Blood Burning

Using his Vital Energy, Yaan ignited two drops of blood essence.

In order to develop the Iron Rank Progressive Blood Constitution, he needed to use his own Vital Energy to ignite a single droplet of blood essence. However, igniting more blood essence would improve the chances of successfully developing the constitution. This could be increased to a maximum of twice as many drops, meaning that the limit on the amount of blood essence that could be burned for the Iron Rank constitution development was two drops. Compared to the tens of thousands of drops of blood essence in Yaan's body, these two drops were inconsequential. He had already decided to use the maximum quantity of blood essence for each stage of the process to ensure his success.

The moment the two drops of blood essence were ignited, they set ablaze within his blood stream. A deep, burning sensation filled Yaan's blood vessels, scalding not only the blood vessel walls, but even his very blood itself!

Yaan maintained a serene expression. He was already aware of what would happen upon igniting his blood essence, and really, just the ignition of two drops was easy enough to manage.

After lingering over this ignition for a few seconds, Yaan felt confident that he could handle the process in its full intensity. With that thought in mind, he suddenly urged more Vital Energy to fill the blood essence and set it ablaze, this time causing both drops to practically explode with an eruption of scalding vitality!

This type of vitality was unique and extremely powerful, but it was ferocious, and it could only be found during the ignition of blood essence. It was this power that some desperate cultivators would rely on in moments of life and death crisis. It was a strong enough power that it could cause their strength to surge beyond its normal limits for a brief period of time. However, after using this method, a cultivator's blood essence would drop to a permanently lower level compared to before, so it was certainly a last resort.

Yaan's Psyche Power surged, showing its use as he gained control over the violent vitality that threatened to rupture his blood vessels if left uncontrolled. With the control exhibited thanks to his Psyche Power, the entirety of the vitality spread throughout his blood, burning only his blood itself whilst now avoiding the surrounding blood vessel walls.

After filling his complete blood stream with this burning power, Yaan focussed on maintaining this state to the best of his ability. The rate of flow of his blood had accelerated to twice its usual rate, energised by the burning vitality that was now continuously refining his blood.

A minute later, the frantic process rapidly subsided, with only some of the unstable burning power lingering as the remnants of the strong vitality remained in Yaan's blood stream.

Success!

Yaan had successfully developed the Progressive Blood Constitution! It was only at the Iron Rank and could not show much use right now, but finally, he possessed all five progressive body constitutions!

Of course, this session was far from over.

With his blood left in this unstable state and with the remnants of the blood essence vitality having nowhere to go and nothing to do, Yaan did not try to stabilise his condition, but instead immediately burned another 16 drops of blood essence! This was the maximum amount that could be burned to develop the Bronze Rank Progressive Blood Constitution; each consecutive blood burning required eight times as much blood essence compared to the last.

He could choose to stabilise his blood, then wait before attempting the progression to Bronze Rank blood, but there were two reasons that Yaan chose not to do this.

Firstly, the unstable state of his blood made it such that the boundaries between the ranks of his Progressive Blood Constitution were weakened. The amount of force required to ascend a rank when starting in this state was lower, whilst the chances of success were higher.

Secondly, the lingering blood essence vitality from the previous blood burning could be stacked atop the vitality generated from the next cycle of blood burning, contributing to his charge towards the rank above!

And so, without giving himself any sort of break, 16 drops of blood essence were ignited within Yaan's body.

Yaan ignited his blood essence and set it ablaze at its utmost ferocity right from the beginning, causing a tremendous amount of power to surge outwards. With Yaan's Psyche Power, controlling this much was still not a problem.

Before long, his blood had ascended to Bronze Rank!

The next step was the burning of 128 drops of blood essence.

Since he was using the remaining vitality from one ascension to continue on with each following ascension, Yaan was not wasting any of the leftover vitality produced by burning his blood essence. As such, he planned to ignite the maximum amount for each rank, until the last ignition, at which point he wouldn't have enough remaining blood essence to do so.

As expected, the release of energy was almost ten-fold stronger this time. Yaan was forced to exert a bit more effort from his Sea of Consciousness in order to control the violent eruption, preventing it from damaging his blood vessels.

Though, at this level, Yaan's blood vessels would not collapse from the blood burning, even if he just left the process alone. Even so, he remained careful, because accumulating any internal injuries this early on would be detrimental for the coming blood burnings.

Yaan realised that in order to perfectly control the explosive vitality, he needed to control the burning power in multiple locations throughout his body. Whilst this could be achieved using a single psyche avatar, it was easier and more efficient to split his Psyche Power, forming multiple psyche avatars, each managing a different portion of the body.

After some thought, Yaan split his psyche avatar into six, one each for his legs, arms, torso and head.

One minute into the process, Yaan's blood gained a faint silver glimmer…

Silver Rank blood!

With no time to celebrate his continual success, Yaan ignited his blood yet again, this time setting ablaze over one thousand drops!

Boom…

A muffled explosive sound could be heard within his body, releasing faint shockwaves that caused Yaan to tremble for an instant. As he was forced to use his Psyche Power to hastily control the burning vitality, he felt a bit shocked that this blood burning was so intense!

After getting through the initial explosive impact, subduing the vitality was much easier. The feeling of having a concentrated, scalding vitality refining his very blood was agonising, but truthfully, Yaan's pain tolerance was far beyond just this by now. He had endured so many torturous training practises, injuries, and so on, that normal physical injuries could barely cause a change to his expression.

