Whooom!
As Gravis willed it, his lightning and Spirit connected. It was effortless, just like flipping over his hand. He felt them connect, but he wasn't able to move his power around. The reason for that was probably because his body wasn't connected yet.
The connection with his body wasn't that easy to establish. Gravis felt some kind of barrier isolating his body. As Gravis felt that, he frowned. 'My Spirit and lightning are far stronger than my body, which doesn't create harmony. It feels like my body is repelling my lightning and Spirit. It's like wanting to push two magnets of the same polarity together,' Gravis thought.
His eyes narrowed, and he concentrated his will on the connection. 'Connect!' he shouted in his mind.
Sure enough, he felt the resistance of his body becoming weaker, but it was still not connected. 'Using my will works, but I have already used a considerable amount of force, yet it didn't connect. This probably won't be easy.'
Suddenly, Gravis' eyes shone. 'Is that why the people in this world say that a balance between the centers of power is necessary to achieve Unity? That would also explain why such a powerful will is necessary. Connecting my Spirit and lightning felt easy, but that was because my will is way more powerful than the average cultivator.'
Gravis watched his body with his Spirit in interest. 'So, the further apart the centers of power are in power, the more will it requires to connect them. Since everyone just reaches the Unity Realm as soon as they can, people wouldn't go through more tempering, and therefore, wouldn't have more powerful wills. Where would they even find such tempering in the first place?'
'That's why they think that a perfect balance is necessary. Having a perfect balance just lowers the requirement of the Unity Realm down to a level one Unity Will for the Tree Stage, and a level two Unity Will for the Self Stage.'
Gravis' eyes shone again. 'I remember the old man shouting that he was feeling the connection as soon as he reached his level two Unity Will. This probably means that he didn't feel it before. The fact that I am still feeling the connection faintly means that I can achieve it.'
'Though, the fact that I can only feel it faintly probably means that I barely fulfill the requirement. This will probably take a long time and a lot of concentration.'
Gravis sighed.
'Go!'
Whooooom!
Gravis' Will-Aura involuntarily activated, shaking and destroying the mountain he was on. Such a powerful level three Unity Will was way too powerful for this lower world's frail environment.
Gravis didn't pay attention to his surroundings as he fully concentrated on his body. To him, it felt like he had returned to the time when he had tempered his Will-Aura while being at the Tree Stage. He had suppressed his lightning inside his mind constantly, and this situation was similar.
With time, Gravis' focus was increasing. It wasn't that his will became more powerful, but that he slowly entered his state of mad training again. It was hard to release one's full power without warming up, after all.
Gravis was fully concentrated, and multiple minutes had already passed. Earlier, he would have been able to reach the Unity Realm instantly, but due to his empowered lightning and Spirit, it became way more tiresome.
After several minutes, Gravis' eyes became bloodshot. He didn't even blink anymore since he couldn't afford even a minute distraction. In Gravis' mind, it looked like two tendrils were coming out of his body as they stretched towards his Spirit and lightning. The tendrils swayed, and if Gravis lost focus, they would disappear.
The feeling could be compared to having a button just out of reach. The person stretched their arm fully, and they were just one centimeter short. Yet, with enough time and concentration, the person might be able to overcome that centimeter. Of course, such an extended reach was limited.
Gravis felt the tendrils nearly touching. It was so incredibly close! 'Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!' Gravis repeatedly ordered in his mind. By now, he was gnashing his teeth in fury and concentration. It felt like he was using all his concentration up.
Normally, Gravis could train and concentrate for months on end, but that was because his concentration recovered just as quickly as it was used up. Yet, now, Gravis was going full-throttle. He held absolutely nothing back!
'FUCKING GO!'
Whoooom!
With one last push, Gravis managed to just barely reach his lightning and Spirit with his body. As soon as the tendrils touched them, power coursed through them, building a solid and unbreakable connection.
BANG!
