He thought to himself as he picked up the relatively intact corpses and stored them in pouches, "I guess that the black cape of that guy is made from human skin."
He was referring to the obsidian-skinned man with black eyes. Arthur had some experience with forging Armaments, so he recognized that the man's Armament was from human skin.
For him, the use of a human corpse is to practice turning the human body into an armament in preparation for foundation establishment. It is a need that everyone in the Blood Skull sect has.
Normally, foundation establishment is very dangerous. In a way, it is similar to a surgeon performing an operation on themselves.
In such a situation, there is no anesthesia to dull or eliminate the pain, so the surgeon is going to feel every little bit of the pain of cutting up their flesh.
This situation is already bad, and that's even though the surgeon has undergone many years of training to become a surgeon. A layman in their situation will surely fail in performing the operation on themselves.
This is the normal situation for those establishing their foundation. For extraordinary people like the disciples of the Blood Skull Sect, the difficulty is through the roof.
If normal foundation establishment is performing an operation on the heart while feeling the pain, foundation establishment for disciples of the Blood Skull Sect is performing an operation on both the brain and the heart at the same time.
It is an exaggeration to say that the disciples of the Blood Skull sect are operating on their brains, but the increase in difficulty for their foundation establishment is still more than two times that of normal foundation establishment.
This sharp increase in difficulty is because disciples of the Blood Skull Sect construct a foundation that encompasses both the path of body refining and energy refining. So they deserve the extra pain and difficulty.
In order to survive the operation, he needs to be young and healthy. This way his body will be able to withstand more trauma before giving out.
He must also have pills and medicines to heal him and keep him alive during the operation.
These two things are the main requirements for anyone who wants to reach the third mortal coil. But both of them will be useless if the person performing the operation on themselves is a layman, not a surgeon.
At least surgeons know what to cut and how to keep themselves alive. This way they will be able to maximize their chances of success.
It is not an exaggeration to say that an ignorant layman will only succeed in performing an operation on themselves and live through it with luck.
He doesn't want to be an ignorant layman, and he doesn't want to rely on luck, so he has to become a surgeon. In order to become a surgeon, he must study and practice establishing a foundation on others.
He is already doing the part of studying by learning how to forge armaments. As for practicing, he is going to need both corpses and living bodies to practice on.
If he fails to forge his foundation, the least injury is for him to lose his life seed and fall to the first mortal coil in a near-death state. If the damage is bad, then he will die.
He knows all of these, so he knows that his life is at stake here. This is why the corpses of both beasts and humans are important to him.
His need for corpses is not a popular need in the cultivation world. The cultivators of most families and sects don't need to practice as much as him because they have the same foundation and can share the process of establishing their foundation with each other.
Only disciples of the Blood Skull sect who have different types of armaments and need to forge different kinds of foundations need to study on their own and practice a lot.
The uniqueness of their foundation reduces the usefulness of the experience of others and increases the difficulty of successfully establishing a foundation. But he didn't complain about this, though.
As he sorted the corpses, he said to himself, "This is the price of power."
Originally he could have used the experience of his predecessors who used the Everlasting Wood Art or the Divine Lightning Armament to forge their foundation. But his situation is unique in that he has to fuse these two techniques to establish his foundation.
There have been many people in the sect who have forged their foundation with either the Everlasting Wood Art or the Divine Lightning Armament, but he will be the first person in the history of the sect to combine the two of them.
This makes his situation precarious. He has to do his very best and even more than that, or he will die no matter the amount of resources that he has.
Currently, he is still learning how to forge armaments. He hasn't begun to combine the two techniques. However, even though his situation is unique, he already has a place in mind to start from.
He intends to use the fusion of metal and wood in the Silver Pine tree as a starting point for his research about the combination of wood and lightning. The metal in the Silver Pine tree is to serve as the carrier for lightning.
There are still a lot of problems to deal with, such as how to make the tree generate lightning and how to apply his findings to the body of humans. But he is sure that with time and a lot of corpses and test subjects, he will be able to succeed.
After he finished looting the valuables, he sat down to rest. Thor woke up a few minutes after that.
Arthur said to him, "You slept for 24 minutes. That's good. I thought that you would sleep for hours and I would need to smack you to wake you up."