Yaan was more concerned about the failure and success of the blood burning rather than the pain and damage it inflicted upon his body, so when the silver glimmer rapidly transformed into a golden glimmer, he felt joyous in his heart.

But he quickly calmed himself down, now facing the next ignition seriously. If he succeeded here, he would develop Mythril Rank blood, leaving just one more blood burning until he was finished…

This was not the final burning, but the difficulty in this attempt would let Yaan know how arduous the final burning would be. Also, he needed to make sure that his blood vessels were not injured during this blood essence ignition, or else the final blood burning would become many times more dangerous.

Boom!

Another muffled, but louder explosive sound resounded from Yaan's body as over 8,000 drops of blood essence detonated in one fell swoop. Even at this point, Yaan still wanted to rapidly blaze away the blood essence rather than igniting the drops slowly, because the sudden surge in vitality was a key point that determined the success or failure in refining the blood to the next stage.

Immediately, the burning vitality caused Yaan's blood within the vessels to expand outwards. As he quickly struggled to keep up with the extremely fast and volatile energy that was now reaching out and touching the walls of his blood vessels, his blood was forcefully refined to such a horrendous extent that all of his muscles and organs were filled with the same burning sensation.

For the first time, the corroding power of this vitality reached his organs and other regions of the body! Luckily, Yaan had already developed the other four progressive body constitutions to the Obsidian Rank, he would not sustain much damage just from this.

For now, Yaan focussed on saving his blood vessels and on compressing the vitality back down into his blood stream. He quickly realised that if he actually wanted to gain full control over the vitality, it would rapidly drain away more Psyche Power. Since he wanted to save his Psyche Power for the final blood burning, he hesitated for a moment.

In the end, he used his Vital Energy and Astral Power to reinforce all of his blood vessels, forcefully resisting the damage in this way. He then used a more reasonable amount of his Psyche Power to regain control over the rampaging vitality, finally gaining control after a few tense seconds.

Within slightly over one minute, the golden glimmer in Yaan's blood was replaced by a glittering shimmer reminiscent of mythril!

BOOM!

Yaan detonated all of the remaining blood essence in his body the moment he saw this glimmer. If he hesitated, every second would result in the loss of a portion of the lingering vitality!

Around 50,000 drops of blood essence detonated in one go. Instantly, his blood vessel walls were burned and corroded heavily. It was only by making use of his Vital Energy and Astral Power that Yaan could resist this, allowing his larger blood vessels to stay intact…

But many smaller capillaries connecting to his muscles and organs ruptured, sending turbulent and chaotic vitality tearing through his flesh, corroding his body and rupturing many vital regions!

Yaan completely ignored this. The damage to his body was irrelevant, it could not kill him, so it did not matter. The main concern was that some of the vitality was lost during this rupturing, so he needed to regain control as quickly as possible.

The six Psyche Power avatars within Yaan's Sea of Consciousness were now almost solid in their appearance. They each pointed towards a different location in the sea, causing waves to tumble about. The movement in the Sea of Consciousness directly corresponded to control over the body, this was the mysterious functioning of the Sea of Consciousness.

The blood all throughout Yaan's blood vessels was rapidly refined. The Mythril Rank blood was yet to stabilise, meaning that it was more fragile and susceptible to this sort of attack. This also meant that the refinement was more ferocious, but this was a good thing, it would raise his chances of success tremendously.

Burning vitality filled his blood vessels and the rate of flow was forcefully sped up by over ten-fold as his organs were pierced by hot flows of blood, filled with unstable vitality. Yaan's entire body trembled continuously as this frantic process continued to proceed…

Yaan remained calm from start to finish. He had prepared for this thoroughly, this was not like the times when he was younger, when he had undertaken something beyond his means, forcing him to navigate his way through life and death. There was no chance that he would die on the spot here, the only danger was that he would fail.

Yaan remained calm.

If he succeeded here, he would be able to proceed with the removal of his Vital Core, he could start cultivating Innate Qi again. So long as he succeeded, he would have a decent chance of actually forming the Vital Qi Core, allowing him to survive through the Immortal Ancestor's unreasonable second test!

But he remained calm.

Getting excited, or panicking, or feeling nervous, would do him no good. All he could do was focus on proceeding calmly, on heading towards his goal. If he did this, he would have done everything that could possibly be done, and he would have executed his actions perfectly.

And if he failed, then that was that - there was nothing else to say.

That said, the moment that Yaan saw the glittery glimmer representing Mythril Rank fading away, as it reformed into a dark black shine within his blood, why would he still care about remaining calm?

"Haha!" Yaan opened his eyes and laughed aloud as a sense of relief swept over him.

He could stay calm when it mattered the most, but he truly was under a lot of pressure here. Truthfully, even if he did do everything perfectly, there was still no guarantee that he would succeed in attaining the required Obsidian Rank Progressive Blood Constitution!

Even though Yaan's body was heavily injured right now, even though he was unknowingly covered in blood and his face was so pale that he looked like a ghost, the feeling of having overcome calamity filled his heart.

Succeeding in an uncertain endeavour really was something to celebrate. For a moment, Yaan smiled a faint smile of satisfaction.

But of course, he didn't get carried away. This moment of relief did not last for long, he needed to press on….and remove his Vital Core!