Gravis sat down before the gate and concentrated on his Spirit Space. His figure reappeared in the Spirit Space and looked at his Spirit Seed. "Let's see what happens," he said. His wealth was already thrown out of the Spirit Space.
BANG!
Gravis pushed a bit of his lightning into his Spirit Seed, and his whole Spirit Space started shaking. The breakthrough was about to start.
The Spirit Seed started to pulse, becoming bigger with every pulse. By now, Gravis felt incredible pain coursing through his mind, but that pain was nothing to him. He only needed to gnash his teeth to resist the pain.
The pain continued as the Seed grew. When it reached double its size, something happened.
Psssh!
Something like a root tore out of the Spirit Seed. It came out violently like it had been pressed out. When Gravis saw that, he smiled in interest. "Is that the Sapling?" he asked himself.
Psssh!
Another root-like thing tore out of the Seed. When Gravis saw that, he raised an eyebrow. "Well, that couldn't be a Sapling too, could it? Well, everyone else cultivates Energy in their Spirit while I cultivate lightning. My Sapling Stage probably won't look like a Sapling.
Psssh! Psssh!
Another two roots came out. By now, the Seed didn't look like a Seed anymore. The roots came out of the Seed without any pattern, and his Seed looked rather weird. It looked more like a growth than a Seed or a Sapling.
Psssh! Psssh! Psssh! Psssh! Psssh! Psssh!
More of these roots broke out from all over the Seed, and they didn't seem to stop. The Seed itself became smaller and looked a bit deflated like it had lost its insides and started collapsing into itself.
After around two minutes, a great number of roots appeared. By now, the Seed wasn't even visible anymore. These growth-like roots covered everything. His Spirit Space also stopped pulsing as everything calmed down. The growth was kind of spherical and had a diameter of two meters.
Whoom!
Gravis felt his Spirit expand. He couldn't test its actual range since all the walls and corridors blocked it. The only thing that Gravis felt was that his Spirit became more powerful. The "Seed" had also completely calmed down. During the breakthrough, Gravis' Spirit Space had also grown to about double the radius, which increased its volume manifold.
Gravis looked at this new thing from all angles. "Well, I can't call it a Seed anymore," he said.
The thing looked like a growth that mortals would have inside them when they got incredibly sick. If it weren't whitish-silver in color, one would think that this thing looked disgusting. It was just a mass of random tubes, roots, growths, or whatever you want to call it.
Gravis rubbed his chin in thought. "Alright, I'll call you Growth from now on!" Gravis said to the Growth. "You really don't look like a Sapling. You look more like a root network or something. Growth is an appropriate name."
Then, Gravis walked closer and started touching the roots.
Squish!
They felt squishy to the touch, and he could move them around however he wanted. They kind of felt like the tentacles of a dead squid. "Ew," he said. "Man, if you weren't made of lightning, you would be really disgusting." Gravis moved the roots around a little bit more, and when he let go, they would slowly move back to their previous positions.
Of course, it was only Gravis who could touch this thing. If anyone else touched it, they would be incinerated. Only lightning could touch lightning without being attacked. "Anyways, that should be it for my breakthrough. Now, time to compress my lightning!"
Gravis left his Spirit Space and opened his eyes again. Then, he used his Spirit and will to compress the lightning in his chest. After every breakthrough, Gravis could compress his lightning more. This time, it should be enough to compress his lightning to a state where it wouldn't constantly poke out of his body anymore.
Gravis hadn't had a full lightning storage in a while. After all, if he didn't unload it from time to time, all the people and objects touching him would be incinerated. Walking around his group or the Freya Clan with that was troublesome and dangerous.
Condensing his lightning didn't take much time, only a couple of seconds. After he was finished, he waited until he got back all his lightning. Just as expected, the lightning didn't come out of his chest anymore. When he saw that, he released a sigh of relief. "Finally, I don't have to check on my lightning anymore. One less thing to worry about."
When Gravis' lightning storage was full again, he summoned a small will-sphere with 5% of his Spirit. Then, he moved some lightning into it, and it absorbed a little over 5% of his lightning storage. After that, it exploded.
The walls and gates shook, but they weren't damaged in the slightest. After all, the walls had to be incredibly sturdy to even allow Sapling Stage cultivators to fight here. If any random attack from such a powerful cultivator could destroy the walls, then what was the point of having different trials? Couldn't they just dig through the mountain and walls?
