Why had Gravis not checked for poison?
There were two main reasons for this.
The first reason was that he had not met any such "snakes" before. Jaimy could be considered one, but he had attacked him out of nowhere, which was more like a direct attack. Gravis had never been subject to such indirect schemes like poison. Sear had also been very convincing with his lies.
Though, that was not the most significant reason. The biggest reason was that Gravis knew that his whole being was so atypical, that probably no poison in this world could affect him.
Poison that attacked the Spirit? His Spirit was full of Destruction Lightning, the purest form of destruction that existed. Anything that entered his Spirit would be annihilated.
Poison that attacked his dantian? His dantian was also not filled with Energy. It was filled with pure Destruction Lightning, just like his Spirit. The same reason applied.
Poison that attacked his will? Gravis already had a Unity Will. A Unity Will corresponded to the Unity Realm, which was the most powerful Realm in this lower world. That basically already counted as something above this world. Nothing would be able to damage his will in this world.
Poison that attacked his body? That was the biggest concern, but his Unity Will or Destruction Lightning could counteract any poison attacking his body.
Basically, no matter what poison was used, Gravis would be easily able to counter it. His whole being was too extraordinary to get influenced by a poison. When Gravis heard that he had been poisoned, he wasn't shocked or distraught, but happy. This would make others underestimate him.
Gravis looked at the others as they readied themselves to leave. "You do know that I have an exceptionally powerful body, right?" he asked Sear.
Sear laughed. "Sure, but we can just suppress you one at a time until your stamina runs out. At that point, we will just cut off your limbs and carry you. Though, that's troublesome, so please don't do that. It's just easier if you come with us."
Gravis didn't answer that statement. Instead, he asked another question. "So, are you all Heavenborn?"
Sear nodded with a smile. "Of course! You have remained in the Heaven Sect for a while, so you should know that the Heaven Sect has the best intelligence department in the whole world. Have you never questioned why it was this good?"
Gravis continued looking evenly at Sear. "Because there are high-level spies in every Elemental Sect?" he asked.
Sear nodded twice. "Exactly! Most Heavenborn are actually naturally created spies. Our Heavenly Pressure is weaker than the usual Heavenborn, but we can keep it up for way longer. This simulates a Will-Aura. Like this, we join the guilds and climb to highly ranked positions. We have no bottlenecks, after all," then Sear laughed slightly. "You would be surprised by how many spies we actually have. 70% of all Heavenborn are just hidden spies in other sects. Impressive, isn't it?"
Gravis thought in silence. This was actually incredible. He hadn't known that there were so many Heavenborn hidden in other sects. No wonder the sects and guilds couldn't keep secrets. Then, Gravis looked at Sear again. "How did you know which meat stick I would eat?"
Sear continued smiling. "We didn't. We poisoned all of them. You're the only one who cultivates lightning, so we don't care about the poison. We can just remove it with our element."
Gravis had already thought as much. That had been his suspicion from the beginning. "So, who gave you this mission?"
Sear rubbed the back of his neck with a smile. "Actually, this isn't really a mission. We just call it like that. The Heaven Sect has informed us about your status and what to do with you. When I met you in the Earth Guild, I asked you where you were going just for this. Informing the Heaven Sect would take a while since it's rather far away. If you had left like a week later, it wouldn't be us waiting for you, but a priest. We just couldn't inform them in this short time frame."
Gravis narrowed his eyes more. "So, the Heaven Sect doesn't know about my current whereabouts?"
Sear waved his hand nonchalantly. "No, it's only us. We wanted to surprise our teachers."
Gravis sighed deeply. "That's good."
BOOM BANG!
An explosion of pure lightning came out of Gravis' feet, accelerating him with the greatest speed possible. Gravis instantly reached Sear and punched with his fist, which immediately exploded with lightning. Sear's body exploded into uncountable small pieces before he could even react.
The other Heavenborn looked stunned at Gravis. They had been ready for him trying anything like this. They had even known about all the attacks he had shown in the Earth Guild. With only his physical body, he wouldn't have been able to be this ridiculously fast. Yet, what had happened? Wasn't his lightning disabled?
