From the Timeless Master’s cave, Sage had been practicing a full set of wood natured techniques. Within them there was a body refining art called ‘Greenbody Training’. Sage had practiced it to the first level, but afterwards he’d stopped any further progress. The reason was simple, it was incompatible with his body.

Greenbody Training was a technique that sought to transform the nature of the body, slowly shifting from an animal to a plant. The first stage merely strengthened the tendons and flesh to be more like the tough fibers of a vine. Later stages transformed the skin into bark and started to dye it green. While it wasn’t explained in such terms, from the descriptions Sage surmised that it altered the body on a cellular level. The effects seemed quite plausible for adding chloroplasts to the bodies cells, given how a practitioner was said to become empowered by the light of the sun. At higher levels it even removed most of the bodies weak points. A high level practitioner could have their body stabbed full of holes and regrow their severed limbs. The function of their internal organs would be spread out through their whole body leaving them with only a single weakness, their ‘root’.

While it was a very impressive art, and also one of the reasons that Sage choose the set of techniques, after practicing it, he found a problem. It conflicted with his transformed body. The art was created for humans. The half-snake body that Sage had didn’t mesh with it. The more he practiced it, the more pain he was in. The effects began to spread unevenly through his body and Sage stopped training it. Without that perfect even distribution of power, not only would it not work in distributing the function of his organs, it might even end up harming him irrevocably.

At the time he reviewed a few other body tempering techniques from other sets and found most of them had similar problems. Some were specialized to only work along with a corresponding Qi cultivation art. Others relied on unusual transformations, possibly leading to the same issue as Greenbody Training. The few that he found which were universal in use were either too resource or time intensive, or were weak in effect. He’d put it on his list of research topics and planned to study it when he had free time. Even after leaving the Sect to begin his tempering training, he touched on it a few times, but none of his tests were successful. It was one of the contributing factors that led to his plan to merge with more wugs. The improvements he gained from merging with the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent were immense, easily equalling a few levels in most body refining techniques. It also gave him ancestral memories, useful physical features, and even an improvement in his basic level of ‘talent’.

Blood Refining.

It was the answer to his problems. The name seemed somewhat confusing as to the purpose: making things out of blood? In actuality, it was a technique that was used to refine the user’s own blood. It could extract impurities and enhance the body. Blood is what supplies essential substances around the body and carries away the waste. The Blood Refining Technique is a body transforming art fueled by the blood of other creatures. From a certain standpoint it was quite similar to the ‘Merge’ technique of the Insect Immortal Index, but for the blood and consequently the rest of the body.

Take the blood from another being, combine it your own, then transform the bones. Blood is produced from bone marrow. By transforming the bones, and the marrow within them, the blood can be altered. The combined and refined blood is used as a guide for the transformation of the bones. The stronger the blood taken, the stronger the result. It spoke of ‘blood essence’ and not just normal blood. Sage wasn’t exactly sure what the difference was scientifically, but he’d seen more than a few techniques in the cultivation world referring to blood essence. He even knew a few basic ones for expelling some of his own essence blood, or distilling some from a beast carcass. The other thing to note was that it could also work with regular blood from regular creatures though with a much reduced effect. Instead of taking the blood essence from a powerful beast, it could also show improvements by taking a sample of normal blood from many individuals of the same species.

This was of course what the mosquitos must naturally do. They fed on a few types of beasts, taking samples from many individuals. Blood Refining in this case would slowly combine and nourish the sample blood, slowly creating a more perfect version of the sampled blood. Sage’s guess was this all had something to do with DNA splicing on an intuitive level, picking out the most desirable traits by comparing many samples to each other. Obviously, this was all just a conjecture on his part. There weren’t any microscopes in this world and even if there was, he wasn’t a biologist, he wouldn’t even know what he was looking at.

During all this time in thought and self inspection, Sage had been serving and pleasantly pandering to Tao Ba. Finally, the third pot of tea was all gone and he came up with an excuse. Thanking the boy gratefully, Tao Ba regretfully said farewell and Sage withdrew from within the Universe Ring. Upon doing so, he saw that golden ring floating in mid-air unattended.

Ah, so I really was inside it.

A moment later, the ring flew back towards the lower portion of his stomach and entered that other dimensional space that housed his dantian. Returning to the same spot as before, encircling the five special materials. Sage, in his flood dragon form, looked around the tomb for a moment to see that everything was just the same as he saw in that memory and also from when he was last here as a teen. All except one thing, that ‘second shelf’ where he’d been given items from in the past was completely gone.

“You’ve gained far more than you should have for your foolishness. Consider yourself lucky because you are the only survivor. Time for you to fulfill your end of the bargain. Go to the Zhu Clan and arrange a marriage. You must rebuild the Lang Clan.”

The deep and commanding voice spoke to him once more, ordering him to… get married? Sage’s shock was so extreme that his usual ability to completely control his face was broken. The surprise showing clearly on his beast face.

“What is the Zhu Clan?”

“Go to the first shelf.”

Walking up to the shelf a scroll made of jade from among of stack of scrolls started to glow with a dull blue light.

“Take the scroll, it will show you the way and express my will.”

Sage, still flabbergasted, could find no way to refuse the great ancestor. Instead he took the scroll and kowtowed to the casket. Knowing that the gifts he’d been given were extraordinary. Even if you didn’t count regaining his sanity and rebuilding his body, he still was gifted an even more magnificent storage treasure that put any other he’d heard of to shame. He’d have to respect his elder and follow his instructions. Heading out of the secret tomb, he stopped to focus and investigate his body. Preparing a new human seal for his new form, before finally heading outside. He needed to figure out just how long it’s been since he left the Holy Flame Sect. There was also the small matter of determining how many crimes he’d committed and how he was going to atone for them.