Elder Ragur escorted John back to his abode in the first years district. Although John was a member of the War Hall now, he was still primarily a student of the sect, and would still need to attend classes.
The War Hall would provide additional training occasionally, as well as provide him with missions to complete periodically. Completing the missions would result in receiving contributions points, with more difficult tasks receiving more points.
'I can't wait to start taking on missions for the War Hall. Not only will I get paid to do so, but I'll most likely also be able to obtain more blood essence.'
John was constantly in need of human blood essence, and joining the War Hall was the best way he could think of obtaining more. His near suicidal actions of attacking the Vice Sect Leader were in pursuit of this goal, and thankfully, it had worked out.
'Not only will I get blood in the future, but I was able to obtain quite a few corpses from the nearby cells in the Crypt, which had allowed my body dantian to advance to the Mid Qi Condensation Realm. Not only that, but there were several late Qi Condensation corpses that I obtained, which might be able to push me to the late Qi Condensation Realm.'
John had spent his three days of agony cultivating the Immortal Asura Body technique. The blood from the youth he had killed, plus a few other of the crypt corpses he had obtained allowed him to break through. With both his body and essence cultivation at the Mid Qi Condensation Realm, his strength had increased greatly from where it was before.
'Now, I feel much more confident in my fight against Russel. Before I advanced, I doubt I could have won, but now I should have a shot, although it will still be a close fight.'
Elder Ragur escorted John all the way back to his home, and John listened closely to the stories of what had happened while he was imprisoned.
"Me attacking the Vice Sect Leader caused that much of a stir?" John asked curiously. He had not expected such a thing to happen.
"That it did. You are quite a popular discussion amongst the first years, although that friend of yours made sure is a handful. He lit the fire many times, making sure to cause as much trouble as possible in the pursuit of elevating your name," Elder Ragur replied.
John shook his head at Adam's antics, although they were not completely unexpected. John could tell that Adam loved being in the spotlight, and such a situation was perfect for that.
"Oh, while you were in the crypt, you missed three days of classes. Here, take this," Elder Ragur said while waving his hand.
A small pile of scrolls and books appeared in mid air and floated over to John, which he caught and stored away.
"Those are your reading materials you need to go over to catch up. Classes start again in a few days, so you have a few days to yourself to catch up and recover your strength," Elder Ragur stated further while looking at John's sorry condition.
Although John didn't make a fuss of it, his body was in quite a battered shape.
"Thanks," John replied.
The two of them soon arrived at John's abode, and John bid Elder Ragur farewell before entering his home.
"Welcome back."
John was greeted by the warm welcomes of Francel and Reya, who were both standing in the main lobby waiting for John's return.
"Hey," John replied with a smile on his face. "It feels good to be back."
Reya suddenly dashed forward with a frown on her face. She closely inspected John's condition, which was quite terrible.
"You're injured. The pool outside has healing properties as well as cultivation benefits. You should go swim in it to recover," Reya said to John.
"Healing properties? Alright, I'll check it out," John replied. He had no idea that his pool was this impressive.
"The Heavenly Lightning Sect sure knows how to treat its disciples well."
John walked to the backyard where the pool was, and took off his robes, leaving only his undergarments, before jumping into the pool.
A refreshing wave of revitalizing energy washed over him, causing his body to shiver in slight ecstasy. He had felt quite miserable after enduring the hellish crypt for three days, but the pool was doing a great job of washing that fatigue away.
The healing properties of the pool began to work its magic, and John could slowly but surely feel his body start to recover.
'This is actually quite amazing. I should eat a healing pill as well to speed this up.'
John popped a healing pill in his mouth, which he had obtained from the rewards of coming first in the entrance exams. As soon as the pill hit his stomach, the vibrant energy contained within began to infuse all throughout his body, making him feel completely refreshed.
'With the combined healing effects of the pill and the pool, I should be back to new in a few hours!'
John continued to relax within the pool. Taking a breather such as this was a rare occasion for him, and he relished in the comfort and peace he felt right now.
"While I'm doing nothing, I should review those materials Elder Ragur gave me."
John took out one of the scrolls from his storage ring and began to inspect it. The quality of the scroll was quite impressive, and was impervious to water damage, allowing John to study it while relaxing in the pool.
"Medicinal Ingredients 101? Sounds like a helpful class."
