Desolate Era (Book 19 - Book 21)

Another streak of light flew out and entered the sea of lightning.

Clones of Ning’s original body continued to advance, each of them being felled in turn by the lightning sea serpents. Clearly, using them to transform his body was incredibly difficult. However, as he continued to gain experience and perfect his technique, each time he was able to endure the lightning sea serpents for increasingly long periods of time.

“Nine dead.”

“Ten dead.”

Ning felt tremendous heartache as well. Every single clone represented some of his chaos nectar.

“I just need to hold on for a while longer. Just now, if I was slightly luckier, I might’ve succeeded.” Ning did his best to maintain complete calmness as he continued his attempts.

Within the region of gray lightning, there was a cocoon of black lightning. Within the cocoon, Ji Ning’s nude body was covered with dim flickerings of black lightning. His skin and his muscles would occasionally be destroyed, but they would almost instantly recover and heal. Ning’s eyes were closed, and all of his heartforce was focused on guiding the strands of black lightning. The power of the lightning sea serpents was simply too terrifying; he wasn’t able to forcibly command even the tiniest part of it, just guide it.

Clearly, Ning had gained increasing amounts of experience in this technique, at the cost of paying with his life over and over.

Starting with his hands, his entire body began to transform. His torso…his four limbs…his head.

Whoosh.

Ning’s eyes suddenly opened.

Swish! Swish! Black lightning shot out from his eyes, not damaging them in the slightest.

“I finally succeeded.” Ning willed the barrier of golden tattoo-light to disappear. Instantly, the cocoon of black lightning collapsed as well. The black lightning sea snake lashed out chaotically, some of it sweeping past Ning’s body as well. However, the lightning simply shot through Ning’s body without damaging it. Ning continued to stand there, completely unharmed. In fact, some of the black lightning even swirled around inside of his body.

“I finally succeeded!” Ning excitedly clenched his fists. After having been completely stonewalled by Exalted Celestial Thundergod, his only hope was to risk the sea of lightning. At first, he had failed multiple times, causing him to begin to worry. What if he died dozens of times without succeeding? Was he supposed to use up all of his chaos nectar on this single technique?

Fortunately, as his experience increased, he was able to withstand the transformation process of the lightning sea serpent for increasingly long period of times. Ning felt more confident in himself upon seeing that he was improving…and today, he had finally succeeded.

“The remaining steps will no longer be dangerous.” Ning let out a relaxed chuckle. “The next step will be to tame a Ninehorn Lightning Serpent. I don’t have Thousandrot Godfruits or a Myriad Thunders Godgem, but I do have chaos nectar. Clearly, the only issue before me is actually finding one of them.”

“Time to go.”

This time, Ning headed straight towards the field of endless black lightning in a fearless manner. The black lightning bolts were all in the shape of serpents, and they flew about with wild abandon with utterly heaven-wrecking power. However…no sea wave, no matter how vast, could drown a fish. This region of lightning sea snakes could be described as an lethally dangerous zone for others, but it was no longer of any danger to Ning. Still, upon actually entering the region, Ning still slowed down his advance and advanced cautiously.

One lightning sea serpent after another flashed past Ning, some brushing against him. Ning, however, simply felt a warm, gentle feeling throughout his body.

“Ha.” He let out a chuckle, then flew all the way into the region.

“Time to search for a Ninehorn Lightning Serpent.”

As Ning flew through the region of black lightning, he continuously released his heartforce to search the region. Heartforce was inherently formless, and so not even the lightning sea serpents were capable of damaging it. Given how far Ning’s coresense stretched, he was quickly able to locate a Ninehorn Lightning Serpent located deep within the sea of lightning. Not hesitating at all, Ning immediately flew in that direction, boring deep into the heart of the lightning sea.

Prior to this, Ning was still able to see the primordial chaos if he raised his head. Now, however, the only thing he could see anywhere were those flashes of black lightning.

After flying for a full hour, a Ninehorn Lightning Serpent drew close to Ning’s direction.

“Perfect.” Ning had long ago formed a ‘serpent egg’ of divine tattoos within his body. So long as a Ninehorn Lightning Serpent touched his body, it would immediately be drawn inside.

Swoosh! Ning did everything he could to move closer to that Ninehorn Lightning Serpent.

Whoosh! The giant black serpent had nine horns on its head and was incredibly agile. It was happily swimming about within the sea of lightning, sometimes flying fast, sometimes flying slow. What caused Ning the most despair was that it had suddenly begun to fly towards a different direction. Given how fast it was, Ning wasn’t even able to catch a glimpse of it, to say nothing of catch it.

“Ugh. Failed.” Once the Ninehorn Lightning Serpent began to move away from him, given how fast its speed was, there was no way Ning could possibly catch up to it. Thus, actually encountering and acquiring one had an element of luck to it, especially in the encountering part.

“I’ll keep going in deeper.” Ning continued to advance into the depths of the lightning sea. The entire lightning sea did have a coremost region. In a lightning sea of sufficiently vast size, Myriad Thunders Godgems would crystallize within these core regions. However, this one had been discovered by the Three Realms long ago. Given how able the likes of Suiren and Daoist Three Purities were, if there were any godgems within it, they would’ve been able and willing to pay the price necessary to enter the core regions to harvest the godgems. Mother Nuwa in particular was completely capable of easily traversing the sea.

Thus, Ning didn’t believe that he would encounter a Myriad Thunders Godgem within the core.

He continued to fly deeper and deeper into towards core…

He flew fairly slowly within the lightning sea. Given that the lightning sea was also quite vast, he flew for two full months. Although he encountered more than a hundred Ninehorn Lightning Serpents, not a single one of them touched him. One of them was so close that Ning was able to see it with the naked eye, but alas…with a swish, it flew past Ning without touching him. Ning frantically expanded his body to become ten thousand kilometers in size, but was still unable to touch it.

The serpent was simply too fast.

After flying for more than two months, Ning finally arrived at the core region of the lightning sea.

He spread out his heartsense. He was able to sense that a series of terrifyingly powerful ripples were emanating from the core; clearly, this was the wellspring of power for the lightning sea. There was a large number of Ninehorn Lightning Serpents around the wellspring as well. In this place, Ninehorn Lightning Serpents were far more common than in any other place. This was the reason why Ning had come here.

“As expected, there are no Myriad Thunders Godgems here.” However, Ning only felt excitement. “Now that I’ve finally arrived here, I can see that there are plenty of Ninehorn Lightning Serpents here. I should be able to touch one.”

Whap!