Nine Heavens Thunder-Controlling Art

After passing through the seal barrier, there was no gravity.

Li Pingsheng flew through the air, his body slicing through it.

Darkness surrounded him. The stench of blood streamed through the air and into his nostrils.

He fell for about ten breaths. The well was deep.

Just before he hit the ground, there was no warning at all.

Li Pingsheng twisted his body in midair.

He kept his right arm out of the way and landed hard on his left shoulder and back.

He rolled several times through the damp mud, bleeding off some of the force.

Pebbles made his back ache. He tasted blood in his throat and swallowed it.

Li Pingsheng didn't get up. He stayed facedown, letting the muddy water soak his clothes as he regulated his breathing.

In a place like this, the slightest careless movement could cost him his life.

It wasn't completely dark around him; the gloom was tinged with a faint, dusky red.

Li Ping propped himself up with his left hand and looked around again.

This wasn't the bottom of a well. It was a vast underground cavern.

The earth underfoot was dark red and sticky, with the smell of rust and rotting things.

Blood-red patterns covered the surrounding rock walls.

The symbols weren't still. They moved across the stone, contracting and expanding along with the shifting earth veins.

A bloody mist filled the air. It stung painfully when he breathed it in.

This wasn't the formation's hub. It was a place where something was being refined.

Before Li Pingsheng could take a closer look, the Well-Guarding Bronze Talisman in his arms began acting strangely.

The talisman pressed against his chest suddenly grew much hotter.

It burned so badly he wanted to rip it off, but it had already adhered to his flesh.

The golden lines on the talisman also began to glow in the dusky red light.

A force of suction emanated from the talisman, passing through his body and reaching into his chest, into his dantian.

Li Pingsheng's whole body shuddered. The pure Yang qi and blood in his body surged toward his chest and were swallowed by the talisman.

His qi and blood drained rapidly.

Within just a few breaths, Li Pingsheng felt himself reaching his limit.

His fingers turned cold, his vision dimmed, and his muscles grew weak. His heart pounded violently as it struggled to pump blood.

But Li Ping's mind remained clear.

Thanks to his Enhanced Cognition talent, he could think faster than usual.

He calculated how long he could hold on.

At this rate, he would die in about a quarter of an hour.

Certain symptoms would appear once his qi and blood were depleted.

Li Pingsheng had used his Resilient Meridians to conceal the Cold Poison and thunder force in his right arm's meridians.

Now that the qi and blood holding them back had been drawn away by the talisman, everything had changed.

The unrestrained Cold Poison and thunder force ran wild through the meridians in his right arm.

The skin on his bluish-purple arm began to split, revealing bloody gashes. Yet no blood flowed from them; dark red ice crystals and purple arcs of lightning appeared in the wounds.

His body trembled with fever and cold.

He tried to suppress them by urging his qi and blood, but the moment it stirred, the talisman on his chest drained it dry.

That was when Li Pingsheng understood what was happening.

Old Qi's face flashed through my mind.

The Well-Guardian's opportunity?

Only you can go down and reinforce the formation?

It had all been a lie.

This wasn't a job to repair the formation. It was a sacrifice.

The old man hadn't sent him down to stabilize the seal. He'd targeted the pure Yang qi and blood in his body and his affinity for thunder techniques.

Li Pingsheng had been chosen as the sacrificial victim to take the place of the seal.

The Well-Guarding Bronze Talisman was a device for draining a person's blood.

He wanted the other man dead.

He'd always assumed the worst of people, yet he hadn't expected the Well-Guardian's methods to be so brutal.

The old man had used Li Pingsheng's devotion to his family and the trust he'd placed in him to send him into a hopeless situation.

If he survived today, he would remember this grudge.

Anger wouldn't help. Staying alive was what mattered.

Li Ping took a deep breath and pushed down his chaotic thoughts.

When nearly seventy percent of the qi and blood in his body had been drained, he began to tremble.

He couldn't rely on his physical strength. He could only depend on his spirit.

He closed his eyes and used his Synesthesia and Spirit Aperture talents.

The spiritual light in his Spirit Aperture was driven to its limit.

Taking his body as its center, it pierced through the blood mist and probed into the mire below.

He sensed the fluctuations of the earth-vein turbid qi and the pulsing of the blood-red runes.

But none of that was what he was looking for.

He searched for a way out.

This was a seal suppressing the earth veins. Aside from the place where qi and blood were refined, there should be a core formation eye.

Old Qi intended to use qi and blood to replenish the formation eye. That meant it needed energy, or something to counter the power here.

His Divine Sense continued downward, passing through rock and mud.

Li Pingsheng's Divine Sense shuddered at a depth of about ten zhang.

Amid the blood mist and earth-vein turbid qi, there was a different kind of aura.

The power of thunder was restrained, yet weighty.

Unlike the thunder techniques he usually cultivated, this power was ancient and full of majesty.

It gave off a faint glow, resisting the influence of the earth-vein turbid qi in the darkness.

There!

He opened his eyes. Though his vision was blurry, the direction his Divine Sense had locked onto was clear.

Propping himself up with his left hand, Li Pingsheng stretched his numb right leg into the dark red mud and crawled forward.

Every movement cost him some qi and blood, and more cracks appeared in the meridians of his right arm.

But he didn't stop.

Li Pingsheng crawled more than thirty meters before reaching the innermost part of the cavern.

After being struck by lightning from below, the mud and sand there rose and fell in ripples.

He swept away the rotten mud with his left hand. Once the sand was cleared, a pitch-black stele was revealed.

The stele was about as tall as a person. Its entire body was black, and it was made of an unusual material.

It was intact, with no cracks.

Various symbols were carved into it, glowing purple in his Divine Sense.

Whenever the faint light appeared, the surrounding blood mist thinned.

The Mother Stele of the Ancient Thunder Stele was the core of the Dragon Locking Well.

The steles in the Stele Forest outside were merely shadows formed by the power overflowing from the Mother Stele.

Li Pingsheng knew this was his last way out.

His left hand trembling, he touched the black stele.

The moment his palm touched it, he unleashed his Synesthesia talent.

Li Pingsheng's Divine Sense entered the stele, seeking to connect with the source of ancient thunder.

His soul resonated with the stele.

The symbols on the black stele began to glow, and a surge of power flowed from his left hand into his body.

The power was so immense that it nearly burst him apart.

At that moment, his Spirit Aperture talent began to take effect.

His opened Spirit Aperture guided and branched the thunder energy, keeping it from damaging Li Pingsheng's meridians.

The Martial Wisdom talent within Li Ping also began to take effect.

A flood of information poured into his mind.

It was the secret of thunder.

Once Martial Wisdom analyzed it, the paths of the symbols formed a picture.

When thunderclouds gathered, he could see thunder tear through the night and the patterns by which lightning flowed.

A lost thunder technique took shape in Li Ping's mind.

[Nine Heavens Thunder-Controlling Art]

It wasn't incomplete. It was the complete true transmission.

As the art circulated, the thunder force within Li Pingsheng lost its balance and was brought under control.

The pure Yang qi and blood that the talisman had been draining changed in nature after mixing with the thunderous aura of the Mother Stele.

When the talisman encountered qi and blood infused with the aura of thunder, its devouring slowed, and it even began to be assimilated in reverse.

Li Pingsheng opened his eyes. A flash of purple lightning passed through them.

The deadlock had been broken.