Gravis fell onto his behind in exhaustion. He had used up all his concentration just now, and he just wanted to think about nothing for now. He just wanted to stare into one direction, unmoving, and think about nothing.
Yet, that wouldn't happen. Gravis felt a wondrous feeling echoing throughout his whole being. Gravis wasn't sure what this feeling was, and he also couldn't describe it. It just felt like clarity. It felt like a fog had been lifted, and things that Gravis hadn't even thought about appeared inside his head.
Gravis looked around with his eyes, but everything looked the same. Yet, when he used his Spirit, it kind of felt different. Everything still looked the same, but it was like he could calculate and foresee some things, as weird as it sounded.
Gravis watched the airflow and how it moved the other air around. The patterns of minute movement were too complex to calculate. There were just too many factors. Yet, Gravis didn't need to calculate. It was like he already knew the answer to where the air would be after some time.
Entranced by the feeling, Gravis looked at other things than just air. He looked at insects but foreseeing their movement was definitely way harder. Understanding what a mortal life would do also included understanding the impulses and thought-patterns going on inside their brain. Something like that couldn't be compared to something as simple as some movement of the air.
Gravis kept watching everything for multiple minutes while sitting on a half-destroyed mountain. He concluded that, as long as something didn't have a will behind it, it wouldn't be challenging to analyze it. Yet, the lines also became blurry between these two distinctions.
The leaves swaying in the wind, for example, obviously had a will behind them. After all, plants were alive and had a will. Yet, those movements were not willfully performed by the plant. Therefore, the leaves' movements followed the pattern of natural movement, even though the leaves were part of a body with a will.
As Gravis watched his surroundings, his centers of power were becoming stronger. It was like his Spirit, lightning, and body had had some trash lying around for a while in them, stuff that couldn't be used. Yet, that trash seemed to be the perfect nourishment for the other centers of power.
His body absorbed some nutrients from the Spirit, and after absorbing all of them, all of Gravis' pores opened as they sucked in Energy widely. It was like his body was starving for Energy.
His lightning absorbed the incorporeal waste from the body. When the waste left his body, it seemed to attract the Energy in the air. It was like the waste was not saturated and wanted to combine with Energy to become whole.
Some weird impurities from his lightning entered his Spirit, strengthening the membrane of his Spirit Space and making it more flexible. His Spirit Space started stretching even further, but it needed more building materials. It was like it had only received bricks but lacked the adhesive to make them stick together. This adhesive was Energy, so it also started absorbing Energy.
All his centers of power became purer. Yet, they all wanted the same thing: Energy. Thus, they all pulled at the Energy in the atmosphere together. Gravis' attraction towards Energy skyrocketed, and all the Energy for many kilometers around gathered towards him.
As time passed, more and more Energy entered him. As the Energy in his surroundings basically vanished, more Energy from outside filled the new Energy-vacuum.
Like this, more and more Energy from further away moved towards Gravis. Thousands of kilometers away, the movement of the Energy was only very subtle, but everyone at the Energy Gathering Realm or above had a feeling for Energy.
Usually, Energy remained still in the air, like water in a lifeless lake. Yet, if someone used some Energy, or if something with Energy moved, the surrounding Energy would be pushed to the side.
So, even though the movement was very subtle, people still felt the strange movement from thousands of kilometers away. Some of the younger people were surprised by the weird phenomenon, but older people looked with awe at the direction in which the Energy flowed.
They knew this phenomenon. This only happened when someone reached the Unity Realm. Every time this happened, the Energy would move like this.
Yet, Gravis noticed basically nothing about all this. He was entranced by the air, the water, the plants, the animals, the earth, and everything in the world. He felt like a child that went outside for the first time in its life. Everything was wondrous.
Gravis lay down on his back and looked at the clouds in the sky.
And for the first time in a long while, Gravis only watched the world, unthinking about anything else. Right now, he only wanted to look, hear, and understand.
Everything else could wait.
Like this, Gravis just looked into the sky for multiple hours.