"Plan B!" shouted the Vice-Guild Master of Darkness. They all activated their Heavenly Pressure at once. The combined Heavenly Pressure pressed into Gravis, but he quickly countered with his Will-Aura.
WHOOOM!
The Heavenly Pressures were pushed back into their bodies, and the Heavenborn felt an unreal power pressing into them, making it nearly impossible to move. Gravis looked at them and saw that they had retrieved several pills. They were about to pop them into their mouths, but Gravis' Will-Aura stopped this.
The eyes of the Heavenborn widened with more shock. They couldn't even pop the pills into their mouths.
Crack.
A small cracking sound came out of the mouth of the water Heavenborn's mouth. This was the sound of a pill breaking. Gravis' eyes widened as he realized what had happened. She had been so careful that she already had a prepared pill in her mouth. Gravis immediately burst towards her with his speed.
WHOOM!
Her Heavenly Pressure's power increased as she broke into the Seed Stage of the Spirit Forming Realm. Gravis' Will-Aura focused most of its strength at her, lessening its power on the others. Gravis used his explosive movement again as he shot towards her with all his speed. While running forward, he retrieved his saber from his Spirit Space.
BOOM!
The water Heavenborn was able to move again, and she had retrieved a thin and long rapier from her Spirit Space. She managed to block Gravis' attack. Yet, in the next second, several things happened.
Crack crack crack.
The other three Heavenborn managed to pop their pills into their mouths, making them also reach the Seed Stage. Yet, something else happened. When the water Heavenborn blocked the saber, she wasn't pushed back. One needed to know that Gravis had the most powerful body out of everyone present. So, how was she able to remain stable under Gravis' attack?
The answer to that was that Gravis didn't want to push her back. As his saber got blocked by the rapier, Gravis showed a smile. A dot of concentrated lightning at the saber's edge, which was not blocked by the rapier, lighted up. A fully loaded, violent streak of lightning jumped out of the saber, avoiding the currently blocking rapier.
BANG!
A tremendous thunder exploded into the surroundings as the violent lightning bolt hit the water Heavenborn's body. She couldn't even release a scream as her whole body got incinerated. This attack had been a result of Gravis thinking about how to utilize his saber with his lightning.
When he had attacked the barrier around the Heaven Sect, he had realized that he needed to place the concentrated dot of lightning perfectly on the part of the saber's edge that would hit the target. Like this, he would achieve maximum destructive potential. That, of course, was hard. Only with a stabbing motion would that be realistically achievable on a living target.
Yet, some disadvantages could become advantages in the right circumstances. If a weapon blocked Gravis' slash, he could release a fully loaded lightning bolt from melee range, creating an instantaneous second attack.
What about the Energy and Spirit consumption? This whole thing would take a lot of Energy and Spirit usually, but Gravis had, of course, already pre-loaded his saber. Like this, he could release a devastating attack without wasting any Spirit or Energy. Of course, that only worked once per fight since he had to reload it.
As Gravis absorbed the Energy and Spirit of the two dead Heavenborn, Gravis realized something. The Energy that entered his dantian was converted to lightning, refilling it completely. Yet, it didn't increase the amount of Energy that Gravis' dantian could hold. The Energy only allowed him to refill his expended lightning.
A similar thing happened to his Spirit. The Spirit that entered into Gravis' mind was not absorbed but destroyed. Gravis couldn't absorb the Spirit, which made him furrow his brows. 'It seems like the Heaven's Balance Cultivation Technique doesn't work with my current body. Though, that makes sense. It's created for a normal body, and I don't have a normal body anymore.'
The good came with the bad, and the bad came with the good. This was a fundamental truth of the world. Yet, the technique was not useless. At least, it could refill his Energy, making it way easier to fight long battles with many opponents. As long as he killed people, he would never run out of lightning.
The other three had already broken through into the Seed Stage, and Gravis' moment of surprise was over. He had killed two people in that short time frame, but now, he had three enemies in front of him, which were one stage higher than him.
The stages in the Spirit Forming Realm were different from the stages in the Energy Gathering Realm. The strength of each stage didn't double, but quadruple. Gravis narrowed his eyes at them.
'This won't be easy.'
