He chuckled and said to himself, "For sure, they won’t want to lend me their Core Metac easily. But I’m sure that I can convince them to help me out."
He is powerful and will become even more powerful once he earns enough merit points to buy a high Dao Status, so he is not concerned about convincing rank 4 cultivators to lend him their Core Metacs. As for the energy nexus requirement, that will be very difficult for him to meet because he has a lot of energy threads.
Even the most talented person, like Slav, only needs to fuse 95 energy threads. Compared to Slav, he will need to do more than 4.5 times the work to create his energy nexus.
Compared to the minimum requirement of 50 energy threads, he will need to do 8.6 times the amount of work. And this is just for now, when he hasn’t raised his talent to the limit.
Once he raises his talent to 90 units, his five energy chambers will have a combined size of 450 units, which will grant him 450 threads. At that time, it will take him 9 times the effort to complete his energy nexus.
To top it all off, he doubts that he will be able to carry the energy nexus along with him when he reverses time. So, if he dies or reverts time, he will have to start all over again, no matter how close to rank 4 he is.
As difficult as this is, he couldn’t complain because this problem is something that he created for himself and will make him stronger if he overcomes it. As it is, if he had a way to make this problem more difficult for himself, he would do it in a heartbeat.
This thought made him smile with mirth and say, "Who wouldn’t want more energy threads?"
He thought about this and many other things as he returned to the sect grounds. Then he went into his temporary accommodations and began cultivating in earnest.
The first thing he did was to take the consumables. These are the Cloudy Date Metacs for raising the energy density of the fifth energy chamber, and the Metacs for raising the strength of his soul and mind.
For the energy density of the fifth energy chamber, it was already at level 9, which corresponds to the early state of rank 3. So all he needed to do was take three Cloudy Dates to raise it to the peak of rank 3.
But for his mind and soul, they were only at rank 2 and only halfway there at 1.5 points. So he needed to raise them to the peak of rank 2 first before he could raise them to rank 3 and then to the peak of rank 3.
As he was doing this, he thought of how he would have to raise the power of his mind and soul again if he rewinds time to the time he awakened. This made him feel as if he was wasting his time.
Of course, he wasn’t wasting his time by raising the power of his soul and mind. He doesn’t really think that. But compared to his cultivation level, his skill, and his willpower, the power of his body, soul, and mind seems like a bottomless pit of effort and money.
He grumbled, saying, "I get to lose my lifespan, but I only get to keep half of my power each time I rewind time. If you ask me, it is not fair."
He is sure that if he asks someone else about what they think about his ability to rewind them, they will call it unfair. But as unfair as that ability is, he is still not content with it.
He wants more and will continue to want more shamelessly, even though the money he is using to raise the strength of his body, mind, and soul was not earned with hard work and is practically free money, while other cultivators like Muni have to work their ass off for a year just to earn around 75,000 energy stones.
He continued to grumble till he raised the energy density of the fifth energy chamber to level 12 and raised the power of his soul and mind to the peak of rank 3. Then he began working on upgrading the power of his Life Ability.
He decided to strengthen his Life Ability before refining the strength of his body because it is easier to do, and because any effort he puts into it will not be lost to the reversal of time.
This time, he was very happy to strengthen this part of his existence. As he manifested his Life Ability, he smiled and said, "Come out, my beauty."
What came out from the energy well in his abdomen and slithered to the palm of his hand across his skin was a large black blob of indeterminate shape.
Even a slime has a definite shape. A slime is round, but this black blob can spread itself into any shape.
The black blob is cold to the touch, just like any metal would feel. It is also extremely heavy, but it is soft and behaves like rubber as he pulled on it and kneaded it like dough.
After playing with it for a while, he took the black blob over to the pile of metal crates that he just bought. Then he dropped the black blob into one of the crates.
The black blob fell onto the metal blocks and spread itself into a thin layer that covered every metal block in the crate. Then it began the enjoyable process of assimilating the metal block, or what humans call eating.
To the metal blocks, the black, slimy, and rubbery liquid metal might as well be concentrated acid because of the way it was corroding them. As time went by, the size of the metal blocks shrank under the ministrations of the black blob.