The elders stopped breathing as they looked with shock at Old Man Lightning. What did he just say? Did he just say that the Lightning 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 possible outcome. I 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 this hypothetical to you specifically. I 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. "Go ahead," he said evenly.
"Imagine yourself in Gravis' shoes. I 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. I have not told you all how the fight went because I 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 their speed, they would need nearly five minutes to reach you. What would you do?" Old Man Lightning asked.
"I 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, so you annoyed them back. No one got injured, nothing major was damaged, no one died. Yet, the Earth Sect has seen this as an insult and wants you dead. Those disciples heard the call and followed through with this."
Stor rubbed his stubble in thought. "I would tell them that they are running to their deaths. Their strength and mine are too far apart. 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 their beliefs," Old Man Lightning explained.
Stor thought about this for a while, while the other elders watched with interest. "I would wait until they arrive. After all, saying that someone wants to kill you and actually doing it is a huge difference. I can afford this luxury because they are so weak. If they were stronger, I 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 no attacks 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 it had gone for Gravis. The details were very precise. Many of them asked themselves what they would do in this situation.
"I would tell them that they have 30 more seconds to attack me. If they decide against that, I'll leave. Killing some youngsters because 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 the temperament 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. What now?"
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," Stor said. "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 I thought. I 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!" he shouted. "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 uncomfortable expressions at that. Forcing the earth disciples to choose between death and their cultivation seemed unnecessarily cruel in their eyes. They were especially appalled when they heard how Gravis killed one of the disciples just because he had hesitated to make 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 fully following his own moral compass and committed no wrong in his action. After all, they have stepped on his bottom line. The only reason 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 abused by 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 to their fairness and honesty, they had no issues in cultivating lightning. After all, there was no objective definition of fairness. It all came 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, so there 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 have just killed them directly. Gravis' definition of a bottom line is just less flexible in comparison to ours. We still consider life and forgiveness 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. The Freya Clan follows through, yet they don't get paid. Yes, they get angry, but they never attempt any revenge. They just stop working together with that Sect. A couple of decades later, they attempt to forge bonds with those same Sects again, the earlier enmity 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 the peculiarity of Gravis' cultivation would take too much time, so let me just tell you that he is the person that has the highest synchronicity with Destruction Lightning possible. No one else, ever, will have such a high synchronicity with Destruction Lightning. You can take his temperament as a perfect template for the temperament of Destruction Lightning," Old Man Lightning explained.
The elder responsible for internal affairs looked with intensity at Old Man Lightning. "So, the higher ratio of deaths between fights inside the Sect is due to that?" he asked.
Old Man Lightning nodded. "We don't have many fights between members, but we do have some. Yet, most of the time, when a winner is established, the victor doesn't finish the loser. After all, they are still from the same Sect. Even if there were enmity before, that wouldn't warrant the death of the other party. Most of the time, establishing one's dominance over the other person is enough."
The elder responsible for internal affairs continued the words of Old Man Lightning. "But if they have Destruction Lightning, they will 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 Destruction Lightning 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. "I would have probably implemented 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."
"Yet," Old Man Lightning continued the elder's words, "that would betray the fairness in the eyes of the Destruction Lightning disciples. 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!"