Four months passed.
Sam is still inside the tempest valley along with the beasts inside the structure. By now Raiju already took the last of the contents from the blood and heart portions Sam made.
The dilution of lightning was really a great method and it worked perfectly according to his calculations. Now all of them are on verge of the breakthrough.
Sam and the beasts are pushing the barrier together and Old beast kept a keen eye on them to make sure that nothing wrong happens.
As they became closer and closer to reach the peak stage of Intiation, Sam suddenly felt a weird sensation in his ees and on his spine near the shoulder blades.
He was familiar with this sensation and the experience for this not exactly pleasant. In fact it was one of the most painful experiences of his life.
It was when he broke through to the middle stage of Astral plane initiation, when the metamorphosis of the l lungs happened.
The change in the lungs due to yanwu's bloodline. Now the same thing is happening but to a different organ. This time it is even happening for two organs instead of one.
Eyes and the back.
He could feel the blood dripping from his eyes and the energy in his body slowly turned into wind elemental energy.
This made him frown in confusion.
He thought since he took the energy from the lightning elemental demons the metamorphosis might have a link to the raiju bloodline. But from the looks of it, it is going on with the order of his contracts.
Since Sky is his second contract the wind elemental energy is the one that is causing the metamorphosis.
Sam gritted his teeth and tried his best to control the pain coming from his eyes and the pain slowly extended to the optic nerves.
But his focus on the pain was completely disrupted as his back also started hurting. He could feel the bones protruding from the spine portion between the shoulder blades.
His back also started bleeding and Sam couldn't even take the pain anymore and started roaring on top of his lungs.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh…"
His whole body felt weak and fell forward. His hands involuntarily reached to his back as he felt the bone protrusions growing more and more.
The increasing pain made him punch the ground and cracks appeared in the structure surrounding them which shielded them from the lightning.
Old Beast looked at his situation and hindered the lightning from striking them. He had an extremely serious expression on his face as he looked at Sam's condition.
There is a sense of familiarity which he couldn't remember where he got this from as he looked at Sam who is growing a new bones out of his body.
The beasts waited for Sam's breakthrough and everyone wanted to comfort him when he saw. But they didn't dare touch him as his groans of pain became more and more intense.
Soon, the bone grew into two wings and slowly flesh started forming over the bone frame and even feathers started growing over it.
And the eyes also stopped bleeding and he could slowly feel his vision returned.
Sam finally stopped feeling pain and his energy started flowing freely as it pushed the barrier of breaking through like it was pushing a paper door.
But after the breakthrough, Sam didn't feel a single ounce of joy, instead there is only relief that the pain was over.
Even that relief didn't last long as he looked at his wings.
His wings are extremely similar to that of the wings of Sky and when Sky saw those wings he became increasingly proud and happy and even stood beside Sam to compare the similarities.
Except for the size, those wings are same in every other aspect.
Even though, Sam is smiling when he looked at Sky's joy, it was particularly forced, because he doesn't know how to hide these. But before that, he decided to try and fly with them.
He tried to feel them and move them and he managed to do that with a surprising ease as if he has been doing all his life.
As he flapped his wings continuously, he levitated a bit. And that is only because he didn't use any spiritual energy. As he channeled the spiritual energy, the wings flapped faster and he slowly started flying.
They worked best when he channeled pure wind elemental energy and when he activated wind elemental fusion, the energy consumption has been reduced by more than half.
He became overjoyed with all the new things he could do. But after all the trials, he once again focused on the problem at hands.
How to hide these wings? He couldn't just let them out in the open. Even though winged races are common and no one would care too much, he couldn't just stay like this. It would be hard for him to adjust.
He then remembered the Nagas and mermaids, their tail transforms itself into legs when they needed it to, maybe he thought there would be a similar situation.
So, he went to meet Chandra who is within his newly created lab.
When Chandra saw Sam's wings, he was dumbfounded.
After Sam asked him about how they do it, Chandra explained.
Sam went to his residence without anyone seeing and sat crosslegged.
He circulated energy according to the cultivation method of Myriad beast bloodlines and slowly circulation the bloodline of Sky sovereign roc.
As he did that and folded the wings as much as he can, they bones started retracting into his body as much as he can and the flesh over the wings was compressed too.
After he was done, he checked himself and wore the clothes over it. Nothing is visible when he stood like that.
He took his feather coat off and once again circulated the energy in the same way he did while compressing the wings. The wings expanded with a whoosh and tore through the clothes he was wearing. He flapped the wings and it all worked normally.
Then he proceeded to modify the feathered coat. The wings are a great addition to him in the battle and he cannot be needed to take the coat off every time he wanted to use them.
But he couldn't think of any possible modifications that would let him use the coat spontaneously like he wanted without the presence of spirit.
But he didn't want to enchant the coat with a spirit. He want a spirit to induce itself in it.
After all, the feather coat is made of Black meteorite Sand and the feathers of the Golden Sun crow. If a spirit induces itself, it might even resemble the Golden Sun crow. It is a waste to enchant it and he is sure that the spirit induction is near.
So, he compromised for the moment and didn't tinker with the coat. After settling the issue temporarily, Sam went to meet his subordinates who already returned from completing their assignments.
Sam sent them to collect the information regarding the Peak stage cultivators of Astral Plane Pre-transcendence.
There are three targets remaining in that cultivation stage and the team managed to get information on all three of them.
Saber Monarch acted alone and he gathered information regarding a woman. She is a sole cultivator who recently opened a sect solely for women.
She is a fire elemental user and she is famous for her fire elemental spells.
No one knows where she was born or where she was from. But it was told that she lives within a volcano and even her sect is located in the premises of the volcano.
The sect for women was created with the sole purpose of stopping some of the demon families who are indulging themselves in too much human slavery.
Sam was surprised that they are encountering demons once again this early.
It seems like the demons are increasing in amount as they moved forward and even more coincidental thing is these demons are also blood demons.
But they are of different elements and different blood colors.
Five elemental King went along with Agar and they got information on the second candidate who is also mysterious of them all.
He is a challenger.
He roams across the realms as he challenges the prodigies of each realms for duels. He would always challenge the peers and even some seniors with a bit of superior cultivation to get a proper challenge.
He didn't kill any of his challengers in a duel. He always showed mercy, but if someone ambushes him, he kills them in the most brutal way.
It was hard to find his exact whereabouts as not many people managed to see his face. In fact, he is also master of disguise and no one knows what his true face is.
But one thing is for sure, he would reveal his name when throwing a challenge. His home realm is actually far from the Crimson reed realm and Nine moon realm and this is not even his operating area, but he only recently got closer as he couldn't find challenges within his realm.
Even now Five elemental King didn't manage to find his exact whereabouts, instead he managed to get news of where he would be next.
