Chapter Five: Lightning Tempering Technique

James stood up from his meditative state, satisfied with the progress that he'd made during this period. He had condensed three more lightning streaks, every time it was getting easier than the last, but the current amount of essence energy in his surroundings was simply insufficient. He started to think about what the storm dragon had said previously about his planet and that it was unsuited for cultivation; perhaps this was because of the lack of essence energy.

The storm dragon, being able to read James' thoughts, chimed in, "It is in part to do with the low quality and quantity of the natural essence energy, but it is also mainly to do with the incomplete natural esoteric laws if this world. They are fractured and they can not support high cultivation bases. Beings surpassing a certain level of cultivation experience will have their power and cultivation base slowly smothered and degraded; at the very least, they will never advance their culivation here.

'Well why am I able to gather qi here then?' James was a little puzzled; he wasn't advancing in realms, but he was still gathering cultivation experience in the form of the thunder streaks, as they basically represented his cultivation base until he broke into the very first realm.

The storm dragon smiled inside of James' realm of conciousness before placating his curiosity, "Your cultivation method is less dependent on the natural heaven and earth laws, but moreso on the law of infinite thunder that has now been integrated into the very core of your being. The more profound your comprehension of the law of infinite thunder becomes, the faster you will make progress and the stronger its special benefits become. I have also been doing my best to temporarily strengthen the heaven earth laws for you while you cultivate, as all other cultivators here will have to do if they wish to meditate. This process is much harder for them as they have to split time between cultivating and keeping their environment suitable. You should be thankful for a second consciousness inside of you that knows what it's doing." The dragon prided itself as the mentor of this amazing disciple. James had no idea of this, but his cultivation aptitude was among the top ten geniuses he had ever met, and he had lived for hundred of years, he could have lived for much longer too had it not been for the war. He also believed that James' natural aptitude would improve exponentially and continuously once the next part of his plan was put into action.

'I see, and don't worry, I am very grateful for the opportunity at life that you've given me. I plan to pay it back tenfold, no, a hundred fold. You wanted true justice right? I can see into your mind just as you can see into mine. In your world, rules can only be put into place by the strong, am I wrong? Then I'll become strong, and set in place a just and realistic set of rules that all of these bastards have no choice but to follow. I don't have to be nice, but I'll sure as hell use my best judgement, I always do...' James' mental voice trailed off as a smile cracked on his face, but he continued shortly, 'Enough with the mushy campy stuff, you said you would teach me the body tempering technique didn't you?'

The dragon's voice became serious and he reminded himself that they were still on a time crunch, "Yes, the method has two parts, the first one circulates conciousness to help heal your body and make it stronger than before, this was what I was doing during your training. I will teach you but I will take care of for you since I have a much more powerful conciousness than you at the moment. The second half of the method requires you to use your thunder streaks and extract them before striking your own body with them, as if you're undergoing a tribulation transcendence. This will strengthen your body, which will subsequently be refined by the other half of the method to further refine your body," The dragon gave a very longwinded explanation, but there wasn't a simple way to explain it in the end.

"I get the gist of it, let's go out once more and try the second half of the method out after you teach me the specifics," James spoke out loud this time and then turned his head to the window before pausing awkwardly; it was pitch black outside...

"Ah fuck..." The dragon was also feeling a bit awkward; he didn't realize how long James had been in meditation. Seeing how late it was, it was no wonder that James had condensed three thunder streaks without the dragons help. Although it took longer than he thought, the storm dragon was still impressed by the speed of James' progress.

James still wanted to test himself out though, so just like on the night that him and his mentor first met, he skillfully dismantled his window and sped out once again. He ran down the street bare-foot as he made his way back towards the park that he tested himself at before.

James had been running for a few seconds before he realized how fast he was moving. Without any footwear he was still running faster than he ever had with shoes before. About five minutes passed and James arrived at his destination. It had taken him roughly seven minutes to get home last time, and he had barely broken into a sweat and it could only be said that he was breathing heavily; he was in a much better condition than when he had gotten back home. This could only be credited to the body tempering that James had already gone through, so he couldn't wait to try it out even more.

He arrived at the same outfield where he had tested his first lightning streak previously, and took off his shirt to look at his body. Upon looking down at himself, he was a little shocked. His eight pack had disappeared, leaving only a defined set of six abs behind, and the number of veins on his arms and legs had lessened considerably. Even his legs were looking a little more like they had yesterday.

