Yang Rai had collected a great many sets of materials in that year but it was nothing close to the 531441 sets he needed. He decided to use them in experiments instead. He first used 9 sets of rank 1 materials in an attempt to raise the rank up by one. It didn't work but the failure degraded the energy in the resources and became nutrients for the small sealed world bead. His attainments in the dao of artifacts was immense so he learned the reason for his failure instantly.
"Master, why do you think it failed?"
"Yin'er it's surprisingly simple. If I'm correct there weren't enough rank 1 resources."
"How so?"
"The energy in the resource that was the basis of this fusion was only slightly higher than a ninth of a 2nd rank. So if we fused 81 resources together we should be able to."
"That's a lot of resources."
"We could try that approach right away but I'd like to try it with another 9 sets before we start using the resources like crazy."
"You're right, master, that would be quite wasteful. Shall we try to pass the energy into the other resources in a spiral fashion?"
"Precisely that. We're going to view these resources as if we are fusing glyphs together."
"Shall we help you?"
"Not this time, just watch. If it works then I'll let you try to do it while I do more research."
"Yes Master."
Yang Rai set up the resources in order. He began swirling the energy around into the resources. This allowed the generated energy to flow, There was no loss in the energy now, after a half a day the resources had finished combining into a single set of 2nd Rank Resources. With the Spirits watching closely They quickly picked up on how it works and the need for absolute control of the situation. The 81 of them began to do what their master had just done. They began to fuse the rank 1 resources into rank 2. Yang Rai dealt with another problem.
You see, Yang Rai only had a maximum of producing 3 sets of resources a day without interfering. Even when he nurtured the trees with the energy in his glyphs they still had a maximum number of 3 sets per day per tree. It wasn't really efficient to continue like this. His next project was to use some rank 1 resources to get seeds to form. This was far easier for him than fusing the materials up a rank. It only took 3 sets of resources to make a new tree seedling. As such he decided it would be best for the moment to create another 6 rank 1 trees. He finished this rather quickly and considering that each tree paid for itself in three days it didn't really become a waste of materials. It was more of an investment than anything else.
After having mastered the seedling creation technique he continued using it on the rank 2 resources until he had 9 trees producing the rank 2 fruit. After he made nine of them he noticed that his small sealed world's energy began to decline. The energy used by the trees exceeded the total energy generated. Yang Rai resolved this by fusing 81 of his T6 R9 Glyphs into each of the Rank1 Trees and 729 into each of the Rank 2 trees. It more than fixed the problem. And it took him a month to regenerate the Glyphs inside his knowledge sea.