He has a lot to do, but the most important activity to him right now is confirming if he can truly cultivate with heavenly lightning.
He wasn't able to confirm this, even when the domain of the Ethera tree covered the whole of Aries, because he didn't have much time to cultivate, and because there were no trees with pure wood-based life force on Aries.
On Aries, the plants there are either ice-based or fire-based. They are like that so that they will be able to survive better in the environmental conditions of Aries.
But back here in Ethera, there are plenty of plants with pure wood-based life force. Their presence here is why he immediately rushed into the forest as soon as he was done repairing his weapons.
He went into the forest and chatted up some trees. After bribing them and coaxing them with benefits that they couldn't refuse, they gave him their sweet and valuable life force with their best wishes.
He had the means and resources to acquire a copious amount of life force from them. Unfortunately, he couldn't get all he wanted because he didn't have the space to store the life force.
His Wood Vessel Sigil technique just wasn't big enough to hold a large amount of life force. This made him consider changing the priority of mastering the two vessel sigil techniques.
He said to him as he left the forest, "Maybe I should forget the Lightning Vessel Sigil technique for now and instead focus on the Wood Vessel Sigil technique. I won't need the Lightning for now since I can get an inexhaustible supply from the sky, and because I'm safe here in the secret realm of the sect and won't need to fight someone above my level."
Now that he is back on Ethera, all it will cost him to get more heavenly lightning is to expend some mental energy to call lightning down from the sky. So it is not free to get heavenly lightning, but the cost is not expensive either.
On the other hand, the acquisition of life force is tedious and expensive. He hasn't found a way to avoid paying the high cost to acquire more life force, but he has decided not to waste his time going back and forth negotiating with plants again and again when he can do the negotiations once.
Then he thought of something else, which made him say, "Who knows? I might not be able to cultivate with heavenly lightning. My recent advancement might have been a fluke caused by the intense fight."
"Or, I might not need life force in order to cultivate with heavenly lightning. Either way, good or bad, there are many reasons why I might not need life force and won't need to trouble myself about its acquisition anymore."
He had this thought on his mind as he rushed to his island. He rushed at full speed because he was in a hurry, so he thought nothing of his speed. But the golden core elders who saw him fly by had a lot to think about because of his speed.
Raging Thunder, one of the four people who have mastered a vessel sigil technique and completed their cultivation at the fourth mortal coil, was chatting with some golden core elders who came to congratulate him on earning enough contribution points in the recent campaign on Aries to get a nascent soul pill as his reward.
There were four of them. All four of them saw Arthur rush to his floating island.
The weakest one among the golden core elders frowned and said, "Wait a minute. That speed can't be right. He is too fast. Something isn't right."
Another golden core elder sighed and shook his head before saying, "You didn't go to Aries with us, so you don't know that Arthur is gedy powerful. I heard that he used the Lightning Vessel Sigil to fight the world guardian of Aries to a standstill."
The weaker golden core elder who spoke earlier widened his eyes in disbelief when he heard the feat that Arthur was capable of. He asked incredulously, "Is the world guardian you're talking about the angry Sun King? Didn't you say that the Sun King had a power output of 100C? Shouldn't Arthur be at the second or third transformation of the fourth mortal coil? How can he match someone who can fight someone who can match a nascent soul patriarch? Even those at the peak of the fourth mortal coil can hardly fight nascent soul patriarchs."
He had so many questions because he was full of disbelief, and he was full of disbelief because Arthur's power didn't make sense to him. Arthur's power didn't make sense to him because he is older than Arthur and should be stronger than Arthur.
It was already baffling to him when the patriarchs allowed Arthur to go with them to Aries, but asked him to stay back in the sect. He wasn't the only one who was asked to stay in the sect. There were other golden core elders, about ten of them, and they were all weak golden core cultivators.
The ten of them were the weakest of the sect. But someone, Arthur, who was supposed to be weaker than him, got to go to Aries.
That has already confused him plenty enough. But now that he is hearing that Arthur could fight the best of the best of Aries, he didn't know what to believe anymore.
At this point, he must get answers, and they have to be reasonable answers, or he might forget which part of the world is the sky and which way is up.
The third golden core elder saw the pure naked disbelief in his eyes and explained, "At that point, the Sun King had been weakened to 80C due to the expansion of the domain of Ethera. The Sun King had also been injured by Void Claw. In fact, the Sun King was still fighting Void Claw at that time. So the fight was really two against one, not Arthur alone against the Sun King."