Ten days later...
"I'm finished."
The thin man with pale skin, which looked as though it had not seen sunlight for months, spoke as he stared at the tattoos covering Jian Long's body with fascination. His eyes moved across the lines and patterns etched into Jian Long's skin as though he were looking at a rare work of art.
Jian Long rose from his seat and stood firmly.
"I hope this works. I don't want to end up as a charred corpse like the experimental mice we tested it on."
The man laughed confidently.
"Of course it will work! My calculations have proven it, and our latest experiments were completely successful."
Then he added inwardly:
It will work... and I, Yuè Fēi, will finally become famous. Then my old mother and my siblings will finally start respecting me instead of my younger brother.
Ten days ago, when Jian Long first came to him, Yuè Fēi had only agreed to help reluctantly, and only because of Yunfei's recommendation. It was difficult for him to refuse a request from someone of Yunfei's standing and reputation in the field of cloud creation, especially since Yunfei was a distant relative who had helped him in his early days and taught him the fundamentals of Cloud Path.
At first, Yuè Fēi thought Jian Long was nothing more than an enthusiastic, dream-filled teenager carrying a collection of fantastical ideas that he wanted to put into practice without understanding how difficult they would be to achieve.
But Jian Long surprised him.
It was not only his ideas that astonished Yuè Fēi, but also his astonishing speed of learning. It seemed as though he possessed an extraordinary ability to develop in Lightning Path. He absorbed every new piece of information rapidly, then used it to further develop his ideas in ways Yuè Fēi had never expected.
On the first day, Yuè Fēi exhausted himself trying to convince Jian Long that what he wanted was impossible. He explained the problems standing in the way of his idea and carefully demonstrated why it could not be achieved through conventional methods.
But as time passed, and as Jian Long's understanding of the problem deepened, he began proposing solutions that were strange yet ingenious at the same time.
Solutions that astonished Yuè Fēi.
It was true that they lacked sufficient theoretical knowledge and depth, but they were like scattered loose threads. And that was enough for Yuè Fēi to grasp them and transform those raw ideas into genuine solutions grounded in knowledge and research.
And so, little by little, through repeated successes and failures, and through continuous work over the past ten days, what had initially seemed impossible began to become reality.
"Alright, shall we begin?"
Jian Long's train of thought was interrupted. He raised his gaze toward Yuè Fēi.
Yuè Fēi nodded confidently.
"Of course. Let me activate my verification Gu worms and monitor you. If anything goes wrong, I'll inform you immediately."
After activating his verification Gu worms, Jian Long prepared himself and began releasing lightning.
Normally, when Blue Bird Gu was activated, the process took only one second, after which a complete lightning bird would emerge directly from the user's palm.
But Jian Long did not want to release a lightning bird.
He manipulated the very method by which the lightning was released.
Instead of allowing Blue Bird Gu to release its usual amount of lightning all at once and transform it into a lightning bird, Jian Long drastically reduced the amount of lightning leaving his hand.
The lightning no longer took the shape of a bird.
Instead, it remained as a small aura of lightning gathered around his palm, which was then absorbed by the tattoos covering his body.
But this method came at a cost.
Because he was releasing a smaller amount of lightning each time, Jian Long needed more time to produce the same amount of lightning he would normally obtain from releasing a single lightning bird.
Instead of taking only one second, it now took one and a quarter seconds.
Jian Long remained completely still throughout the process.
He did not move his body, nor did he even open his eyes.
He had devoted his entire concentration to precisely controlling the amount of lightning being released, preventing it from forming into the shape of a lightning bird even for an instant.
At the same time, the tattoos spreading across his hands and back began to glow with a brilliant blue light.
The blue radiance pulsed across his skin with every surge of lightning, while tiny electrical currents flowed through the tattoos, as though his entire body were gradually transforming into a network for storing lightning.
After one hundred and twenty-five seconds had passed—the amount of time required to gather the energy of one hundred Lightning Birds, which was the maximum amount the tattoos could store—Jian Long stopped releasing lightning and clasped his hands together in front of him.
In the next moment, he focused his consciousness entirely on the energy accumulated within his body.
Suddenly, strands of lightning shot out from his back, resembling a hundred lightning arrows fired simultaneously. They surged toward his arms, gathering at the tips of his hands.
The air around him began to tremble violently.
The sheer density of the accumulated lightning was terrifying even before it was released.
Then Jian Long thrust both hands forward.
The attack exploded!
An enormous amount of lightning surged toward its target—a massive boulder in the courtyard of Yuè Fēi's house.
The instant the lightning struck the boulder, an intense white light erupted and filled the entire area.
Nothing could be seen anymore.
The lightning illuminated everything around them with such blinding brilliance that, for a moment, it seemed as though the sun itself had descended upon the earth.
The flash lasted for several breaths before gradually fading away.
When their vision finally returned to normal, Yuè Fēi's eyes widened.
The massive boulder was gone.
In fact, the entire courtyard of Yuè Fēi's house was gone as well.
It had been completely erased from existence.
"We did it!"
Yuè Fēi jumped up in excitement before rushing toward Jian Long and embracing him tightly.
As for Jian Long, he did not even have enough strength to resist. His entire body trembled from exhaustion, and he was on the verge of collapsing after unleashing an attack of such power.
Jian Long laughed as Yuè Fēi shouted excitedly:
"We finally did it! We actually managed to produce an attack with Rank Four power! I'm going to become famous! Wait... stop!"
Suddenly, Yuè Fēi froze.
He released Jian Long, causing him to lose his balance and fall directly to the ground.
Meanwhile, Yuè Fēi grabbed his head with both hands and stared at the ruins that had, only moments ago, been his beautiful courtyard.
"You destroyed my beautiful courtyard!"
He then turned toward Jian Long with a face full of anguish.
"Do you realize how much time I spent taking care of it?! How are you going to compensate me for this?!"
Jian Long lifted his head from the ground and glanced at the destroyed courtyard before answering indifferently:
"This is your fault. You should have made us test this somewhere else."