Blood essence is qualitatively different from heart blood, just like raw ore is from processed material. The heart blood of a beast, especially after purification, still contains the will of the beast.
This will can be a hindrance when using it, and the refining process was to not only get rid of the last bit of the beast's will, but to also bring out the maximum potential from a portion of heart blood.
For example, there is a pill called the berserk beast pill, and potion counterpart, that uses either heart blood or blood essence of a beast to attain part of its strength.
Raw heart blood in this recipe would increase the chances of failure and not be as potent as the same amount when refined properly. With this information one might wonder 'If heart blood leads to such instability for no trade off, then why would anyone use it.' and the answer is that refining heart blood into blood essence is especially difficult.
It was easy for him because of his freakish talent in control as well as his accomplishments with the heart of mana, but not everyone is that fortunate.
Unless one was part of a large organization or family that has seniors that are experienced and powerful enough to refine it for you, then you would have no choice but to use it as it is.
Now that he had the purified blood essence ready to go, the other steps were much easier. With the help of the giant potion furnace he put together the necessary bath with a large quantity of some of the more valuable herbs, even running out of one of them.
"Hopefully there will be more of them further into the center, it doesn't show up that often but I will need it every time I want to do this. Unless of course I manage to form the Divine Devouring body."
This plant is known as blood chilling grass, which normally isn't very valuable besides how rare it is. It isn't used for much of anything but its rarity and beauty makes it a desirable house plant.
But Itroth discovered a use for this otherwise useless plant. After being heated and paired with the seeds of the just as useless but equally beautiful jade star orchid, it has the effect of temporarily suppressing the might of high purity bloodlines which gives him enough time to properly subdue them and form the desired 'body' from it.
After preparing everything and thoroughly boiling it under intense heat it was time for him to enter. He took off the little clothes he did have and submerged himself in the boiling liquid.
He immediately felt the urge to scream at the top of his lungs and jump out, but he endured the pain. This pain didn't come from the temperature, although that certainly wasn't helping, but came from the liquid boring into his skin all around his body to prepare for the blood essence.
Coupled with the fact that he felt a pressure coming directly from his soul as he had to suppress his talent to prevent it from ruining the process, he wasn't having a good time.
At first the holes were very small, but they quickly grew in size. When he entered the furnace, microscopic holes formed all around his skin but after an hour of seeping in the bath the holes became half an inch wide.
For others this damage would only be detrimental, but for him that cultivated the Golden body refining technique this is exactly what he needed. He was blowing through the red stage and by the time he was ready to add the purified blood essence he just broke through to the orange stage.
'I can only wait until I do this again to have such a major boost, at that time I should be ready to start cultivating the Golden Overlord physique.'
He added the blood essence and the liquid suddenly stopped boiling. Suddenly all of the liquid in the cauldron rushed into his body, filling the holes and tunnels.
At this point he let go the restaurant on his talent, it would not mess with this stage but help it go faster, and after checking his talent level shot up to 25.
A few other things changed however, and he truly wasn't expecting this.
[Talent: Enhanced Physique
Talent rank: B
Talent description: With the body, mind and soul perfected and the perfect foundation achieved, the true ascent to godhood begins.
Talent effect:
-Purifies Body, Mind and Soul
-Balances Body, Mind and Soul
-Reduction of natural Limits
-+16% per level. (Current bonus: 400%)
(New) Management
(New) Balances Additional Talents
(New) Combines compatible talents, skills, curses, hexes, bloodlines, blessings and equipment.]
[Talent (4) Ancient Behemoth Physique
Projected talent rank: Legendary
Current Talent rank: A
Talent Description: The true ruler of the Astral plane in its lifetime. Known as the mother of all beasts, the ancient behemoth is second to no man nor beast. Under its guidance its offspring have achieved the impossible and ascended to the divine plane.
{Current} Talent effects:
-Beast pressure (Behemoth Physique)
-Beast might (Behemoth Body)
-Transformation(Behemoth) {Sealed}
-Great increase to all stats {Sealed: 10%}
Sub-Talents:
-Behemoth Physique (SSS)]
So much had changed so suddenly that he was extremely overwhelmed and had to take a few moments to properly process what was going on.
"Firstly my level went up, probably because I held it back for so long." Creating a body out of blood essence isn't as simple as putting all the ingredients in a pot and enjoying the benefits.
"I knew that higher level talents would unlock additional effects as one levels up, but that's for S rank and above. Also the rank of my talent increased to B, the effects changed, and 3 more effects were also added." He slowed down his thinking to gather his thoughts.
From what he knew when an S rank awakened, all of the effects of their talent wouldn't immediately be available. In addition to what they had access to upon awakening, there would be 4 more that had to be unlocked via leveling up. At levels 25, 50, 75 and 100 the additional effects would be unlocked with the more powerful effects being unlocked later.
But not only did he unlock new effects at F rank, well B rank now, he unlocked 3 in one go. After unlocking the 4 additional effects at level 100, an S rank talent could rank up into a SS rank talent, but there would only be one more additional effect.
In fact, that was the way for any talent to rank up, by leveling up to level 100 through constant usage its rank would increase but he had never heard of unlocking additional effects before ranking up to S.
"The text also changed from 'Projected talent rank' to just 'talent rank'. Could it be that the analysis skill or the formation plate couldn't make a proper estimation to the rank of my talent and now that I leveled up it could make a better guess. But that still doesn't change the fact that I unlocked more effects before ranking up to S." He didn't know how the analysis skill worked, to him it was simply a miracle that it could compile so much information about him so easily.
It could even make a description on the Jin clan techniques and the ancient behemoth physique. He was beyond sure that no other human had ever achieved either of these so there wasn't a database that it could go off of.
"Whatever. It doesn't matter how it works, only that it does. It's useful to me so I am not even going to question it."
"I am also not going to question the changes to my talent either, the rank of a talent is a purely made up concept. If I limit myself to thinking like those short sighted old bastards that made up such a faulty system in the first place then I am only doing myself a disservice."
"Either way I successfully formed the Behemoth Physique. Under the influence of my talent it had to have evolved up from the body."
The effects of the Behemoth Body and the Behemoth Physique are very similar in nature. Firstly there is the increase in stats, which would usually be extremely specific in which stat it increases but under the effect of his talent it became a general increase, and the eventual ability to transform into a behemoth.
This was very similar to what beasts could do after transforming and reaching a certain power level, and his ability to do so was also limited until he reached this same power level.
Where it differentiated was the skill-like effects they brought. The behemoth body gave him the ability Beast might which was an active ability native to behemoths that suppressed other beasts that either have a lesser bloodline than it or that are much weaker than it.
It was this ability in conjunction with Laura's relatively purer bloodline that the golden flame war elephant was so threatened by. If it wasn't older, and subsequently more powerful, than her then he would have no choice but to concede the forest to her if she wanted.
The ability beast pressure from the behemoth physique was a comparatively greater version of beast might but was a passive/active rather than purely active, meaning that any beast or inheritor of a beast bloodline that was weaker than him would always be suppressed by his very aura when ever he wanted.
In conjunction to the massive increase in his stats this ability would be extremely valuable to him in the future.