Heavenly Lightning Body Refinement, Condensing the Source!
"You may all step back. Such divine might is too great; even a slight touch from it would likely reduce you to charred remains on the spot..."
Shi Jian's voice wasn't loud, but it reverberated throughout the entire stone forest.
Sun Lin had already put away the talisman and ran off. The Lord Rat hesitated for a moment, but after being glanced at by Shi Jian, it immediately wiggled its paws and darted away.
The lesser demons also began to retreat towards the outer edge of the stone forest...
After clearing the area, Shi Jian silently adjusted his state of mind. After confirming that there were no living creatures around to interfere, he began to calm his mind and wait for the right opportunity.
He wasn't being overly pessimistic.
Rather, the practice of Heavenly Lightning Body Refinement is far too dangerous. Human Race cultivators use heavenly lightning to temper their bodies and cultivate their Dao of Light heart.
His use of Heavenly Lightning Body Refinement to temper his body was merely a side effect.
Instead, one should take advantage of the gaps in the Heavenly Lightning Body Refinement to draw in the power of lightning to one's body, thereby comprehending the profound mysteries of lightning. Furthermore, one should intercept a portion of the lightning power to transform one's body and stimulate one's bloodline!
There were no pioneers on this path.
Or perhaps, Shi Jian had no way to obtain such profound methods and could only rely on his own exploration, paving the way himself.
The sky grew increasingly dark, and a fierce wind howled.
Thick, lead-gray clouds piled up in layers, like Mount Tai pressing down, sealing off the entire world and preventing even a sliver of light from getting through.
The atmosphere was heavy, hot, and oppressive.
Shi Jian stood firmly on his feet, swallowing the turbid water, in the very center of the stone forest, awaiting the baptism of thunder and lightning, waiting for the opportune moment!
The wind has stopped.
Everything was silent.
Then, a bolt of lightning crashed down!
A purple-white lightning bolt, like a silver serpent, crashed straight down from the sky, roaring for miles around, before finally striking the outer stone pillars...
Boom!
The rock layers on the surface of the stone pillar were shattered instantly, and fragments of stone flew like rain.
Then came the second, third, and fourth bolts of lightning, one after another, as if all the accumulated Frenzied Thunder from the past few months had been unleashed!
Thunder roared like a curtain, Frenzied Thunder like rain!
Sun Lin's guess was correct.
The lightning first struck the outer perimeter, then was guided layer by layer by the stone pillars, finally converging in the center until it formed a thunderous force.
Shi Jian counted them in his mind.
Seven, twelve, twenty...
The thunder had become a continuous, deafening roar, a scorching smell filled the air, the earth trembled slightly, and pebbles bounced wildly.
When the thirty-six bolts of heavenly lightning struck, the outer guiding stone pillars were already saturated.
All the remaining lightning power surged towards the center of the stone forest like a flood, following the natural paths between the stone pillars.
This was the moment Shi Jian had been waiting for!
He assumed a stance, releasing his Yao Qi, and actively drew upon the terrifying heavenly might.
The next instant, a bolt of lightning several times more violent than before struck him with a deafening roar, following the patterns on the stone forest.
It happened in an instant, without any buffer.
The instant that power surged into his body, Shi Jian's consciousness seemed to be torn into countless fragments...
This pain wasn't just the tingling sensation from the meridians being washed away, nor was it the burning sensation when the Thunder Leopard Demon Core entered the abdomen...
It's not that the bones are cracking.
Blood vessels are bursting!
Every single hair, every inch of skin, every muscle texture was pierced by tens of thousands of red-hot iron needles at the same time!
Shi Jian suddenly spread his limbs, arched his back high, and spat out a cloud of blood from his mouth and nose, the blood flowing like a great river...
The roots of the black fur were burned and charred by the electric current, the skin was cracked and riddled with wounds, and blood gushed out like a fountain.
The flesh was an eerie purplish-black color, while countless fine, hair-like lightning patterns emerged on the surface of the bones beneath the charred flesh...
