Storing his diary, Aotian nodded in satisfaction and cast a brief glance at Young Master Chun, who was having his face pulled out of the sand by his companions and still had several of those small golden grains stuck there.

His gaze then turned to the sky, where the previous storm had dissipated, thoughtful.

Suddenly, slowly raising his hands, he focused.

The Dragon Peak disciples, who were also occasionally staring at him with gloomy and angry looks, almost instantly wanted to mock him when they saw him enter that stance, as if they instinctively knew what he intended to do.

Even the dragon at the bottom of the sea looked, speechless, at Aotian, but the girl beside him, upon seeing that scene, couldn’t help but have a bad premonition.

‘No, impossible! He wouldn’t do that again, would he?! No, this is an extremely complex Taboo-Tier technique, incomparable to those techniques he saw before… h-he couldn’t…’

The more she thought about it, the paler her chubby little face became.

But, as if to prove how wrong she might be, even before the first of the Dragon Peak disciples could even open his mouth to provoke Aotian, a strong gust of wind blew.

The sky, clear moments ago, began to darken. Thunder echoed powerfully above, until at some point, rain with fine hail began to fall.

It didn’t seem nearly as powerful as Young Master Chun’s display, but what left everyone wide-eyed were two things.

The first was: how could he have used the technique after only seeing it for such a brief moment? Maybe he had learned it before and was only using it now, but where would he have learned it then?

As for the second: why the hell was the power of this storm so strong?

They looked in disbelief at the fine hail, which, when hitting the sea, raised large waves. Just from the force of the impact, they could calculate that each of those hailstones had enough power to take down a cultivator at the late stage of Nascent Soul.

But looking at Aotian, the energy fluctuations he emitted while releasing the spell were only at the Golden Core realm, which was simply illogical when compared to the power the technique was reaching.

Aotian looked curiously at the spell, which violently dominated the sky, while feeling his energy reserves draining quickly, but that attack covered an area of 50 square miles, which was the size of a city.

So, basically, with just one use of that technique, Aotian could kill all cultivators at the late stage of Nascent Soul and below within a city, without exception. Even a cultivator at the perfection of that realm, if they didn’t run fast enough, could end up being overwhelmed by the density of attacks and perish there.

He hadn’t improved the technique or anything like that. He had only used his thousands of minds, together with his extraordinary knowledge base, which he formed during his years in this world, in addition to an almost complete mastery up to the Soul Formation realm, to extract the maximum from this spell.

Since the dependence on external energy was greater than on internal energy to perform this Weather Control technique, and being Taboo-Tier, Aotian was able to use his advanced knowledge simply to bring the power of a realm higher than his into this technique, and that was why it was so strong.

Focusing, he slowly rotated his hands in a claw shape, pointing toward the sky, and even more unbelievable phenomena began to happen there.

The rain and hail, which were generated both by Aotian’s energy and by the air itself, began to be manipulated as they fell, suddenly grouping together and, then, a terrifying image was drawn in the sky.

There, an image of a twenty-meter rain dragon appeared, sliding directly and cutting through the sky, creating a loud whistle, until—

BOOOOMMM!!

The water dragon violently impacted the sea, raising a great tsunami and demonstrating incredible power.

“Impossible…”

The Dragon Peak disciples murmured with blank minds, seeing that unknown boy’s spell simply reach enough power to even injure cultivators at the early stage of Soul Formation.

That was already the same power their senior brother Chun had managed to bring out with the technique earlier, although, in Aotian’s case, it was a single attack, it was still extremely shocking.

Even Cang Song and Hui Lang swallowed dryly, not expecting that junior brother, who was actually extremely powerful, to have such terrifying talent.

Rihai, beside the two, shook her head helplessly at her show-off husband, who made it increasingly clear that he was someone from the immortal plane, but she also let out a sigh, feeling a bit unwell while looking at the palms of her own hands, with a complex look deep in her blue eyes.

At the bottom of the sea, the dragon and the little girl already had their mouths open, their minds buzzing.

