Unfortunately for Su Ran, it would take her a few days to find the Heaven Thunder Prison. In the interim, Su Qingcheng was undergoing her own trials and tribulations. She had been situated in a luxurious room next to Fan Yu’s room, which happened to be right next to Lei Zetian’s room. To put it simply, they now all lived next to each other. Strangely enough, Yao Meiyue remained quiet this entire time, but only now chose the time to speak. The more I think about it, the more I feel like this lady should be someone I also recognize. Su Qingcheng was confused for a moment, but before she could reply, Yao Meiyue was jubilant and cut her off. I get it now. She’s that crazy lightning person who was banished from Cloud Nine. I remember saving her sorry ass because she was carrying a kid with her. I think that kid must have been that Fan Yu. I was bored one day and decided to take a visit to Cloud Nine to challenge myself.

Su Qingcheng was startled, she didn’t expect this at all. ”So what exactly happened between you and them?”

I was killing some of the magical beasts that were chasing them by happenstance. They were able to escape. My thinking is they were being banished but those beasts never intended for them to escape alive. I was bored, so I challenged myself to kill every creature that chased after them. I definitely tried not to expose myself, but surely her treatment of you is also because she owes me big time.

“Isn’t that way too convenient, Master?”

Forget it. The past is the past. Now you’ve broken through and gained enhancement thanks to the power of lightning given to you by Fan Yu and triggered by satisfying your battle lust, no doubt Lei Zetian will attempt to solidify your lightning seeds by having you fight a proper lightning beast. It should be of the Tianqi Prince rank at least, or she’ll simply be sending you to your death if it were any higher than that.

“What should I do, then?”

For the meantime, I need time to study how the lightning has affected the Nightflower Tianqi. This has never happened before in my entire life, so this is new territory for me. I’ll come up with a solution, but you can’t disturb me in my analysis. Unfortunately, you’ll need to work through this on your own. In the interim, be careful, because if Su Ran breaks us out in the middle of this fortuitous period, not only will we be unable to unlock the full potential of Lightning Nightflower Tianqi, but Lei Zetian will be in danger. My existence has clearly caused her view of you to rise highly, placing you next to Fan Yu like this. Therefore, we must take the chance to recover quickly.

Su Qingcheng agreed, and spent the following week resting and recovering. Lei Zetian from time to time had personally come to deliver some medicines in the form of a certain type of spirit grass. Su Qingcheng soon realized from her reading in the past that this spirit grass helped her to cultivate lightning energy better. This was Violet Sky Grass, which was normally eaten by the electric beasts that Lei Zetian reared. However, now that Su Qingcheng had a similar power, she could use the grass to heal up more quickly and also allow her lightning powers to improve a fair bit. At first, Su Qingcheng was scared, but after Lei Zetian consumed the grass herself on the spot, Su Qingcheng followed and realized the effects of it on her body were strong.

At the end of her fourth month in prison, Lei Zetian had called out Su Qingcheng back into the courtyard where she was imprisoned in the Heaven Thunder Cage. This time, however, there was no cage. Lei Zetian politely called out for Su Qingcheng to stand in the center. “Lightning Child, I only ask for you to take part in this last trial,” she explained. “I need you to battle this Lightning Wyvern Prince.” With that, an ear-piercing roar could be heard as a blue wyvern appeared in the air. It was just like in the stories Su Qingcheng read in the past. It had no legs, and could only remain airborne. If it were to land, it would slither like a winged serpent. Blue lightning flashed out from its open mouth.

“Lightning Wyvern Prince?” Su Qingcheng balked. Then she clearly remembered what Yao Meiyue had told her. This was indeed a lightning beast of the Tianqi Prince stratum. She inwardly sighed – her master was just too awesome, to predict this. Thus, she was not surprised. On the contrary, she was very nervous.

“It looks fearsome, but I think with your new abilities, you should be able to take it on. You need to kill it and then consume the lightning core inside it,” Lei Zetian explained. “Only then will your lightning powers properly solidify in your Tianqi paths. I had Fan Yu go through the same thing too. You need to do this, since I’ve already heard reports of your mother flying in the Empire’s airspace. I know she wants to break you out, but now that things at changed, it could be said your mom has the wrong idea. I’m making you stronger!”

Su Qingcheng nodded. Actually, this Lei Zetian might have tortured her at first, but since she survived, she gained a massive power boost. However, the instigator of all this was actually the insidious Fang Li, who conspired to unscrupulous means to try and steal Su Qingcheng’s heritage. As a result, Su Qingcheng actually respected Lei Zetian’s tyrannical but honest face more than she did Fang Li. It was strange, but she couldn’t help but look at her captors with mixed feelings after that. Now, she idly wondered what Su Yanran was feeling. She hoped she was alright… Except there wasn’t any time for that.

