Molting the Mortal Coil

Chapter 985: Materials

The first of the three materials Sage got his hands on was called Life Penetrating Flame. This viridian green flame was quite odd in that it did not burn anything but lifeforce. It only consumed the vital energy of living beings to fuel its fire. This sounded quite terrifying, but it also meant that the Life Penetrating Flame did not have as many auxiliary uses. Few Cultivators would want to make it their innate flame as theyd become helpless against so many things. Puppets, Flying Weapons, and just energy attacks in general would create many difficulties for a person whos flame could only burn living things. It also meant it was useless for Blacksmiths, Alchemists, and other Professions as they couldnt use it to heat things without feeding it lifeforce. What sort of craftsmen would want to age themselves or constantly have to sacrifice living beings for everything they made. It was due to these reasons that Sage could purchase the Life Penetrating Flame so cheaply. He didnt care about its weaknesses as unlike others he was not limited in the number of Heavenly Materials he could use. Also, he benefited merely by possessing more Heavenly Materials even if he didnt use them.

The second he got his hands on was extremely lucky. Sage had to spend every Spirit Stone in his possession as well as trade a pile of resources in order to secure the private sale. One of the smaller stores he put an order in had found it. They werent confident enough in their strength to host an auction, so they werent willing to consign it to another shop or put the word out in fear of losing it by force. So, instead they sold it directly to Sage. It took all Sage had, but this was still a losing deal for the shop as this Heavenly Material was quite valuable. A Heavenly Thunder named Silver Yin Lightning.

Not only was Heavenly Thunder a type that Sage was missing, the Silver Yin Lightning was extremely important for the Yin in its name. Just as the First Light was an extremely Yang Flame, the Silver Yin Lightning was extremely Yin. The Black Enhydros was also somewhat yin in nature, as was the Eye of the World, but that was far from their purpose. The Silver Yin Lightning, on the other hand, was extremely powerful in Yin energy. Just as the First Light could banish the darkness and was quite powerful against evil, the Silver Yin Lightning was the opposite. It wasnt specifically cold, dark, or evil, but the same essence within those things, the Yin, was powerful in it. Sage didnt specifically need the power of evil for anything in particular, but it was good to have access to such an option. Just as Sage had found good use for the First Light in the past, the Silver Yin Lightning could come in handy in certain situations. The other, and more important, use was to act in counter to the First Light. The dichotomy between Yin and Yang made Sage excited to attain.

Lastly, Sage got lucky with another Heavenly Thunder. He needed to attain one of them to have one of each of the seven types of Heavenly Materials, but he wasnt going to turn down a second one if he could get his hands on it. The Occult Thunder was not won because it was unwanted or no one knew about it. Instead, Sage had to win it in an auction the old fashioned way. It was especially bad because hed blown through all of his Spirit Stones only a few months before he came upon the Occult Thunder. With this problem, Sage had to trade away many of the more unusual resources hed acquired through his adventures that he hadnt found a use for. There was a suit of Soft Flexible Armor that the Jinxi Po had worn, which was worth hundreds of millions, and there was many millions worth of arrow shaped Magical Tools along with that. Sadly that was still only a start and Sage included tons of materials from the Psionic Hidden Domain. It was far from the full amount he had, but it was still a sizable percentage of the very rare materials. To finally win the material he also had to add in the production methods for his Formation Machine.

It was not a secret he wanted to share with the world, but the design he gave away was the very first Formation Machine he created himself and not the most modern versions on the Inner World. There were many massive Sect Protecting Arrays and also the small and portable Formation Plates, but the Formation Machine was a middle ground between them, somewhat replicating the varying effects of larger arrays in a portable form. This invention was enough to tilt the odds in his favor and allow Sage to pick up a third Heavenly Material.

The Occult Thunder was extremely unpredictable and mysterious, in short: occult. It had no clear visible form, creating only a dim purple haze in the air and thunderous sound coming from all directions at once. Its other properties were equally unusual as the Occult Thunder had the strange ability to assimilate itself into other types of lightning, hiding itself within. It had some weaknesses, but not nearly as bad as with the Life Penetrating Flame. A lightning Cultivator would become an excellent supporter with the Occult Thunder as their innate lightning Qi, able to boost the strength of other lightning Cultivators by leaps and bounds at the cost of being less useful in one on one fights.

As a more niche, but still useful, Heavenly Material, Sage was able to purchase it, but only at a high price. It was especially useful since hed just got another Heavenly Thunder which he could use in tandem with the Occult Thunder which meant he didnt have to suffer from its main weakness.

Having experienced the integration process so many times before, Sage went through the process without a hitch. The Life Penetrating Flame, a viridian green ember of flame, became a small white star with a strangely large green corona around it. Once it was added to the space around the Inner World, Sage felt the natural forces in the world change and instinctively felt a boost in the cycle of decomposition and regrowth.

The Silver Yin Lightning, a small black sphere surrounded by silver sparks, manifested as a silvery moon orbiting opposite the white star of the First Light. It added a counter balance to the yang energy of the First Light, making the dark ecosystems and environments of the world complete. This change was similar to that caused by the third Heavenly Material, the Occult Thunder. It appeared as a slightly purple haze crackling with purple sparks, but when it entered the Inner World it spread across the field of tiny stars sparkling in the distance. Instead of becoming a planet or a large star like the others it was a haze in the sky like a distant nebula among the flickering starlights that represented Sages Qi. With its addition, the ecosystems of the world became more complete and unusual energies began to randomly appear around the world to give birth to more rare and unique natural resources.