Chapter 351 - 351 – Punishment Lightning
Gravis nodded. "Yes, please tell me more," he said with interest. Finally, he would know more about his homeworld.
The Opposer drank more of his coffee. "You are currently inside Opposer City. Pretty straightforward name, isn’t it?" His father said with a smirk.
Gravis had never heard the name of his home city, but it actually made sense. Still, Gravis looked at his father with a complicated expression.
"Hey, don’t look at me like that," his father said. "I wasn’t the one who gave the city its name. No one actually intended to build this city. It just grew out of nowhere, and the name stuck. I’m a big Energy magnet, so my surroundings are the densest in regard to Energy. Therefore, a lot of people started building their own homes around ours."
’Opposer city, what a simple name,’ Gravis thought with a smirk.
"Anyway, Opposer City is located in the Central Plains. As the name suggests, this is the middle of the entire world. Nearly all of the Peak Sects are located in these plains, and you can find the absolute elite of cultivators and beasts here," his father explained.
"You could compare it to the Core-Continent in your lower world. Yet, the Central Plains are much, much vaster than the entire lower world. To put it into perspective, the Central Plains are many times bigger than thousands of lower worlds combined."
"Thousands of lower worlds?" Gravis asked with shock. "The Central Plains are that huge?"
The Opposer nodded. "Similar to your lower world, the further away you go from the center, the less Energy there is. There are no barriers or anything significant between the areas, and the Energy doesn’t just get cut off. It simply becomes less and less."
"You could liken the highest world to an onion. We are inside the core, but the further out you go, the more layers you will see. Just like in your lower world, the further out you go, the bigger the areas get."
"The areas outside are bigger than the Central Plains?" Gravis asked.
The Opposer nodded. "Yes. The massive size of the highest world can’t be compared to any other world. The highest world has existed for the longest time, so it also had the most time to expand. On top of that, it also has, by far, the most Energy, so its expansion is also more rapid."
The Opposer scratched his chin in thought. "You could say that all other worlds combined are about just as big as the highest world."
"But aren’t there billions of worlds?" Gravis asked.
The Opposer nodded again. "Yes, but that’s just how vast the highest world is. The grass outside the city, for example, is the most powerful common grass that you can find. It doesn’t even have Spirituality and, therefore, can also not be counted as a Spirit Plant. It’s just really hard grass."
"No wonder killing the grass was so easy," Gravis said. "According to its physical power, every stalk of grass would need to be at the Unity Realm. I might be powerful in the Unity Realm, but killing thousands of cultivators in my Realm? That seems a bit too much."
"Yes. The grass has a body in the Unity Realm, but nothing else. It only acts on instincts and can’t do anything else. That’s also why the grass just attacked you without relenting. Every beast or Spirit Plant would have already fled from your lightning," the Opposer said.
Gravis remembered something. "Speaking of, what is this new lightning that I gained after absorbing Heaven’s lightning strike, and why was I stunned when I absorbed it?" Gravis asked.
"It’s Punishment Lightning," the Opposer said. "Normally, cultivators can only use it way later in their cultivation journey. That’s because you need to comprehend some laws in regards to lightning to wield it."
BZZZ!
Gravis summoned a small, white ball of lightning and looked at it. "But I can use it just fine," he said.
The Opposer nodded. "Because you understand its laws."
Gravis’ eyes widened. "I do?" he asked.
"Your Spirit is adapted to lightning, so it has a very deep connection to it. When you absorbed the Punishment Lightning, your Spirit started combining with it. It was like the Punishment Lightning was telling your Spirit all its secrets and what it was."
"Though," the Opposer said. "Laws are very complex, and it is a long process trying to understand them. When the lower Heaven unloaded so much lightning into you, your Spirit was overloaded with understanding. It was completely occupied and couldn’t do anything else."
The Opposer scratched his chin again and looked at the ceiling. "You could compare it to one of your legs falling asleep. When your nerves get cut off for too long, they can’t transmit signals back to your brain. So, when the connection gets re-established, all the nerves send their signals at once, overloading your brain and making you feel uncomfortable. Though, of course, there are still differences."
