After 400 years of time inside the Artifact several of the elders broke through another minor realm. Once they did, Yang Rai gifted them presents for their disciples as well as themselves. Yang Rai knew that they were training little girls to become good and proper wives. It was something that he just got used to at this point.
It helped that his wives and children all said he shouldn't hold himself back. One of the key reasons was because his bloodline was incredibly powerful. His own children kept consistently breaking through limit after limit. Some faster than others but still they all were capable of mastering many of his techniques. Some of them even learned how to create glyphs for themselves.
Alongside the elders improving leaps and bounds his wives jumped worlds many times. There were some with still very weak foundations. This was fine since he didn't care about how strong his wives' were, only that they were safe and remained diligent.
Those of his wives that had already been in the Open heaven realm were promoted into the 8th Rank quite quickly. However they were now scouring for currently single women or helping their sister wives grow their foundations.
Lan Xun had her foundation strengthened more than enough to handle a direct promotion to the Open Heaven Realm 9 Rank. Xiao Qi, Lai Cheng and Lang Xinyue were all on the same boat. It only came down to them choosing their materials. All four of them Decided to choose different full sets and then trade till they each had a full set but all had a resource related to each other. It was a show of sisterhood that was powerful enough to inspire the other many wives to do the same.
Now all promoted simultaneously. This would be quite the test. All four of them seemed to struggle slightly in their endeavor but were eventually able to overcome the hurdles and hidden dangers. Becoming the pinnacle of the open Heaven Realm together. Shortly after they went back to the Cultivation Spring to consolidate their new realm.
Of course Yang Rai wouldn't be sitting on his laurels either. He had been creating the Rank 9 Trees throughout the 400 years. He ended up finishing this endeavor. He now had 729 resources producing trees, vines, flowers and ore. As an artifact refiner the Ore one was simply the best one for him.
He really wanted to find more kinds of generators. It was unfortunate for him that he didn't have them. He would have liked more types since all resources have different properties. But he couldn't find anything even in the couple of years he spent popping in and out of existence across the Shattered heaven.
In any case he focused on using whatever resources he had now to maximize his glyphs. This caused his wives to question why he wasn't ascending into the Open Heaven Realm. Surely he had plenty of rank 9 resources.