The months began to tick by.
After reaching the Divine Vessel Realm, Ryu's cultivation speed drastically plummeted. This was only to be expected. After all, the pinnacle geniuses of the Shrine Plane reached the Divine Vessel Realm at twenty years old, but wouldn't reach the Connecting Heaven Realm until eighty years later on average.
Luckily, now that Ryu had an Immortal Body, his limitations in this regard were lesser than that of many others. Without accounting for outside sources, Ryu would only need a fourth of that time to reach the next Realm. Should he make good use of his resources, he could cut that down by another half.
Either way, his goal was to firmly enter the Lower Divine Vessel Realm by the end of the year. Currently, he had only opened one of six Vessels, so he couldn't truly be considered to be at that stage quite yet. Only after opening his second would he be. The fifth Divine Vessel corresponded to the Peak Divine Vessel Realm, while the sixth was the Half-Step Connecting Heaven Realm. Once that was completely, he could begin connecting his Vessels and Pulses to carve a path toward Immortality.
Though his Qi Realm cultivation came to a near grinding halt, Ryu vastly improved in other facets.
For one, he finally completed the foundation of his Lightning Qilin Bloodline, allowing the strength his four Ancestral Grade bloodlines provided him to reach five hundred thousand jin.
Following this, Ryu made use of his momentum to open his first Body Vessel. Within the Pulse Tempering Realm – the first Realm of Body Realm cultivation – one opened their Body Pulses. Now, Ryu had firmly stepped into the Vessel Tempering Realm, allowing his bodily strength to skyrocket.
When Ryu felt his own strength, he was once more shocked by the power of his bloodlines.
According to convention, a Half-Step Connecting Heaven Realm expert would have one million jin of strength. A Half-Step Immortal Ring Realm expert would have ten million, and a Half-Step Path Extinction Realm expert would have one hundred million jin of strength.
Since the Peak of the Vessel Tempering Realm was the equivalent of the Peak of the Immortal Ring Realm, one can imagine the amount of strength opening just one vessel provided.
There was a massive qualitative leap in his power. Half a million jin was already half the strength of a Half-Step Connecting Heaven Realm expert. But after opening just one Body Vessel… Ryu directly leapt to five million jin of strength!
According to Ailsa, the first Body Vessel was by far the easiest to open. It would provide about a tenth of the strength the Realm had to provide, the second would provide fifteen percent, the third would provide twenty percent, the fourth a quarter, and finally the fifth would provide the final thirty percent.
Essentially, if Ryu had just one Ancestral Bloodline, opening his first Body Vessel would net him the ability to temper his strength to ten million jin. However, since he had a starting point of five hundred thousand jin and not one hundred thousand, it would provide him room for fifty million jin!
Unlike the Pulse Tempering Realm where all of the pulses must be opened before one began to temper their blood, in the Vessel Tempering Realm, because of the difficulty in opening one's vessels, a new tempering must occur after every opened Body Vessel.
It would normally take decades to complete. But, Ryu had confidence to finish in just ten years.
Ryu's Body Realm wasn't all he made progress in. Under his diligence, he mastered several Peak Earth Grade techniques. In addition, he completed his final breakthrough and finally comprehended his Northern Heavenly Wind Inheritance to the Impose Realm.
With this, Ryu's speed had reached a godly level within the Mortal Grade. He was confident that none below the Immortal Ring Realm could match his speed. And, now that he had coupled it with a movement technique that made use of his full abilities, the results would speak for themselves.
However, on this day, with just a little more than half a year remaining until the matters of the Core Region kicked off, Ryu wasn't focused on any of these things.
Deep within the Death Worm Immortal Cave, a naked woman was strapped to a table made of black jade.
Undulating breasts that flowed like milk, long slender legs, a small treasure island partially obscured by soft thighs… It was sight to behold indeed, if it wasn't for the fact she was crying to the point that her tears and snot became indistinguishable. Plus, after months of being unable to groom herself properly, her 'treasure island' was obscured by far more than just her a portion of her thighs. If her arms weren't pinned down, there'd definitely be another two forests to see under them as well.
However, the man who stood over her showed no fluctuations in emotion at her pleas. After all, this was the woman who cruelly tortured his grandfather for months before publicly humiliating his corpse. Even if she cried ten times harder, Ryu wouldn't blink a single eye.
In these past five or so months, Ryu hadn't forgotten that this Zu Clan Elder, or 'Esme', as Youkai had called her. Instead, he had simply allowed her to wallow in her own fear. This wasn't a woman who deserved an easy death. Living in constant fear of death for the last several months had brought her right to the cliff's edge. Now it was time for Ryu to collect her debts.
Ryu had taken his research into Necromancy very seriously. Though only five months had passed in reality, it was the equivalent of fifty months or about four years within the crystalline jade. This had given Ryu ample time to study numerous Death Seals and deepen his knowledge.
Before, since he couldn't enter the second floor, Ryu was stuck with using Grave Qi and Hecate's personal Death Seal. After all, every Death Qi needed a specially tailored Death Seal. So, even though the first floor had a few Death Qi cultivation techniques surpassing Hecate's, they would have been useless to Ryu in the past.
Grave Qi was a Heaven Grade Qi. It wasn't too bad, but it also wasn't very good either. It met the bare minimum requirements to evolve from the Mortal Qi grades to the Immortal Qi grade, but that was all. There was no Cosmic Grade Grave Qi. A qi needed to be at least of the Higher Mystic Grade, a Grade one step above the Heaven Grade, to become Cosmic Qi.
Ryu had taken his time to reach this point because he needed to accomplish a few things.
Firstly, he needed to learn and comprehend a new cultivation technique. This alone was simple. With his Heavenly Pupils, comprehending any Mortal Qi Technique was as easy as breathing. In addition, after having opened his first Qi Vessel, he could now store seven different types of qi in his miniature datians.
Secondly, he had to modify and create his own Death Seal based on the one provided in the second floor of the crystalline jade.