Lightning Is the Only Way

Gravis looked at Stella and noticed that she had a melancholic expression on her face. 

Her teacher had already died, obviously.

Losing someone dear was always difficult. Gravis knew this very well. However, they were all Immortals by now, and no one would sink into an inescapable whirlpool of despair. The death of a loved one was normal for every Immortal.

"For what it's worth," Gravis said. "The short moment I have talked with your teacher gave me the impression that she was a good person, far better than most humans."

Stella took a deep breath. Her emotions still hadn't calmed down, and they wanted to lash out at anything that came close to her. A mortal human might lose their control and shout at Gravis that he had no idea what he was talking about, but she had enough control over herself to realize Gravis' sentiment.

"Yes, she was," Stella said slowly with a distant look. "She was like a mother to my brother and me."

Gravis nodded. "You know, before you appeared, I was already losing faith in humanity. Seeing you reminded me of your teacher, which reminded me of the fact that not all powerful humans are hypocritical assholes."

Stella wanted to distract herself for now, which is why she looked at Gravis with furrowed brows. "That's a harsh judgment," she said. 

"It is, but does that mean that it isn't true?" Gravis asked.

Stella remained silent for some seconds.

"Tell me what happened," Stella said. 

Gravis nodded and told her about his last fight with Samantha, the Unrestrained Sect, and how the other Sect Masters acted.

After Gravis was finished recounting his tale, Stella snorted in disgust. "Yeah, I agree that their conduct is false and disgusting, but just because you see this conduct running rampant here doesn't mean that other places are the same."

Gravis waited for Stella to explain. 

"The Sects here count as High-Tier Sects, but only barely," Stella explained. "They have their Immortal Kings, which gives them a grand illusion of being very powerful when they can't even enter the core territories of the world."

"They believe they are powerful enough to be part of the world's leadership but feel unjustly treated by not being allowed to enter the core territories. This gives them a need to prove themselves to anything and anyone."

Gravis nodded. "Makes sense. They seek short-term power with everything they have to prove to others and themselves that they are powerful. However, all this hypocrisy makes it difficult for disciples to like the leadership. When a talented disciple leaves the area, they will be less likely to help their previous home due to their bad feelings towards it."

Stella was a bit surprised by Gravis' words. "Are you sure you're only four millennia old?" she asked. "You talk like an ancient, experienced expert."

Instead of answering Stella's question, Gravis gave her a question of his own. "Have you been born into this world, or do you come from a lower world? I'm very certain that you have been born into this world."

Stella furrowed her brows. "That isn't hard to guess," she said. "I have obviously been trained for a long time with methods that don't exist in lower worlds."

"I was talking about your mindset and your surprise at my knowledge of human conduct," Gravis said.

"Explain," Stella said, a bit indignant.

"I started my journey in a lower world, which means that I went from weak to the most powerful in two different worlds already. On this journey, you get to see all facets of human and beast conduct. Any Ascender can see the Sect Masters for what they are, which silently builds disgust in the Ascenders towards the Sect Masters."

"Additionally, I'm very certain that nearly no Sect Master from this Sect Alliance is an Ascender. There might be one or two odd ones, but everyone else must have been born in this world."

Stella furrowed her brows as she thought about Gravis' words. "What makes you think so?" she asked.

"Because being a Sect Master in this Sect Alliance is a dead-end," Gravis said. "People who have never been in this position might not realize that they are in a dead-end, but the Ascenders have been in that position before. After all, every Ascender has once been the most powerful person in their world."

"If the Ascenders were susceptible to taking up such a position, they wouldn't be Ascenders. They would have already taken up such a position in the middle or lower worlds. Therefore, most Ascenders know these kinds of positions and know to avoid them."

Stella combed her hair with her fingers as she fell into thought. Gravis' words actually made a lot of sense. Why hadn't she thought of that before?

Stella quickly found an answer to that question.

Because she didn't have enough knowledge in different positions of power. She had joined the Nine Elements Sect, and her talent had been quickly noticed by the upper echelon. While being a Core Disciple, she had to fight against a lot of soft and hard schemes, but she hadn't been in a different position before.

The life of a Core Disciple definitely wasn't easy. The Peak Sects knew that they couldn't create a powerful expert with safety, which is why the competition amongst Core Disciples was fierce and fatal. 

If the Core Disciples were protected against hidden schemes and assassinations, they wouldn't have any experience in these matters. Pumping resources without end into a Core Disciple just for them to die to a preventable assassination attempt was a waste of money and time. 

Because of that, only some superficial rules were in place to spur the creativity of the subtle and plotting kind of Cultivators. Then, it was all on the backs of the Core Disciples to deal with these schemes. If they died, they died. 

However, the answer to the question of why Stella hadn't been able to see these things that Gravis had seen was because she had only been in the Core Disciple position. She hadn't been a Sect Master. She hadn't been an elder. She hadn't been an unaffiliated Cultivator. She hadn't been inside a less than savory Sect.

The fact that Stella managed to realize these things was beyond impressive. Being able to analyze oneself this objectively and finding reasons and origins of why one lacked in a certain department was very difficult. 

Only with such a mindset could one grow indefinitely. 

This was probably also one of the essential reasons why Stella had climbed to her current position.

Gravis looked at Stella's expression and wondered what she was thinking about. Gravis needed to know Stella's mindset better so that he could help her in understanding the Law of Freedom, which was imperative to restoring her Will-Aura's growth. 

"What are you thinking about?" Gravis asked.

"Just about people in general," she answered absentmindedly.

"Could you elaborate on what you are thinking about?" Gravis asked. "Knowing you better makes it easier for me to help you with your Will-Aura issue. That's what you're here for, right?"

Stella looked at Gravis with a complex expression. She didn't know why, but she somehow didn't like it that Gravis said that she was only here because of her Will-Aura, even though that was the truth.

Nevertheless, Stella narrated her thoughts to Gravis for the next half hour.

Gravis simply stood there, listening to her thought process, and to be quite frank, he was rather impressed.

Her thoughts weren't the same as his, but they were similar. 

After a while, Gravis wanted to add his input to her thoughts. Stella seemingly accepted that input without injecting any wrong meanings when Gravis accidentally generalized a statement. She knew what he meant and didn't get hung up on technicalities.

As the hours passed, they talked about one topic after the other. The conversation flowed in a free form, seemingly having no specific goal as they simply exchanged their opinions. 

Before they knew it, the sun had set and risen again. They had been talking for over half a day. 

When one of the sun's rays hit Gravis' eyes, he noticed that over half a day had passed.

"Alright, stop," Gravis said, holding up his hand.

Stella frowned. "Why?"

"We've been at it for quite a long time," Gravis said. "Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy our conversation, but there's something I have to do."

"What?" Stella asked directly without any kind of distant politeness.

Whoop!

Gravis took out an Emblem and looked at it with narrowed eyes. 

"I need to talk to someone."