Being Forced to Work

The Blood Core Realm required a Rank 5 Soul, which was equivalent to the prestigious Holy Core Realm in Qi Refining! It was common knowledge that a person's life-span would increase along with their realm, starting from the Qi River Realm, at which point a human's life-span increased to 200 years. This increased to a maximum of 300 years at the following Spirit Tree Realm, then 500 years at the Holy Core Realm!

Generally speaking, life-span was the limiting factor in how far a cultviator would progress along their path within their life. Even with the 300 year life-span of a Spirit Tree Realm cultivator, less than one in every hundred of these people would be able to take the next step into the Holy Core Realm within their life-time!

Reaching the Holy Core Realm from the Profound Roots Realm in under 100 years was pretty much unheard of, even for those 5-Star Samsara Soul geniuses. They weren't only limited by their perception into the world laws after all, but also by their talent in refining spiritual energy into their own Profound Qi.

As for Khan, he didn't need to care about talent, but Body Tempering was still slow and arduous! In fact, by all reason, it should be much slower than Qi Refining, which was why Qi Refiners never achieved much success with it.

Khan had also realised that as his body improved, his physical form was optimised, and somehow, his talent into Qi Refining became even worse. He speculated that the reverse was true and that Qi Refiners would become more useless as Body Temperers as they progressed. He really wasn't sure why more people didn't seem to realise this.

Even so, even with his firm will and his ability to endure the torturous training of Body Tempering, he had no confidence that he could reach the Blood Core Realm within just 81 years!

It was said that at each Body Tempering realm, a person would actually receive a greater increase to their lifespan compared to the equivalent rank Qi Refining realm. From what he understood, those rare giant demons who achieved the Flesh Temple Realm body possessed lifespans of around 450 years! It was true that this race naturally lived for longer than humans anyway, but giant demons who instead reached the equivalent Spirit Tree Realm and didn't train much in Body Tempering would only live for around 350 years by comparison!

Because of this knowledge, Khan had been planning to relax and take his time, spending 300 or so years to reach the Blood Core Realm! Well, just training with his usual methods wouldn't make this possible, but he assumed that after 300 years of living in this world, he would come up with a more efficient training method somehow. If not, he'd rob everyone in sight and make up for what he lacked by consuming ungodly amounts of resources.

But now, this damn priceless artefact had taken away all of his precious carefree lifespan! He wouldn't be able to live a relaxed life at all like this, he would actually need to work hard!

Succeeding in 300 years whilst still doing as little work as possible was already going to be a bit of a stretch according to his estimations, but 81 years made it totally impossible now!

"Damnit all, I'll have to actually focus my efforts on training now! Why did it have to be this way, why?! Fatty! I hope you burn in hell for all of eternity for leaving me this trap!"

The girls were unable to say a word as Khan kept yelling out and lamenting over the fact that he would need to work hard from here on. Up until now, he only spent a few hours each day training his body, but honestly, this was already ten times more than other humans could endure when it came to Body Tempering.

Eventually, Khan wore himself out and just sighed. He slumped his body and no longer even had the heart to properly tease the three girls. He trudged out of the room, exhaling a continuous and never ending sigh, before eventually stopping in the main hall downstairs.

"M-master, are you alright?" Hui asked uneasily. She'd never seen her master so depressed before!

"Hui…" Khan turned to her and sighed again. She stiffened up and listened attentively.

"Yes master?"

"Could you draw out the Body Tempering Formation again?"

Hui blinked, then quickly nodded.

"So it's just that! Of course master, there are plenty of resources in Yusef's ring, I could even create the second stage formation if I needed to!"

Khan blinked in surprise, then his eyes lit up and his mood took a complete 180. He realised that perhaps he had felt depressed too soon…

Formations were constructs created by Qi Refiners using a series of materials, generally linked together using spirit ink, which allowed the formation to function.

Formations covered all areas, from defensive formations, to camouflage formations, to attacking formations…it was such a vast field that there were even formation masters, Qi refiners who devoted themselves to studying formations in all their intricacy!

Basic formations could be made by anyone with a bit of practice though. The Body Tempering Formation was the most common method used to train the body along the Primordial Body Tempering Path. The body could also be trained by consuming massive amounts of relevant resources, but this was far too expensive for most cultivators to even consider. The Body Tempering Formation was the most common choice by far, it was widespread and more or less affordable.

