Female Novel
Chapter 271
The elders stopped breathing as they looked with shock at Old Man Lightning. What did he just say? Did he just say that theLightning Sect could break apart? What was he on about?
"Don't you think you are overreacting?" one of the elders asked Old Man Lightning.
Old Man Lightning crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. "If we don't plan accordingly, this is a possibleoutcome. | am not overreacting," he said.
"What do we have to plan for then?" asked another elder with urgency. "What is the problem?"
“Let me give you a hypothetical," Old Man Lightning said and then looked at one of the elders specifically. "Stor! Let me give thishypothetical to you specifically. | think you are the best person for that."
Stor was the only elder who wasn't in panic right now. He actually looked into Old Man Lightning's eyes with determination. "Goahead," he said evenly.
"Imagine yourself in Gravis' shoes. | am reducing the strength of the Earth Sect's disciples so that you actually feel the strength,or in this case, weakness of your enemies in front of you, just like Gravis. Gravis is about as strong as an average Sect Master,so, in your case, two people at the Seed Stage and ten people at the initial stage of Spirit Forming are coming at you. | have nottold you all how the fight went because | want to see how you would react," Old Man Lightning explained.
Stor nodded and let Old Man Lightning continue.
"Those disciples were 20 kilometers away and shouted at you that they would kill you. Then, they charge at you, but with theirspeed, they would need nearly five minutes to reach you. What would you do?" Old Man Lightning asked.
"| would question them about why they wanted to kill me," Stor said.
Old Man Lightning nodded. "In your past, the Earth Guild in the Middle-Continent annoyed you slightly when you visited them, soyou annoyed them back. No one got injured, nothing major was damaged, no one died. Yet, the Earth Sect has seen this as aninsult and wants you dead. Those disciples heard the call and followed through with this."novelbin
Stor rubbed his stubble in thought. "I would tell them that they are running to their deaths. Their strength and mine are too farapart. This couldn't even be considered a fight."
"The disciples answer that they know that. They know exactly that they are about to die, but they wouldn't dare to betray theirbeliefs," Old Man Lightning explained.
Stor thought about this for a while, while the other elders watched with interest. "| would wait until they arrive. After all, sayingthat someone wants to kill you and actually doing it is a huge difference. | can afford this luxury because they are so weak. If theywere stronger, | would probably either directly flee or take the initiative," Stor said after some seconds.
Old Man Lightning nodded. "Okay. The disciples reach you and build a barricade. You wait in front of the barricade, but noattacks arrive. You wait for 30 seconds, but no one attacks you. What do you do now?" Old Man Lightning asked.
The eyes of the other elders shone. They hadn't expected this development. They were pretty sure that this is precisely how ithad gone for Gravis. The details were very precise. Many of them asked themselves what they would do in this situation.
"| would tell them that they have 30 more seconds to attack me. If they decide against that, I'll leave. Killing some youngstersbecause they said that they would kill me, but not going through with it, doesn't sit that well with me," Stor said.
The other elders were quite surprised. Stor could be considered the cruelest of the elders. He followed the destructive side of thetemperament of lightning very closely. They were surprised that Stor didn't just straight up kill them.
Old Man Lightning nodded. "They taunt you so that you would attack, but none of the disciples take the initiative to attack. Whatnow?"
Stor didn't hesitate. "I turn around and leave. If they don't have the guts to fight, then there is no reason in me killing them," Storsaid. "This is no tempering, and they haven't attacked me. Fighting them makes no sense."
The other elders nodded. They fully agreed with this decision. They also wouldn't attack the earth disciples in that case.Old Man Lightning sighed. "Just as | thought. | think we actually have a problem here," he said with a shake of his head.
The others looked skeptically at Old Man Lightning, but one of the elders looked like he realized something. "Wait a second!" heshouted. "Didn't you say that multiple of the disciples died? Did Gravis attack them?" he asked.
The others' eyes also opened widely. This seemed barbaric in their minds! This wouldn't be at all how lightning worked!
After that, Old Man Lightning explained to them exactly what Gravis had done. Some of the elders showed uncomfortableexpressions at that. Forcing the earth disciples to choose between death and their cultivation seemed unnecessarily cruel in theireyes. They were especially appalled when they heard how Gravis killed one of the disciples just because he had hesitated tomake his decision.
