had paid off indeed.
While it was a pit, the benefit was not low at all. It lived up to the hype and more.
Even the reason Ning could successfully overcome the barrier between the fourth stage and fifth stage so easily was due to this new effect.
For each of his breakthroughs, Ning used the concept of heat and the potential energy of his Qi to shatter the barrier between realms. These were a few tricks he had formed based on his knowledge of his previous world. But as he progressed more and more, these small tricks would naturally fail to keep up with him as the barrier between each realm would continue to be strengthened.
But now, with his attributed Qi, Ning discovered that he could mobilize more potential energy, and his momentum also grew to break through these barriers.
For him, this was an amazing piece of news. After all, he only had a mid-grade spiritual root, and while his qualification was okay, he could not easily sail past realm barriers in the later stages without external aid.
So, while these small tricks might seem insignificant, Ning had no plans to not capitalize on them. Only after accumulating such small improvements can he turn them into a base for a stronger foundation.
Just as his thoughts moved in such a way, he suddenly heard the voice transmission of his master.
"Come to the alchemy hall."