There were five stages to this formation. The first stage was the slowest and easiest to tolerate, whilst each higher stage became increasingly expensive and difficult to create, and intolerable in terms of the pain experienced.

"Is that ok master? Can you handle the 2nd stage?" Hui asked uncertainly.

"Of course!" Khan grinned. "Haha, of course, the 2nd stage…it will be much faster to train using this!"

The minimum requirement for using the 2nd stage was to possess a Vital Life Realm body. Still, the pain was simply too much, so very few Vital Life Realm cultivators would choose to use the 2nd stage.

But the speed of progress was 2-3 times that of the 1st stage!

It was said that when using this formation, one would need to endure five times the pain to benefit from twice the speed of progress!

However, Khan didn't even think twice about accepting this cost!

"Aren't you both forgetting something?" Fu Bian and her sister followed them into the main palace reception hall. She rolled her eyes when she saw Khan's sudden change of mood.

"Even if you have the materials to create the 2nd stage Body Tempering Formation, do either of you actually possess the ability to do build it?"

Khan paused. She had a point…the 1st stage Body Tempering Formation was renowned for being one of the easiest formations to create, such that anyone could successfully build it within 3 or 4 attempts after studying it for half a day.

Thinking this, Khan turned to Hui quickly.

"Hui, can you make it?"

"I, well…" She realised that if she said yes but failed, she would be wasting a sizeable sum of her master's winnings from his death-match earlier.

"Just be truthful Hui. If you think that you have a chance to succeed, I want you to try it."

"I can!" She exclaimed, but then paused. "I've studied this formation quite a bit because I expected you would want to use it at some point master, but we only have enough materials for a single attempt…if I fail, we could sell some of the other treasures and maybe try two more times, but we need money to buy the spirit stones to operate it, and-"

"Hui. Just give it a go, don't worry about failing, you need the practise either way, right?" Khan smiled.

Hui, and also the Fu sisters, could hardly believe that this greedy guy was being so generous.

"If you waste everything, I'll just rob everyone in the outer sect to make up for it."

Ah, back to reality.

As Hui worked on building the formation, Khan stepped back and watched her with intrigue.

He'd never put much effort into learning about formations. Since Hui seemed to be interested in this discipline, he decided that it would be good to train her as a formations master. His slave's power was his power, and more importantly, he couldn't be bothered to study again after experiencing a full decade of school on earth.

"You know that even if she has talent in formations, it will take two or three attempts at least, right?" Fu Bian said quietly besides him.

"Nah, she'll succeed. She did the first time. In fact, I've never seen her fail a formation, even after she went through that basic formations practice manual."

"You mean the book with 100 formations which are cheap to create but produce no real effect? How many did she try, if she succeeded every time?" Fu Bian raised an eyebrow.

"All of them." Khan smiled.

"Liar."

Hearing her cold snort, Khan just shrugged. He understood Hui's talent better than anyone. People in this world underestimated slaves so much…why would it be the case that a slave was useless and untalented, whilst every rich young master just so happened to be a genius of his generation?

People genuinely believed this sort of thing to be true, but they were misreading the situation. Slaves were never given the opportunity or resources to achieve anything, whilst those rich nobles were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, then they used that spoon to eat top quality cultivation resources for each meal.

Khan recognised this world as a place where anyone had the chance to achieve greatness. Anyone else would have become disheartened after discovering that they possessed the absolute worst talent possible for Qi Refining. Khan however, just shrugged and moved on to something he could actually do.

Hui was born a slave. The moment her human slave traders noticed that she was a cutie in the making, they deemed her a future sex slave and raised her with the expectation that she would become some young master's toy. For that reason, she had actually been treated quite well for a slave, nobody wanted to buy a beaten up or scarred girl.

The point is, people were too quick to judge. Khan saw Hui's potential on that day in the slave market. That indescribable clear look in her eyes despite her fear, despite her hopeless situation, was enough for Khan to recognise her worth. What talent, what background? Those things could be useful, but a person with the right nature and mindset would find a way to achieve greatness no matter what.

Hui wasn't like Khan, she wasn't entirely confident in herself and her abilities. However, she was the sort of person that when given the right support, her true talent would immediately become clear.