The moment Khan stepped into the outer formation circle, he instantly felt a wave of pressure hit his body and he was racked with pain.
"I thought you said this formation is activated in the same way, why is it already activated?" He asked with a frown.
"It isn't, this is just the residual aura of the formation, the same way you feel a faint aura when stepping into that other formation you were using." The spirit replied.
"No, it's not even close, this must be at least a thousand times stronger." Khan didn't back down, but instead grinned. He walked further forwards, feeling an increasingly powerful killing aura building up until he reached the centre.
His body was filled with pain and he hadn't even activated the formation yet. He even felt danger and killing intent coming from the formation…it was totally different compared to his past training sessions.
This was much more exciting.
This formation was designed for all Body Temperers from the Body Transformation Realm to the Blood Core Realm, although, the spirit considered all five of these realms as a single 'Elementary Stage'. She only referred to the five separate realms in the same way as Khan because she quickly realised that this seemed to be in the norm in this world.
This formation wasn't at all conventional according to the spirit, but she admitted that if you could somehow tolerate the agony, then it was definitely effective for a very low cost.
However, there was also more danger for Khan, a human. This type of formation was originally designed with a completely different sort of race in mind, a race that grew ten times larger than humans as mortals, and even larger if they trained to higher realms.
"Remember master, this isn't like the other formation, you can't use this for hours at a time. The energy placed into the formation is instantly forced into your body, then the pressures of the formation balance out the internal force created by the energy. The formation keeps the pressures balanced or else you would explode…I…anyway…" Hui seemed a bit anxious, understandably.
What if she messed something up and Khan was killed?
"Hui, don't worry, you set up the formation perfectly. I'll be fine." Khan smiled after saying this, but his expression quickly turned serious.
"She's right to be worried, there is an element of danger here. I would definitely begin with the tamest possible setting and work up from there, otherwise the impact will take you by shock and you won't be prepared to handle it properly." The spirit commented.
"Fine." Khan agreed, mostly because he could already feel the crazy intensity of this formation.
Hui placed ten spirit units worth of spirit stones into the formation. The whole formation glowed for a moment, but then the light disappeared. However, the red light contained within the formation as a whole had clearly just jumped upwards massively. Khan could already feel the pressure on his body, and it still wasn't even activated yet!
Khan placed his palms on the runes to his left and right, then injected a strand of Blood Energy into each.
He was already prepared, but the impact was so sudden and so intense that it still took him by surprise. The moment his Blood Energy connected to the runes, a flash of light spread towards the rune which held the spirit stones. This energy then shot around the entire formation, with half of it rushing directly into Khan's body from all directions.
"Peugh!" He suddenly choked, spraying blood across the formation. The energy was forced directly into his body with no way for him to resist, causing some minor damage.
"What the…" The spirit sounded shocked. "Your race isn't just untalented when it comes to Body Tempering, but is completely incompatible with this path! How can this be…? The Primordial Body Tempering Path was the very first cultivation path, the most fundamental path that should be accessible to all intelligent and semi-intelligent life with a physical body…this…I'm surprised that you even reached your current stage!"
Khan didn't have the luxury to listen to the spirit's musings. The energy that was forced into his body rushed into a central point, where it seemed to bounce back and rapidly expanded outwards. Khan was alarmed and felt an extreme life and death crisis approaching. If that energy really did expand outwards, it would completely tear his body apart!
However, before such a brutal thing could happen, he felt a second force pressure his body from the outside. This force acted on every cell within his body and slowed down the rapid expansion of the crazed energy. The energy gradually became 'stable', until it was evenly dispersed throughout Khan's body.
Although the movement of energy had calmed down, Khan was anything but calm right now. The energy within his body didn't seem to be moving, but it was actually rapidly vibrating back and forth, thousands of times every second.
Blood seeped out from Khan's pores as he felt every cell within his body accumulate damage gradually. Not a single part of him was left uninjured, and all was injured equally.
The spirit frowned anxiously but remained silent. She was trapped within Khan's soul right now, meaning that if he died, she would also die. She really hadn't anticipated this bizarre situation, where Khan was unlike any physical being that she had previously encountered. She realised that it wasn't just him though, but his entire race, and multiple other races in whatever world this was.
Was this a unique realm of sorts? Or was it something else entirely? She couldn't be sure of anything…
Although his situation seemed dire, Khan calmed himself down and assessed his state objectively. Whilst his appearance looked bad, with him sat there covered in his own blood, he felt that so long as he endured for another couple of minutes, he would survive this ordeal.
Even though the vibrating energy was continually damaging every cell in his body, the damaged cells would then greedily devour that same energy to restore themselves. These two processes of damage and regeneration allowed him to maintain this state without his injuries worsening after a few seconds passed by.
A minute passed.
Hui watched on anxiously, unsure if Khan was ok or not. He didn't look ok at all with his blood soaked figure, but Body Temperers were much more resilient than Qi Refiners, so perhaps his injuries weren't that bad…
It was true that he didn't have a single serious injury, but rather, every part of his body was injured moderately to an equal degree. This pain was such that it was completely impossible to just ignore, because no matter what he focussed on, it was just again filled with that same pain.
This was why the spirit called this method 'unconventional'. Not many living creatures could endure such a situation where it was impossible to turn away from the pain. Clearing the mind was impossible, as was distracting yourself with something else. With every cell in the body undergoing this torturous cycle, the pain even made its way into the user's thoughts.
Between this crazy method and simply using body tempering pills, nobody would choose the former. Really, this formation was exclusively used by common mortals who had no money but held onto lofty ambitions. They would rely on this formation to train until they reached a realm where obtaining resources became easy, at which point they would immediately stop using this formation and never touch it again.
Another minute passed by. Over this minute, the energy gradually declined as it was swallowed up by Khan's cells. As the energy in his body decreased, so did the external pressure. The pain gradually declined, until finally, the process was over…he survived!
Seeing the formation dim down, Hui knew that the energy had been used up completely.
"Master, master, are you alright, do you need me to treat you?!" She tried to rush into the formation, but it was difficult for her to endure this strong bloody aura that lingered around the inactive formation.
Khan saw her trembling but trying to push forwards anyway, making him feel warm in his sinful heart.
"Hui, I'm fine." Khan stood up and grimaced slightly, but the fact that he was able to stand showed that his injuries weren't serious.
However, he felt hungry.
"Hui, find me as much food as you can, as quickly as possible." Khan said this calmly, but Hui's eyes widened when she heard his tone of voice. Looking into his eyes deepened her shock.
He looked like he was on the verge of killing somebody!
Khan wasn't just hungry, he felt like he was completely starved, as if he hadn't eaten for a full month!
He didn't even care about his injuries, he couldn't think of anything except for food! This was a deeper hunger than any he had experienced in his life, strong enough to trigger his most primitive hunting instincts. If an animal were to walk past him right now, he would no doubt pounce and slaughter it, then devour its meat raw!
Hui quickly withdrew all of the food from one of their spatial rings. As a hedonistic individual who cared about his own pleasure above anything else, of course Khan would have Hui carry an extreme surplus of food around at all times. These were all heavily preserved foods though, he couldn't just keep ordinary meat in a normal spatial ring for months on end, it would rot.
Multiple pounds of meat appeared before him. Khan jumped forwards, grabbed a handful of beef strips, then shoved them into his mouth and swallowed after biting down twice. He then repeated this over and over, only pausing once to turn to Hui and say:
"More!"