In the Universe Ring, Sage had set up a workroom for each of his professions and was training his body and senses to equal the level of skill that he’d already mastered on the Inner World. Before going into seclusion this time he’d already copied down the profession libraries available to four star professionals and on the Inner World he’d already reached the standard of five stars with every skill. It was only after he’d reached this level did he start using metamorphosis to incorporate the three eggs.

It took him a full year to advance his professions to such a degree, which worked out to nearly fifty years per profession on the Inner World. His body in the Universe Ring could not really keep up, but it took only a couple months for him to try out a hundred different bodies and reach a final result. At that point, he stopped practicing his professions and went out of the central building of the Universe Ring and went out to an open area where he merged with an egg from the Inner World. It was definitely some sort of weird inbreeding, passing these genes back and forth, but there was no risk of defects or abnormalities because he could control the whole process. Even so, he was pretty sure if there was any actual physical mating required for this stuff it was very likely he would be far more resistant to making any changes at all.

In the year that he was in metamorphosis in the Universe Ring, he spent hundreds of years on the Inner World adapting the Lang Clan’s techniques to work with his new body. He tested out the various paths that his descendants had forged and tried out the three methods of body transformation. The first being Spirit Jade, just like the insect they’d gained the ability from, the Spirit Jade Beetle. By consuming a certain combination of specific minerals, their whole body became a medium to store more Qi. This was the ‘tried and true’ method that the majority of the Lang Clan used, giving them a way to exhibit an explosive burst of power.

Two of his children had started down alternative paths, which they called Tyrant Jade and Prove Your Metal. The latter was created by Xingwang, his third son, who had tears in his eyes every other night of training, but he never uttered a word of complaint. He was the first to start truly experimenting with his body and failed over and over again. His body became like stone and while tough and strong it dulled his senses and emotions. Even so, he never gave up and eventually found a way to get a metallic body. He took disciples in the following generations and they improved upon his methods, but they all ended up requiring a certain amount of self torture to reach success.

Tyrant Jade, on the other hand, was made by his fourth son, Yazhu. He wasn’t afraid of his older brother’s failures and followed the same route of body transformation. His efforts were far more successful and the resulting body composition became a perfect medium for the Jade Mantle technique. With a Tyrant Jade body, a skilled member of the clan can maintain the Jade Mantle around their body all day and night with barely any energy expenditure.

To try out the different options, Sage had to go back into Chrysalis again to restore his body back to its original form. Even so, he felt it was a worthwhile experiment, especially because he could form a more objective opinion of each option using a direct comparison. A few of the clan researchers were also cleared to use metamorphosis for such experiments and they had performed this study in the past, but it was good to truly feel the differences for himself. He had the luxury of plentiful research time, so he wasn’t shy of putting it to use.

The Tyrant Jade was definitely the most innovative and he actually felt there were many similarities between it and the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel. They were bodies tailored specifically to be perfect vessels for a single technique. It was also much like when he’d had a cobra body to empower the Hypnotic Eye, except the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel and Tyrant Jade were a lot more successful. Of course, if he had kept pursuing that path he would likely be able to get better results, but the real takeaway here was that it was a valid path and he realized it was also one that the original Lang Clan followed. The Colossal Iron Mantis was very skewed towards its power of growth. Each rank, the mantis could triple in size from the last. It went from the size of a dog, to a pony, and then to the size of a house. He was a nobody in the clan at that time so he’d only heard rumors of fifty foot tall fourth rank mantises.

That power of growth was also present in the Jade Sky Mantis, but it was not nearly as effective. Rather than tripling in size each rank, the Jade Sky Mantis could only double in size each rank. On the plus side, the Jade Sky Mantis was the size of a man rather than a few inches tall, so a fifth rank Lang Clansmen could still push their size to nearly a hundred feet tall, but it was pretty terrible in comparison to the original. If his calculations were right, a Colossal Iron Mantis owned by a Nascent Soul could reach a terrifying height of almost five hundred feet, while a Jade Sky Mantis at the same rank would almost hit two hundred. Of course, most of the Clan did not increase their size to such proportions because it required the accumulation of a large amount of Qi. On the other hand, those who liked to fight would go for the maximum size because they could use the Human Seal to regulate their body size.

Transforming as many times as he did, Sage also made a connection between the growth ability of the Colossal Iron Mantis and the limitations of Qi in the body. The quality of a beast or insect’s bloodline seemed to put a cap on their improvement speed. In order to keep advancing, these beasts would need to grow larger and larger bodies to contain the power necessary for the next rank. This gradual growth process seemed to take far longer and much more effort than it did for a beast with a higher quality body that didn’t have to spend so much effort getting bigger. While it also took time and energy for the Colossal Iron Mantis to grow, it was far less exaggerated and their maximum size was limited by their linked owners' cultivation and not their own potential.

Is this actually a method that was devised to subvert the inherent limits on a beast’s bloodline quality?

Sage had not used his linked insects in direct combat in some time. While they were far less resource intensive than cultivators they still followed the same curve. The resources invested had diminishing returns and to make a single rank five was equivalent to thousands of rank fours or tens of thousands of rank threes. Facing this problem he let them grow naturally on the Inner World, but even so there hadn’t yet been the birth of a tier six over thousands of years. That was why he chose to use the, comparatively, more intelligent Dragoons with equipment to boost their strength. He also had the Purple Mist Sect, but they were something of a unique existence that had been hidden away for tens of thousands of years.

It was only now that he realized what the Lang Clan’s Colossal Iron Mantis was used for. While it wasn’t much in the way of special abilities or talents, it could keep growing to match its master. Even if it wasn’t the most impressive, it would be a reliable fighting partner they could always fall back on. As he saw with the Chong Clan’s factions, they had all developed their linked creatures to be powerful tools, but that really only applied to Core Formation Cultivators. The Nascent Souls he saw in battle had all developed their own unique methods, which he guessed was because they had to come up with new ways to push their bugs to higher levels. In comparison, the Colossal Iron Mantis would just keep getting bigger and the linked Lang Clansmen could focus their improvement efforts on themselves.

It’s actually sort of funny. The Insect Immortal Index is a technique that can lead to endless variation and improvement, but the Lang Clan chose the path of simplicity. Then again, maybe the Chong Clan forced them into that route when they deposed them?