Lindon attached the thousand mile cloud to Orthos's shell, then added the camping bedroll he brought from Sacred Valley atop it, then tied himself down to Orthos's shell with a bit of rope and promptly laid down and started cycling Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel in one of his cores with his parasite ring on.
While all cycling techniques are taught as breathing patterns, strictly speaking breathing in a specific pattern is not necessary to practice a cycling technique, breathing techniques are a mnemonic device, generally it is only at Truegold that a Sacred Artist has necessary mental discipline and willpower and control over their own spirit that they no longer need additional help of following a physical cue to control their madra in specific ways.
Some Iron bodies, like the Sha Family's Moonheart Iron body, lets the Sacred Artist gain total control over their own spirit at Iron. Lindon with his well developed will can do same. The added distraction of movement and jostling has only added to the effectiveness of his cycling.
Lindon just needs the barest beginning of a spiral in his core to reform his bond with Orthos, but last time he had more than a month to practice Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel, now he has three days. However much he cycled Lindon is not reaching Jade, at least not for another two weeks, that too if he cycled for every moment of everyday with few hours set aside for sleep and food and other necessities.
But from his ownership of the Labyrinth Lindon knows that the so called Transcendent Ruins are just one of the small nodes the Labyrinth automatically puts to use when it needs some additional energy, such structures pop up all over the world semi randomly, to pull in Vital Aura from an area and top up the Labyrinths energy reserves.
If Lindon reaches the Transcendent Ruins, he can use his knowledge of the Labyrinth and his own past experiences with this specific node to trip some security scripts to delay the nosy factions of Desolate Wilds from entering deeper into the Ruins and gain himself sometime.
Even without using Burning Cloak Orthos reached the Purelake before the deadline, and Lindon thanked his friend.
Lindon, Little Blue and Orthos, waited in the shadows of the treeline, their entire focus on the shoreline of the Purelake. Lindon could see some of the Purelaker boats in the only source of clean water for miles around.
Orthos had trampled over both dreadbeasts and mindless sacred beasts on their journey here, and left plenty of Remnants in their wake, but thankfully they did not have to kill any creatures with sapience. His memories of the dead timeline made Lindon extremely reluctant to kill people, whether they be human or sacred beast, not that he wouldn't if he had no other choice, but even if technically Lindon is weaker than vast majority of Sacred Artists on Cradle, he still felt like he wasn't, he still vaguely remembered being Dreadgod, then becoming so much more as he Ascended to Heavens. So, no killing, as much as he could manage.
Just before mid-morning, Lindon felt a vibration in his feet. Knowing what is to come, Lindon braced himself against Orthos. In ten minutes that vibration crescendoed into the ground quaking for miles around. And in other five minutes the enormous pyramid of Transcendent Ruins pushed itself out of the ground, slowly at first, but it sped up rapidly. Lindon climbed back up on Orthos and at the very first sign of entrance Orthos started to run towards it on the shaky ground, jumping over newly formed ditches, sidestepping just risen boulders, Orthos ran towards the entrance and stepped inside just as the entrance fully rose out of the ground.
Lindon did not care who saw them enter the Ruins, probably no one did, any who could have seen them was too far away, even if someone did, it is entirely possible they might not have seen Lindon atop Orthos. And a Sacred Beast running into the Ruins would not a topic of interest for much longer, after all in the next several hours any sacred beast that can will run to the Ruins and sacred beasts will continue to pour into the Ruins until someone builds a wall and defends that wall. Additionally there will already be some sacred beasts and dreadbeasts inside the Ruins, preserved and kept in something of a stasis from the last time the Ruins have risen.
Orthos trampled and burnt several such beasts while following the directions Lindon gave to the very centre of the Ruins, the soulsmith workshop.
Lindon had to activate and deactivate several scripts along the way, to open the path forward, he made sure to deadlock any entrances behind him, there are several routes one could take to the workshop, but to reopen the route they took would need a level of mastery in scripts that no one in the Desolate Wilds possesses. Lindon would do something similar with other routes, but only once he has reached Jade in at least one core.
As soon as Lindon reached the soulsmith workshop, he untied the thousand mile cloud and his bedroll from Orthos's shell.
Orthos growled lowly in his throat and said, "The Blackflames impulses to rage are once again battering at my mind."
That gave Lindon pause and he asked a question he should have probably asked before, "Apologies, Orthos, I remember Eithan saying that it was his arrival and order which stopped Arelius Elders from giving you the 'mercy'"
Orthos snorted dismissively and answered, "It was, in that time, but this time I escaped overextending my spirit by the barest of margins and the medicine in the aftermath helped barely stabilize me. I had more control and retreated whenever the rages were about to overpower me. Apparently, Cassias's father, Gaien Arelius argued on my behalf. He probably did not want to lose a powerful 'weapon' he could at least use one more time."
