Lindon rolled the beacon in his right hand as he cycled, one of the Starlotus buds pushed him halfway to Iron, and the other one will finish the job, but Lindon had a better use for it. So he consumed his last remaining orus fruit, and cycled in a breathing technique of his own design that increased his madra recovery and density.
Five days of relentless cycling under the burden of parasite ring finally let him forge three scales a day, Lindon fed two scales to Little Blue and consumed last scale to push the boundaries of his own core.
All the while he redesigned the way to gain the Bloodforged Iron body.
After the end of tenth day of his cycling spree, as twilight enveloped the wilderness, Lindon once again applied faintest of his will on the beacon and suddenly one particular set of emotions from the jumble of feelings he felt from the beacon came into focus, determination and eagerness, and the beacon gave a sense of direction. Straight ahead.
Lindon completely ignored the skull splitting headache assaulting him and immediately rose, hooked a scripted water-skin to his belt, shoved a packet of dried meat into the pocket of his inner robe, and scooped up Little Blue into the pocket he sewed for her near his collar. Jumped on his thousand mile cloud with his already neatly packed backpack, and cycled the pattern for quick madra recovery while infusing the thousand mile cloud's control script, which he updated for efficiency, with his pure madra.
Lindon zipped through the air dodging trees in way, within the hour he covered fifty miles and reached the foothills bordering the Desolate Wilds, and he could see sliding down one such foothill, trampling trees and boulders alike, a magnificent massive turtle, facets of his shell outlined by sullen red in the deepening darkness, height of a horse and thrice as wide.
"Orthos!", Lindon shouted with joy.
And Orthos let out a roar of exuberance, that induced the fear of dragons into normal animals and sacred beasts alike, and put them to panicked flight.
Lindon increased his madra input into the control script and raised his speed and Orthos blazed with the Burning Cloak and tripled his speed.
In a minute they were only yards apart, Lindon cut off his madra flow into the cloud construct, deployed his basic soul cloak and jumped. At the same time Orthos cancelled his Burning Cloak and pulled back madra from his channels and into his core, so that Lindon would not be too badly burned when he touched Orthos.
Lindon timed his jump expertly and came down with his hands around Orthos's neck and his body flat on Orthos's uncomfortably warm shell. All the while Little Blue whistled and tinkled, joy and victory.
Lindon tightened his hold on Orthos's neck and choked out, "It is good to see you."
Orthos rumbled out a relieved, 'Lindon'.
Lindon heard the vindicated hope and destroyed doubts in that. And just tightened his hold some more.
After clearing off tears of joy, Lindon and Orthos exchanged stories and Lindon was astonished to learn that Orthos regained his memories three months ago, instead of fifteen days it had been for Lindon, and that there is no Eithan Arelius in Blackflame Empire, Orthos had never met him in this second chance at life.
Lindon already knew there were some changes in this timeline, for one thing, Yerin was not in Sacred Valley, he tried to sense for her with the beacon immediately after retrieving Little Blue and the beacon only pointed to outside the Sacred Valley. Lindon will not even consider that Yerin might be dead, and seeing the changes, Lindon hoped Yerin's master is still alive. The Sage of the Endless Sword is as much as Yerin's father as he is her Master. And Lindon knew his death was a deep wound on Yerin's heart that was only just healing even after their Ascension.
They made camp near where they met and the three of them drifted away into sleep while talking, with Lindon leaning against Orthos's shell and Little Blue sprawled on Orthos's head.
In the morning Lindon and Orthos discussed the next step in their plan. With Orthos's help Lindon hollowed out two boulders into primitive cauldrons and dugout ten small cells into side of the hill, beside which they made their camp.
As Orthos went off to hunt down and bring back sandvipers and Lindon got on with chiselling scripts on to the cauldrons and cells, all the while Lindon washed his body with madra from his core.
It took Orthos two full days to bring back ten sandvipers.
Lindon has only cursory knowledge in Refining, he never had the time or the inclination to study the subject in depth, he can pump out basic elixirs up-to Lowgold level, and that level of expertise is enough for what he plans on making.
A sanviper's venom is as much as it is its madra as it is a liquid mix of poison and acid. At the dawn of thirteenth day since Lindon left Sacred Valley, he checked his core, it is at the brink of spilling over into his body. Satisfied, Lindon activated first of scripts on the two primitive cauldrons, these ones are same and scripted to preserve their contents and positioned himself near the first cauldron.
Orthos retrieved one of the sandvipers from their scripted cells, holding it securely in his mouth. At Lindon's nod, Orthos decisively bit off its neck where Lindon showed him.
Lindon quickly took the dead sandviper's head and carefully cut into its flesh with his Halfsilver dagger, dug out its venom sac, and emptied the sack in the cauldron he is standing over. Just as quickly Orthos took the sanviper's remaining body, drained its blood into the second cauldron.
Lindon and Orthos both deposited the pieces of the sandviper in a one of the ten small scripted circles between the two cauldrons and activated the circle. Just as they did so the remnant of the sandviper formed inside the circle, sandvipers are Sacred Beasts after all, mindless ones, but still Sacred Beasts. Of the ten Orthos caught only two are at the level of Lowgold, remaining eight are just Jades.
Lindon and Orthos repeated the process until they drained the venom and blood of all ten sandvipers into their respective cauldrons. Then they killed the remnants in their scripted circles, none had a binding, which is just as well, and deposited the deadmatter from one Lowgold and four Jade remnants into a cauldron each.
Then Lindon deactivated preservation scripts powered by his pure madra, and Orthos powered the second circle of scripts designed to breakdown the content of the cauldrons into their purest essences. And Lindon activated third circle of scripts that prevented said essence from escaping the cauldrons.
