The days kept passing, from time to time, the Gu house opened, to hunt and to recollect resources to refill their reserves, to feed their Gu's and to diminish the losses they all suffered.

During those times, they kept dividing on many hunting groups, among them, Dio isolated himself, after all, he was most used to working alone and besides, it was too stressing for him to scheme with someone close to his back.

Besides, most of the time he spent outside wasn't on hunting, feeding his Gu's or Cultivating, he instead focused on honing his skills and developing new techniques.

Dio began to jump periodically, seemingly attempting to decipher a new secret, suddenly, the image, vague figure of a rabbit appeared beside him.

That was a Strength phantom.

Strength phantoms are only present when a 'beast-branch Strength' Gu achieves a hundred percent of completion.

They basically represent and ensure that the 100% of the power of the animal is being used, at the same time, they extend and amplify the 'range' of the attack considerably.

The ratio of activation of the strength phantom depends on many factors such as the 'movement' used, a 'alligator' would have a higher ratio of activation through a bite, a 'rabbit', however would do so, through a jump.

Those 'Strength phantoms' are the culmination of their power over their path, which could be further amplified by other Gu's, such as 'Strength Qi' Gu which increased the reach and the strength of those Strength phantoms considerably.

With this Gu in particular, the biggest weakness of the path could be mended, long-range fights.

An ordinary Strength Gu warrior focuses on strengthening their body, so, naturally they fight on short distances, whilst most Gu masters focus on using other 'elements' which can be extended further from the body.

Hence, for the most part Strength path was most frequent on the lower ranks where fights were of low-distances.

From rank 1 to 3, the level of most Gu masters, and when the fights aren't at a terrifying point yet.

As for rank 4 to 5, well, a mutated beast is equivalent to a rank 4 Gu master, and that spider was a mere mid-tier mutated beast.

When you reach at such point, the weaknesses of Strength path become clear, that and the surge of new paths and the extinction of many Strength related Gu's and materials made the decay of this path inevitable.

Of course, there were exception to this rule, there were still many 'Immortals' which focused on Strength path, one of them was Chu Du.

His talent is such that he even created a new branch of Strength Gu worms!

As for Dio?

He was also trying to develop his own particular branch of Strength path.

For starters, he first wished to solve one of the main weakness of Strength phantoms.

Which was their low ratio of activation.

Basically, each Strength phantom had a 'varying' ratio of activation depending on the proficiency and the move used, 'alligator phantoms' are more likely when you bite, and 'rabbit phantoms' are more likely to occur if you jump.

The technique is crucial, the higher the proficiency of the Gu master, the higher the chance of activation.

Most novices would activate it one of 25 times, whilst a proficient expert 3 or 4 of 10 times.

And with other Gu worms, the ratio could be increased to a whopping 100%, without failure.

Dio, aimed to acquire that percentage without relying on external tools such as Gu's.

To do so, he considered the case of 'Strength phantoms.'

If Strength phantoms were activated randomly, why would experts have a higher ratio of activation than novices?

There had to be a pattern!

Be it on muscle activation, tendon contractions, blood circulation and bone tension, there was a requirement which allowed the successful activation of a Strength phantom.

He only had to find that pattern.

After many attempts, he did 1 of 10, 3 of 10, 5 of 10, 8 of 10, until finally through practice he became masterful enough to activate it on a full 100%.

When he was confident enough, he then made a second test, he wanted to delve further into their potential.

He made all the right activations on the right moment, but, he suppressed them, and kept them on a loop, not allowing them to be fully completed.

Whilst this passed, he glanced at the vague image of the rabbit which was now solidifying.

Suddenly, he jumped 3 meters above the ground.

"Success!"

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Dio, by constantly piling and accumulating 'blood' on the core of the Strength phantom could extend the duration of its effect, effectively acquiring an 'explosive' ever-lasting force.

Which became progressively stronger over time!

Of course, even though he found a solution he was still troubled by two things, firstly he was unsure if his 'body foundation' was enough to fully use the power of his new concept.

Secondly, even if he could, his Strength phantoms would sooner or later hit their 'upper limit', and thus, regardless of how powerful Dio was they'd collapse and crystallize fully at this moment..

Dio frowned, at first, he managed to 'pour' a small amount of 'Blood Qi', which after piling up, allowed the 'rabbit phantom' to take a pinky shape.

At this point, its power doubled.

It doubled once more when it became red, once more when it became crimson and when it became dark purple.

"Crck." "Crck." "Boom!"

He jumped dozens of meters, and left a small crater of blood, together with a puddle of blood.

His legs were utterly shattered, his body foundation was too low to endure the power of his newly created method.

Dio was completely exhausted, after all, he had been experimenting tirelessly for hours!

Hot sweat flew across his forehead, yet, despite his exhaustion, his eyes shone with a white trace, he was completely excited by the possibility that opened before him.

"If the power of a mere rabbit can reach this point, then what about a horse, or an elephant?"

Dio closed his eyes.

"I'll test them soon, when I fully complete the effect of their respective Gu's, after all, the more powerful a certain Gu is the more it takes to be fully integrated to the body of the Gu master.

Anyway, I'll consider this experiment a success, and I shall call it; Blood Phantom."

