95 Rank-up test. (1/2)

Li Yang sat in his room and quietly focused on his cultivation, his mind sinking deep into his own body, into the depths of his dantian. He started to draw out Qi from his Ascending Foundation, the platform that had been created when all 36 of his runes formed a circle and connected to each other.

He drew out four different strands of Qo, one for each of his elements, and had them float in front of him. He first manipulated the pitch black strand of Qi that came from his law of destruction, using it to form a rune that resembled a black hole. He then slowly integrated his law of fire, his law of ice, and his law of lightning. Since his law of destruction would try to swallow and destroy them the moment they got too close, integrating them was the easy part, making sure that his law of destruction didn't actually destroy the other laws was a tad bit harder.

This was his first time attempting to form the runes needed for the Myriad Monarch technique, the Monarch Runes, so he failed in his first five attempts. Part of the reason behind his failure was his inexperience with the rune crafting process, but the main reason was the fact that his control over the law of destruction was still lacking. It was fine if he was just going to use a tiny sliver to wound an enemy or to block an attack, but now that he was using a slightly larger amount than usual, and even had to control it rather delicately, he ended up failing.

But on his sixth attempt, his efforts were rewarded, a fully formed Monarch Rune appearing in front of him. The cultivation manual said that the Monarch Runes would take on an appearance that signified all the laws used to create it, but the Monarch Rune in front of Li Yang looked just like his destruction runes, a pitch black hole that swallowed up everything else.

Now that he had formed the rune, the next step of cultivating the Myriad Monarch technique was to fuse this rune into his bone marrow, allowing it to completely alter his bone marrow. Li Yang gave himself a short moment to restore himself to peak condition, restoring the small amount of energy he had wasted during his first five failures.

He then controlled the Monarch Rune and had it travel through his veins until it reached the pinky finger of his left hand, arriving at the very tip of his finger. He then had the rune slowly sink into the bone, having it enter his bone marrow. Now came the hardest part of the cultivation technique, altering his bone marrow and turning it into this black hole Monarch Rune.

At first, everything went well, the Monarch Rune sank into his bone marrow and started to fuse with it, slowly taking it over and multiplying. But his control over the fusing process lapsed for a split second, causing the Monarch Rune to go amok and turn unstable, imploding in on itself and dissipating.

With the rune collapsing, Li Yang could only let out a sigh and start over from the beginning. He was a bit more familiar with the rune crafting process now, so he didn't fail as he drew up the new one, quickly transporting it to the tip of his left pinky finger. He once again had the Monarch Rune sink into his finger and start merging with his bone marrow, this time making sure that his concentration was fully focused on the rune and the fusing process.

Before long, the Monarch Rune had merged with all the bone marrow in his left pinky, resulting in the bone marrow of that finger turning into a pitch black type of energy, a collection of several tiny black holes. This was a sign that he had succeeded in altering his bone marrow using his Monarch Rune, turning it stronger and more resilient.

Li Yang didn't immediately continue creating Monarch Runes and fusing them into his bone marrow, studying this new bone marrow for a short while, making sure that there were no problems with it. When one was dealing with something as unorthodox as the law of destruction, one had to make sure to always keep a close eye on it after doing something new.

Luckily it didn't seem like there would be any anomalies, his new bone marrow acting the same as his old one. Only once he was certain that there wouldn't be any unexpected situations did Li Yang start crafting more Monarch Runes, beginning to fuse them into the rest of his bone marrow, slowly changing all of it into tiny black holes.

But even if the process became simpler after succeeding once, it was still very time consuming, especially since he had to keep a close eye on the runes as he fused them into his bone marrow. Due to this, once the rank-up test to become an inner disciple rolled around, he had only managed to turn around 70% of the bone marrow into his body into Monarch Runes.

But even though he had yet to finish the first stage of body cultivation, he still felt a slight increase in his strength. Thanks to Jinwu and Shenlong's blood, Li Yang had become a humanoid Divine beast, his body strong enough to crush someone at the late stage of the Xiantian Rune realm using sheer brute force. Now that he had this body cultivation technique to back him up, his already strong body became even stronger, even if he hadn't fully completed the first stage. If he were to guess, he would say that his body was strong enough to allow him to combat someone at the early stage of the Ascending Heaven realm using just his physical strength.

Li Yang was going to participate in this rank up test, so even though he was a bit reluctant to leave his body cultivation incomplete, he still stopped his cultivation and opened his eyes. He stood up from his bed and stretched his body, enjoying the popping sounds that his joints produced after not moving for four months.

He felt somewhat hungry, so he took out something quick to eat from his interspatial ring and started eating while preparing a bath for himself, creating and melting some ice in a large wooden tub. Once it was ready, he took a quick bath to clean himself and then changed into a fresh yellow robe that bore the mark of the Yuan clan, a wolf howling at a distant moon. After making sure that he had prepared everything, he stepped out of his house.