Hundred Sage Grade

The months passed by at an agonisingly slow pace. Yaan switched between using the grey vortex and studying formations time and time again. His body and mind steadily grew stronger, as did his comprehension over formations. After training in this cyclic manor for slightly over 18 months, this excessive training method finally came to an end.

And yet, Yaan felt no relief, because his training was not yet finished. In a way, he had merely reached the start line, and now, less than one year remained until the Immortal Ancestor's deadline.

That said, his rate of progress was truly phenomenal. He knew that were it not for the Immortal Ancestor's assistance, combined with this ongoing life-threatening pressure, it would have been impossible to progress so rapidly.

His progressive body constitutions, including bone, flesh, organs and tendons, had now all ascended to Obsidian Rank!

His blood essence was now at 'half'…indeed, Yaan's blood essence had developed to such an extent that it no longer made sense to measure its quantity in terms of the number of drops, because exactly one half of his blood was now blood essence! This was the maximum amount of blood essence that Yaan could possibly develop right now, it was also the amount required to present him with the best chance of attaining the Obsidian Rank Progressive Blood Constitution when he began the blood burning process.

As for Yaan's Psyche Power, the improvement in this regard was also quite shocking.

The Psyche Power within his Sea of Consciousness continually expanded, growing thicker, denser and more powerful, expanding the size of the sea, stretching out the walls of sentience and growing the Sea of Consciousness itself. However, since psyche cultivation experienced no clear boundaries when cultivated alongside other paths, it could be difficult to determine the exact level of one's psyche cultivation.

Ordinarily speaking, most psyche cultivation practitioners were uncertain about their exact level of progression, but this was not the case for Yaan at all. In fact, back then, the Spirit Plane Lord taught him a method which allowed him to do exactly this.

Whoosh…

The thick grey Psyche Power in Yaan's Sea of Consciousness surged, forming enormous waves that dwarfed what he could previously muster by a hundred fold. The wave suddenly froze in mid-air, then rapidly separated in half, then half again, and again…

After splitting multiple times, the sections of Psyche Power formed into figures that gradually took on Yaan's appearance. They were all his psyche avatars!

Not only could Yaan now manifest 120 psyche avatars within his Sea of Consciousness, but he could also form stronger psyche avatars compared to before, though these would require more Psyche Power to create.

The stronger psyche avatars were more life-like compared to before. In terms of appearance, they were now almost indistinguishable from Yaan's original body!

Yaan originally didn't place much emphasis on learning how to form multiple psyche avatars simultaneously, but that was only because he had never properly cultivated his Psyche Power like this. However, during his study of formations, he found that forming multiple psyche avatars side by side, all with varying strengths, allowed him to pursue multiple streams of thought simultaneously. This not only drastically improved his rate of progress in his study of formations, but also caused his Psyche Power to grow at an incredible rate.

It was a steep learning curve. At first, forming so many psyche avatars was an exceedingly difficult task, but now, doing this was simplicity itself to Yaan.

The reason for him forming as many psyche avatars as possible right now, was to check his level of cultivation.

The Sea of Consciousness could be split into five grades which corresponded to Rank 1 through to Rank 5 level of cultivation; Single Sage, Ten Sage, Hundred Sage, Thousand Sage, Myriad Sage. Yaan possessed 4-Star Realm cultivation, meaning that he could at most form a Thousand Sage Sea of Consciousness. If his Sea of Consciousness actually did encounter a bottleneck in its progression, that would show that he had attained a Peak Thousand Sage Grade Sea of Consciousness.

Right now, Yaan was able to manifest over 100 psyche avatars within his Sea of Consciousness, symbolising that he possessed a Hundred Sage Grade Sea of Consciousness.

The Hundred Sage Grade Sea of Consciousness was the minimum requirement needed if he wanted to form the Vital Qi Core. The formation of the Vital Qi Core was simply too jarring to the body and mind, so it was necessary to possess a powerful consciousness in order to remain conscious throughout the process.

Not only did Yaan require this higher grade Sea of Consciousness to form the Vital Qi Core, he also needed it in order to endure the removal of his current Vital Core.

Right now, Yaan possessed 4-Star Realm Vital Energy cultivation, whilst his Vital Energy had shot up to a staggering 82%. Yaan had not actively pursued the improvement of his Vital Energy, but this improvement came about naturally when cultivating using elixirs; elixirs benefited both the physical body and the Vital Energy.

This rate of progression in terms of Vital Energy was essentially impossible when using normal body tempering medicines. Only with elixirs, the true panaceas of body tempering, was such a thing made possible.

