By the time his body in the outside world finished his metamorphosis, Sage had already perfected the Liquid Metal body with the help of the researchers. He took some time to stretch out and exercise the thick eight limbed mantis body that now perfectly matched his body on the Inner World. Then, he brought out the materials required to change its composition to the Liquid Metal body. It took a few days to complete this second transformation, giving his golden carapace a much more silvery sheen.

With this step finished, his two bodies were now almost exactly the same. The only difference was one he could not control. His Qi Cultivation technique in the outside world was the Life Nebula provided by the Seed of Life, while on the Inner World, his Soul Clone used the Countless Ego Concoction. One of them was the source of the Inner World, while the other was specialized in splitting his Qi and Spirit Power into hundreds of tiny threads. Unfortunately, this meant that any techniques he tried to develop that relied on the careful application of power would be much more difficult for him to use with his original body, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

Even so, he was now much more in sync between the two bodies and over the next few months he practiced his Professions to finish raising his mastery of them to that of five stars. He had to tread new ground on the Inner World with these professions, but he could rapidly match that same slow advancement on the outside world. At this time he actually appeared again in the Holy Flame Sect as he had to take advantage of the Sect’s resources in his training. He was already starting to reach a point where some of the materials for his training started to become scarce on the Inner World. There was an abundance of plant based natural treasures, but some of the more unusual ores were in shorter supply. Even worse was the many materials that were derived from Demonic Beasts.

The Inner World had only been ‘seeded’ with the beasts he collected in the past. Even after thousands of years of proliferation and evolution the amount of diversity was far smaller than the outside world. Worse yet, the strength of these beasts was far weaker. It took a long time for Demonic Beasts to reach a high rank and those that did he recruited to his side. The number of tier five beasts that were hunted on the Inner World was somewhat limited and his training consumed these materials faster than they were collected. In the Holy Flame Sect, these same materials were abundant, the world they inhabited seemed to have an endless supply of them.

It seems the people in charge have kept the size of human civilization on this world small in order to ensure a steady supply of high level resources. Since it takes high level people to defend cities and clear out areas for new ones, they also get to decide how big the cities can get.

As much as Sage felt he was an advocate for increasing the living standards of mortals, he had no problem with attempts to control the spread of civilization and the growth of the population. All the materials that high level cultivators required took a lot of time and space to flourish so these people had already taken a conservationist stance sometime in the past. If they just conquered all the wilderness and let humanity expand without limit they’d eventually face shortages for the strongest cultivators. Since these powerful folks lived for many thousands of years, of course they would look out for their own benefits. Why would they not only allow, but encourage mortals, which they could wipe out with a wave of their hand, to mess it all up?

For those in the Holy Flame Sect, the mysterious Lang Sheng that had come out of seemingly nowhere and made big records suddenly disappeared for a year. Then he reportedly came out of seclusion and started openly training his professions in the sect. Previously, between his seasonal profession tests, nobody had seen him. This time he was actually spotted going into workshops and frequenting shops to purchase materials and sell the goods he produced. Many tried to fawn over him and build a relationship, but they were unsuccessful. The rumors that he was a Nascent Soul made some of them try even harder, but all of them were very careful not to get on his bad side. Nobody wanted such a powerful enemy.

Gradually, they started to forget about his somewhat legendary deeds. Then, three years after he’d taken sixteen Profession tests, he rapidly took part in seventeen Profession tests. In order to progress into five stars, each test required a couple days to complete and so his feat this time was not an overnight surprise to the Sect. Instead, it was a long and drawn out affair, taking months before he was finally finished. At that time, the name Lang Sheng truly became a legend among the Holy Flame Sect. A single cultivator had reached the highest level in every single Profession.

There was no sixth star for Professions in the Holy Flame Sect. Given that there were so few Nascent Souls in the world, none of them dared to claim they had reached mastery. In fact, the Peak Master’s were each the foremost masters of their respective Professions in the whole Kingdom. With so few Nascent Souls practicing each Profession there just wasn’t enough of them to be creating a formal organization and examinations to verify their ranking. Five stars was technically the highest official rank, but it was far from the actual peak of each field. Not only would Sage have to master all the knowledge of each five star profession there was also the even higher level that the Peak Master’s had attained.

That said, the highest techniques and knowledge of the Peak Masters was not something they made available in the Holy Flame Sect’s Million Skill Library. Only when a Peak Master was on their deathbed would they consider passing on their exclusive secrets. This high level knowledge was passed on to the Holy Flame Sect’s Master and not left for public access. While this was unfortunate for Sage, it also meant that he had finally been able to attain his goal. In the Million Skill Library he finally had access to all of its knowledge and copied it all down as quickly as possible. His goal of creating a fully fledged heritage for the Inner World was finally complete.

Now, with enough time and the influence of his ideas from Earth, he had hopes for the Inner World surpassing the capabilities of this world. The difference in how the basic rules of the world worked certainly made things difficult, but the presence of what was basically magic opened up a lot of possibilities. The principles of scientific research were not hampered, so he was very eager to see what they could come up with in the future.

After investing five years, Sage had finally ‘conquered’ the Million Skill Library. While those in the Holy Flame Sect were busy speculating on whether or not he’d become the next Peak Master, Sage had actually turned his attention to one of the Holy Flame Sect’s other important buildings: The Sunfire Pagoda.