Soul cultivation, the start of the hunt.

With the information imprinting itself into his mind, it didn't take Yao Jun too long to understand the entire technique. Just as the name and summary suggested, the cultivation technique required you to shatter your own soul into tiny fragments and then stitch it back together. You used your own laws to stitch your own soul back together, allowing the laws to merge with your soul and greatly enhance it.

In theory, once you repaired your soul for the 9th time you would reach the Godking realm and your soul would be able to seize control of all the laws you had used to stitch it back together, even if someone else was trying to use that law against you. If someone sent a thick pillar of flames at you as an attack, you could just take control over all the fire, meaning that you only had to endure the power of that person's Qi, it would drastically weaken most attacks.

Yao Jun immediately started to cultivate the technique after digesting the information. The later parts would require quite a few resources to help him keep his soul alive while shattering it, but the first parts of the technique were rather simple to cultivate, they only required him to become aware of his soul and strengthen it enough to materialize it, as well as breaking it down once. Yao Jun had already managed to do this years ago, back when he was on his own home planet, so all he had to do right now was use the principles of the technique to strengthen his soul a bit more.

Yao Jun slowly started to take deep breaths with a steady rhythm, all the Qi in the surrounding area forcefully pulled to the house where he was currently residing. The Qi entered his mouth and then flooded into his God Gate, a small maelstrom forming above the house as each of Yao Jun's breaths brought in more and more Qi, all of it flooding into the part of his soul that was constantly residing within his God Gate.

With the maelstrom of energy entering his soul, it didn't take Yao Jun to properly enter the first stage of soul cultivation, the Realized Soul realm. This realm was equal to the earliest cultivation stages, around the 3 Xiantian Heavens, so it didn't really give Yao Jun a boost to his strength, it merely allowed his soul to leave his body for a short period of time.

But Yao Jun didn't stop his cultivation after reaching the Realized Soul realm, he continued to breathe in a steady rhythm, more and more Qi flooding into his soul, which slowly became unable to handle the flood of energy. The perfect copy of him that was standing inside his God Gate, his now fully materialized soul, was slowly starting to break down beneath the maelstrom of energy, seemingly drifting apart.

Yao Jun quickly had his own Qi enter his God Gate and surround his disintegrating soul, slowly inserting small amounts of his various laws into his soul and using them to patch it up again. He didn't disintegrate his entire soul right away, he started with his right hand, then moved up the rest of his arm before stopping at his neck. He then repeated this process with his left arm and then did his legs before moving on to his torso, saving his neck and head for last.

He was already an Earthly Deity and had great control over his laws and Qi so, despite the fact that he had no experience with soul cultivation, he faced no problems while cultivating the first two parts of the technique. But even so, he didn't feel like risking anything when it came to his own soul, so he took his time disintegrating it and patching it up again, only fully rebuilding his soul after a grand total of 172 days. He no longer had to worry about how much time he spent cultivating thanks to acquiring this tower so he could afford to take it a bit slow and focus on a steady and careful pace.

Upon fully rebuilding his soul for the first time, Yao Jun officially entered the next soul cultivation realm, the Law-Touched Soul realm, and finally felt a change. In this realm, the energy within his soul will draw upon the power of the laws that have started to fuse into it and coalesce and morph, becoming a type of energy similar to Qi, or the body equivalent of Monarch Essence. The cultivation manual mentioned that this energy was known as Anima Essence and was greatly suited to attacking and dealing with ethereal things like souls and illusions but was barely able to interact with physical things.

Yao Jun opened his eyes after reaching the early stage of the Law-Touched Soul realm, the maelstrom of Qi above him dissipating when he stopped his rhythmic breathing. Yao Jun raised his right arm and gathered a bit of his Anima Essence in his palm, studying the mist-like energy while muttering to himself.

"Earthly Deity realm in Qi and the Immortal Rebirth realm equivalent in body and soul cultivation, it's a good start. I'll have to start gathering some soul-related resources if I want to continue cultivating my soul safely, the ones I currently have on hand probably aren't enough. Guess I'll spend the last 78 days on my body."

With how many people Yao Jun had killed so far he did indeed have a few soul-related resources on his hand, but he would prefer to get his hands on quite a few more before he tried breaking down his soul again. After all, even the slightest mishap could end up killing him if he wasn't careful. Since that was the case he decided that he might as well use up all the corpses he had in store right now and continue to cultivate his Blood Ocean's Hunger technique.

He was very close to the middle stage of the Blood Puddle realm, the realm equal to the Immortal Rebirth realm, so he guessed that if he spent the remaining 78 days and used up all the corpses he had on hand he should be able to formally enter that stage, giving himself another slight boost in strength. Yao Jun took out some food from his interspatial ring, eating a quick meal and giving himself a short moment of rest before he continued his cultivation.

After he finished his quick meal, which only consisted of some bread and cheese he found in one of the many interspatial rings he was carrying, he closed his eyes once more and delved into his cultivation. He brought out corpse after corpse from his interspatial ring, all their blood, flesh, and Qi being compressed into a single glistening drop of ruby-like blood that he then proceeded to infuse into his own body.

Yao Jun's calculations proved to be a bit off, as he hadn't reached the middle stage of the Blood Puddle realm even after the 78th day passed and time within the tower stopped being sped up. But he felt like he was on the verge of breaking through so he decided to continue cultivating, spending another two months locked up in the tower before he finally felt all the bones within his body growing slightly stronger thanks to all the drops of blood, or Blood Hearts as they were called, fusing with them.

Yao Jun opened his eyes again and let out a heavy breath, exhaling a faintly red mist that reeked of blood. He stood up from his seated position and stretched his body, his joints crackling since he hadn't moved for quite a few days.

"It really is getting harder and harder to advance, no wonder Yuri and the others spent several hundred years. I can't even imagine how long I would have to spend cultivating if it hadn't been for my God Gate."

It was a simple fact known to everyone, the higher your cultivation the longer it would take to increase it, but it was only now that Yao Jun himself was truly encountering it. And it would be even worse for him, who was going to cultivate three different systems at once. Luckily he had this tower to aid him in his cultivation and to make up for the time he lost on one cultivation system while cultivating another.

Yao Jun finished stretching his body and then vanished from the house, once again appearing in the small cave that was the core of the volcano where he was hiding. He picked up the yellow tower and put it back into his God Gate, raising his head and looking into the distance, his gaze passing directly through the walls of the volcano.

"Alright Peyton, I've plucked your fangs and claws, now it's your turn."