Arthur did the fighting excellence test and stopped when he reached level 41. He could go further, but only by one level or so. Since he didn't need to and had already taken the first-place record, he decided to give up there.
After the two of them achieved their goals, they returned to their houses to do what needed to be done in order to grow stronger.
Thor neglected forging entirely and focused completely on cultivation. But Arthur had to learn forging, formation, research the silver pine tree, and also cultivate. This slowed down his cultivation speed.
Fortunately, his life seed is really like a seed, so it can absorb mana from the environment and cultivate on its own. This way, even when he isn't actively cultivating, he is still cultivating.
In order to maximize this passive cultivation ability, he made sure to spend as much time as possible within the cultivation room. This was to take advantage of the higher concentration of mana in it.
Doing such a thing was mostly harmless. But it became quite dangerous anytime he was forging within the cultivation room. The higher concentration of mana made explosions more explosive.
The higher concentration of mana in the cultivation room made it seem like he was welding metal in a room with a higher concentration of oxygen than normal. A tiny spark or fire can quickly become exaggerated in the cultivation room.
He had heard many times that mana was volatile and highly reactive. After many years of explosions, he knew that to be true down to his bones and eye sockets.
That last part was because an explosion once took away his entire face and eyes. The explosion was very powerful, and his face was very close to it when it happened. So it breached his energy shield and roasted his eyes.
His eye socket became exposed for a while. But he gained a lot of experience from it. So one might say that he bought his experience with his eyes.
Years went by like this. Soon it was 25 years since he gained admission into the Blood Skull sect and 20 years since he participated in the first inter-sect competition.
Arthur was on the top floor of his house working. He was at a table using a microscope to examine tissue samples of various plant matter. The plant matter he was examining came from a source very close to him.
This source of the plant matter is the forest of trees around him. It wasn't so much a forest as a garden of trees because the trees aren't allowed to grow freely but are instead limited to the plots that he had demarcated for them.
There were different types of trees in the plots. All of them were one shade of silver or another, but they had different physical properties.
There were slender trees that were short and those that were long. There were thin and thick trees. There were some with rounded leaves, while others had pointed leaves in the shape of stars.
There was too much variability in the silver trees. This physical variation is the first thing he collected data about.
But the appearance of the silver trees is not that important to what he wants by breeding them. What he cares the most about are the properties of the silver trees as raw materials for forging, such as tensile strength, durability, conductivity, flexibility, etc.
These properties are the data that he collects next. The data he collects is what he uses to identify silver trees that possess the attributes that he wants and determine which direction he should take the breeding.
Still, his ultimate goal is to create a silver tree that can reach the third mortal coil. He has been able to breed silver trees with remarkable material properties, but as of yet, he hasn't been able to get one of the silver trees to advance to the third mortal coil.
This obstacle is why he decided to build a microscope to see if he could identify cellular characteristics that could help him determine what he is doing wrong or what he should be doing.
He just doesn't look at the cells. He also observes their behavior when infused with various concentrations and types of mana. He is hoping that what he observes will give him a new direction both in terms of research and solution for his problem.
So he is doing both observation and experimentation at the same time. After he does this, he will record the data he observed into a memory crystal. Then he will pick up another tissue sample for experimentation and observation.
As he replaced his current sample, he couldn't help but say with annoyance, "I hope I'm not wasting my time."
He has this concern because he has been working on the silver trees full-time for almost four years now. He overcame the first obstacle three years ago, but he has been stuck on the second obstacle since then.
He had reached the peak of the second mortal coil after 15 years of hard work. This is 15 years since he first participated in the inter-sect competition, so he spent 20 years cultivating from the tenth transformation of the first mortal coil until he reached the peak of the second mortal coil.
After reaching the peak of the second mortal coil, he had time to do anything other than cultivating. So he dedicated the last five years to forging and researching the silver trees.
He mastered forging after a year of intensive and expensive research. The next thing that he should have done after that is begin practicing foundation establishment on others. But he didn't do that because he hadn't determined what kind of formation he wanted to establish yet.
To be exact, he already had something in mind. But because what he wanted to achieve is dependent on the silver trees, he decided to figure out how to bring the silver trees to the third mortal coil first.