A huge snake rose up in front of a crippled man lying helpless on the ground. His body was atrophied and weak, yet his head was twice the normal size. He was barely able to hold himself up with his weak arms, but the look on his face was as if he was the one in complete control, glaring imperiously up at the giant monster looking down on him. The elderly woman groaned and climbed back to her feet. Despite her age, she seemed quite strong and didn’t give the snake a second look. She righted the wheelchair and then bent down. She picked up ‘Beast Kira’ from the ground and placed him back into the wheelchair. Then she walked around behind the chair and smoothed her clothing.

The man looked up at the cobra and the cobra opened its mouth again. Then came the sound of a quick burst of air, and a black flash.

“Nooo! How dare you!”

Miss Hailee screamed out in agony, and a vicious air arose around her. Darkness formed around her and it began to seethe and boil like something was trying to climb up out of it. The cobra’s eyes narrowed and there was another burst of air from its open mouth. The darkness instantly vanished and the woman slumped over the back of the chair.

The two of them had black holes on their foreheads, still smoking in the aftermath.

Sage shook his head. How could he be proud after defeating an old woman and a cripple. One was the leader of a gang of ruthless killers, and the other condoned his actions by assisting him. Even if it didn’t feel good, he wasn’t a fool. They were enemies. Just by entering the mine, the Flares had already decided to kill him. His only routes out were to submit to them and be completely at their mercy, or to be the one doing the killing.

With the battle finally settled, Sage quickly cleaned things up. He was still heavily injured, so it was still not the time to digest his gains. He slithered around the battlefield, placing all the corpses, their items, and all the sleeping Flares into the Universe Ring. He still wasn’t sure of the conditions on the Inner World so he didn’t want to disrupt anything there. Once he’d cleared the place he spent a minute linking to a new Chameleon Mantis and matured it to a larger size. Entering its internal space he sent it to fly off and hide while he entered the Universe Ring himself.

Whew! Cut that one a little too close.

Despite having reached a new level, he’d been far too close to death in that battle. Without worrying about anything else at the moment, he curled up inside his manor and fell asleep.

Five years ago.

Success!

Sage laid upon a bare stone floor, covered in sweat and aching all over his body. Guan Zhenyan had tested a new poison upon him and after checking the initial results left him to suffer the aftermath. He clenched his fist and despite the sounds of his bones creaking he was filled with vigor. After such suffering he’d finally succeeded!

Sending his consciousness into his body, he examined a newly formed structure. He hadn’t focused upon his meridians, nor was he looking into his dantia. His perception had traveled to that second set of meridians and moved to the second dantian. The Poison Dantian. Formed by the Blood of Fire technique that Sage acquired from the Fire Bellied Cobra. The technique wasn’t that profound, and anyone could practice it. Of course, without a second set of meridians like he had, they wouldn’t follow the path of a normal cultivator. Blood of Fire drew poisons from the body and combined them together. It was an unending font of poison, but it wasn’t a path of cultivation. Even the creation of poison drew from the strength of the user, and if he taught it to mortals, it would likely take years for them to create even the simplest poisons or medicines.

On its own, the technique wasn’t that profound. It merely had a high barrier of entry. Who had two sets of meridians? Who could transform their bodies in such a way? It was far too unusual. Suffering a new poison every week and then completely dispersing the Blood of Fire technique back to the start gave Sage quite an in depth understanding of how it worked. With this knowledge he had an idea. His poison dantian could mix and store poisons. If he added another poison to his Second Dantian, it would mix with what was already there, but what if he had another Dantian? A third? For any other person, the idea would be impossible nonsense, but not for Sage.

He was ready to undergo another metamorphosis to try and mutate his body yet again, but he realized that Guan Zhenyan would either come along to observe, or forbid him from doing it. Every time he underwent metamorphosis it wasted months if not years worth of time. Guan Zhenyan wouldn’t just let his ‘employee’ take a vacation, not to mention how Sage didn’t want the man to know what he was up to. With the most obvious route to success a bust, he was pushed to the more difficult path.

If I can’t rely on transforming my body, I’ll just have to modify the technique!

Sage had only ever invented a single technique of his own, and even then that was merely modifying and combining three other techniques that already existed. He even had the assistance of Ruanfu through the whole process. Could he actually do it again all on his own?

Without any better options, he took the plunge. He already had a second dantian, something any other cultivator couldn’t claim. He was also destroying and rebuilding the cultivation within it on a weekly basis. There was ample opportunity for testing. Every week when he smashed apart the cultivation in his Poison Dantian, he would build it back again slightly differently.

Most of the time it was a complete failure and it collapsed almost instantly. The collapse injured him, but thanks to his enhanced healing ability he was able to recover and follow the conventional Blood of Fire to endure another test. Each attempt taught him more about how his Second Dantian and the Blood of Fire operated. Every failure increased his knowledge of his own internal body structure and how it responded to changes. Such destructive testing wouldn’t work for normal Qi Cultivation. Without his power as a Core Formation Cultivator to back him up, Sage wouldn’t be able to power that fast healing ability and he would have died dozens of times. It was only because the poison cultivation was a secondary path that he could afford to experiment so harshly. He also had the vicious poisons that Guan Zhenyan tested upon him. The poisons were vital to practicing Blood of Fire and after a failed test, Sage needed a proper use of Blood of Fire to clean up the mess he’d made. The proper circulation and absorption of poison set his poison meridians back to a default state, setting them back up for him to try and break them again.

Eighty One times. Nine times nine attempts. Nearly two years of failed trials finally culminated in success. As if part of some cosmic order, the successful technique consisted of nine spheres. They were layered inside of each other, like nine balloons inserted inside of each other. Yet, the description that was most apt to him was the nine circles of hell. Nine layers of poison. With that odd thought, Sage named his newly improved technique: Blood of Nine Pits. The name was not completely apt, as these nine layers were not stationary. When in operation, just like the Blood of Fire, poison was pulled from his body and brought to his poison dantian. It was then pulled in and merged to the outer layer of poison. When he called the poison out, it also drew from the outer layer.

The key part of the Blood of Nine Pits was its ability to cycle. After much experimentation, Sage discovered a method to move the outermost layer down into the center of the Poison Dantian. Then, the next layer down surges into the outer position, the third one down becomes the second, and so on. For some reason, the technique was only successful when he increased the number of layers to nine.

With his success, he started testing his own poisons. Collecting the most vicious and vile that Guan Zhenyan used upon him, he learned that he could push the poison into his body, switch layers and then draw it back into his poison dantian. In this way he could mix them together within his body, creating new concoctions as he wished. Most importantly, he also found that he could destroy the outer layer without losing the rest of the Blood of Nine Pits. In this way he could continue to ‘destroy’ his poison cultivation for Guan Zhenyan and keep the man unaware of his new improvement.