When It Rains It Pours

James strode past his friend's living quarters and stepped outside. He was only greeted by a dark cloudy sky and some mild wind grazing his side. It was chilly, but nowhere near freezing; probably around 10˚C (50˚F). Nearly two steps out of his door, James felt a cold sensation on his shoulder... It was raining.

A silent smile crept onto his face as had always liked the rain, and it was nice to see something that he actually enjoyed in the midst of all of his massive workload. He continued walking out past the shrubbery and into an open park. His sword glinted in the dim light radiating from a street lamp as he drew the blade from its sheathe, and a fog started to settle a few inches off the ground from the cool, damp air.

Taking a basic sword fighting stance, James closed his eyes and focused on the sword, on its sharpness, on the killing power of the weapon. After twenty or so minutes, a sharp aura started to rise around the sword, and upon swinging it a blur of faint was sent out, cutting through the air around it before disappearing into nothingness, only shooting five or six inches from its launch point.

"So this is sword essence..." James muttered under his breath as he reflected on the process. His manipulation and generation of sword essence were weak and unskilled respectively, but he understood the theory of weapon essence through jade slips that he had obtained from the two rings he took from the bodies of his enemies yesterday. It was a different type of energy to qi, was special to each particular type of weapon, and was the foundation to most weapon skills.

Lightning streaks diffused their energy into James' brain to increase his analytical strength, before practicing generating more and more sword essence with every move and manipulating it to be sharper and more precise.

James' sword came to a halt... Come to think of it, sword essence was important, but his handling with swords wasn't very great, to begin with, so he stopped pushing his sword intent and focused on practicing his forms. With rain starting to come down faster and faster, James could see each and every droplet crash against his blade with his enhanced mind, each watery marble splashing against the metal edge and cutting perfectly into two now separate droplets. It was a beautiful process to watch a sword cut through rain.

His eyes suddenly lit up...

Each and every one of his slashes were now targetted at a different raindrop, cutting it in half. He took his mind off of consciously practicing, and his speed and finesse slowly increased with each raindrop he cut.

Letting his body take control, his mind drifted, and stress riddled his brain.

Slash!

His sword accelerated and spliced through multiple raindrops.

Slash!

James thought about the only two people he could still protect, Alex and Whit.

Slash!

He thought of how he had no choice but to run away after his family was murdered in front of his eyes...

Woosh! Plunk...

His sword struck empty air and got its tip stuck in the ground, James stared into the sky with the now pouring rain and rumbling storm clouds. the downpour soaking his clothes and hair with water streaming down his arms and legs, those clear, innocent droplets gliding down his blade and into the soil...

There was a rumbling in the sky, and James' calm expression broke into pieces before he angrily slashed his sword towards the sky, sending many thin arcs of lightning into the clouds which blanketed the Earth for as far as one could see. He kept slashing towards the sky, his lightning essence charged with emotions, and replenishing themselves as fast as they were spent. James screamed and roared to the sky about the cards he had been dealt. Why couldn't he have just lived a happy mortal life? There was no need for this to happen to his world, his family, his friends...

The clouds rumbled as if the heavens weren't willing to listen to the bullshit that this brat was spouting.

"WELL F*CK YOU TOO!" James thrust his sword into the air to release more of his rage through his qi, only to be met with a lightning strike sent back from above. The lightning coursed down through the blade and invaded his arm, causing James extreme pain.

Although James was enraged, he wasn't stupid. He knew to stop cursing the heavens. Maybe sticking his metal sword into the air like a lightning rod wasn't a brilliant idea. He stopped flailing his sword around and started to relax... But he suddenly heard a voice in his head, "What the fuck are you doing, dumbass? The world was stupid enough to feed you raw lightning qi, why aren't you already condensing thunder streaks?"

James paused, "Uh... How'd you sleep?" He didn't listen for an answer as plopped down onto the soaking wet grass and tried to reign in all of the rampant energy in his systems. One... Two... Thunder streaks were being condensed at an alarming rate, and James had already managed to forge five more thunder streaks before there was more rumbling heard from the sky.

From the looks of it, the heavens weren't done with James, and they were very insistent when it came to their petty agendas. Unfortunately for James, there was one teensy weensy little issue that the storm dragon felt wasn't important enough to mention. The heavens simply despised the Storm Dragons Split Cultivation technique for its propagation of independent energy. Heaven could control all energy in the world... except energy that truly originated from other beings. Lightning strike after lightning strike struck the crown of James' head. 'Don't you have a job to do?' James thought, and without saying a word, Conor had already started to repair the damage done by the onslaught of electrical death streaks that were still heading his way.

A total of nine arcs of lightning struck James in that short time. Taking advantage of the moment, James had condensed an astronomical forty thunder streaks in that short amount of time. He stood up, his body riddled with aching pains, both from having his whole body ravaged by foreign energy, but also because it was filled to the brim with his own thunder streaks. His tempered body was barely keeping up with the damage being done to the energy overflow from his dantian.

His body...

That was it! That extreme damage and reparation had finally pushed his body past the bottleneck that he had seemingly gotten infinitely close to without ever touching. His body was pushed through to the ninth level of bone fusion, but it still wasn't a durable enough catalyst to encase all of that excited energy.

"You know... maybe if you relinquished the emotional dampener that you put on me you'd have some spare energy to keep us in good shape..." James spoke aloud with ridicule in his voice, seemingly targetted at no one. It was pretty obvious that James' spontaneous outburst was due to the lack of emotional restriction that Conor had placed on James the day before. All of his pent of anger and rage slowly wore down and punctured the barrier that Conor could no longer reinforce in his sleep, which led to his seemingly unreasonable change in behavior.

"As nice as that would be, the first thing I see when I wake up is you having such a bad emotional outburst that you literally got murked by the sky. I think we need some more time..." Conor paused in his response, "...however, I do believe that I could at least lessen its strength a bit. We have to open up eventually."

Suddenly, the healing effect in James' body strengthened, but he was overcome by a sudden wave of anger and grief. Thankfully, the two of them were better prepared and it was only a fraction of their bottled-up emotions, and as such, they were able to stabilize their collective mind relatively quickly.

James wasn't in the mood to practice swordsmanship at this particular moment, so he stood up, brushed some charred skin off his arms and chest, took his first step back towards his home when... "Ah! Shit!" James realized that the now sixty-some thunder streaks were still rampaging through his body. 'Well... This isn't a very safe place to sit down and think of a solution now is it?'

"No, Indeed it's not," James started to drag his broken body back across the field and towards his little hut under the bridge.