Lightning Is the Only Way

"Haven't you said that you cared about us?" Cera said with venom. "Have you been lying?"

"Hey!" Gravis shouted as he frowned. "Don't ever question my love for you! I know very well how it feels to be suppressed, and I understand how frustrating it must have been for all of you, but don't blow this out of proportion!"

"There are many ways you could have used to solve this issue. If it were truly so bad, you would have taken any of them," Gravis said.

All three of Gravis' children had different reactions to his words. Yersi sighed while Aris looked with a complicated expression towards the battle. Meanwhile, Cera only looked with disdain at her father. "Enlighten me," she said, and judging by her tone, she didn't expect much.

"First of all, you could have immediately fled as soon as you were confronted by this situation."

"Where to?" Cera asked without any amusement.

"The sea beasts," Gravis answered simply.

"The enemy?" she asked like she hadn't heard correctly. "And become traitors? I could never live with such a shame."

"And exactly that's why the situation wasn't so bad," Gravis said. "Because staying in this situation was not as bad as living with some shame. If living in this situation was so bad, you would have simply fled in shame. Tell me, what would you have done if you knew that the Earthquake Emperor would kill you tomorrow? What would have happened? Would you have waited and obediently died?"

Cera gnashed her teeth. "Of course not! I'm not throwing my life away!" she shouted.

"So you admit that you had a choice in your current circumstance," Gravis said.

Cera glared at Gravis. "Of course we had, but living in shame is even worse than dying."

"Now, you're contradicting yourself," Gravis said with some annoyance. "You said that you wouldn't have thrown your life away, but now you say that you would rather die than live in shame. What is it?"

Cera stood up angrily. "These are two unrelated things!"

"No, they're not," Gravis answered. "When you're confronted with a horrible situation, you will want to find a way out of it. But sure, let's put a pin in that. Next thing: You could also have attacked the Tornado Emperor together when the Earthquake Emperor was busy. There surely had to be some times where that opportunity presented itself."

"And waste such a great tempering opportunity?" Cera shouted back. "That's a level three Emperor, and there are not many left. Wasting such a great tempering opponent just to- "

And then, silence.

Cera grew angrier as she realized what she had just been about to say while Gravis only smirked. Aris closed his eyes and sighed while Yersi felt a bit uncomfortable with the situation.

"You know," Gravis said after some seconds. "I have a close and powerful friend in this world, and I think her words are very accurate for this current circumstance."

Gravis paused for a bit.

"She would say, stop being a little bitch," Gravis said.

Cera nearly exploded.

"As far as I have seen," Gravis said, "none of you three had had any genuine setbacks yet. You have been born in a perfect area suited for you. Then, you have been at a place that allowed you to become Kings very quickly. After that, you joined the defensive lines and stayed there."

"You didn't have to crawl, flee, and hide from an enemy that was about to kill you. You didn't have to do something shameless to defeat an opponent that was too powerful for you to kill. Now, you have been suppressed once by a level four Emperor, and you immediately acted like it was the worst thing."

"We are not some carefree mortal animals," Gravis said. "The fact that you hadn't yet needed to resort to something like this shows that your life has gone too smooth. If I were a mortal, I would feel for your circumstance, but we're not mortals. We're Cultivators. How can you possibly reach the top if such a minor thing, which you could have even resolved yourself, affects you so much."

Gravis leaned back again. "Yersi should know. She had once been in such a situation. Isn't that right, Yersi?" Gravis asked.

Yersi sighed but nodded. "Back when I have left the Offspring Areas for the outside world to recover my power, I didn't live with dignity," she said. "I had to crawl and hide in caves, flee from anything that even looked like it was dangerous. I have basically lived like a weak rodent, constantly hiding from danger."

"Father is right," Yersi said. "This has maybe been the most horrible thing in our lives, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't so bad."

Aris also sighed. "How could I have been so blind?" he said from the side. "When I saw you killing the Tornado Emperor, father, I felt rage. I felt like you were stealing my opponent. If our situation had truly been so bad, I would have felt relief, not rage."

Cera still wasn't completely willing to accept her father's and siblings' words.

"Every bad situation, experience of pain, tragedy, and other similarly painful things make you more powerful," Gravis said. "As mortals, we can vie for a life without such pain, but as Cultivators, we need to fight against the pain to reach our goal."

Gravis stood up.

"If such an incident has such a gigantic impact on you, it might actually be better for you to stop cultivating," Gravis said.

Silence returned.

"That's too far, father," Yersi said.

"It's not," Gravis answered. "Only now have you gotten a true taste of cultivation. Do you think this will be the first time that any of this will happen? Only more pain will wait for you in the future. You guys know my story. Yet, instead of listening, put yourself in my situation. Don't think like it's something that someone else has experienced, but something you have experienced."

"You can't compare yourself to us," Cera said, less angry by now. "Your circumstances are far from normal."

Gravis looked at Cera for some seconds and sighed. "Is this as far as you can go?" Gravis asked. "Have you already accepted that you can't become as powerful as me?"

Gravis looked at Cera intently as Cera averted her eyes. "Do you think my power has been handed to me? I won't be a hypocrite and say that I have achieved absolutely everything on my own, but I have achieved 95% on my own."

"Without the assassination attempt on my life and being buried in a pile of shit for two weeks, I wouldn't have gotten Destruction Lightning. Without me killing someone I felt very close to, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to attune my Spirit to Destruction Lightning."

"Without me constantly seeking my own death through insane tempering and pain, my Will-Aura would be nearly useless right now. Without me fleeing from my opponents in shame, I would be dead. Without me constantly fighting Heaven and purposefully walking into its traps, my Spirit and lightning wouldn't be so powerful, and I wouldn't even have come to this world."

"Cultivation is pain," Gravis said. "If you can deal with the pain, great, but if you can't, it's better that you don't cultivate."

Yersi and Aris listened intently. Cera didn't want to admit it, but her father's words also touched her a bit.

"When I've been a level five King," Gravis continued as he walked around, "I have been able to fight a beast three levels above me. Something like this doesn't even exist in this world. Yet, was that enough? Was that where I stopped?"

"No, I didn't. Instead, I spent three times of my current age at that point to push myself one level further."

"Think about it," Gravis said. "That would be 2400 years for you right now. Would you be willing to not fight a single beast in the next 2400 years and only comprehend nothing but Laws to boost your Battle-Strength one more level? Would you be fine with remaining level one Emperors for 2400 more years?"

Silence reigned again.

"I think I would," Aris said.

Gravis smirked when he heard Aris. That was a good mindset.

"And Yersi," Gravis said as he looked at her. "Don't coddle your siblings. You're only hurting their path to power by doing that."

Yersi felt called out while Aris and Cera looked at Yersi with questioning looks.

Yersi smiled awkwardly. "Actually," she said slowly. "I never thought of our situation to be so bad, but I didn't want to make you two feel weak."

Aris sighed again when he heard that. "I have a lot to work on," he muttered.

Cera's insides churned in a mix of emotions.

"ARGH!" Cera suddenly said as she shook her head violently. "Fine!" she shouted. "Over is over. Can we change the topic now?"

Gravis had to chuckle a little when he heard her.

Then, the four of them talked about their lives, Laws, cultivation, power, experiences, and everything else.

And sooner than they thought, the deadline for the southern region had arrived.

"It's time," Gravis said as he stood up after three days.

"What's your plan, father?" Yersi asked. Gravis had always avoided talking about this topic.

"You will see," Gravis said with a smirk. "The only thing I can say is that the dynamic of this entire war might change."

"In truth," Gravis said as he looked towards the west. "There is a high possibility that this war will completely vanish in a few years."