toybunovel Chapter 1150: Where Lightning Becomes Pure
Chapter 1150: Where Lightning Becomes Pure
The man in white’s breathing turned ragged as his hand reached down again for the snow-white stone by his feet.
Right as he was about to force more power out of it, a bolt of white lightning detonated on his shoulder.
Crack—!
The arc slammed straight into the shoulder that was already injured. From the stump where his arm had been severed came a rapid chain of ear-splitting pops.
His body jerked. His face drained of color, and even the earth-vein energy under his feet stuttered out of rhythm for a beat.
Pure instinct took over. He snatched up another snow-white stone and whipped it toward his shoulder, trying to smash Ethan out of wherever he was hiding.
But he’d already been hit hard. The strength he could call up now was nowhere near what it had been a moment ago.
The instant the stone left his fingers, Ethan appeared at his side.
Transparent lightning coiled around the man’s arm. Ethan’s five fingers clamped down—one clean grip around the wrist—and he tore the snow-white stone away.
The moment it hit Ethan’s palm, his gaze shifted.
The energy inside it didn’t resist him.
Instead, it flowed into him through his hand like it had finally found a channel it could merge with.
After that snow-white aura entered his body, it didn’t clash with the transparent lightning at all. It raced along the lightning’s pathways, spreading fast, sinking into the depths of every strand of electricity.
Ethan felt it, unmistakably.
His transparent lightning changed.
Within the nearly colorless arcs, a ghastly pale-white energy appeared—cold, pure. Not the chill of ice, but something cleaner, more fundamental, like a purity born from a deeper structure of power itself.
Once it fused with the transparent lightning, the edges of the arcs weren’t just sharp anymore. They carried a texture—something that could rip open energy on a higher level.
Ethan’s breath hitched.
He immediately drove his power, pulling everything out of the snow-white stone and into his body.
The white glow on the stone’s surface faded in seconds. Its essence was drained clean, until all that remained was a dull shell. It crumbled between Ethan’s fingers into powder.
And his transparent lightning had been completely stained with that ghastly white.
Ethan lowered his eyes to his palm.
Lightning danced there, the pale glow crawling along his knuckles before drawing back into his hand again.
It wasn’t silent and colorless like before. It wasn’t the simple, snowy white Lily produced either.
This was purer. Denser.
Like the final form left behind after every impurity had been stripped away.
He’d always believed the lightning from The Infernal Abyss, once it evolved into transparency, had reached its peak.
Only now did he understand.
The true highest form of this lightning was a pure, ghastly white.
Lily’s lightning carried that same tone, but it wasn’t this pure—nowhere close.
The power inside this snow-white stone had actually made up for what his transparent lightning was missing... and pushed it into a higher evolution.
Ethan stood at the bottom of the canyon, ghastly-white lightning snapping endlessly in his palm.
The force still pouring out of the stone continued to spread through him, seeping layer by layer along the transparent lightning’s channels—filling his arm first, then surging into his chest, his back, and his limbs.
The once-transparent arcs were dyed pale white, their edges turning more solid, their motion carrying a cleanness so extreme it felt razor-sharp.
In no time, Ethan’s body was flooded with a fullness he’d never felt before.
Not the ordinary satisfaction of recovered energy.
More like something that had always been missing inside him had finally been completed.
The transparent lightning stopped being nothing but destruction and penetration. It began to interlock with the power from the snow-white stone, the two forces biting into each other—locking, shaping, refining—until a deeper, purer form started to take hold.
Ethan threw his head back and shouted.
"Ahh!"
The sound bounced around the canyon. One after another, the snow-white stones embedded in the cliff walls flared to life, like his power had shaken them awake.
The next instant, Ethan brought his hands together in front of his chest. Ghastly-white lightning erupted from his palms, a dense storm of crackling snaps as it surged outward.
The man in white started to retreat—
—but the wave of lightning was already on him.
This time, what Ethan released didn’t just hammer from the outside. The moment that pale lightning touched the man’s body, it burrowed straight into his skin, spreading inward along flesh and bone.
The remnant white power inside him fought back, trying to hold the line. But the arcs found gaps like they were born for it, slipping through every defense, seeping into his blood, pressing down toward his soul.
The man in white’s pupils shrank to pinpoints.
He opened his mouth, trying to scream—or at least speak—but the strength in his throat had already been sealed shut by the ghastly-white lightning. The current spread inside him. The wound at his severed arm exploded open again, and the cracked badge on his chest let out a shrill, splintering scream of its own.
At the same time, the snow-white stones throughout the canyon changed.
The ones scattered across the ground, lodged in the rock face, half-buried in the breath of the earth-veins—every single one of them lifted on its own. They began to rotate slowly around Ethan, their surfaces growing brighter and brighter.
Then their outer shells started to melt.
The pure energy inside turned into streams of ghastly-white liquid, flowing along the lightning’s patterns in the air and pouring into Ethan’s body.
More power flooded in.
The space behind Ethan trembled, and within the ghastly-white lightning, the enormous phantom of a golden dragon took shape. Its scales were condensed from gold light, and between its bones ran lightning—transparent and ghastly-white braided together like veins.
It lowered its head, staring at the man in white. One massive claw tightened slowly in midair, and the pressure alone made the canyon walls shudder, loose stones raining down.
Ethan lifted a hand, then pressed it down.
The golden dragon phantom dove with him—slamming straight into the man in white.
The fear on the man’s face finally broke through completely. Only now did he understand: Ethan didn’t just absorb the power in the snow-white stones—he could command the energy inside the stones around him.
But it was too late to do anything about it.
The golden dragon phantom swallowed him whole.
Ghastly-white lightning crushed in from every direction, forcing its way into his body.
At the bottom of the canyon, the sound of bone tearing rang out. Flesh was sliced open by the arcs, then pulverized by the dragon’s force. The man in white couldn’t even get out a full scream before his body was ground to pieces inside the dragon’s shadow.
Worse—
his soul didn’t escape, either.
The ghastly-white lightning followed the collapse of his body straight into the depths of his spirit, ripping apart the last thread of his soul’s wavering light.
When the golden dragon phantom finally dispersed, the man in white was gone—soul scattered to nothing. Only a few wisps of leftover white glow flickered on the ground before snuffing out.
Ethan didn’t spare him a single glance.
All his attention locked onto the snow-white stones around him.
If these things could push his transparent lightning into an even higher evolution, their value was far beyond any ordinary energy core.
He flicked his hand, and every snow-white stone he could collect at the canyon floor came whipping toward him. Chunks tore free from the cliff face. The rubble on the ground was sifted through by transparent lightning—anything that carried that ghastly-white power, he swept into his storage space.
Only after he finished did Ethan lift his head.
Deeper in the canyon, not far away, there was a dark, yawning cave mouth.
It wasn’t big, tucked between two slabs of black rock, but an eerie blue light kept spilling out from within.
That glow wasn’t sharp like the snow-white stones. It carried an invisible pull instead. Ethan only looked once, and he felt his soul get tugged—just lightly, like something had brushed a finger against it.
That power was... strange.
It wasn’t heavy like earth-vein energy. It wasn’t domineering like the power of The Infernal Abyss. It wasn’t even clean and obvious like ordinary elemental strength.
The deep blue light rolled out of the cave in slow rings, like an invitation to step inside—yet at the same time, like it was waiting to swallow anyone who came too close.