Gravis also scratched his chin in thought. Then, he looked at the, still hovering, lightning ball and thought about it. For some reason, he had a peculiar feeling towards it. It just felt like it was right and that this lightning was him.
When one tried to understand everything about themselves, it would be difficult to describe every facet of their being. It was just a feeling, and this feeling encompassed one’s full understanding of themselves. The feeling Gravis had towards the lightning was similar.
He tried to explain some of the facets of his new lightning and found a lot of information that he could share. He could explain how this lightning acted, how it felt, how it would interact with different things, and many more facets. Gravis felt like he could talk about his new lightning for days.
As Gravis noticed that, he realized how much he actually knew about this new kind of lightning. He actually knew so much about it! Yet, he had never noticed it. He had only felt the feeling that the Punishment Lightning gave him but had no idea that this feeling encompassed so much knowledge.
There was a generally accepted truth about how people learned about a concept. In the beginning, the knowledge about the relevant topic was very basic and simple, and with further study, it grew more complex.
At one point, all the complex, seemingly disconnected facets of the topic would fuse together, creating one whole concept. At that point, one didn’t need to learn many new things about it anymore since the concept can logically infer everything else.
If the person were asked why they thought that something in their studied topic worked a certain way, they would often just say: "Because it makes sense," or "it’s logical," or "because it’s obvious."
Gravis had skipped all the learning and directly reached a feeling around the whole concept of Punishment Lightning. Consciously, he felt like he knew nothing about it, but everything about it just made logical sense.
"You know," the Opposer said, pulling Gravis out of his thoughts, "this might be a bad thing. The understanding has basically been handed to you on a silver platter, and you didn’t go through the trouble to understand it. It’s similar to just getting your cultivation raised by a major Realm."
"Understanding new laws in the future might become more challenging than normal. That’s why you must progress slowly and understand all the facets of your cultivation."
Gravis nodded. "I know," he said. "My power might be ahead of others in my Realm, but as soon as I get complacent and increase my Realm, my advantage will vanish. Those people would have honed their skills more. At that point, I would maybe only be slightly stronger. Another Realm later, I would probably be only around average."
The Opposer smiled. "It’s good that you understand."
They remained silent for some seconds until Gravis remembered something. "By the way, what was that fungus that I absorbed into my Life Ring?" Gravis asked.
"That’s a Common Fungus," the Opposer said. "It sounds more like a category of a fungus instead of a specific kind, but that is actually the name of the specific kind."
"Is it because this is the most common fungus that it is called Common Fungus?" Gravis asked.
The Opposer nodded.
Gravis summoned his Life Ring and looked at it. His awareness entered the Life Ring, and he saw an area hundreds of kilometers wide with some common grass. There was also some water and air, but nothing else was special about the area. It was merely the bare minimum to keep living things alive.
Yet, below the surface, Gravis felt the fungus. It was just staying underground, absorbing some nutrients and Energy. The Life Ring was absorbing the Energy in the air, and it funneled it into the Life Ring.
"Master," the fungus transmitted as soon as it felt Gravis’ Spirit. Gravis was surprised that the fungus could talk with him, but he noticed that it only understood basic concepts. It was similar to the Freya’s Birch in the lower world.
"In comparison to the grass," the Opposer said, regaining Gravis’ attention, "this fungus is an actual Spirit Plant, or Unity Plant if you will. It has some awareness but isn’t very smart. Yet, it has a hard body and a lot of Life Energy. Sadly, it’s very slow and mostly lives underground. It’s not useful in a fight since everyone can just run away."
"What if they don’t?" Gravis asked.
The Opposer smirked. "Then it can be very troublesome since it’s tough and robust. It’s like that bramble bush from that clan where that little girl comes from."
Gravis was a bit confused about what his father meant, but then he realized what clan he was talking about. "The Freya Clan?" Gravis asked.
"Yeah, that was the name, I think," the Opposer said, unsure. "If cultivators attack into it, even several might die to it. It can just wear them down with its hard body and constant regeneration."
Gravis’ eye shone a bit as he looked at the Life Ring. This could maybe come in handy in the future, but his father’s words reminded him of something else.
"By the way, what happened to the lower world after I left?" he asked.