Chapter 461: Thunder Elemental Lifeform

After passing through the hurricane, Qi Suian returned to Flying Fish Town Island, completely unnoticed.

His disappearance hadn’t caused much of a stir on Flying Fish Town Island, either.

The previous battle with the Red Bay Wind Thieves had been chaotic; it was normal for a person or two to go missing in the aftermath.

Besides, Qi Suian had kept to himself. The only ones likely to remember him were children like Mi Yun, who used to get candy from him.

He glanced at his candy shop. It had long since been cleared out and had a new owner.

Since he hadn’t returned for so long, he was presumed dead. Being all alone, Qi Suian’s belongings were naturally carved up and divided among others.

It wasn’t just him. The butcher shop belonging to Fatty Qi, the meat-seller who had fought alongside him, had also been taken over.

This was the inevitable end for someone who died with no wife, children, or siblings.

Most of the shops on his street had new owners; the volley of arrows had taken many who lived and worked on that same street.

Qi Suian quickly retracted his gaze, focusing instead on the Wind King’s scale in his hand.

The scale had begun to change upon arriving at Flying Fish Town Island. The change wasn’t external, but rather a modification of its internal data.

It was converting its authority by reading the island’s information.

On Red Bay Town Island, it had acted as a temporary deed for that island; now, it was becoming a temporary deed for Flying Fish Town Island.

Qi Suian paid no mind to these changes, simply waiting quietly for the transformation to complete.

Once it was complete, he could have his vegetative secondary consciousness act as a proxy to refine the Wind King’s scale and obtain ownership of Flying Fish Town Island.

’The system update really is slow,’ Qi Suian complained inwardly.

Apparently, there was too much data from Red Bay Town Island stored in the Wind King’s scale, so deleting it was taking time.

A single scale could only serve as the temporary deed for one ownerless island at a time. Therefore, it naturally had to purge the data of the previous deed before importing the new one.

And whether it was reading, importing, or deleting, the process was incredibly inefficient.

Qi Suian estimated it wouldn’t be finished for at least three hours.

He considered speeding it up himself but was afraid his methods might be too crude and damage the scale.

Three hours wasn’t three days. Qi Suian could afford to wait.

’Just another eventful day,’ Qi Suian thought as he noticed the thunderstorm gathering intensity over Flying Fish Town Island.

He couldn’t tell if it was because of his own arrival—a protagonist with plot armor—or if the storm had simply been building to a bursting point.

A furious bolt of lightning blasted down from the sky. It didn’t strike Qi Suian, but instead hit the very center of Flying Fish Town.

The location of the Wind King Palace.

It struck so fast that not a single Windwalker could react in time.

’The casualties won’t be light.’ Qi Suian watched as flames shot up, rapidly engulfing the entire Wind King Palace.

A good number of the Windwalkers inside the palace had been struck dead by the lightning.

’Something is wrong with this thunderstorm.’

’The Windwalkers are strong. The chance of them being killed by a lightning strike should be extremely low.’

’Even with a storm this intense, they should have been severely injured at worst.’

’But now, at least half the Windwalkers in the palace are dead. The survivors were on the periphery—they were only injured, not killed.’

Qi Suian’s eyes narrowed. He suspected the thunderstorm was targeting the wind, inflicting massive damage as if it were a direct counter. Otherwise, this scene wouldn’t make sense.

Luckily, most of the Windwalkers weren’t in the Wind King Palace. They were out on patrol duty. The ones who remained were on leave, so there were relatively few of them present.

After the lightning strike on the Wind King Palace, all the Windwalkers rushed back immediately and began using the power of wind to extinguish the flames.

In less than ten minutes, the fire at the Wind King Palace was put out.

’The storm is gathering power.’ Qi Suian’s gaze fell upon the immense source of energy coalescing from the lightning in the sky.

By the looks of it, it wasn’t just gathering power—it was aiming.

Just as he thought, the next moment, another blast of lightning came crashing down.

This time, however, the Windwalkers were prepared. After all, the Wind King Palace had just been struck.

Having lost the element of surprise, the Windwalkers simultaneously used their power over wind to create a dense web of protective layers.

Yet the lightning tore through many of their defenses with ease. Fortunately, there were enough Windwalkers contributing; by the time the blast was finally spent, only seven thin layers of protection remained.

’It’s definitely a counter effect. No wonder it killed half the Windwalkers in the palace earlier.’

Qi Suian’s eyes narrowed, and he shot toward the lightning in the sky.

Lightning doesn’t normally have an elemental advantage over wind, but the principle behind this attack went beyond simple elemental counters.

Here, both the wind and the lightning were alive. It was like one person taking a knife and stabbing another.

