Lightning Is the Only Way

What things had Gravis noticed?

Gravis had always felt pressure inside his mind as he shoved more lightning into it, but at some point, the pressure didn't increase anymore. In the beginning, he hadn't been sure since it was always just a small increase in pressure, but as it stayed constant for multiple weeks, he realized that he was right.

Why didn't the pressure increase, even though he had shoved more and more lightning into his mind? The reason for that was that his Spirit Space slowly grew. Apparently, when the pressure reached a certain threshold, his Spirit Space would be forced to increase in size.

He saw that his Spirit Space had already grown by some meters. These couple of meters had already doubled the volume of his spherical Spirit Space, which was incredible. He wondered how big his Spirit Space would become after a year.

Yet, this discovery was unimportant in comparison to another one. Gravis had found something way more amazing!

The suppression of the lightning required Gravis to use all his Spirit and will. Due to the continued growth of his Spirit Space, the density of lightning didn't increase inside his Spirit Space. It just became more. So, after two weeks, the density hadn't grown anymore.

Yet, Gravis had noticed that he managed to suppress his lightning more and more. The compressed area slowly got smaller. How was that possible? With some logic, one could find the answer.

The suppression of his lightning required his Spirit and will, right? Yet, his Spirit didn't increase during cultivation. It would only increase when he reached the next Stage, so, that only left one thing.

Yes, this forceful suppression of his lightning increased Gravis' will!

After Gravis had realized that, he quickly checked the compression rate of his Will-Aura and found that he had reached 3.4%! That was an increase of 0.6%! An increase of 0.6% in only one month was incredible!

As soon as Gravis saw that, he dropped everything else. Nothing was more important than the will! He might also only be able to temper his will while being in this Stage! Gravis knew how the Self Stage looked, and he was sure that his own Self Stage would look identical to the Self Stage of others.

The Self Stage was called Self Stage because the Energy in the Spirit Space would completely fuse with the Spirit and would become another self. At that point, if a cultivator entered their Spirit Space, they wouldn't see their Energy anymore. They would enter the Self in their Spirit Space and see an empty Spirit Space before them, except for their own body.

Compressing a Self? That didn't seem possible, even with lightning. Yet, compressing this massive amount of lightning was possible!

'I need to use this time! Fuck, I already wasted a month!' Gravis thought with a mixture of rage and excitement.

Starting this day, Gravis spent all his time inside his Spirit Space. Even if he didn't have any lightning to shove into the space, he continued suppressing the lightning inside his mind. Gravis' eyes became red with fiery motivation! "COMPRESS! COMPRESS! COMPRESS!" he shouted inside his mind.

Meanwhile, the lower Heaven started getting nervous. It couldn't look into the mind or Spirit of cultivators in the Spirit Forming Realm, so it had no idea what was going on. The only thing it saw was that Gravis' Will-Aura continued increasing without reason! What was going on!? Wasn't Gravis' Will-Aura already powerful enough? Did he need even more!?

Gravis' crazy suppression also expanded the Spirit Space even without adding new lightning. After another two months, half of the whole Spirit Space was just empty. Under Gravis' insane training madness, his Spirit Space was growing much faster than he could shove lightning into it.

This insanity increased for a total of nine months. Gravis had been a total of ten months inside the third trial now, and today was the day when he stopped for the first time. Why did he stop?

The door to the fourth trial was still closed, so that was not the reason.

The reason why he stopped was that he had to stop. His Spirit Space had reached a diameter of 50 meters by now, and it had hit some kind of wall. On this day, Gravis felt like his Spirit Space was tearing. A sense of danger also appeared inside his heart as that happened. He felt like if he continued suppressing his lightning, his Spirit Space wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure anymore and would explode.

Gravis felt unwilling, but he was rational enough to stop. Even though he wanted to continue more than anything in the world, he had to stop himself. With a sigh, he released the compressed lightning for the first time in nine months.

BANG!

The lightning expanded again until it filled the whole Spirit Space, but it was not nearly as dense as before. Gravis could even walk through it again. Gravis looked around and sighed in lament again. "I guess when the lightning regains its old density, I will reach the Self Stage. This should take around a year. A little longer than I had initially expected, but that's not an issue."

Gravis left his Spirit Space and shook all the accumulated dust off his body. He had remained unmoving for nine months, after all. He stood up, and as soon as he did, many of his bones started cracking. His muscles also started aching a little.

Gravis stretched himself and did some training to get rid of the stiffness, and after everything was resolved, he was hit with a wave of tiredness. "Man, I'm exhausted, but first of all, let me check my Will-Aura."

WHOOOM!

Gravis concentrated his Will-Aura to the maximum and felt elated when he saw it. He immediately broke into wild laughter. "0.2%!" he shouted with excitement. He had easily reached the threshold for a level three Unity Will and went way beyond that.

1% and 0.2% didn't seem far apart, but the difference was immense in relation to each other. In terms of diameter, 0.2% was only a fifth of 1%! In terms of volume, it was many times smaller. These ten months of training were equal to the tempering Gravis had gotten from his fight against the priest, times three!

With this Will-Aura, Gravis would even be able to stop someone at the Self Stage from moving. If it were a priest, Gravis would be able to suppress their power and speed heavily. Now, Gravis was the absolutely undisputed number three in the world. With his body and Will-Aura, he would even be confident to fight all four priests simultaneously.

Yet, Gravis wasn't stupid. He knew that he would still be helpless in front of the High Priest. In fact, he would still be helpless, even if he reached the Self Stage. The gulf between the Self Stage and the Unity Realm was just too vast.

All three Realms had a significant gulf between them.

But wasn't the Unity Realm the fourth Realm?

Yes, it was, but the three Realm rule didn't start at three but at one. The Body Tempering Realm was the first Major Realm. There was an incredible gulf between mortals and someone at the Body Tempering Realm, after all.

Like this, the Body Tempering Realm would be considered as a Major Realm. The Energy Gathering Realm would be a Minor Realm, and the Spirit Forming Realm would also be a Minor Realm. The next Major Realm would then be the Unity Realm.

There was a reason why cultivators ascended to the next world after they reached the Unity Realm. Their Energy and power would grow incredibly, and it would put quite some stress on Heaven to keep multiple of them in its lower world.

Gravis was also sure that the High Priest hadn't even taken a single step forward from the moment when he had reached the Unity Realm.

After thinking about his new power, Gravis went to sleep for a couple of hours and then continued with his regular training. Sadly, he couldn't train his evasion anymore due to the new form of the lightning in his Spirit.

After another two months, the door opened.

Gravis had been inside the third trial for a full year now, and he was quite happy that he could get to the next one. He had become rather bored by now.

"Well, I'm 21 now. Only one more year of waiting. Then, I can kill you, Heaven."