John began to read the scroll, which contained information regarding identifying medicinal ingredients, and their uses in alchemy. The first scroll contained general information, as well as a few common medicinal plants that could be found around the Yuan Continent.
After finishing the scroll, John opened the next one, which contained a much more in depth list of medicinal ingredients. There were dozens of plants mentioned, with small diagrams of each one, as well as descriptions of what they were used for in alchemy, where they could generally be found, and how valuable they were.
John perused through the various medicinal ingredient reading documents, completely engrossed in the pages. Although he was not an alchemist, he wanted to know as much as possible about the cultivation world, as finding rare plants could help him sell them for large sums of money.
"Money is the most important thing after all. If I have enough money, I can buy just about anything to help with my cultivation...well, almost everything."
After finishing the Medicinal Ingredients reading materials, John took out one of the other scrolls Elder Ragur had given him. His eyes lit up as he read the top of the page.
"Lightning Finger. Finally, a lightning battle art to learn!"
John had wanted to cultivate a lightning battle art for quite some time now, but had never come across one. He eagerly read the scroll completely, making sure to not miss a single detail.
"This battle art is about projecting a sharp and intense beam of lightning out from the finger towards the target. Although it doesn't seem to be a particularly high level technique, its better than nothing."
He was not completely surprised that the technique was a relatively low level one. It was the first technique the sect had given its disciples, and it was mostly used for learning how to properly control lightning based attacks.
Lightning was a violent energy, and if cultivators were not careful, they could lose control of their lightning Qi, resulting in harming themselves more than the enemy. This was why the Heavenly Lightning Sect slowly introduced techniques to their disciples, rather than allow them to study high level arts right away.
With his Lightning Attribute Body, this was not a problem that John would run into. His body had become almost impervious to lightning damage, and only extremely high level lightning could hurt him. Not only that, but his control of lightning Qi was far beyond a normal cultivators, so losing control would not be an issue.
"Lets test it out!"
John practiced the technique internally for quite some time, following the meridian and acupoint pathways depicted in the technique. Because it was not a very high level technique, it was incredibly quick for him to learn and unleash.
John pointed his finger up into the sky, and began to channel lightning from his dantian, through the meridian pathways depicted in the battle art, and towards the finger acupoints, when all of a sudden...
Tremble!
John suddenly lowered his finger as he felt a tremble within his soul. Although it was incredibly slight, he was sure it wasn't his imagination.
Tremble!
The tremble occurred again, causing John to raise his guard. A thought crossed his mind, and he sent his divine sense inwards to his soul, inspecting his soul space.
All was normal in his soul space, and John was just about to leave it when his soul trembled again.
"It's you!"
John called out as he appeared next to the ball of lightning essence. The lightning egg was trembling inside, and its trembles began to increase in intensity as time went on. The egg was quite a bit larger than the last time John had inspected it, clearly signs of it growing as it absorbed the lightning.
It was nearly three feet across now.
"What's going on? You're not about to hatch, are you?" John asked, but received no response.
According to the artifact spirit, the egg would require an incredibly large amount of pure lightning energy to hatch. Although John knew the ball of lightning essence was incredibly pure and profound, he was unsure if it would be enough to hatch the egg in one go.
"Looks like the gift that Celestial Soulrend gave me was even more amazing that I had originally guessed."
He had paid it no mind over the last four months since the egg went into the lightning essence ball, but the lightning essence ball had lost most of its energy. It had been an incredibly potent source of lightning before, but now only dim flickers of lightning remained.
John watched closely with bated breath as the egg began to tremble with increased intensity, until it was almost to the point of vibrating.
Crack!
Suddenly, and without warning, a crack appeared on the egg.
Crack!
Another crack appeared, and another. The cascading series of cracks spread throughout the entire egg, when suddenly, a burst of lightning from within the egg caused the eggshell to explode.
The lightning burst slowly faded, revealing the creature that had laid dormant within the egg.
John's eyes widened with complete and utter shock as he looked directly at the creature as it emerged from the egg. He recognized the creature, although he was unable to believe his eyes. According to his knowledge, such a creature was a complete myth, and was told as fairy tales and legends.
However, having run into the dragon earlier, who John had also figured was a myth and legend, he began to realize that there was more truth to these myths than he originally figured.
The creature let out a slight whimper as it stretched its legs which had been cramped up in that egg for untold years, before it looked up to John.
"I knew you were supposed to be special, but this...!"