Poison God's Heritage

"I can see it," Law shouted. "The Red Soulsteel, it's over there on top of that mountain," he added.

Far in the distance, where Law pointed out. A red-colored Soulsteel was sitting comfortably on top of a mountain peak. Unlike the other pieces, this one was not being struck by lightning. It was shooting it.

The red Soulsteel was surrounded by several lightning orbs that slowly moved around it like moons would do to a planet.

Soon, one of these orbs would randomly spew out a string of lightning at the base of the mountain.

The area around the mountain was scorched black with the lightning that had been shooting out of this Soulsteel for god knows how long.

"That looks a bit dangerous," Law commented.

"Not at all," I replied as I guided the ship toward the Soulstone. Once we were close enough, the bolts no longer targeted the ground randomly to discharge, but they shot toward us.

However, thanks to the rods on top of the ship, they were instantly absorbed into them and harmlessly charged the ship.

"I thought you said they won't work once we're deeper into the Thunder Domain," Law said.

"They wouldn't work against the thunder that falls from the sky, but this one is less dangerous and less powerful so the ship can easily absorb them," I said as I docked the ship near the red stone.

I had a few puppets come out and pull out the stone then immediately place it inside a holding space. Since this stone was constantly shooting out lightning, I feared it might damage the ship from inside.

"That's pretty interesting," Law said.

"What is," I asked.

"That," he pointed forward.

Surprisingly, the third region was not as big as I expected, but it was pretty interesting nevertheless.

From what I saw, we were standing on a mountain range that extended in a circle around the fourth region. The reasoning for that was that the red Soulsteel was planted only on the peaks of the mountain range, and far below us was a piece of the cyan stone. However, that was the only thing we could see.

From the peaks of the mountain, all the way to the base of it was nothing but pitch black thunderclouds. Strangely, there was not a single streak of lightning nor a boom of thunder in the fourth region. Which, to be honest, was pretty strange for the Thunder domain.

"Let's collect the red stones first, then we can go down and check the other one," I said.

We took the ship and slowly drove to the top of the mountain range, collecting as many red stones as we could.

A cultivator hopped on top of the mountain range, he was surprised clearly by seeing our ship in the distance, but once he realized it was the fourth region just in front of him, he dove down into it.

He disappeared in the clouds without making a sound. But no longer than a few seconds, the thunder which seemed calm, began exploding out like a volcano that had been woken from slumber.

Lightning began streaking under the belly of the storm, and thunder boomed with relentless wrath. And no longer than a few more seconds, everything quieted down.

"I have a bad feeling about this area," Law said.

"Same here bud, same here," I said.

The two of us finished up looting, I mean excavating the Soulsteel and soon approached the base of the mountain on the fourth region's side.

We approached from the cyan stone area to inspect it, and before I did anything I spread my divine sense outward.

However, my Divine Sense couldn't even penetrate the clouds.

"These clouds stop divine sense. I guess they're too charged for that, look it's even reacting," I said as the clouds seemed bothered by the use of Divine Sense.

"Can we even go there?" Law asked.

"I somewhat doubt that, seems that this area is not as simple as it appears. Give me a second," I said as I pulled a few small metallic pyramids from my holding bag.

I had about a dozen or so of them in hand which I simply threw into the clouds.

The small metallic pyramids are what I use to geo-position for my tungsten rods. And they can display a graphic visual via sound echo.

However, not a second after the small pyramids landed, they were all destroyed. Not a single one of them survived as thunder struck down at them.

I sighed as I realized that entry to this area was not going to be possible for us.

"Perhaps if we have the full tattoo, we'll be able to enter," Law said.

"Even if we had it, only one of us can enter, not to mention that we're missing half of the last tattoo we need."

"The man that entered before us should have a tattoo, so we can take his arm, and you can go in. I honestly wouldn't have made it this far without you, I'm just baggage at this point," he said.

I smiled at him and said, "Don't worry about it, also I thought about getting his arm and improving our own ship's glyph. But the issue is, I have no idea where the guy is, if he is alive or not, and how we can even get there." I said.

"I can try and get inside," Law said.

"And rely on something like luck? Hell no, you'll end up dead. Not to mention, your luck might be the thing that allowed you to come with me so I can stop you from doing something this stupid. Give me some time to think about this, I'll figure something out," I said as I sat in front of the massive cloud curtain.

I began thinking of how to approach this massive cloud. First things first, I called out a random worker puppet and asked it to walk inside. But doing so, in case it would get destroyed without me being able to retrieve it would be a waste. So I wrapped it with a sturdy nonconductive rope and sent it forward.

The puppet slowly walked into the cloud, nothing happened at first and after a few seconds, hell broke loose as thunder and lightning boomed constantly.

I hastily dragged the rope back, which was not easy, and found a scorched and burnt puppet at the end of the rope.

"That's what you call well done," I muttered as I saw the devastating state of the puppet.

The lightning's strength was so powerful it bore through its metallic body and scarred it deeply burning and melting many of its parts. However, the 'mind' circuit was still functional thankfully.

I pulled out the mind formation and plated it in another puppet.

"What did you see inside?" I asked.

"Dark. No living creatures, not even the soil were alive. No plants or trees. Only darkness." The puppet said.

I sighed as I took the puppet back inside the holding bag.

Law threw in a piece of wood that he got from his holding bag. And although I expected a reaction from the storm, everything remained quiet.

"Could it be that the storm reacts to metal only?" Law asked.

"It's a possibility," I said, but this was good. This was progress.

"How about we put a puppet inside a wooden cage, maybe it won't be noticed?" Law said.

As much as I doubt that, I can't come up with a better plan for now, so I agree with Law's idea. And he immediately began building a log cabinet.

***

"You're underestimating Shen Bao," the Lord of Lords said. "He isn't a man who would recklessly throw his life away. As you know, he didn't come all the way to the beyond by being strong-headed or willful. He thinks before he acts and isn't someone who will simply just die in the fourth region."

"You don't understand it's not that he isn't brilliant, but his own brilliance might cost him his life. The fourth region requires one to have the four circles of the lightning prohibition to enter it. And right now, he does not have it on him but on the ship, and it isn't even complete," she said.

"So what?" the Red Sun said, "So what, he will figure something out, like he always does, look," he said as he pointed at the screen where Shen Bao was sitting in front of the clouds pondering what to do instead of diving right inside it.

"That's the one you think is going to die? Hah! You really underestimated him. Give him time to think and he'll definitely come on top, also, you saw how he used the ability of the Thunder Swapping cauldron without using Origin Qi, and how he understood your own Thunder Prohibition without even having it imprinted on him."

The Blue Sun couldn't reply and sighed as she watched stressfully as Shen Bao was still trying to solve the mystery of the clouds.