Krune looked at them and said, "Alright, we're all going to enter, but not for now. I need some time to check one thing first."
They looked at Krune and nodded in response. It was Yusa then remembered one thing. "Right! During that battle against the Fog Leopard, your Myriad Water Thunder Dragons suddenly dispersed. Why was that?"
Krune nodded as he replied, "Exactly! That's what I wanted to check. At that moment, I felt something in my foundation that reacted to the lightning power that I used in the Myriad Water Thunder Dragons. I want to take some time to check why that happened."
He then looked at Shinja and asked, "You probably know more about the situation of the danger zones than us. Do you think those Divine Soul Realm demon beasts would probe this location?"
Shinja shook her head as she replied, "Extremely unlikely. We're too deep underground. To probe an enormous region with Divine Sense is already somewhat difficult. To include a depth of two kilometers on top of that is out of the question. Otherwise, this gate would have been found a long time ago. Not to mention that the Raskie Danger Zone's fog affects the Divine Sense to start with."
Krune understood the situation and nodded. The next second, he transformed back to his wisp form and moved to a corner. Soon, Shinja's eyes almost popped out of her sockets! She even rubbed her eyes to see if she wasn't hallucinating, but Krune was still there in the same way.
"Is that a wisp?"
Yusa put a hand on her shoulder and nodded, telling her, "Now you know why he shows no mercy when he sees someone harming other wisps. He's basically protecting his race."
Of course, Shinja found it unbelievable. "How's that possible? Shouldn't wisps be extremely weak? His combat prowess is out of the charts as well. On top of that, he far surpasses the strength of those with the same cultivation level."
Hearing Shinja's words, Yusa looked at Krune and asked, "Is it okay if I talk with her about that?"
Krune agreed. "Go ahead. I will have to concentrate for a while, so leave some space for me here. Make sure to explain everything to Shinja. Talking about the Myriad Energies Technique is okay with me as well."
Yusa nodded and left with Shinja. She was going to explain how Krune became that strong. She then took a blood contract and started writing on it. While doing so, she told Shinja, "Shinja, this isn't because we don't trust you. In fact, I might tell you this straight away. Krune is a wisp that will never force anyone he trusts into a blood contract. This is something that Ao and I insisted on doing. That's because you won't be able to talk about it without Krune's agreement. Also, it won't allow those memories to be forcefully read like with Soul Searches that high-level cultivators can do."
Shinja then looked at Ao Sulian, who nodded. She then took a deep breath and signed it. Krune had already shown his wisp form before she signed anything to start with. If she wanted to, she could simply refuse, and no one here would be able to do a thing. They still weren't her match, but even so, Krune still trusted her and showed her his true form! In Shinja's eyes, that was more than enough.
"Can you tell me now how a wisp was able to get to this point?"
Yusa and Ao nodded and started talking about everything.
---
On the other side of the cave, Krune was paying attention to his rainbow core. He started to summon a little lightning elemental energy outside. At first, nothing happened, which made him a little puzzled. Krune then decided to go ahead and use the Thunder Line skill. As expected, his rainbow core rippled, and his control over the skill went out of control once more. After some sparks flew around, the skill that had just formed disappeared.
'As I thought, it's the lightning elemental energy that causes it. The moment I use lightning power, the lightning element inside my rainbow core reacts to it. If I'm not wrong, it's because the rainbow core's lightning came from the Heavenly Tribulation. Could it be that it has some conscience of its own?'
However, that part wasn't important. The issue was that Krune couldn't use the Lightning element because of that. He tried several times but had no use. As long as a large amount of lightning elemental energy was used, his rainbow core's lightning would mess up with it. It was then that Krune had an idea.
'Could it be that my rainbow core wants to eat the lightning that I'm using?'
He thought it to be very likely. Otherwise, why would it intervene only when a lot of elemental power was used? That's probably because it only cared if there was a lot of it.
With that, Krune then directly summoned Lightning element around the rainbow core, and sure enough, it started absorbing the Lightning element. But that wasn't all. He could feel that the power of lightning that he fed to his rainbow core was being converted into the power of Tribulation Lightning as well. It was then that a crazy idea came into mind. 'If there's a lot of Tribulation Lightning, can I use it by myself?'