He opened his two eyes, and he glanced briefly at his palm.

"Now, I'll experiment with another concept.

Fire.

If the essence of my freezing vapour technique is freezing, why can't my Heat Wave Palm Strike evolve into a flame?"

...

He raised his index finger, he tried to vibrate and spin his hand on a myriad of ways, but, he found no right pattern, he failed this time.

After testing their effect for an hour or so, he stood up.

"Sigh, this experiment has been a failure."

Dio resigned.

If he only had this technique to develop, perhaps he'd spent far more of his time delving into it, but for now?

Dio's whole began to vibrate, the air waves began to bend to his will and his speed increased considerably.

This was one of the most powerful techniques he had devised for the last 8 days.

At the end, he was trying to adapt to the concept of Gu's of this world.

For a path to be considered 'complete' it needs to have a Gu of each kind:

Offensive, Defensive, Movement, Investigation, Concealment, Healing, Storage, Cultivation.

For his offensive, his muscles would suffice but he had other various methods.

As for his defense, he could use directly his 'freezing' technique to block any incoming impact.

Movement, he could use his newly created technique.

Investigation?

When he acquired an aperture he was planning to acquire the Gu Luck Deduction to help him to compensate for this weakness.

Concealment was unnecessary for him, whilst Healing was the most well-covered by his Vampiric regeneration.

And lastly Storage and Cultivation Gu worms would be acquired by him when he awakened an aperture.

...

As for the means to awaken an aperture?

Well, Dio made an agreement with Ma Shan Hu.

Through Poison-vow Gu he promised that he'd join to the Ma tribe and for the 2 decades at least, he'd not be allowed to go to any tribe or organization, and he could also not leave their tribe.

There were some exceptions such as if it was destroyed or what not, but, that was the gist of it.

Obviously, the reason why Dio even dared to make an agreement with Poison-vow Gu was mostly because of his Vampiric regeneration and his body foundation.

After all, even though the poison was fearsome, he was confident on enduring and surviving the process.

And as he became progressively stronger, this confidence would become even higher.

The second reason why he joined them, was because he truthfully needed a 'support' on this world.

After all, this was the land of Giant Sun Immortal Venerable descendants, if he didn't have the Huang Jin bloodline, even if he became powerful he'd be suppressed by all those superforces.

As for becoming a demonic overlord, that would be too foolish, he couldn't even contest against a single rank 4 Gu master, let alone a horde of rank 5 experts.

Thus, he decided to make a compromise.

That was his reasoning, whilst Ma Shan Hu's was even more simple.

He needed to recover some of his losses!

Even if he made a dozen of mistakes, as long as he could recruit a new rank 3 expert, most of his mistakes would be pardoned as he'd have accumulated a lot of merit points on the tribe.

Dio, was someone proficient on healing techniques and he had a high fighting strength, so his value as an elder was obvious to everyone.

As for the two rank 3 Gu's, Dio would take?

They're two.

Vital condenser Gu.

Body and spiritual conversor Gu.

The former Gu had a simple effect, which was to increase the 'density' of the vital energy, but reducing its overall quantity.

If the Gu master who used the Gu had a weak constitution they'd be sick for years or even die on the act, if they had an average body they'd recover on a matter of weeks and felt healthier for the following years, filled with a highly condensed 'vitality' surging through them.

Gu masters with a higher 'vitality' would only feel weak for a few days or hours, and would experience an improvement on their constitution and blood purity for the following decade!

On the case of Dio, he'd merely had to rest for a brief moment before recovering all his strength and becoming even more powerful than before.

...

The second Gu however represented a 'conversion' of energy between the aperture and the body.

This was an expendable Gu which basically allowed its user to convert 'mass' into fuel for the aperture and viceversa.

Obviously, muscle mass was better than fat, but, fat could also be used for the whole ordeal.

The whole point of using fat or muscle was for nourishing the aperture, which frankly had a terrible ratio of conversion.

Perhaps, for a rank 2 aperture, such Gu would be necessary but for a rank 3 Gu master the effect would be low.

And to use a rank 3 Gu to nourish a rank 2 aperture was foolish so it was normally used on the opposite way.

To nourish the body by using the aperture's foundation.

The amount granted depended on the Gu master's intent, they'd merely give the Primeval Essence to acquire some muscle mass or...

They'd use the foundation of an aperture to nourish the body and grant it a huge vitality.

This Gu was only used by either rank 4 Gu masters who could use this Gu without losing their foundation or by rank 3 or lower Gu masters who couldn't longer advance on their Cultivation and thus relied on 'alternative' methods to raise their fighting strength.

Dio pretended to be a Strength Gu master who tried to use his aperture as the fuel to nourish his body, whilst he was quite the opposite.

He wanted to use his body as the fuel to forcefully create a 'gate' on a non-existent aperture, hence, creating one of his own.

But nobody had ever considered this, after all, how can a human who showcased such a powerful fighting strength be a mere 'mortal?'

Obviously, he'd also have asked for a rank 1 Hope Gu to do so, but he didn't want to give them any clues.

That was the logical reason whilst the emotional one was that he was still pissed off with Ma Shan Hu and he wished to increase his expenditure of resources even more.