Qi Suian sped toward the storm. The lightning seemed to notice him, gathering in massive quantities to form a humanoid, lightning-elemental lifeform at its core.

It resembled an ape, with slender rays of lightning extending from its back like a pair of wings.

The creature was rather abstract; its facial features were blurry, but there were enough dividing lines to make out a general shape.

A buffer zone of radiant lightning formed, attempting to slow Qi Suian’s approach.

But Qi Suian completely ignored the buffer, shattering the radiant lightning and appearing right before the elemental. He reached out to grab it.

"Human, you dare provoke the envoy of the Thunder God!" The elemental erupted with lightning, attempting to transform into a current of electricity to slip through Qi Suian’s grasp.

But the creature was ultimately no match for him. Even as a current of electricity, it was still caught firmly in Qi Suian’s hand.

Grabbing raw energy with his bare hands wasn’t difficult. It was mere elementalization, a skill he had mastered while researching the Gloomy Attachment Technique.

Unless one operated at a conceptual or rule-based level, there was no possibility of escape.

Clearly, this creature was not. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been caught.

He seized it and forcibly dragged it back, compelling the lightning elemental to resume its physical form.

"Who is the Thunder God?" Qi Suian asked.

The elemental’s blurry features contorted into a grimace, as if it could feel pain. "The Thunder God... is the Thunder God."

"I’ll give you a lesson on giving me the runaround." Qi Suian delivered two hard slaps—SLAP! SLAP!—with enough force to nearly disperse the elemental’s entire form.

"One more chance, or I’ll end you."

As he spoke, Qi Suian ripped away more than half of the surrounding thundercloud and stuffed it into his Melting Furnace as fuel.

He was starting to see that his usual approach—torture first, ask questions later—was the right one.

Otherwise, they never told the truth.

With more than half of its storm gone, the lightning elemental immediately withered, looking incredibly weak.

"The Thunder God is the thunderstorm... It is being born from chaos."

"The age of wind is over. The future belongs to lightning," the elemental said, its voice extremely weak.

Qi Suian wasn’t surprised. He had already guessed as much from the name and the clues, but he needed confirmation.

"How much time is left in the age of wind? When will the Thunder God be fully born from chaos?" Qi Suian asked in a cold voice.

"I don’t know." The lightning elemental genuinely didn’t know. It had been less than half an hour since its birth, and then it had been caught by Qi Suian.

The only reason it had hurled lightning downward was because it had sensed the power of wind upon its birth.

It held no deep-seated grudge against the wind, yet it was compelled to drive it out and let the power of lightning take its place.

This was instinct.

That was why it had launched a blast at the Wind King Palace.

But being newly born and inexperienced, it hadn’t caused even greater casualties.

Then it had seen the Windwalkers rushing to put out the fire, which meant even more wind gathering in one place.

The elemental couldn’t restrain its instincts and launched another blast.

But unlike the first time, this one caused no damage.

Just as it was preparing a third blast, it ran into Qi Suian and was caught before it could be unleashed.

"How were you born?" Qi Suian asked.

But a look of confusion appeared on the elemental’s face. It had simply opened its eyes and found itself within the lightning in the sky; how would it know the details of its own birth?

Seeing this, Qi Suian realized he was asking the wrong entity.

He then forcibly tore the lightning elemental from the storm, stuffing the remaining clouds into his Melting Furnace.

Without its storm, the light around the elemental completely vanished, leaving behind a humanoid creature that merely flickered with stray currents.

This half-energy, half-carbon-based lifeform was just the thing for Qi Suian to pass the time.

After all, he still had two and a half hours to wait for the Wind King’s scale to finish its update.

"You... you let me go! Without me, the glory of lightning will never descend upon this island!" the elemental began to struggle.

Hearing this, Qi Suian understood. The creature was indeed just a manufactured tool. Even now, it wasn’t concerned with its own survival, but with the propagation of lightning.

For an individual, this was a form of bondage. For a being like the Thunder God, however, it was the most useful kind of assistance.

Qi Suian, however, had no intention of listening. He found a random spot to land and immediately began his dissection.

Since he couldn’t get any answers out of it and it didn’t seem to know anything, he would just have to find things out for himself.

He didn’t place much importance on it, though. He figured this lightning elemental, much like the Wind Spirits and Windwalkers, was far from the core of the Thunder God’s power.

Especially since the Thunder God hadn’t even been born yet and was still in chaos.

As for what this "chaos" was, how would Qi Suian know? The elemental hadn’t elaborated, and he had no other evidence or clues. It was impossible to know such things out of thin air.

’An interesting structure. It can serve as a killing machine, a coordinate node, and even as administrative personnel.’

’It must be expensive to produce. No wonder an island only gets one.’