A person curled into a fetal position on the ground, while a bored looking man stood over him. The stone tiles on the ground were already soaked with moisture and a puddle had already formed beneath the slowly writhing person. Surprisingly, the puddle was formed completely from sweat pouring out of that unfortunate person. With visible speed, their skin was shriveling up, the perspiration pouring out from them like a sponge being squeezed.

The person standing nearby didn’t seem phased in the slightest and merely took a puff from his bronze smoking pipe. After a few minutes the almost violent sweating finally slowed down and then the poor creature on the ground heard a voice within his head, “Why aren’t you describing the effects, yet?”

A terrible pain spread through the back of Sage’s head. It originated at the top of his spine and blossomed with an almost rhythmic throbbing into his brain. He described it to Guan Zhenyan as ‘spikes being driven into his brain by hammer wielding drummers’. That was far from the end of things, as next came an assault upon his Spiritual Sea. The Blood of Fire worked as quickly as possible, but the poison was too fierce and it stormed into his mind. The skies were blasted away by huge icy storm clouds. His Spiritual Sea was suddenly thrust into winter. Snow flurries and icy winds transformed the place and soon even ice started to form in the sea itself. Thankfully, he’d already formed an island or he was worried he might have completely had his mind wiped by that terrifying cold.

The next few poisons that Guan Zhenyan used were similarly terrifying and Sage found a pattern. These new poisons were highly concentrated and attacked one specific portion of his self. One of them nearly dissolved his heart, pushing it to a gelatinous state before the Blood of Fire could save him. Another caused both of his lungs to collapse and fill up with a viscous purple liquid. Surprisingly, the worst were actually those that targeted the outside of his body. They were far from the most damaging, but Guan Zhenyan told him that the most useful poisons weren’t the ones that killed, they were the ones that were the most distracting.

Against the most powerful foes, things that could kill or heavily injure them were rare. Instead, the ones that merely caused pain or irritation were the best as they could be effective on even the strongest enemy. In a battle between two foes that were evenly matched, even the slightest distraction could break the balance. There were many techniques that could protect the body from poisons and toxins. Using Sage as a guinea pig, Guan Zhenyan advanced his methods and focused on very concentrated effects. Why cause a slight pain over the whole body when you could instead cause a deep and lasting pain in a specific place? The focused poisons had an easier time breaking through the protective techniques and also took longer to heal.

As in Sage’s case, it was like he had a poison collecting drainage system spread through his whole body. Diluting a poison through the whole body allowed him to put the whole system to work gathering the poison, while focusing the dosage would overload the drainage system and cause flooding. Even if such a poison would normally be ineffective, the extreme concentration could still cause damage. With such a good test dummy, Guan Zhenyan’s methods advanced quite quickly. In the past, any time he battled with someone very resistant to poison it would be a struggle for his life. Who would allow him to use his most terrible methods at full force? What enemy would give him a detailed accounting of a poison’s effects? He could only muddle along, creating more and more powerful poisons, but only in the most crude manner. Now with such great feedback he was able to fine tune his poisons and rapidly increase his might.

Of course, this all came at Sage’s expense. He’d suffer from a poison, slowly recover, and then face a slightly altered version of the same poison. This would continue for many rounds, and before long his recovery required the help of powerful healing pills supplied by Guan Zhenyan. Then, Guan Zhenyan would start the process over again, but this time mixing in secondary poisons to mix within Sage’s body. Worse yet, after the new venom was concocted, he’d make Sage dispel his Poison Cultivation and get hit by it without any resistance to test the difference.

Sage realized his work was too grueling to make any real progress with his other forms of training. His injuries kept him from training his physical body, and the lingering pains caused too much of a distraction for him to study the laws. He knew that in order to advance towards rank 6 he’d need to make progress in the laws, but he had no real guide along the way. It was his belief that Guan Zhenyan was far stronger than merely rank 6, so he kept hope that he could eventually earn enough to get instruction in this regard. Even so, his current progress had slowed to a crawl.

“Sir. I would like to receive a portion of my wages and not have it all put directly towards paying my debts. I also have large amounts of poison to sell.”

“Hah, getting a little smarter are you? No problem. I’ll send someone over for them.”

Everytime he thought he’d come up with a good idea, it seemed that Guan Zhenyan was merely waiting for him to figure it out. Sage sold large quantities of poisons back to Guan Zhenyan, and then immediately used those funds to ask for assistance.

“Great Sir, I would like to pay for your instruction once more.”

Sage explained the issue of being too debilitated by the pain to train and Guan Zhenyan offered a solution, “In the business world, if you want something you have to make a deal. The first step in that process is to figure out who has what you want! Lucky for you, I have just the solution, a Spiritual Cultivation Technique. Normally, it’s only for my disciples to purchase, but we can make an exception this time since you’ve been working so hard.”

“Thank you, Sir. I’d also like your assistance in rebuilding my Inner World. Just like the Shou Empire wanted to use me for, I’m sure you can easily accomplish the same thing, right? I’m prepared to offer you a thirty percent cut of the profits.”

“Now that’s more like it! You received favor first and then followed up with your real deal. Not bad! Even so, that’s not such a great offer. Most of the cost is going to be in acquiring rare plants and species to populate your world with. You think I’m going to front such large sums for only a third of the profits?”

“Is that so? Then I’ll just have to slowly build up my funds until I can purchase them myself. It’s just a shame that it will be a waste of time that could be spent growing more products. Thirty percent is not a third, but I’ll up the offer. Instead of thirty percent of profits, you can have a third of the output. That means full distribution rights, usage, or whatever else for those goods instead of just funds. That should be enough to get your full support, right?”

“Ahh, now that’s more like it.”

“Perfect. I’ve also got another request. Building such a business, the faster the time ratio in my Inner World, the greater the profits, yes? In that case, I’d like to ask the Great Sir for assistance in cultivating toward rank six.”

“Now that you’ve roped me in with benefits, how could I refuse? Nicely done! Only, you’re at this Grandfather's mercy, so you’ll have to suffer a little. You’ll have to give me half your output and you’ll have your deal.”

“That… fine, but only if you throw in the Spirit Cultivation Technique for free. Also, upgrade the grade! I know you probably have dozens, give me a good one.”

“Good, good, good! You’re catching on faster than I thought you would.”