Sage had barely any time to get used to the body he’d named the ‘Gold Thunder Mantis’ and now he was already altering it. Unlike most of the other creatures that Sage had merged with, there was no specific feature that he was trying to get from the Bone Mantis. The Bone Mantis wasn’t famous for any special natural abilities that it had. Instead, it was famous because of what could be made out of its body. As powerful and dangerous as it was, it was actually more treasured than it was feared. The reason that Sage wanted it was likely related to the reason that it was so treasured. The Bone Mantis usually had the power of a rank four cultivator when it reached maturity, yet even the biggest ones weren’t much larger than a human femur.
If there was anything special about the Bone Mantis it would be its liking for the foul energy of death, as well as its unique appearance. The Bone Mantis was well known because the outward physical appearance of the Bone Mantis could be so incredibly varied. For some reason, when the Bone Mantis was young, it would choose one of the bones that it was exposed to and as it grew it would take on a shape to almost perfectly match the outward appearance of that bone. Sometimes one bone would not be large enough, and there was one example in a book where a Bone Mantis looked just like the bones of a hand severed mid-way up the forearm. Usually it chose larger single bones, and Sage made the guess that it was so it could hide in more places. If a bunch of bones, with no remaining flesh or tendons were standing up atop a pile of rocks, what was holding them together?
Why was this important? For Sage, it meant that the Bone Mantis had a very high quality bloodline. It was likely also the reason why it was so valuable as a material. It was just far more concentrated power than other things. Having a huge body definitely increased one’s power, so how impressive was it for something smaller than a cat to take on a Demonic Beast the size of a warehouse? This quality on its own was enough for Sage to fight to get one and merge with it without any reservations. That, and it also happened to be a Mantis. What would be more fitting for the Lang Clan than improving their bloodline with a stronger Mantis?
It was only after fusing with it, did Sage realize why the Bone Mantis was so strong. It turns out that it’s innate ability was very similar to that Mosquito he acquired long ago. There was a giant mosquito he’d found in a swamp near the Soul Taming Abode and it was worthless on its own, but he had found an Ancestral Memory of a technique that he named simply Blood Refining. The Mosquito was only a Spirit Insect, so it wasn’t smart enough for any names or history to be passed down, and it was already remarkable that such a creature had its own technique. When the mosquito took the blood of other creatures it could extract the best parts of its victim’s bloodline and use it to strengthen its own. In his opinion it was a pretty wonderful technique, but the problem was that it required powerful beast bloodlines. For others, the opportunity to constantly improve their base quality would be very useful, but Sage had the Insect Immortal Index. If he could get his hands on such good beasts he would just merge with them directly! There was no need to just take a portion of its strength when he could get it all instead.
The Bone Mantis had a similar technique, which he chose to give a similar name. It took something from the victim and used it to slowly refine and improve itself. The difference is in what it took, and also what gave it its name: Soul Refining. Anything that was related to the soul was definitely rare and unusual for Sage, but it seemed he was fated to keep running into creatures with soul related abilities. On the other hand, the technique of the Bone Mantis was far less terrifying than some of the others he’d gained. When something died near the Bone Mantis it had the strange ability to collect the remnant soulstuff of the deceased. Sage still didn’t know much about souls, soul cultivation, or the afterlife, but when he combined with the Bone Mantis he learned quite a bit more.
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It wasn’t spelled out explicitly, it felt more like a fact that the Ancestral Memories were just glossing over while they explained how to use the technique. When something died, their soul was released from their body and upon dissipating it was sent to another place. In this process, torn pieces of the soul were shed when it was ripped out of its body, and also left behind when it was destroyed or left this realm. It turns out the Bone Mantids actual innate power was its ability to touch soul and spirit type beings with its physical body. The Bone Mantis would use its bladed forearms to snatch and eat these leftover fragments of departed spirits.
With this new information, Sage realized why the Bone Mantis was so rare and also why others had been so unsuccessful at breeding them in captivity. It was known they needed to be in a place of death, but they didn’t realize that the Bone Mantis would require stronger and stronger things dying nearby it in order to thrive. Those cultivators would likely have tried to surround it with dead cattle and other livestock, which likely worked great in the beginning. Then the Bone Mantis would grow stronger and the souls of livestock wouldn’t be enough. Even if they used higher rank beasts, eventually the Bone Mantis would stop growing. From what he understood of the Soul Refining technique it took many deaths of a similar strength as itself for any progress to be made. Who would be willing to sacrifice hundreds of tier 3 beasts in order to raise a single Bone Mantis to tier 4?
Along with this ability to catch and eat spirits, the Bone Mantis also had a very weak ability to detect them. It was akin to a sort of psychic sense of smell and when something died nearby it would start searching for places it felt were fragrant and then it would snatch its invisible meal with its large forearm blades. The Bone Mantis could touch spirits and so it would know when it struck its mark.
What did all of this mean? The good news was that the Bone Mantis with its Soul Refining seemed to have unlimited room for growth. The bad news was that its innate quality was not as spectacular as he expected. In order to receive the big boost in strength he was hoping for, he would have to harvest remnant souls just like a Bone Mantis did.
Even so, there was still a large improvement in quality, just not as much as he expected. As for how his true body was modified, it was actually quite simple. The main change was to his antennae, which grew larger and gained a new sensitivity to spirits. On top of that, the surface of his exoskeleton was still golden, but it seemed more dense and substantial. His forearm blades grew even larger than they were before and his mantis body now seemed to be dominated by its large forearms, wings, tail, and eye stalks. The normally large and imposing upper body that was so iconic of the Mantid’s look seemed quite small for this new body that he had named ‘Thunder Soul Mantis’.
After the metamorphosis was complete, Sage secretly met up with Yating and passed him many eggs of the Thunder Soul Mantis. He also double checked that the whole of his technique library had been properly passed on, including the most recent improvements and changes that had been made to the Violent Sun Sect techniques. There was already progress on integrating them with the Jade Mantle, the Thunder Soul Mantis, and also many methods to actually train the Violent Sun Body Instruction itself.
All of his accumulated knowledge, wildlife, and plants were now ‘backed up’ in the Lang Clan and he felt at ease on heading towards the unknown.