That should be impossible for a simple Golden Core cultivator, but there was a young man showing a power and mastery of the spell that only the creator should be capable of reproducing in the same realm.

The two looked at each other when they thought about it, stunned, and then an absurd thought came to them at the same time.

“C-Could it be… that is the reincarnation of the Dragon Sovereign?!”

The great dragon spoke trembling, and the little girl instinctively wanted to disagree, but when her mouth opened, the words didn’t come out, and an absurd feeling took over her heart, even more when she remembered Aotian using a superior version of the Dragon Claw technique that she had never seen before.

Turning her attention to observe the boy on the surface, who commanded the weather, she thought, with perplexed eyes.

‘Could it be possible?’

Not even Aotian could expect that, because of his act of using his solid cultivation knowledge to use a technique, he would be mistaken for someone’s reincarnation.

At that moment, he was focused solely on displaying the technique as perfectly as possible—not because he wanted to slap the faces of the Dragon Peak disciples. He had already irritated them before and had no intention of pushing it further—he wasn’t one of those protagonists who couldn’t even sleep without slapping someone’s face first.

No, he had already pushed whatever those disciples thought to the back of his mind, not caring about their opinions. His goal now was to show off to the dragon at the bottom of the sea and make sure that, whatever the test was, he would perform better than everyone else.

After all, Aotian was there with the goal of passing the test and gaining a part of the world authority that City Lord Leung had talked to him about earlier, and that was what he was going to do.

‘Let’s try to increase the level…’ he thought, with a smile rising on his lips.

Controlling Tian Zhu, the sect leader, he immediately began to synthesize the Weather Control technique, using all the materials he had and seeking to improve the technique as much as possible.

It would be better if he had more Taboo-Tier techniques, but unfortunately, besides this Weather Control one, he only had the Enlightened Mind technique, which was, in fact, the most mysterious technique he possessed so far.

Soon, under the influx of knowledge, he felt in real time the Weather Control technique updating and improving in many aspects, and that, instead of making him happy, made him thoughtful.

‘I always believed I couldn’t improve the Enlightened Mind technique because I didn’t have Taboo-Tier technique base material to enhance it, but now, with the example of the Weather Control technique as precedent, it seems that’s not the case…’

Aotian blinked, with a serious and thoughtful look, but deep down, confused.

Without hesitating, he tried once again to improve the Enlightened Mind technique, even using the Weather Control technique to enhance it, but again, he achieved no result.

‘Nothing… what could be happening? It’s as if this technique has no flaws that I can correct for now. Is it because I don’t have information regarding similar inheritances that involve the mind?’

‘Or could it be that, from the beginning, this technique… involves something greater?’

When he thought about this last point, his eyes shone slightly as he remembered the necklace with fragments of the law of life that Old Liu, Rihai’s great-grandfather and the creator of the technique, had around his neck.

‘Yes! Maybe that’s it! It’s not that I underestimate the old man, but I really don’t believe he could create a technique on his own that is more perfect than this Taboo-Tier Weather Control technique, which, judging by its depth and the place where it is found, must have been created by the former owner of this small world, a Mahayana.’

‘And if he doesn’t have the capability by himself, maybe something else, like the laws of life in the necklace, influenced him during his epiphany to find an unlikely path, one that involves something much greater! And if it involves something greater like laws, it’s natural that I, who have no knowledge of that, cannot improve this technique!’

The more he reflected, the firmer his belief became that the Enlightened Mind technique was even more extraordinary than he had imagined.

Taking a deep breath, he didn’t know whether to feel excited or worried about it, but for now, he forced himself to believe it was positive. After all, that was a technique he would be extremely reluctant to give up, and if it was influenced by the laws of life, maybe it was much more positive than he thought.

Returning to reality, he focused on the present, setting this aside temporarily and began to shape the patterns in his roots in a more efficient and complex way, following the result of the synthesis.

As these differences happened, he could feel the power of the storm increasing and, along with it, his control, until something simply clicked.