A surge of vital Qi and Blood and blood relentlessly repairs itself.
But the heavenly lightning wouldn't give him any chance to catch his breath...
The second bolt of heavenly lightning converged and struck down once more.
Shi Jian's body was shrunk three inches by the impact, his claws digging into the ground, sending shards of rock flying...
The skin and flesh of his left shoulder ripped open, exposing the scapula, with arcs of electricity dancing on the bone surface—a horrific penetrating wound tearing through flesh and bone.
He did not fall.
His limbs were driven into the ground like nails, and from his throat came deep, wild roars...
But this wasn't a roar of pain; it was gritted teeth, forcibly suppressing all the screams into his stomach, trying to forcibly refine that trace of lightning power!
The third course.
A cracking sound came from the spine; a vertebra of the coccyx had broken...
The fourth one.
His right forelimb tendon tore, and his entire leg went limp, but he forcibly held on with his Demon Essence, stubbornly persevering...
The fifth one.
The lightning bolts kept falling; Shi Jian had lost count of how many they were...
His consciousness oscillated between lucidity and unconsciousness, and each time he was about to lose consciousness, a bolt of lightning would strike him awake.
Meanwhile, the Demon Essence within his body was circulating wildly.
The lightning power that was injected into the body was not completely resisted.
Shi Jian used the most ruthless method, wrapping his body with his Qi and Blood, suppressing it with his Demon Essence, and using his bones and meridians as containers, to forcefully infuse a trace of the thunderous origin into his Demon Core!
The Demon Core trembled violently within his Dantian.
The once dark and murky surface of the Demon Core core now showed numerous white cracks, a sign that it was not breaking...
Instead, it was the power of lightning that continuously and forcefully seeped in, gradually reconstructing the Demon Core!
Shi Jian knew that this was the most crucial moment.
If he can't withstand it, his Demon Core core will shatter, and he'll die on the spot, or at the very least, he'll be severely injured...
If you can withstand it, that would be an unparalleled blessing!
Shi Jian bit down on the stone pillar beside him, breaking two of his canine teeth. His mouth was full of blood and stone fragments, but the pain actually brought him back to full consciousness.
Carry it!
He wasn't thinking about anything; only one word was on his mind.
I don't know how much time passed.
Maybe half an hour, maybe a whole night...
As the Lei Bao gradually subsided, the last few streaks of lightning fell sparsely on the outer stone pillars, like an enraged god finally letting his anger dissipate.
The clouds began to thin, and a sliver of light peeked through a crack...
In the center of the stone forest, a black bear lies on the ground.
Its fur was charred black, its flesh was mangled and bloody, its limbs were bent at abnormal angles, a section of its tailbone was broken, a piece of its left ear was missing, and there was not a single patch of intact fur on its entire body.
The surrounding ground was burned to a glassy, smooth surface, reflecting Shi Jian's utterly wretched state...
But he was still breathing.
Although his breath was weak, his chest still rose and fell, and each breath was filled with blood and the smell of burning flesh, but he pulled through!
Shi Jian barely managed to support his battered body, feeling both lingering fear and a sense of exhilarating relief at rebuilding from the ashes...
He lowered his head and focused his consciousness into his Dantian.
The Demon Core is still there.
On the surface of the pitch-black Demon Core, the white cracks had closed, replaced by an extremely fine ring of silver electric arcs.
The electric arc slowly swirled around the Demon Core, appearing and disappearing like a lurking young snake.
Very weak, so weak that it is almost invisible.
But its existence is undeniably real!
This is not a remnant of external force, but a trace of the original Lightning Origin that has been nurtured and operated on its own by the Demon Core...
It is also a seed.
It was planted on the foundation he had painstakingly cultivated over decades.
Shi Jian grinned, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth and blood...
He was ugly, frighteningly ugly, yet he laughed with unbridled joy!
There's no other reason than that this method involves infusing the body with heavenly lightning to refine its power, transforming it into several forms of destiny—it's tantamount to gambling with one's life...
And he succeeded in the end!