The storm dragon, having read James' mind, once again had to explain, "Using the body tempering method will boost your physique temporarily, especially when you're just starting body tempering, but there are still permanent effects as you can see. When preparing for an upcoming battle I will circulate the second volume of the tempering technique to make sure you stay at your peak condition."

James nodded and gave a, "mhm" as if to show that this answer was satisfactory enough. He then turned to his internal vision and brought out one of his four thunder streaks. He guided the electric bolt out of his body to hang suspended in the air in front of him. He then flicked the bolt towards his own chest and it struck him with a pop as it spread into mini lightning bolts which scattered across his chest before permeating his skin. The electricity shook his flesh, bones, and meridians alike and the storm dragon started circulating its consciousness, the micro-tears in James' muscles and small cracks in his bones and meridians were healed in no more than ten seconds.

The thunder streak condensed once more in his dantian, but this time with in its dull grey hue, signifying it's lack of energy. "Huh," James spoke to himself, and technically his dragon friend as well, "I gotta say that stung like a bitch but I can already feel the difference, not to mention how quickly it healed over with your help," James brought out two more thunder bolts before striking himself again in the chest. He then let out a light shout, the two thunder bolts had brought more than double the pain, unlike what he had expected. 'Lets hope that this hurts the enemy as much as it hurts me," James somehow found a place to be sarcastically optimistic in this; but the pain was once again healed quickly, taking no more than thirty seconds to heal.

"It's probably best to stick to one or two thunder streaks at once for now..." the dragon and James both shared the same view, not to mention that every time James used his thunder streaks, they would come back a little stronger than they were before. James brought out his final useable thunder streak, as the other three still needed a few minutes to recover.

For the third time, James threw a thunderbolt into his chest. He noticed that the strength of the thunderbolt was the slightest bit stronger than before, barely noticeable, maybe a thousandth of a percent, but it was an improvement. At the same time though, the pain that it caused him to experience was practically negligible. This meant that his body was advancing by leaps and bounds by comparison to his thunder streak.

The dragon spoke openly to James, "You seem to have a very strong aptitude for body tempering, with a solid foundation and all. I reckon about an hour of this would allow you to advance yourself to the first stage of body tempering. You should know that this type of speed is unprecedented, even with a method as efficient as this one." The dragon carried on and encouraged James to continue. Although his body would acclimate to his power naturally, there was a limit to how many he could handle, as each realm of cultivation had a certain limit to the power that someone's body could contain. James likely had a higher thresh-hold, but the storm dragon wanted to push the young boys limits even further with a strong tempered-body.

James sat down and silently aided the dragon with the second volume of the tempering method, although he wasn't injured, it would still make some progress while he waited for his thunder streaks to charge themselves back up.

The thunder streaks filled themselves up halfway by the natural surrounding energy and the other half by James' willpower and force of soul. Yet that force of soul was converted into more essence energy; basically, it was creating energy from an infinite source. It was literally an infinite source of energy, something previously deemed impossible by science, but science had never met cultivation.

Although James knew about this feature of his cultivation method, this sort of went over his head. Once his lightning streaks had all replenished their reserves, James once again hit himself with two thunder streaks two times in a row, before sitting down and recovering once more. He repeated this process over and over again, which grew quite boring, but at least he had someone to talk to while he essentially just abused himself.

After almost an hour, James hit himself with four thunder streaks in a row; he felt that he was on the verge of breaking some sort of barrier. He heard a lot of popping and crackling sounds as his body shook a lot from the thunder streaks. His bones snapped and were instantly put back together before James could even feel the pain. His skin became solid like copper and his bones were as strong as steel.

The dragon gave an imaginary applause, "Congrats! You've advanced to the body tempering first stage, the first realm of the bone fusion stage. Following this includes a much stronger defense, tolerance to energy and much stronger physical strength." James' mentor read off these effects as if it was some sort of cultivation drug commercial.

James laughed at his teachers sense of humor and heaved a satisfied for tired sigh, 'let's go home, I feel like I'm about to drop dead..." He spoke in a slurred voice, obviously tired as all hell. It wasn't a normal thing for teenagers to subject themselves to so much blaring pain. Even sadists weren't this extreme.

But the funny thing was that James, in fact, had an even easier time getting himself home than he had running to the park the second time. This body tempering thing had given him a fantastic boost. He even used a thunder streak in each of his legs to boost his speed dramatically as he went home; to his pleasant surprise, there was no after effects of using the thunder streaks, albeit a bit of tiredness in his leg muscles.

Despite running home so energetically, James calmly reinstalled his window and turned to walk towards his bed, but tripped and fell on the floor. He didn't even get up, he had already fallen asleep...