Lindon had never actually met Gaien Arelius, but from what he heard, Gaien is an archetypical sacred artist turned politician.
Lindon hummed in thought and said softly, "Eithan probably manipulated fate enough to keep us safe, but I do not know how far that protection extends."
Orthos snorted again and growled out, "Knowing Eithan, probably only until you yourself woke up."
Lindon chuckled softly and agreed. That is something Eithan would do.
Orthos went off to vent some of his Blackflame rage on dreadbeasts and sacred beasts he could find, Lindon forged some scales for Little Blue and settled down to cycle.
Lindon settled on a routine, as soon as he woke up, three hours to practice his Jade cycling technique. A half an hour break to give his madra channels rest during which he broke his fast with the sacred beast meat Orthos hunted down and saw to other bodily necessities. The another one hour each of the cycling the technique of his own invention to recover madra and increase madra density in all three of his cores, then Forging scales for Little Blue. Another half hour of break for lunch and to see to his other physical needs. Repeat the same schedule with breaks for a small snack in the middle and dinner at last. And before going to sleep four hours of Jade cycling technique and one hour of recovery cycling.
More than Lindon, it is Little Blue who saw more rapid rise in her equivalent level of advancement. As a natural spirit Little Blue is born with something like Copper sight and Jade spiritual sense. Her equivalent of Iron body would have been purifying her essence with Soulfire, something Eithan did for her last time, however even without that, the only thing Little Blue needs to reach her equivalent level of Gold is power, which she digested quite fast in the from of the scales Lindon forged for her.
Even though Lindon planned to contract with Orthos first, Little Blue reaching her equivalent of Iron made the decision for Lindon.
With Orthos as witness, Lindon kneeled before two inches tall Little Blue and extending his finger to her, which she took hold of with her indistinct hands and Lindon said solemnly, "I swear to open my core to you and share my power."
Little Blue fluted out her own agreement and their bond settled lightly over them, Lindon only gained the cleansing flavor of Little Blue's madra, but Little Blue arched her back, grew half inch and regained the definition to her features, she looked mostly as she had after Eithan baptised her in soulfire and gave her some of his power as forged scales, only a lighter blue and one and half inch shorter.
Lindon broke out into a laugh and even Orthos joined him, Little Blue then scampered up to Lindon's neck and tried to hug him and her soothing power smoothly flowed into Lindon's madra channels, refreshing them as it reached his core.
With shared focus between the core bonded to Little Blue and the core reserved for Orthos, it took full twenty days of practice of Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel under the burden of parasite ring for Lindon to decide his core is ready to accept a portion of Orthos's power.
Lindon sat opposite Orthos, with his palm on Orthos's nose and both swore at the same time to open their cores and share their power.
This time both Lindon and Orthos were ready for what came next. Orthos carefully guided Lindon's pure madra through his madra channels, cleansing the damage done to his channels by the Blackflame madra, and Lindon immediately got to packing down and taking control of the Blackflame madra flooding in to his core with Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel.
Orthos was done first, but Lindon could feel Little Blue scampering up to Orthos's head to give him a dose of her own cleansing touch. After a minute Lindon's both bonded partners went off to explore the Ruins and Lindon remained in his seated position and continued to cycle.
It took Lindon another ten days of focused practise of Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel to be satisfied with the stability on his Jade Blackflame core.
His improved Bloodforged Iron body seems to be working as intended, Lindon's decreased need for sleep and increased physical recovery from the past remained at the same efficacy, and his hope of adding madra channel recovery seems to have borne fruit. His madra channels are more resilient and are quick to recover from strain.
While the theory had been sound, doubts and fears had lingered, not that those are gone completely, it is entirely possible his Iron body might fail to keep up as he advanced, worse, it might even become a bottleneck to his advancement.
Lindon promised himself to take a year after reaching Truegold to completely make sure his foundation is stable, but immediately after making that promise to himself even Lindon doubted he would ever slow down.
Lindon stood up and stretched trying to soothe the aches and pains from sitting in same position for hours on end, but already his Iron body drank a trickle from his unbonded pure madra core to heal those aches and pains away.
With his third core on his mind, Lindon walked to the huge cupboard holding the Jai clan's 'Ancestor's Spear' or more accurately a weapon of forged hunger madra with a binding and some very clever scripting.
Lindon opened the cupboard and the white blinding light of hunger madra flashed, and he knew that white light so intimately, hunger aura, sin of Monarchs.
While Lindon already decided to fill his third core with hunger madra and incorporate one of the two hunger bindings in to said core, he cannot do that immediately, those bindings and the spear are at the level of Truegold, if Lindon tried to incorporate that binding now, it would pop his core like a soap bubble.
So he had some use for the Ancestor's spear for a while yet, he has a core to fill with hunger madra and a technique to rework and re-learn.