962 Blood Absorption

Alex and the sect master returned to the sect after a few days.

Alex was done with his training for now and had to go back to cultivating. He had fought beasts up to Saint Foundation's 4th realm and defeated them, and even managed to survive a 5th realm beast long enough for the sect master to interfere.

Alex now understood how strong his dao was. He was surprised to find that there was a ceiling to how strong his dao could get.

It wasn't a natural ceiling but rather one imposed on him by the heavens. Regardless of how strong his intent was, if the heavens didn't want to help him, he couldn't ask too much out of them.

Still, being able to bring out a power that was 4 realms higher than his Qi was already good enough.

If there wasn't a cap on it, he wondered just how badly a simple Dao could destabilize the entire cultivation world.

'I wonder how much stronger the others can get,' he thought.

He had come to find that not many of the saint realm experts actually knew any dao. It just so happened that the ones he met were some of the strongest and thus knew a dao or two.

Even the elder Bu he killed turned out to actually be a rather talented cultivator in the sect that was once considered to be betrothed to Ren Xiuyin. However, Xiuyin was too young at the time, so the sect master at that time, the current sect master's father, had outright refused to even entertain the thought.

The elders now considered that this might have been where elder Bu's envy of Ma Tianxin had stemmed from.

Alex had asked the sect master how strong his Dao could make him, but unfortunately, the sect master's dao was something related to the knowledge of beasts and thus wasn't applicable in combat.

Alex did come to learn that it made someone a realm or two stronger than they would be normally. The sect master had told him as much.

Alex returned back to his room and called out both of his beasts before starting his cultivation for the day.

Alongside cultivation, he also continued learning more and more about the saint ingredients from his mind. He had quite a few saint ingredients, so he wanted to be done with learning everything about them by the time he went into practical experimentation where he would try and deduce the structure of an ingredient's powder using nothing but only 2 of the ingredients.

At the same time, Alex continued his Undying Physique cultivation, his Demon eyes cultivation, and even his Spiritual energy cultivation using the Mask.

The mask had 9 different stages to help him improve, and Alex was currently using the 3rd stage, but it was starting to get easy too. His spiritual sense had started reaching around 5.2 Kilometers, and soon he would have to up the strength of the mask to the 4th stage.

Alex hadn't cultivated in over a week, so he cultivated for 2 whole days before stopping.

He went out with his beasts to get some fresh air for a while and talked with a few people that had stopped to greet him.

Alex talked with them for a while before returning back to his room. Then, he prepared for something he had been wanting to do again for some time now.

He brought out his cauldron full of blood as it was time to make another Blood Beast.

Alex had a variety of beast cores now. After all, he had killed no less than 10 different Saint beasts when he was back in the demonic forest.

Not only that but there were also the beast cores that were given to him by the sect master before he had left.

As such, he had too many choices at the moment and couldn't choose one instantly.

"Calm down, what do I want to test with this beast?" he asked himself. Obviously, he wanted to test how strong a Blood beast created by a certain beast core could get.

But there was one more thing he needed to test. As such, he knew exactly what core to choose.

Alex reached into his storage bag and pulled out a beast core of a beast with a Saint Condensation 7th realm cultivation base.

There were many other cores that were of higher cultivation base of course, but he chose this one specifically because of one single reason. It was the same cultivation base as the Rhino that had become a Blood Beast.

The core he had pulled out belonged to a beast that had died many years ago, so Alex wanted to test one exact thing.

He wanted to test if a Blood beast created from an older beast core could ever rival one created by a newer one.

Alex put the core into the pool of blood in his cauldron and started making a blood beast. He poured his Qi into the blood and the beast core started fighting against the onslaught of his blood aura.

However, his aura was just too strong for an impression of a spirit to fight back against.

Within minutes, Alex overwhelmed the beast core and in the next moment, the blood beast started forming.

The blood flew out of the cauldron into the open air. It flowed around until it became a long, cylindrical-shaped beast that wiggled horizontally.

'A snake?' Alex wondered when he saw the beast. However, he wasn't correct. The shape changed a little as 4 legs appeared on the blood beast and the trail grew thicker, letting Alex realize what it was.

"Ah, a lizard," he thought.

The lizard took a few minutes to form. Its body had protective scales, its tail was curled upward, and had large eyes.

The Blood lizard was about 3 meters wide and a meter tall. Alex brought out the Blood Rhino to compare, and it was taller than the lizard, but not as wide.

Alex moved away and kept his beasts away from harm. Then, he gave the order.

"Attack each other!"

The two beasts wasted no moment and immediately moved to attack each other. They only attacked a single time, but that was enough for Alex to get an answer.

And he was very happy with the answer.

"There is no difference," he said with a smile. "That means that if I ever find a very old, but strong beast core, I can use it without worrying about it not  being as strong."

Alex tested the two beasts a bit more. The rhino was tougher, but the lizard was more agile. But when it came down to pure strength, they were the same.

Alex asked the two to fight him as well, and he used his Blood armor to handle the two of them with ease. No matter how strong they were, he was much stronger.

'Well, it wasn't like I had to worry about insubordination anyway,' he thought. Once he was done testing, he put the beasts back into the book and put the book… somewhere.

Alex's best guess at the moment was that it was going to his heart, which made sense considering the artifact was called the Blood God's Manual. But he couldn't find it there, so it was still just a guess.

Then, Alex sat back down and filled the cauldron in front of him with blood again. Only this time, it wasn't his blood at all.

The 10 different beasts he had killed had given him over hundreds of liters of blood. With the cauldron in front of him only capable of handling no more than 30 liters at a time, Alex was forced to bring out 8 more cauldrons before they were filled to the brim.

Then, he closed his eyes and remembered the words written on the first page of the Blood God's Manual. The words for Blood Absorption technique.

He slowly pulled Qi from his body through a certain pathway, one that Alex had noticed was the same one of the four pathways that he used for his other cultivation methods of his.

The only difference was that they used that the Five Yang Divine Path used the pathway in the Yang spiritual root, and the Winter Moon cultivation method and the Undying Physique used ones from the Yin spiritual root.

The Demon Eyes technique used ones from the normal meridian with no spiritual roots attached and this was the same one that Alex was going to use for the Blood Absorption technique.

Once he used the absorption technique, the Qi in his body moved along a particular path that mixed with a lot of his blood vessels creating a pulling aura from his blood that called for all blood aura in the surrounding.

Surrounded by 9 different cauldrons full of blood, the aura immediately attack Alex from all sides as it tried to enter his body.

Alex expected to feel some pain, any pain, but to his surprise, there was no pain at all. Perhaps it was because his body was just that strong or perhaps because his blood aura was stronger than any here.

As he absorbed it, Alex realized that two things were happening. One, his blood aura was getting stronger, and two, his cultivation base was rising.

Alex frowned. He didn't want to raise his cultivation base this way, so he used his intent to force all the absorption to go toward his blood and blood only.

2 hours later, the blood in the cauldrons had no aura and was akin to just red liquid. Alex had absorbed all the Blood aura from them.