He didn't know if it was feasible. First of all, he had never heard about someone having the Tribulation Lightning as part of their cores, let alone using it. 'But if it works, the power of my lightning skills will multiply several times. It will definitely become my best trump card!'
Krune then kept feeding lightning power to his core. The process was quite slow, not to mention that it used a lot of his Spiritual Energy. The problem was that only 5% of the Lightning element's power that he sent in was converted into Tribulation Lightning. The rest was simply discarded by his rainbow core. In any case, Krune understood the reason.
'The Tribulation Lightning of my rainbow core is basically filtering all the impurities in my own lightning. In the end, only 5% is usable. But this is good as well. It shows how powerful this Tribulation Lightning really is.'
Time passed, and Krune had to stop to recover his Spiritual Energy three times. Only after around 10 hours did his rainbow core finally stop absorbing the Lightning element.
'First, instead of trying to use the Tribulation Lightning, let's try to use a normal Thunder Line. I want to see if my rainbow core's Tribulation Lightning will intervene now.' With that in mind, Krune summoned the Lightning element and used the skill. The Thunder Line pierced the cave wall and disappeared deep inside.
'As expected, if my rainbow core's Tribulation Lightning is satisfied, it won't mess around with my normal control over the Lightning element. Even if I can't use the power of Tribulation Lightning, I still found a way to stop it from affecting my own Lightning element. The problem is, how should I try to use it?'
Krune pondered over it for a bit and tried to guide the Tribulation Lightning just like he guided his Spiritual Energy. Sadly, it didn't even move. Krune decided to bait the lightning out using his own lightning power as a bridge, to no success either. In fact, there wasn't much Krune could do anyway. It was then that he thought about something.
'When my Spiritual Energy Meridians were being formed, they were capable of absorbing and letting the tribulation lightning pass through. Can I do the opposite?'
Krune had never thought about doing the reverse. However, he thought it was still worth a shot. Instead of connecting all his seven meridians with his universe foundation, he moved one out and connected it directly with his rainbow core. Although nothing happened at first, it made Krune understand one thing.
'I see, that's because I used my meridians to absorb. For this to work, I have to reverse the flow. Instead of absorbing things from outside, I will absorb things from the inside.'
As expected, when the flow of the spiritual energy meridians was changed, it started to absorb the Tribulation Lightning from the rainbow core. For safety's sake, Krune absorbed just a little bit of Tribulation Lightning and then fused its power with his own Lightning element. After that, he used the Thunder Line skill again.
Krune was impressed! The size of this Thunder Line increased by three times, and it was obviously much more powerful. He then threw it against the cave wall. As expected, it also pierced through the wall and went deep inside. Not to mention that the hole left behind was much bigger than the previous one as well. Krune used his Divine Sense to probe the distance that it traveled before dissipating, and it wasn't before it pierced through a hundred meters of earth that it lost its power.
'Impressive! The normal Thunder Line was only able to pierce through about twenty-something meters of rock. However, with just this little bit of Tribulation Lightning, the power increased several times!'
Don't look down on the distance that the lightning pierced through. Lightning was weak against the earth in the first place. For it to pierce through a hundred meters of it was already very scary.
Krune became excited, and he wanted to try more! He then returned to his human form and went to talk with Yusa and the others. He explained what he found and that he wanted to test it outside. While explaining, he thought to himself, 'It's also a test to see how much Tribulation Lightning I can summon at once. My rainbow core definitely won't allow me to use everything, so I need to know my limit.'
Yusa and the others nodded in response. If they were venturing together inside the secret realm, they must know their group members' full capabilities. Only with that could their teamwork reach its peak.
With that, Krune's group left the cave and covered its entrance. After that, they moved far away from there. If Krune's Tribulation Lightning was really that powerful, then he might attract a lot of attention after using it.
Krune asked Shinja to help him find a 9th Stage Foundation Establishment demon beast. After looking for over an hour, Krune's Divine Sense finally spotted one. It was a Crimson Tiger, and it was at the peak of the 9th Stage at that.
