What Sword Flash said made Lady Evergreen laugh and say, "So without a magnetic field, all that would have been left of him would be a perfect core that survived because it can withstand heavenly lightning."
Sword Flash was impressed the more he thought about the three factors. Eventually, he said in awe, "Everything is interlinked and important. If he were missing a single one, he wouldn't have been able to cultivate with heavenly lightning. This is impressive. I wonder who came up with his cultivation plan."
Thunder Drake was still struggling with the fact that common sense had been overturned by Arthur. But he could only say, "I guess you guys were right. One can indeed cultivate with heavenly lightning as long as the conditions are right."
He had been baffled when he saw Arthur enjoying himself beneath lightning bolts for more than ten minutes and had asked the other two what they thought Arthur was doing.
Sword Flash suggested that Arthur was cultivating with heavenly lightning. He refused to believe it and denied it, while Lady Evergreen agreed with Sword Flash and said that it was possible for Arthur to mitigate the negative effects of heavenly lightning by using life force from the wood vessel sigil technique.
He still didn't agree with Lady Evergreen and maintained vehemently that it wasn't possible to cultivate with heavenly lightning. Lady Evergreen was miffed when he said that they were ignorant of the power of heavenly lightning, so she suggested that they bet.
He had readily agreed to the bet because he was confident of his standing. If it were in any other aspect, he would have agreed with Sword Flash. But lightning is his domain and area of expertise, and from his years of experience, it had been ingrained into him that one shouldn't mess with heavenly lightning even if they had a lightning vessel sigil technique.
He wasn't sure what Arthur was doing, and he only thought that Arthur was practicing his lightning vessel sigil technique. But he was sure that Arthur couldn't be cultivating with heavenly lightning for so long.
Now that he had lost the bet, he realized something that he had overlooked earlier because of his fear of heavenly lightning.
So he said to them, "No wonder he was able to use heavenly lightning to enhance the strength of his body back on Aries. I thought for sure that he was just using the heavenly lightning to cast the Lightning Angel spell."
After coming to this conclusion, he said to Arthur, "Well done. And carry on. Just make sure to be careful not to hurt yourself."
Arthur bowed to them and said, "I'll be careful."
By the time he looked up, three of them had gone. He hadn't noticed when they left, even though his divine sense was blanketing the whole area.
He could only shrug and say, "I didn't notice it when they came, so I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't notice when they left."
He had long since made peace with the fact that their spiritual sense was powerful enough to manipulate mana to fool his divine sense. So instead of thinking about how they were able to avoid his perception, he decided to think about coaxing more trees into giving him their precious life force.
So he said, "Maybe I should get a plant pet that I will raise solely to provide me with life force.
He thought about this as he flew to the forest down below. He used the power of his core to enhance his speed, so his figure was writhed with blue lightning. His violent skin combined with the lightning to make him look like a large bolt of lightning shooting through the sky.
His fast speed was put on display again for people to see. So if anyone had any doubts about his speed, they were given the privilege of confirming his speed and clearing their doubts.
After some negotiation and coaxing, Arthur was able to get more life force from the plants. But he could tell that it would become more and more difficult for him to get life force in the future. This was because he was running out of life essence to negotiate with the trees.
There are very few things that the trees are willing to receive in exchange for their hard-earned life force. Mana stones are not one of these things. This is because there is plenty of mana in the environment for the trees to use.
Plus, the trees are not in a hurry for a quick influx of mana that mana stones can provide. They have the patience and all the time in the world to slowly extract what they need from the environment.
So no matter how rich he is in mana stones, it won't matter to trees. What they want from him is to clear the space around them by killing their competitors or reducing the number of predators by killing herbivores and insects.
They can't kill themselves, so they will appreciate it if he can kill for them. Unfortunately, he can't fulfill their murderous needs because the forest doesn't belong to him.
He can't just kill anything and anyone for the trees. Even if he could, he certainly can't kill every other tree in the forest for a single tree. No matter how much life force the single tree is willing to give him, the single tree will eventually run out of life force and won't be able to provide for his needs for long.
This means that he is left with the option of giving the trees life essence. The life essence that he can refine from living people and corpses is highly regarded by trees and very valuable to them. So he can always make a deal with them as long as he has life essence.
The problem with this solution is that he doesn't have an infinite amount of life essence. He needs to make them, and they are expensive to make.