"While doing all of this," Old Man Lightning said, "I didn't even see an inkling of regret or guilt in Gravis' eyes. He was fullyfollowing his own moral compass and committed no wrong in his action. After all, they have stepped on his bottom line. The onlyreason why anyone survived was that those people decided to betray their beliefs. If they hadn't, they would all be dead."
"This seems similar to the Warped Ones," one of the elders said, making the others nod.
The so-called Warped Ones were former disciples of the Lightning Sect that had a very warped sense of fairness. In their minds,fairness was power. That mindset came nearly exclusively from their traumatic past. Most of the Warped Ones had been abusedby more powerful people in the past, making them believe that whatever a stronger person did, was inherently fair and right.
They had been abused when they were weak, so it was only fair that they, in turn, abused the weak. Due to them adhering totheir fairness and honesty, they had no issues in cultivating lightning. After all, there was no objective definition of fairness. It allcame down to what they themselves believed was just and fair.
Whenever the Lightning Sect found a Warped One, they would banish them from the Sect. The Warped Ones were very rare, sothere never appeared another power created by those. There just weren't enough to create another power.
Old Man Lightning lifted his hand to halt the discussion. "It does seem similar, but it's not identical. A Warped One would havejust killed them directly. Gravis’ definition of a bottom line is just less flexible in comparison to ours. We still consider life andforgiveness if someone went against us. Of course, we often consider it but not follow through. This brings me to my next point.Do you remember how the Freya Clan acts in general?" Old Man Lightning asked.
"The Freya Clan are basically pushovers," Stor said with crossed arms. "A Sect comes to them, giving them a proposal. TheFreya Clan follows through, yet they don't get paid. Yes, they get angry, but they never attempt any revenge. They just stopworking together with that Sect. A couple of decades later, they attempt to forge bonds with those same Sects again, the earlierenmity completely forgotten. That's why they are under our protection. We don't go against our words."
Old Man Lightning nodded. "Exactly. Doesn't that seem to be the exact opposite of how Gravis acts?"
The elders fell into thought again, but one by one, their eyes lighted up.“Are you suggesting that different forms of lightning foster different mindsets of lightning?" one of the elders asked.
Old Man Lightning nodded solemnly."Exactly!" he said. "Explaining thepeculiarity of Gravis' cultivationwould take too much time, so let mejust tell you tharhek the cerson thathesithe'h ghest synchronicity withDestruction Lightning possible. Noone else, ever, will have such a highsynchronicity with DestructionLightning. You can take histemperament as a perfect templatefor the temperament of DestructionLightning," Old Man Lightningexplained. The content is onNovelDrama.Org! Read the latestchapter there!
The elder responsible for internal affairs looked with intensity at Old Man Lightning. "So, the higher ratio of deaths between fightsinside the Sect is due to that?" he asked.
Old Man Lightning nodded. "We don'thave many fights between members,but we do have some. Yet, most ofthe time, when a wires com
e ablished thee or doesn't finishthe loser. After all, they are still fromthe same Sect. Even if there wereenmity before, that wouldn't warrantthe death of the other party. Most ofthe time, establishing one'sdominance over the other person isenough." The content is onNovelDrama.Org! Read the latestchapter there!
The elder responsible for internal affairs continued the words of Old Man Lightning. "But if they have Destruction Lightning, theywill surely destroy the losing party. This is a similar temperament to natural lightning, but it yields a totally different outcome."
"Now," Old Man Lightning started again. "Let's presume we don't know about this situation. We get more and more DestructionLightning cultivators, and the deaths in internal fighting become more and more. What would you have done then?"
The elder responsible for internal
affairs started growing nervous as he
thought about that hypothetical
scenario, "| would hve Probably
iraplambnfed some rules about life
and death fights needing to be
accepted by one elder. Like that, only
the people with real life and death
enmities would be allowed to fight
each other." The content is on
NovelDrama.Org! Read the latest
chapter there!
"Yet," Old Man Lightning continued the elder's words, "that would betray the fairness in the eyes of the Destruction Lightningdisciples. If that happened more and more frequently, what do you think would happen?”
The elders took deep breaths. This was a dangerous scenario.
After some seconds, Stor looked at Old Man Lightning with intensity, but on his forehead, sweat could be seen.
"Civil war!"