Molting the Mortal Coil

Sage had a tough time deciding on which body transformation route he wished to follow, but then remembered something he had recently gained. The library he’d stolen from the ruins of the Violent Sun Sect. Their strange sect and its high air pressure were actually because of the Cultivation Technique they practiced. In fact it wasn’t a Qi cultivation technique at all, as the Violent Sun Sect turned out to be a rare sect of Body Cultivators.

In the past, he’d only heard rumors and hearsay of Body Cultivators. Even if he’d met a few, they merely seemed like cultivators with stronger bodies instead of Qi, but now that he had access to the hidden library of an ancient sect he saw how wrong he was. Most of those ‘Body Cultivators’ he met in the past were merely Qi Cultivators that had trained in a few body hardening arts and techniques. It turned out that true Body Cultivators had a different path to immortality than others. Regular Cultivators would work to create their inner core and then fuse their soul and mind into that core to form their Nascent Soul, then they would learn laws and infuse those laws into their body until the Nascent Soul and Body truly became one. Since they no longer had to worry about a body and could just grow it out of their own power, they could just fly into the air and didn’t have to worry about aging any more.

Or at least that’s how he understood it. Sage hadn’t reached that level and most people didn’t know the truth. He’d pieced together the hints and clues from people like Tao Ba, Guan Zhenyan, the Lang Clan Ancestors, and old texts, but he wasn’t sure of it.

Body Cultivators on the other hand were entirely different. They didn’t focus on filling the dantian with Qi and turning it into a power center, they infused it into every inch of their flesh, bone, and internal organs. Rather than learning to release this energy into the world they turned it all inward and made their bodies into living weapons. They didn’t release bursts of flame, nor did they cover their bodies in stone, all of their power was contained within. The stages of their cultivation were concerned with completely transforming the various parts of the body. The skin, then the muscles, the tendons, the bones, and finally the organs. When their entire bodies were completely transformed they would be equivalent to a Core Formation Cultivator.

It was only at this point did they start to align with a Qi Cultivator. The Body Cultivator would have to make their body resonate with the laws of the world. When they could bring those laws into themselves and make use of them, they could match a Nascent Soul in combat, and gain an undying body. Nascent Souls could survive without their bodies, but an equivalent Body Cultivator had a sort of impossible regeneration ability. Not only was their flesh tougher than most metals, but it took greater and greater amounts of damage to kill them. The stronger they got, the more powerful their ability of regeneration became.

To reach the legendary level of Immortal Body Cultivator, the mind, soul, and energy of the Body Cultivator was merged into every cell of their body. As long as even the tiniest speck of them remained they could regenerate again. Seeing the parallels at the later ranks gave Sage a better understanding of rank 7 cultivators, because it seemed that both paths led to a similar destination. He even guessed that the even more rare Soul Cultivators had a similar end goal. It seemed that all the parts of a person had to be incorporated together with the understanding of laws. Different types of cultivators just used different paths to reach that point, and focused on different areas first.

What did this all have to do with his choice of body?

Sage finally had access to a full Body Cultivation heritage and he was eager to try it out. Others had trained in both paths in the past before, but he had never heard of anything training both to the peak. He also wasn’t naive enough to think he could be the one to break that mold. Instead, he was merely looking to get stronger and perhaps it was possible to combine Body Cultivation with the body transforming ability of the Jade Spirit Beetle.

The Violent Sun Body Instruction, the key technique of the Violent Sun Sect, used the medium of high pressure for its transformation. From what he could tell, each of the different Body Cultivation Sects had their own unique methods to transform their bodies. To attain that high pressure, they had different methods incorporating hot and cold. There were instructions on how to build what was essentially a giant pressure cooker, and also how to train in the deep sea. These methods came with assisting techniques training them how to stop breathing, swim at high speed, and to read and avoid undersea currents. It was actually quite interesting to see techniques of this sort that were purely body related. Sage already knew how to do similar things, but those techniques relied on manipulating Qi.

For the next few hundred years, Sage experimented with different materials and body compositions, then subjected himself to the high pressure training of the Violent Sun Sect. He also had an idea and got some of the researchers to help him perfect a formula. He even sent a few people out of the Inner World and Universe Ring to purchase a few unusual minerals and plants that he didn’t have on the Inner World. He took inspiration from the Tyrant Jade body, in that it was basically the Spirit Jade body, carefully modified to work extremely well to channel the Jade Mantle technique rather than just store Qi.

Sage applied these same principles to the metal body his other son developed, changing it to better accommodate the Violent Sun Sect’s high pressure training. It was slow going and somewhat demoralizing since a failed test meant a year resetting the body back to a default starting point, but then he made a breakthrough by trying something he considered silly, but just couldn’t help himself from attempting. He incorporated the Blue Icesilver, the Heavenly Material that he used in his Blacksilver Pawns, and it had a high degree of compatibility with his body.

It took a few dozen more attempts between him and the other researchers to iron out all the kinks, but eventually they developed a new path for the Clan’s body transformation: Liquid Metal. In order for this transformation to work, the whole body didn’t just become a form of liquid metal, instead it was more of a hybridization between the original metal body and the Blue Icesilver. Blue Icesilver in its natural state was a solid metal after all and only when Qi is poured into it does it gain a more liquid and controllable quality. Given the requirement of Qi it made for a poor Body Cultivation only change, but for a cultivator, they could inject Qi into their body and it would actually speed up the body cultivating process.

From what he understood, the techniques to transform the body were methods to push out the impurities and imperfections. To the science of Earth this seemed pretty nonsensical, but given that it worked, it meant that either the natural rules of this world were different, or these techniques operated on a scale or scope that he had no idea of. For all he knew, these things were going on in the space between atoms, maybe it was some sort of metaphysical part of the body that light and electromagnetic energy could not affect, or it could even be something that only was present because of the ‘energy of the heavens and earth’ that were so useful here.

Whatever the case, these techniques made bodies stronger, and by turning his body into liquid metal it could switch between a tougher and softer state. As a Body Cultivator got stronger, it would take more and more effort to keep strengthening themselves. The Liquid Metal body allowed him to train with much reduced conditions and still improve. It was much like being able to purposely reduce his physical strength so that he could train with lighter weights and still get returns.

In a pinch, those with the Liquid Metal body could soften their exoskeleton and squish through a smaller opening, but for the most part it was much more useful to reshape their outer shell to add spikes, blades or patterns to the exoskeleton. Altering the other parts of the body was very tricky and could cause internal damage if they weren’t careful. More than a few of the researchers had to consume pills to recover from such organ damage.