"Alright, so my Spirit and lightning are back to a ratio of one-to-one. That also makes it less troublesome to calculate my Lightning Crescent," Gravis said with satisfaction. "So, I guess I could say that my Spirit and Lightning are at the same level now. That only leaves the body."
Gravis retrieved all his wealth, except for one thing. A small hill of medicinal pills remained beside Gravis. All of these were body tempering pills. "Heh, for once, I could be considered lucky," he said with a smirk.
Where did Gravis get so many body tempering pills from? Had he readied them before the journey?
No. Where would he have even gotten the money to get so many of those?
So, where did these pills come from? Funnily enough, these pills all came from the dead group of disciples from the Earth Sect. They had been at the peak of the Seed Stage and would have reached the Sapling Stage by now if they hadn't died.
Of course, the Sects took the Heaven's Trial very seriously, so every disciple carried enough body tempering pills to reach the Sapling Stage with their bodies. After reaching the Sapling Stage, they would only need to eat all these pills, and their body would advance. Sadly, since they had attacked Gravis, all their pills now belonged to him together with all their other wealth.
"Father once said that having no luck doesn't mean that I won't get wealth. Others will get their lucky chances, and I only have to kill them to get their lucky chances and wealth. And sure enough, he was right," Gravis said with a chuckle.
After saying that, Gravis started shoveling pills into his mouth like a starving ape. Yet, there were just so incredibly many pills. It took him several hours of nonstop eating to finally make his body advance.
Green smoke shot out of Gravis' mouth as he burped. This concentrated smoke had as much medicinal energy as a whole pill. Yet, Gravis didn't mind. He just had too many pills to care about such a minuscule amount of medicinal energy.
"Feels good, man," Gravis said to himself as he lay on top of the still considerable mound of pills. "Now, my body, Spirit, and lightning are at the same level. There is no imbalance anymore," he said.
But then, he started smirking, "but what's so good about balance? Other people have issues with their elements if their body is more powerful than their Energy or Spirit, but not me. My body ignores lightning, so why stop now?" Then, he looked at his bed of body tempering pills with a smirk. "Imma eat all of that."
And like this, Gravis ate more pills. He had only eaten a little less than a fifth of the pills previously. There was still a lot to go through!
After a full day passed, Gravis patted his tummy as he ate the last one. His lightning easily cleaned the outside of the pills. After all, many of them had been lying on the ground for a day, and Gravis was not interested in eating dust.
After he finished eating, he stood up and stretched himself. Then, he did some practice punches and kicks. "Yep, my body should be around the Tree Stage right now. Man, it took four times the amount of pills to reach the Tree Stage compared to the Sapling Stage. Expensive, expensive…"
Then, Gravis moved his lightning throughout his body. "Yep, no resistance. Everything checks out," he said. "My Spirit and Lightning are equal to the Sapling Stage, while my body is equal to the Tree Stage. Compared to my current Stage, I am even more powerful than when I was at the Seed Stage."
"With just my Will-Aura and physical strength, killing people at the Tree Stage shouldn't be an issue. I don't even need my lightning for that," Gravis said but then frowned. "But the Self Stage is different. Everyone I have ever fought against in the Core-Continent only went through the ninth Stage of Energy Gathering. If someone is at the Self Stage, it means that they have gone through the tenth Stage of Energy Gathering. This means that they don't only have a higher Realm, but also double the amount of Energy."
"Every Stage quadruples the power of the cultivator. That has been true until now, but the Self Stage is different. Since they all went through the tenth Stage of Energy Gathering, a Self Stage cultivator is not 16 times more powerful than someone at the Sapling Stage, but probably around 24 times. Double the Energy is not completely double the strength, but it goes a long way. If going through the tenth Stage also increased the body's power, it would probably be a proper 32 fold increase."
"Luckily, my more powerful body takes this advantage away. So, all in all, someone at the Self Stage should be as powerful to me now as someone at the Tree Stage when I was at the Seed Stage. So, the power dynamic didn't change. Interesting," Gravis narrated to himself with interest.
"Well, time to go!" Gravis said and then opened the door to his trial without hesitation.
"I know Heaven is smart, and I am pretty sure that it only has a maximum of three chances to properly kill me. There are not that many things that it can use to threaten me. I am about 95% sure what the first trial is going to be. After all, currently, I am at my weakest. Heaven will probably throw an incredibly dangerous trial to me right at the beginning," Gravis said as he charged down the hallway.
After a while, the hallway widened into a one-kilometer wide arena. When Gravis looked at the middle of the arena, he smirked.
"Called it!"