Nine Heavens Thunder-Controlling Art

Passing through the sealing barrier, gravity vanished.

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

The surroundings were pitch black, and the stench of blood surged into his nostrils with the air.

He fell for about ten breaths; the well was incredibly deep.

As he neared the ground, there was no warning whatsoever.

Li Pingsheng twisted his body in mid-air.

Dodging with his right arm, he landed on the ground, taking the impact with his left shoulder and back.

He rolled a few times in the damp mud to dissipate some of the force.

Gravel caused pain in his back, and the taste of blood filled his throat, which he swallowed down.

Li Pingsheng did not stand up; he remained prone, letting the muddy water soak through his clothes while he adjusted his breathing.

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

The surroundings were not entirely dark, but rather a faint, dim red.

After propping himself up with his left hand, Li Pingsheng looked around.

This was not the bottom of a well, but a massive underground cavern.

The ground beneath his feet was dark red, sticky, and carried a scent of rust and rotting matter.

The surrounding stone walls were covered in blood-red patterns.

These symbols were not static; they moved across the walls, contracting or expanding in rhythm with the shifts in the ley lines.

The air was thick with blood mist, which stung with a spicy heat when inhaled.

This place was not a formation hub, but a site for refining something.

Before Li Pingsheng could examine it further, the Well-Guarding Bronze Talisman in his robes began to act strangely.

The temperature of the bronze talisman pressed against his chest suddenly spiked.

It burned so intensely he wanted to rip it from his body, but the talisman had already fused to his flesh.

Beyond that, the gold threads on the talisman began to glow under the dim red light.

The talisman emitted a suction force that passed through his body and into his chest, straight into his dantian.

Li Pingsheng's entire body shuddered as the pure Yang blood-qi within him gathered toward his chest, only to be swallowed by the talisman.

His blood-qi was draining at a rapid pace.

Within a few breaths, Li Pingsheng felt he could no longer hold on.

His fingers turned cold, his vision dimmed, his muscles grew weak, and his heart hammered violently to maintain blood flow.

Yet, Li Pingsheng's mind remained sharp.

Thanks to his Enhanced Cognition talent, his thoughts raced faster than usual.

He calculated how long he could endure.

At this rate, he would likely lose his life in about a quarter of an hour.

Once his blood-qi was exhausted, certain symptoms would manifest.

Li Pingsheng had originally used the ability of his Resilient Meridians to hide the cold poison and lightning energy within his right arm.

Now that his primary blood-qi, which had been suppressing them, was being drained by the talisman, the situation changed.

The freed cold poison and lightning energy rampaged through the meridians of his right arm.

The skin on his blue-purple arm began to split, revealing bloody gashes, yet no blood flowed out; instead, dark red ice shards and purple electric sparks emerged from the wounds.

His body trembled from the alternating cold and fever.

He tried to circulate his blood-qi to suppress it, but as soon as the blood-qi emerged, it was sucked dry by the talisman on his chest.

At this moment, Li Pingsheng understood what was happening.

The face of Old Qi flashed through his mind.

An opportunity for a Well-Guardian?

Only you can go down to repair the formation?

It was all a lie.

This was not a job to repair a formation, but a sacrifice.

Old Qi had sent him down not to stabilize the seal, but because he coveted the pure Yang energy and lightning-attribute power within his body.

Li Pingsheng was the sacrificial lamb chosen to fill the position of the seal.

The Well-Guarding Bronze Talisman was an instrument for extracting human blood.

He wanted him dead.

He was accustomed to always assuming the worst of others, yet he had not expected the methods of the Well-Guardian to be so brutal.

Exploiting his concern for his family and the degree of his trust, they sent him into a desperate situation.

If he could survive today, he would remember this grudge.

Anger was useless; surviving was the only thing that mattered.

Li Pingsheng took a deep breath, suppressing his chaotic thoughts.

When his body's blood energy reached about seventy percent, his body began to tremble.

Unable to use his physical strength, he could only rely on his soul.

He closed his eyes and used the abilities of his Synesthesia and Spirit Aperture talents.

The spiritual light within his Spirit Aperture was pushed to the limit.

Using his own body as the core, he pierced through the blood mist and burrowed into the mud beneath the ground.

He sensed the fluctuations of the earth's foul energy, and blood-colored runes began to pulse.

However, these were not what he was looking for.

He had to find a way out.

This place was a seal suppressing the earth's veins; aside from the place where blood energy was refined, there had to be a core formation eye.

Old Qi wanted to use blood energy to fill the formation eye, which meant the formation eye required energy or was resisting the power here.

His Divine Sense descended continuously, passing through stone and mud.

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

Amidst the blood mist and the earth's foul energy, there was a different aura.

The power of thunder was extremely restrained and heavy.

Unlike the thunder techniques he usually practiced, this power was ancient and possessed great majesty.

It emitted a faint light, resisting the influence of the earth's foul energy in the darkness.

There!

He opened his eyes; although his vision was blurry, the direction locked onto by his Divine Sense was clear.

Supporting himself with his left hand, Li Pingsheng dragged his numb right leg through the dark red mud and crawled forward.

Every movement consumed more blood energy, and more cracks appeared in the meridians of his right arm.

But he did not stop.

Li Pingsheng crawled about thirty meters before reaching the innermost part of the cave.

After being struck by the thunder from below, the mud and sand here would ripple in circles.

His left hand cleared away the surface sludge, and once the mud and sand were removed, a pitch-black stone stele was revealed.

The stele was about the height of a person, its entire body black, and the material was quite unique.

The stele was intact, without a single crack.

It was carved with various symbols that emitted a purple glow within his Divine Sense.

Every time a faint light appeared, the surrounding blood mist would diminish slightly.

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

The steles in the Stele Forest outside were actually shadows formed by the overflowing power of the Mother Stele.

Li Pingsheng knew this was his final way out.

His trembling left hand touched the black stone stele.

Once his palm made contact with the stele, he utilized his Synesthesia talent to its fullest.

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

A resonance occurred between his soul and the stone stele.

The runes appearing on the black stone stele began to glow, and a surge of power entered his body from his left hand.

This power was immense, nearly bursting his body apart.

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

The opened Spirit Aperture guided the thunderous energy, branching it out so that it would not damage Li Pingsheng's meridians.

Meanwhile, Li Pingsheng's Martial Wisdom talent also began to function.

A massive amount of information flooded into his mind.

It was the secret of thunder and lightning.

After Martial Wisdom analyzed it, the paths of the runes formed a picture.

When thunderclouds gathered, he could see thunder tearing through the night and the laws governing the movement of lightning.

A lost thunder technique was pieced together in Li Pingsheng's mind.

Nine Heavens Thunder-Controlling Art

It was not a fragment, but the complete true transmission.

Once the true formula began to circulate, the lightning energy within Li Pingsheng's body lost its equilibrium and was brought under control.

The pure yang blood energy that had originally been siphoned away by the bronze talisman underwent a change in nature after merging with the lightning aura of the Mother Stele.

Upon coming into contact with blood energy imbued with the aura of lightning, the bronze talisman's consumption rate slowed, and it even began to show signs of being assimilated in reverse.

After Li Pingsheng opened his eyes, a flash of purple lightning streaked through them.

The dead end had been broken.