Lightning Is the Only Way

The days came and went.

With her father's and teacher's acceptance, Joyce destroyed her Spirit. After that, she started refilling her Spirit with Energy until it was 99% done. With the help of a lot of Energy Stones, she reached the tenth level of Energy Gathering and immediately condensed her Spirit. All of this took only a couple of hours.

Like this, her path was set. She would go through the Self Stage in the future. She would also have a lot of time to get used to fighting in life and death tempering. After all, it was nearly impossible to speed up the progression through the Spirit Forming Realm. She would require 40 years of accumulation to reach the Self Stage. By then, she should have already been able to condense a level two Unity Will.

If everything went according to plan, she would be able to train her battle capabilities and spend time with her family for 40 years. After that, she would leave her family forever. They would never see each other again.

This was the cruelty of the cultivation world. Everyone that wasn't able to keep up would get left behind. Due to the time dilation difference between the middle world and the lower world, everyone she knew would be dead in a maximum of 30 years after she reached the middle world. Thirty years in the middle world would correspond to 300 years in the lower world, the absolute maximum of longevity for Spirit Forming experts.

This thought was quite harrowing, but Joyce knew that there was no way around it. She would spend a lot of time in her Clan in the next 40 years because that would be the last time she would have a family. She decided that she wouldn't have a family until she reached the highest world, which would take an incredibly long time. If she even managed to survive until then.

Joyce also sent out a lot of invitations to her friends. After all, they needed five people for a group. Entering with less than five was impossible, for some reason. This was probably one of Heaven's restriction that would minimize the wastage of Energy for trials.

In the following days, many of Joyce's friends would arrive. She always greeted them and informed them about why they were invited. A lot of them weren't happy when they heard the reason. After all, the ratio of deaths was just too terrifying for the Heaven's Trial. Yet, others were thankful for the invitation.

When Joyce wasn't entertaining guests, she was taught by Gravis how to fight. Many people have fought more battles than Gravis, but no one had been through more life and death fights. After all, what worth did sparring and harmless fights have?

terrain and that everything could be considered a weapon. He even said that the fact that she was a woman

she was a woman, even if it could be useful. She wanted a fair fight, where gender didn't play a role. Gravis didn't mind. After all, it was her

will, she couldn't imagine stabbing a beast into the behind or cutting off its genitals. In her mind, this seemed kind of disrespectful, and not even her

and their own philosophy. If she didn't want to use these things, it was up

they realized that they had to give Joyce more space. She was an adult, and she would need to make her own decisions from now on, and when those decisions were wrong, she had to live

four chosen people would be fighting as one team. If there were someone on a higher Stage, the difficulty of

Spirit after going through the tenth Stage of Energy Gathering. Yet, not everyone was as determined as Joyce. Nearly all of them weren't willing to waste their years of effort just to start

to know that Joyce had friends from all over the world, and

in the presence of Gravis. He knew Gravis' face and saw what had

Gravis confirmed it, and the cultivator decided to go through with it. Like this, their group had two people at the

weren't willing had left a long time ago. Now,

strengths and weaknesses, Joyce made another decision. The fourth member was a disciple of the Wind Sect. His Will-Aura was above average, and his

the remaining candidates had any outstanding talents or powers. All in all, they could be considered supremely average. After nearly an hour of debates, she still wasn't able to make

choose?" she asked

too weak and wouldn't be able to pull

"But we don't have any

Gravis

and looked at