There were multiple methods that Yaan could choose from to regress his Vital Energy cultivation below the 4-Star Realm, but now, his Vital Energy was too strong to use some of these methods. If he wanted to use those methods, he would need to waste away the Vital Energy that he had accumulated until now, returning to the Initial 4-Star Realm. Doing it like this was wasteful given that there were other methods which could make the most of his accumulated Vital Energy.

Just because Yaan was going to drop down his Vital Energy cultivation temporarily, did not mean that his efforts in developing his Vital Energy to this point were in vain. In fact, the method that he decided to use would make great use of his Vital Core when he finally attempted the Vital Qi Core formation.

However, right now, none of that was important. Whilst Yaan had indeed attained a Hundred Sage Grade Sea of Consciousness, he was not satisfied with leaving it at just this. This was only the bare minimum requirement needed to successfully endure the formation of the Vital Qi Core, but attempting to form his Vital Qi Core with a Sea of Consciousness that had only just reached this level still carried some risk.

So, before anything else, Yaan planned to focus on the training of his Psyche Power.

After 18 months of training, it wasn't only Yaan's various cultivations that had improved…his understanding of formations had reached a level where he was now fully confident in setting up the first of the psyche cultivation formations that he had learned fro the Spirit Plane Lord.

Now that his mind had relaxed and recovered to an extent, Yaan began doing just this. He had already discussed this matter with the Immortal Ancestor, and the immortal even willingly handed over all of the materials needed to setup this formation.

However, the white-haired immortal seemed to choose randomly when he wanted to make Yaan's life more difficult. He only gave Yaan one set of materials, then stated that he would not give him anything else in the event of Yaan's failure.

This was a complex formation, it was entirely possible that some of the materials would be partially damaged if the setup went awry. Whilst this type of failure was unlikely to be expensive, it would be a definite struggle for Yaan to gather certain resources used in this formation, if he could even find such things within the sect.

And that was ignoring the question of whether or not the immortal would actually permit him to leave this cultivation chamber and venture out into the sect…

For now, Yaan removed these thoughts from his mind. Regardless, he needed to at least attempt to build this formation. Using this formation would be a completely new method of cultivating his Psyche Power, meaning that he would definitely experience good progress to begin with, since it would temper his mind in a way that his mind had not yet grown accustomed to.

Compared to the basic formations that Yaan built up previously, this formation was many times more complex.

For one, there were actually 216 formation components!

These components were arranged in quite the interesting manor, with six hexagons of varying sizes within one another. The outermost hexagon measured 30 feet across, whilst the inner hexagon, the core of the formation, was only nine feet across. Once the formation was set up, Yaan would sit within the centre of this core to activate the formation.

Each point on these staggered hexagonal rings was made from another six connected resources.

The connections between all of these resources were extremely complex, with tens, then hundreds, then thousands of connections formed as Yaan maintained his focus and continued to setup the formation.

When making a formation like this, sometimes all of the materials could be placed on a flat surface, but other times, some resources would need to be elevated higher than others. This formation was one such case.

Yaan used mythril posts to achieve this. He cut apart the lengths of mythril into varying sizes and then placing the resources on top, depending on the required height for the particular resource.

Mythril was a common material in the cultivation world, often used to forge spiritual treasures for cultivators at around the Qi Temple Realm. It was quite expensive, especially when considering that Yaan was using it as a mere holding post, but it's not like Yaan was actually using up any of his mythril in this formation; it could all be collected and melted back down afterwards.

After the formation was completed, the mythril posts would no longer be needed, since the materials would hold their positions within the stabilised formation.

Yaan continued to form connections between the resources using formation water. He slipped up twice, causing damage to the connections, but Yaan did not make this mistake at any crucial moments.

Over the past 18 months, he had come to learn how to identify the crucial moments in setting up a formation. He knew, almost by instinct but also in part due to his rapid deductions, which resources could be susceptible to damage at which points in the formation's construction.

Yaan took extra time and care at each tentative and fragile step, making sure that he absolutely did not make a mistake at these points. He showed the demeanour of an expert in formations as he did this; it was a shocking level of progress that he had made in under two years!

When Yaan finally succeeded in finishing all of the formation connections…nothing happened. With a light sigh, Yaan began walking around the formation, inspecting each and every aspect, until he found the problem.

One of the corners in the third hexagonal ring was positioned slightly incorrectly, and because of this, the formation was not able to activate. Yaan carefully removed some connections, repositioning the resources, before he re-established those connections.

This time, the formation immediately lit up with a splendid golden light as a three-dimensional hexagonal dome appeared within the chamber.

The Golden Sage Runic Formation was complete!