After a few more hours of testing, he finally found a proper way to use it. When he channeled the cultivation method it 'ignites' his mana, and the closer it is to his body, or technically the flower, the hotter it burns.
But that's only because it spreads out the farther away it is, and to solve this he forced it to stay compact no matter how far it travels.
"Again I'm glad I didn't go for the fractured cultivation method. It would take me much too long to find my own solution to this problem."
Just like for cultivation methods, Itroth had created a multitude of cultivation techniques. And one of them was the ghost palm art, which was a part of the eternal ghost set.
The entire set was full of auxiliary techniques, ones that don't attack or defend themselves but assisted in other ways, and the only one that directly attacked was the ghost palm art.
It was also the only one that he had the capability to practice. The minimum requirement for any of the arts was saint tier, and not because he wasn't powerful enough but because of the strain it puts on the body.
If he was a normal cultivator that depended on the level of mana capacity based on their cultivation method then his mana being so high would be more than enough to practice all but one of the arts in the eternal ghost set, but the cultivation method that he practiced couldn't be used like any other.
The hundred flowers cultivation method sacrificed immediate usability and direct benefits for infinite capability and lack of rigidity. Other cultivation methods include ways to boost the strength of the body in very specific ways that ensures that unless you go out of your way to train, your physical body would always be at the same level as your mana.
But the hundred flowers cultivation method didn't have this part, and because the cultivation methods mimicked by it technically weren't his main one, he couldn't get such benefits from them either.
This meant that if he wanted to practice a cultivation method whose minimum requirement was above the average strength of both his body then he couldn't practice it unless he wanted to severely damage his body. This didn't apply to spells but the spells that Itroth used and were preserved were all of a much higher level than he currently was.
In his early life Itroth was a pure cultivator and only started to use spells when he was at the supremacy stage. If Ray tried to use a spell like that then he would be dried up before it even activated.
He activated the heart flame divine method's flower and instantly the air and mana around him got a few degrees hotter, if he was a step stronger then the mana would have directly ignited.
He raised his hand and with a quick motion he struck the space in front of him and a flaming copy of his palm shot out 100 meters before it started to dissipate until it disappeared at 150 meters.
"If it was any other element, besides maybe lightning and light, then it would have gone 200 meters at full strength and dissipated at 300 meters. But then the power wouldn't be that great. The benefit of the heart flame divine method isn't the direct damage but the fire that ignites after the fact so that's not a big concern."
He tried it a few more times and discovered that for the 100 meters, normally 200, after shooting out its power was basically the same and the effects were also the same as his own hand, with the trees burning down in roughly the same amount of time. But after that its power would drastically decline until having no effect at 150.
This was a much needed ranged attack that didn't suck all the mana out of him as the other times he used such techniques he had to keep feeding it to mimic half of the same effect.
"That goes to show how effective spells, techniques and skills by extension are. If I had to do this without the ghost palm art then there is no telling how much mana I would need to spend."
He looked further into Itroth's soul to see what other cultivation techniques he knew but was quickly disappointed. There were thousands of techniques that he knew but the majority of them were extremely fragmented and the ones that were as anywhere as complete as the eternal ghost set were few and far between.
"And that's only because he used it so often, otherwise it would have been as fragmented as all the others. But I guess I'd rather the cultivation techniques be the ones that decayed and not the cultivation methods."
Of the few that were somewhat complete the only other one that he was close to being at the level of using was called the breath of life cultivation technique, which among other things was very effective at healing and restoration.
As a matter of fact it was so versatile in what it could do that one of the ten flowers sealed away in the shagroth flute was the breath of life technique; those 10 were the ones that he used most often so one could see how useful it was.
With his strength the only thing that he was capable of doing was healing, as anything else was at least at the saint tier equivalence, but he was looking for a replacement for regeneration for a long time.
It had long stopped being effective on him because of his vitality, only having any effect when hundreds of them were used at the same time, but the breath of life technique would continue to get stronger as he did and would always be effective. Plus he would have to grow those hundreds of flowers by hand, back when he made a soul contract with Laura the only reason so many flowers suddenly formed and then just as suddenly dissipated was because of his talent temporarily taking over.
He grew a new regeneration flower, which was a green rose, and channeled the breath of life through it. It took a second for it to respond but this was much quicker than making an entirely new flower as the early stages of breath of life and regeneration were the same in theory but different in effectiveness.
The rose went from light green to almost black as it successfully transitioned and immediately he could feel the aura of healing bursting out of it. Unfortunately while it was now more effective it also drained more mana, but now that he could grow mana flowers at will he could always be topped off no matter how bad the drain was.
"I just realized how overpowered that is, how do they make so much mana anyway? It can't be made out of nothing."
Curious, he pulled out an existing flower with the soul soil it was planted in and observed how exactly it was making so much mana, and his discovery shocked him.
As it turned out when the mana flowers were planted in the soul soil they would slowly consume the soul power and convert it into an extreme amount of mana. It drained so little to make so much that he didn't even notice it when it was in his soul sea, but now that it was isolated and he was actually paying attention it was clear as day.
He withdrew the soul soil and replanted it in the actual dirt and after close inspection it turned , water and a little carbon dioxide into mana like a normal plant would photosynthesize except it didn't need any light.
"Guess I have to be careful how many of them I plant. If I suddenly collapse and die because my soul power was being drained for too long… honestly that would be kind of funny."
"But that shouldn't be a problem in the long run, as long as I keep growing my soul power then it would eventually slow down and stop. The mana density in the cave was many times stronger than out here and the flowers were producing a lot less. They might only produce mana up to a certain concentration and then stop."
Now that he caught up to his own strength with the heart flame divine cultivation method and his only option to get stronger was to plant the flower in his soul sea and let it absorb mana, more flowers would only make him stronger in the grand-master tier not push him up a tier, he was going to grow a flower or two of the Thunder God Divine cultivation method and grow them to his stage.
But before he could even form a blank seed a ball of golden flames with a black core that was taller than he was shot out from the core of the forest at him at astounding speed.