Krune told Shinja to be ready to help in case things go south as he went forward to confront the beast. Tigers were lonely by nature, and this one was no different. Thanks to that, Krune didn't have to bait one out of a group in the first place. He didn't waste time and went directly to attack.
When Crimson Tiger saw Krune, it was surprised. "To think that a 4th Stage weakling would come this far inside the Danger Zone, I guess this is my lucky day."
Krune smiled after hearing that. "Is that so?"
The tiger was taken aback by that answer. Its instincts told it that something was not right. It then used its Divine Sense, but only Krune appeared in it. Shinja stayed far behind precisely to prevent the tiger from noticing her presence. Krune told her that if it didn't work, he had the confidence to hold it down long enough for her to arrive.
After the tiger found nothing, it didn't wait anymore. The feeling that something bad was going to happen was still bothering it, so it attacked straight away to not give a chance for anything to happen. In any case, Krune saw it moving straight at him, and it would be in front of him in a second.
'An attack that can use the total power of the Tribulation Lightning available to me. There's only one thing that powerful in my book.'
Krune concentrated his entire mind on the attack. His Spiritual Energy Meridian absorbed Tribulation Lightning like crazy until its connection with the rainbow core was cut off by the core itself. Krune then concentrated the entire power of the Tribulation Lightning up above him.
"Heavens Fall!"
That was the only thing he could think of. The attack that had given the greatest impression ever since he was born, the lightning strikes of the Heavenly Tribulation! Only that would be able to display the full might of the Tribulation Lightning.
The Crimson Tiger was shocked! That strike came too fast, and it had absolutely no time to even think of a countermeasure when it hit its back.
Boom!
An enormous explosion blasted everything away. Even Krune, who was the owner of the attack, was sent flying in the distance. Krune was only able to stop himself after two hundred meters! The fog around was cleared up to five kilometers away, and it even revealed Shinja and the others in the distance. They looked at the apocalyptic scene in front of them, and the sight gave them shivers!
"That's not the power a Foundation Establishment cultivator should have. Even an early-stage Core Formation Realm cultivator would probably die if hit head-on by such an attack!"
When Krune looked at where the Crimson Tiger was, there was only a crater left behind with lightning sparks appearing everywhere. The tiger was nowhere to be seen, and it seemed like it had been completely pulverized! Not even its demon core was left behind. Krune looked at that scene with apprehension. The power of the Tribulation Lightning was too absurd! Nevertheless, Krune quickly came back to himself. The explosion would definitely attract the attention of the nearby demon beasts, so they needed to leave soon!
---
Back in the cave, Yusa and the others were looking at Krune as if he was a monster. All that attention made him feel quite uncomfortable, though.
After a while, Shinja asked him, "How did you keep the Tribulation Lightning with you? I also underwent through the tribulation when I reached the Foundation Establishment Realm with my universe foundation. However, I had to give it my all just to fend it off, let alone keep it. Not to mention that I had the help of the guild back then. Otherwise, I would have definitely died."
Krune explained that he used his Spiritual Energy Meridians to guide it inside. He then divided it into several parts before conducting it to hit his planet. He told them what happened after the tribulation was over and how the remnant power of the Tribulation Lightning struck his rainbow core while it was being formed.
Shinja and the others were amazed. In the end, it was just a coincidence that something like that happened. Then again, Shinja understood it better. There was no way someone would purposely strike their future core after becoming successful in building a universe foundation. It was tantamount to suicide!
Ao couldn't help but comment, "Anyways, that strike was too powerful. That peak 9th Stage Foundation Establishment Crimson Tiger was turned into dust. That's incredible!"
The others could only look at him with jealousy. If they could gain his power just by drinking his blood, they would definitely suck him dry!
In response to Ao's comment, Krune looked away and pretended he didn't notice it. "I just used a little bit too much strength, that's all."
The others' mouths could only twitch in response.
Just a little bit? Is he making fun of us? If that's just a little bit, then what about us? Can you at least first think about our feelings?