While Su Qingcheng was gawking, the Wyvern Prince didn’t waste a single moment. It opened its gaping mouth and started to breathe a blue lightning gas at Su Qingcheng, who opted to test the waters by blocking with her forearms. The gas felt like flames, which charred her skin, but she actually didn’t feel much of a shock from it. This amazed her, realizing that she could actually absorb the lightning essence slowly. Now she realized that she could very much benefit from the Lightning Wyvern Prince’s core. She used flame Tianqi to leap up high into the sky, rushing at the wyvern. Then, she immediately lunged towards its belly and performed a take down, forcing it into the ground. She did not use any lightning power, because it would be useless to try and paralyze an electric creature with electricity. Instead, she injected pure Nightflower Tianqi, causing its internals to go haywire, like it was being short-circuited.

Since she was already empowered heavily due to the lightning seeds inside her, the Nightflower Tianqi had actually evolved also. It adopted some harmful properties of electricity, which included nerve-sensory overload. This caused the wyvern to spasm on the spot, which gave Su Qingcheng the opportunity to smack it repeatedly with ferocious punches, bloodying the Wyvern Prince into a sorry state. When it regained its motor skills and other faculties, it looked ferociously at Su Qingcheng with a bloodshot gaze. Its intelligence was in no way inferior to a human’s; there was no way it could stand for a little kid like Su Qingcheng to beat it stupid into such a humiliating state. Knowing that she was an electric entity just like it, the wyvern swung its heavy tail around like a sneak attack. Su Qingcheng, who did not have time to get into her Black Hole Stance, was hit by the tail and sent careening into a nearby pillar, causing a small crater to form at the point of impact.

Wincing, Su Qingcheng grinned with a savage light shining in her eyes as she quickly regained her composure and shot towards the weakened wyvern like a lightning bolt, causing the wyvern to be startled. Its eyes widened in disbelief as it saw what appeared to be a lightning bolt charge towards it. Su Qingcheng appeared in front of the wyvern’s face in the blink of an eye and grabbed it by its upper and lower jaw. Now, the beast had fear in its eyes for once – it meant nothing though, as Su Qingcheng vented out her emotions on the wyvern by tearing it in half by spreading its jaws apart like opening a plastic bag. She had injected an absurd amount of Nightflower Tianqi to gain this boost in fleshly strength, so by the time she was done, she had exhausted herself once again. However, she saw the core of the Lightning Wyvern Prince fall out of the carcass. It looked like a blue orb that had gaseous purple substance inside it. Su Qingcheng held it carefully.

Lei Zetian smiled as she saw Su Qingcheng, with some immense effort, take down the beast. She thought to herself that it was her good fortune that this abnormal kid could survive the electric cross. Even bigger fortune for Su Qingcheng, actually. “Go on, kid, you should eat the core quickly before the gas disperses.” She smiled.

Without any hesitation, Su Qingcheng took the small orb into her mouth and consumed it. It was surprisingly crunchy, as she bit and chewed on the orb, she felt the gaseous substance rush into every fiber of her being. By the time she fully consumed the orb, she could feel lightning rushing through her entire body like adrenaline. Her eyes flashed blue this time and she faced Lei Zetian with a smile. “It worked,” she said. Su Qingcheng snapped her fingers and a bolt of blue lightning struck the spot in front of her. “It worked!”

“Haha, very good. Your body is abnormal; it seems to be able to adapt to the forces of nature after having been subjected to it for long enough. There are a lot of strange powers in nature, lightning is just one of those outside of the scope of the five basic elements. Imagine if you can control others…” Lei Zetian smiled. “You would become a heaven-defying existence that even gods would tremble before!”

Su Qingcheng smiled confidently, before looking at Fan Yu. Fan Yu weakly smiled and nodded. The two of them didn’t say anything to each other, but their looks meant everything. Lei Zetian, however, was oblivious and smiled. “Good, good. Now you better get some rest. I need to tell you about your tasks. It’s only been four months, but I think it should be said my experiment has been a success. I can’t help but feel like we got on the wrong foot, so I do apologize for… Uh, abducting you, I guess.”

Su Qingcheng sneered in her heart. If she hadn’t survived the electric cross torture, and if she didn’t have Yao Meiyue backing her up, she would just be like those other prisoners – trash that didn’t deserve to live. It really meant that in this world, power meant everything. Su Qingcheng had the power to withstand everything thrown at her, so she was treated as Fan Yu’s equal. When she nodded politely and left to go back to her room, Fan Yu remained quiet. Lei Zetian’s expression, on the other hand, got very ugly.

“Master, what’s wrong?”

“Fan Yu, go to your room. We have our expected guest. Obviously, she came uninvited. But it’s obvious why she’s here. Humph. She should be lucky that Su Qingcheng broke through.”

Fan Yu knew in her heart now that Su Ran had finally found them after a week of searching since Fang Li told her about the Heaven Thunder Prison. She quickly left the area also. Lei Zetian floated up to the height of the prison complex and bellowed out.

“Su Ran, mother of Su Qingcheng! I beseech you to calm down. Don’t do anything stupid! I was going to let her go.”

Su Ran’s voice roared out, piercing through the cloud of lightning that blanketed the prison. It caused a rift to open between portions of the field of lightning. “Shut the hell up! You took my daughter, now prepare to suffer the consequences!”