During the long minutes of to the halfway point of the breakdown happening in cauldrons, Lindon silently lamented that he did not have access to any kind of traditional binding agent, even weak spiritual water like what the Holy Wind School calls Grandfather's tears would have sufficed. But he had none, so he had to improvise.
Lindon took his second and last Starlotus bud he looted from Heaven's Glory and regretfully dropped it in to second cauldron with sandviper blood, then had Orthos reduce the input of Orthos's blackflame madra in that cauldron. Instead of complete breakdown into essence, in blood cauldron the remaining thickened blood started to absorb the essence in the cauldron,
As the venom in the first cauldron completely turned into essence, now the second bit of improvisation, Lindon took out a small steel scripted container, it was just a spice jar previously, Orthos made a small donation of blood, which Lindon purified multiple times with scripts until he was left with ten ounces of madra conducive clear liquid with a slight inclination towards fire and destruction.
Lindon poured that liquid into the venom cauldron and activated yet another, fourth script, this one forced the essence to bind with the clear liquid.
And turned towards the blood cauldron, as he hoped, the nourishing nature of the starlotus bud, protective properties of the sandviper blood and slow breakdown by script powered by blackflame madra resulted in a deep red liquid. Lindon asked Orthos to deactivate the script powered by his madra and activated the fourth script on blood cauldron, this one intended to focus the process of absorption of essence and concentrate the liquid.
Another ten minutes and the process is done.
Lindon scooped Little Blue from his pocket and deposited her on Orthos's head. She fluted out encouragement and Orthos rumbled out, "The dragon advances."
Lindon gave them both a nod of confidence, scooped the deep red liquid with barest of golden shine to it, from blood cauldron into a glass vial. And extracted the black liquid with little flecks of red, from venom cauldron into a crude Goldsteel injector Lindon made.
Then Lindon stripped down, as naked as the day he was born, and sat down in a cycling position, breathed in four additional scales he saved to keep his already full core at the edge of overflow, and in one smooth motion injected the condensed venom extract of ten sandvipers just above his heart, just as the agony began, downed the red gold blood extract from the glass vial.
The venom extract tried to rush through his body, but Lindon took hold of it with madra touched by the protective and nourishing properties of blood extract, controlled by the focused chthonic willpower of an Ascendant and the heir to the Reaper of the Worlds, Lindon's will guided the venom extract in burning new madra channels into his body and spirit.
Agony assaulted Lindon in waves, all it received in response is indifference and dismissal. Through the marrow of his bones to his every muscle to all of his organs, the venom extract drilled new madra channels and the blood extract that followed behind it nourished and strengthened those new channels.
After a long hour of unimaginable agony, when both the venom and blood extract are spent, Lindon deemed his new madra channels satisfactory and with the brief flex of his will let the overflow in his core to spill through his body.
The stench of filth that rushed out of his every orifice of Lindon's body is horrifying, and a part of Lindon regretted for being awake and aware for the entirety of it, last time he lost consciousness before the process began and woke up after it was done.
Once it is done, and his core became more condensed than it was in Copper, Lindon carefully stood up, took hold of the tree branch he smoothened into a scraper and scrapped the squelching filth off himself. After scraping off as much as he can, Lindon jumped into small scripted pit that gathered water from moisture, it had soap beside it. As the water became thoroughly brackish and Lindon felt marginally clean, Lindon jumped straight from the first pit to beside the second one, this new pit had soap beside it too, Lindon scooped out the water from the pit, thoroughly cleaned himself, and only after he was sure of every nook and cranny of his body, Lindon activated the secondary script, which heated up the water in the pit, he submerged himself in warm water, and checked on his core and madra channels.
This time around he had more madra channels than the last time and they felt more sturdy. Of course, it is only after they are tested vigorously that Lindon will know how successful he had been in his intentions.
Lindon had not yet started to practice the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel, his focus until now had been on quick madra recovery and quick increase in madra density. But he is Iron now, and he needs to focus on his Jade cycling technique.
Relaxed and satisfied, Lindon remained in the warm water for another half an hour before exiting the pit and dressing himself.
For the sake of his modesty Orthos and Little Blue had kept their eyes closed since Lindon started stripping, but from the very beginning Lindon felt the faint touch of Orthos's spiritual awareness on his spirit.
Once Lindon dressed himself Orthos opened his eyes and rumbled out his congratulations as Little Blue performed another one of her victory dances on Orthos's head.
Smiling Lindon forged a scale, both as a treat to Little Blue and as test for his madra channels, Lindon felt barely any strain, he might have succeeded after all. Lindon fed the scale into Little Blue's unnaturally widened mouth, who swallowed it in a single gulp.
As Lindon finished his advancement to Iron before midday, Lindon ate his prepared lunch of dried meat early, and started cycling anew, this time in preparation to split his core, it would be more painful than when he had done it as a Foundation level Sacred Artist, but every level of advancement makes it more and more easier for Lindon to exert his will, especially inside his own body.
After who knows how many hours of deep cycling trance, Lindon felt his madra system was ready, he gathered his will, pushing through his Iron level cores fierce resistance split apart his core into three equally sized smaller cores, they positioned themselves equidistant from where his singular core had been, in an upside down triangle.
Lindon let out a sigh, let the spiritual pain flow out with that breath, gave rest to his throbbing madra system and finally realized how parched his throat felt.
Lindon opened his eyes to look directly into one of Orthos's huge eyes with coal black sclera with a red iris and asked quietly, "How long was I out?"
"Four days", Orthos rumbled out.
Lindon cursed uncharacteristically, as Yerin would have, "Bleed and bury me, the Transcendent Ruins rise in three days. We need to go!"