Many years ago, Sage had trained in the Sunfire Pagoda to push him out of diocrity and into the third rank. Compared to where he was now, it felt like many lifetis ago. He had to struggle so hard to accumulate enough points in the Sect to pay for his training ti and even then hed only managed to move from the level of a common soldier to that of an elite soldier. Unlike that ti so long ago, he no longer had to struggle to gather enough money to use the Sunfire Pagoda. The secret steam weapon projects hed introduced to the Holy Fla Sect were enough to earn him many contribution points and that was without considering his earning power from his high level Professions or selling goods from the Inner World.
Sage had two goals in the Sunfire Pagoda. First, he planned to train his body with the Violent Sun Body Instruction. Second, and most importantly, he was going to see which of the training thods in the Sunfire Pagoda was most effective. More specifically, he intended to use the Sunfire Pagoda to design a training regin and then develop equipnt to reproduce its effects. Then, with the new equipnt he would have a new developnt path for the clan. So people were simply not very talented when it ca to Qi Cultivation, but since they all had Mantis bodies, they would have an advantage over normal humans when it ca to body cultivation.
The Sunfire Pagoda had a total of 99 floors. These floors were split up into eleven different types of training, with nine floors each. In the past, Sage had never really gone past the fifth floor of any of these different types of training. Not only was it expensive, but he was also too weak for it at the ti. This ti he planned to not only try out every one of the 99 floors, but he also planned to move back and forth between levels to test out how effective it was to switch between them rapidly.
Eight of the eleven types of training seed to correspond to the eight trigrams, which was sowhat odd since Sage hadnt really seen any other direct references to that taoist concept. There were plenty of little bits and pieces used in formations and cultivation that matched up with the small amount he knew of taoism, but it was all sowhat circumstantial stuff. Of the eleven types of training, Sage started with the two that were sowhat related to thods hed already seen ntioned in the Violent Sun Body Instruction. Heat Tempering, for Fire, and Cold Tempering, for Water. Unfortunately, as he tried them out, they were more focused upon the extrely high or low temperature and Sage found out that this body cultivation technique really was very focused upon high pressure.
On the plus side, two of the training types were actually very beneficial. The Ground training made him feel extrely heavy and he guessed it was so sort of gravity related effect. It was not sothing hed experienced much in other places, so he paid special attention to the materials and the arrays on those floors. He did his best to try and decipher their mysteries, but there was too much hidden from him to reverse engineer them that simply. Along with this gravity effect, the Lake levels were almost an exact match for one of the Violent Sun Body Instructions training thods. The nine levels were actually combined into one giant lake and the closer one moved to the center and the deeper one dove actually signified the different levels of training rather than requiring a move to another floor of the pagoda.
In the manual, a cultivator could head down into the deep sea to experience high pressure, but they would also have to resist the cold, and avoid aquatic beasts at the sa ti. The Lake levels skipped those downsides while still offering a place to train under high pressure. The Wind levels were not very useful as the vicious wind tempests were aid toward agility training and not a high pressure zone. There were also the Heaven levels that were like a more dangerous version of the Wind levels, where the air was full of flying tal blades instead of just ones made of wind. The Thunder levels were about as useful as the Fire and Water levels, as it mainly consisted of being struck by increasingly powerful lightning bolts to temper the body. The Mountain levels were actually the opposite of what he was looking for as they were another combined level that consisted of climbing a small mountain with harsher conditions as you got higher. The most rough of which was the extrely low air pressure and temperature.
The final three types of training were called Breath, Mind, and Essence. Essence was one he frequented many tis in the past, as it drained a Cultivators Qi, adding a sort of resistance to Qi cultivation to help break past limits. Mind training created a sort of pressure upon Spiritual Sense, which was another useful exercise, but it didnt really assist his body cultivation. Lastly, Breath was quite strange as it consisted of battling with endless waves of puppets. These levels were very popular, but they were mostly used by those wanting to increase their combat experience and beco more familiar with their fighting techniques.
In addition to swapping between the different levels that he found to be effective he also tried to combine them with the Violent Sun Body Instructions techniques. More specifically, he brought out a giant cauldron from the Inner World and used it on the Fire levels. He sealed the door from the inside and let the high heat of the floor heat it up. This cauldron was actually more of a giant pressure cooker, but unfortunately using the Sunfire Pagoda wasnt really any better than any other source of high intensity heat. After that failure there was a success, as he found the cauldron thod was improved when used in unison with the high gravity of the Ground levels.
He also spent so ti on the ninth level of the Spiritual Sense training, but after a few months he stopped seeing improvent. His Spiritual Sense had been awakened early by the Seed of Life and had always been improving along with his cultivation so he assud hed already reached the peak that the Sunfire Pagoda could push him to in that area.
Sage t with Peak Master Lupeng and Peak Master Zhen in order to acquire the thod to create his own gravity chamber. He offered up the sizable balance of his Holy Fla Sect points, but that wouldnt directly benefit the two Peak Masters so they didnt agree. The two of them were experienced masters so they werent crass enough to demand more, but Sage could understand their position and he brought out many of the higher level materials from the Inner World to sweeten the deal. Each of the Peak Masters had their own Profession and good materials were worth far more to them than Spirit Stones. In order to win them over he even had to offer sothing more unique and he included a few Psionic Crystals from the Hidden Domain. Thankfully that was enough and Sage finally got the plans to construct his own gravity chamber which he imdiately started work on in the Inner World. He used Spirit Stones to buy the materials he needed which werent present on the Inner World not only for the gravity chamber but many other things.
Once he was stocked up on materials he finally left the Holy Fla Sect more than five years after hed returned.
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