BOOM!!

A powerful lightning bolt thundered across the sky, far stronger than before, making the world seem like it was trembling.

In the sky, the raindrops and ice, much thicker than before, began to gather again, and the image of the dragon appeared once more, but this time, it seemed much more real and, around its water body, the hail ice condensed, creating claws, teeth, and several ice scales, which only made it more majestic. Its total size was five times larger than before, reaching a terrifying one hundred meters in length.

As soon as it formed, it didn’t fall directly like before, but its body suddenly began to move. Its white ice eyes seemed to shine, and it then began to swim quickly toward the sea, increasing its speed and momentum even more.

Finally, just a few meters from the sea, the beast opened its mouth, and from the sky, a lightning bolt fell at the exact same instant, striking its tail, circulating through its body, passing through its chest while illuminating it, until it exited through the mouth, seeming even more powerful than when it came.

Despite so much happening, everything, from the dragon’s appearance to it releasing its lightning breath, happened in a mere blink of an eye.

The powerful electric ray, leaving the beast’s mouth, struck the sea with a thunderous sound, like the roar of a dragon, and then the water body came right after, violently crushing the sea.

BOOOMMM!!!

The impact raised a gigantic tsunami, which traveled a long distance until it swallowed the island where everyone, frozen and incredulous, watched it happen.

Moments earlier, even Young Master Chun had woken up groggily, only to witness the scene before him in disbelief, doubting whether what he was seeing was real. In the end, when he felt the power of that strike—far surpassing his own—the shock was so great that his eyes rolled back, and he fainted once more.

When the wave passed, everyone had swallowed some salt water, their mouths still open in stunned silence.

Aotian observed his strike, which reached a power capable of injuring even cultivators in the late stage of Soul Formation, and nodded in satisfaction as he lowered his arms, feeling almost all his energy depleted.

‘This is probably my strongest technique right now… but it’s a shame it still has some major flaws…’

He judged, with a sigh, half bitter and half satisfied.

The problem he saw was that, besides requiring a great expenditure of energy, this strike took too long to condense, which allowed the target to escape even before the attack formed and hit them.

This slowness came from the excessive dependence on external energy, which took time to be controlled by the cultivator’s own energy. Even so, he believed the technique could prove very useful one day, especially when facing enemies without intelligence, like the Shadow Beasts.

And another problem was that to create such strong power with the technique, he ended up having to sacrifice its great advantage, which was the wide-area attack, since the dragon basically ended up becoming a single-target strike.

But he still thought it was good enough for now. In the future, when he acquired more high-level inheritances, he could refine the technique even further, since, from what he could tell, it was still far from near-perfection.

After his display, he noticed that the sea had soon calmed, and it didn’t seem like the dragon responsible for the test intended to appear anymore.

Thus, he shrugged, turned around, and walked among the Dragon Peak cultivators, who still had empty, stunned eyes looking at the sea where his previous strike had fallen.

Not caring about them, he left there, returning directly to his wife and his disciples.

The first thing Aotian saw was his wife’s amused smile directed at him.

“Did you have fun?” Rihai asked, a playful glint in her eyes, quickly masking the earlier hint of complexity so her husband wouldn’t notice.

“Hmm… it was nice. You should try learning this technique, it’s very good. I’ll give you some tips later to help you optimize and control it better.” He smiled back at her and sat cross-legged beside her.

She nodded and turned her gaze back to the stone with the technique, focusing on it, not noticing the worried look that Aotian stopped hiding toward her back.

How could he have missed the complex expression she had earlier, along with the strange attitude she displayed when they parted from the sect disciples the day before? Aotian felt that he really needed to find a quieter, calmer place later to talk with her about what was going on.

With his mind weighed down by worry, he had no idea that he had drawn the shocked, admiring, and excited gazes of a dragon and a little horned girl beneath the water.

And so, while the others struggled to recover from his feat, the ten days allotted to learn the Weather Control technique slipped by in the blink of an eye.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep