After his death, Sage had rebuilt his cultivation from the ground up. At that time, the Seed of Life and the other Heavenly Materials took over. With him practicing the method the Seed of Life taught him, his body was made into fertile ground for the Seed of Life. The collection of Heavenly Materials he’d collected had entered into a sort of loop, feeding and nurturing others. At the time, Tao Ba had even restricted him from practicing normal cultivation. It had created a restriction for him during Ebb and Flow training, in the evening when he unsealed his Qi Pores he had to be careful not to alter or strengthen the flow of the Life Nebula technique. He merely opened himself to the world and let his starving body drink in as much Qi as it liked. Other practitioners would use that time to fiercely circulate their Qi Cultivation Technique, the massive influx of energy would be their best opportunity to strain at their bottlenecks and increase their cultivation.

Instead, the Heavenly Materials in Sage’s Dantian were in a sort of feedback loop and the energy they naturally emitted was already at the maximum rate that his body could handle. Somehow they created a sort of equilibrium between transforming his body and also preventing it from being harmed. So, in order to increase the speed at which he cultivates the only option he had was to gain more Heavenly Materials. More importantly, he had to maintain a balance between those objects.

Sage wasn’t sure whether or not the ‘elemental’ system of the East or West were more correct, but at the moment he wasn’t matching either one. Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. The Western system, and one that he didn’t quite follow, considering the Seed of Life was Wood related. On the other hand, for the Eastern System: Wood, Earth, Metal, Fire, and Water; he was missing Metal. Given the world around him, he was more partial to the Eastern System being more ‘correct’ here, and so he hypothesized that adding a Heavenly Metal would be a good balancing factor for the other Heavenly Materials inside his Dantian. It had only ever been a guess, and he’d never thought he’d actually be able to find a Heavenly Metal. They were too highly coveted for him to expect to encounter one.

He’d already been approaching the peak of rank 4, especially with Ebb and Flow training. While he wasn’t allowed to directly work on improving his cultivation, the intense training of his Qi Pores, Meridians, and physical body created a stronger foundation. In order to handle a greater amount of Qi it was necessary to have a strong body. Each stage and rank that were gained would cleanse and purify the body, creating a stronger vessel. Depending on the cultivation method or the cultivator’s aptitude, the amount of cleaning and transformation their bodies underwent was different. In time, the changes wouldn’t be able to keep up with the new demands on the body and so it was common for cultivators to try to strengthen their body to help them break through bottlenecks in their advancement.

That said, most preferred to use special resources and pills to improve their bodies. Body refining techniques required extreme amounts of effort, suffering, and pain. Who would want to spend years doing hard physical training when a single pill could have the same effect? Sage had the advantage of a beast body, one that was far stronger than a normal human’s body. That was mostly due to the effects of the Blood Refining technique. Without it, he would only have a different anatomy than a human body. Blood Refining is what let him truly increase the quality of his physical form and not just the shape or size. In most cases beasts had stronger physical bodies than humans, but that was because of their forms. Of course, a huge bull weighing more than five times more than a human would be much stronger. They’d also have hooves and horns, natural weapons that the human would have to find a way to deal with. That said, they were both creatures of flesh and bone.

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If the bull and human were at the same level of cultivation, the bull had a physical advantage and the human had their mental superiority. Demonic Beasts had all sorts of strange and unusual powers, but that matched up against cultivator’s special Qi techniques and cultivation methods. That’s where the special bloodlines of truly powerful Demonic Beasts came in. They were born with innately higher quality bodies, just like humans have different levels of talent, beast bloodlines were not all the same. Most famously, a Dragon bloodline would make the Demonic Beast far more powerful than others at the same rank and stage.

Sage had already used Blood Refining to the limit, and when combined with Ebb and Flow training, his cultivation speed was many times faster than it had been back when he first joined the Holy Flame Sect. It had taken him more than a decade to breakthrough that final bottleneck of rank 2 and become a rank 3 cultivator. Now, with his new body and with the help of a greatly improved bloodline he was gaining strength as a rank 4, at nearly the same speed as he had when he was rank 2. Normally, gaining a rank would at least halve the training speed, and in most cases quarter it or even cut it down to next to nothing. Even so, he was still impatient for a breakthrough. Forming a core was the main dividing line between the strong and the weak. Those at rank 6 made the decisions for the large powers of the world, and only those that were at rank 5 were strong enough to even enter the conversation.

Sage thanked King and Ruanfu, informing them he’d probably be occupied for a few days. He sent them back into the Universe Ring and picked up the post that he’d attached the Blue Icesilver to. He was worried that as soon as he touched it, there would be a reaction so he stored it in the Universe Ring and put himself into the optimal condition. Sleeping, bathing, and eating. Adjusting his mind and body for the shock that was to come. Only when he was completely sealed in with a dozen layers of defensive formations and sitting on a meditation mat did he finally bring the Blue Icesilver back out. He waved his hand and a thin layer of Steelsilk flew out, severing the top of the post. The cloud blue chunk of metallic ice fell down towards him and he caught it on one palm.

Here it comes!

It touched his skin. Nothing else happened. It just sat there in his palm doing nothing. Sage was a little confused, but not worried. Perhaps it took a little more to activate it? He sent out a sliver of his Qi and the Blue Icesilver reacted instantly. Of course, the knowledge that Tao Ba had passed him about Heavenly Materials covered such a thing, and he knew the pattern he had to use to activate it. He had just been imagining there would be a reaction with the Seed of Life as soon as he touched it. Instead, it activated exactly as the ‘book’ had told him. Once he sent his Qi in using a specific pulsing rhythm, the Blue Icesilver came to life. It started to melt, but in a way that ignored gravity. It didn’t drip down, instead just liquifying in place. Transforming from a roughly spherical cube into a flowing liquid sphere.

Just when he was starting to admire the ball of blue mercury, the other Heavenly Materials in his Dantian started to act up. There was immediately a sort of vibrating resonance between them and the Blue Icesilver. Sage didn’t feel like reliving them bursting into his body forcibly again so he hurriedly followed the advice from the ‘book’ and swallowed down the ball of liquid metal. It felt like a very heavy pudding, or a sort of jello milkshake combination. Something so thick that if he weren’t such a strong cultivator it would have choked him to death. As it was, he slowly swallowed it down, glad that his training of Divine Breath had strengthened his lungs and throat.

The Blue Icesilver required it’s prospective wielder to have real guts. To attempt to refine it, they had to swallow it down into their stomach. While it didn’t seem like much mass, the problem was that as soon as it entered the body it spread out and stretched into the same ‘other space’ where the meridians and Qi system lived. It started to feed on Sage’s Qi and with that it gained mass. It grew larger and larger, starting to bloat out his stomach. He was now on a timer. He had to refine it before it grew large enough to drown him or explode his stomach from the inside.