This limitation would greatly slow down the growth of his strength, but he had two other avenues of strength that he had yet to tap into. The first was 'one with mana', right now he had only gotten to 5% after the constant combat which meant that he had 95% still left untouched.
When every cell was completely saturated with mana, it would allow him to combat a late stage supremacy or a weaker early stage deity. This was the method that Itroth used, but Ray had access to one more.
The Jin clan's Golden Overlord Physique would be where he would put his extra focus into for the time being. The Golden Overlord Physique depends on neither talent for mana nor soul power to achieve strength that surpasses that of a deity tier, not that he was aware of that now.
What it used was a specially designed liquid called Ichor. After beginning on the true path of the Golden Overlord Physique, Ichor would begin to accumulate in the body when under stress.
This Ichor could then be used for a multitude of things. From crop growth to blacksmithing, artifact refining, alchemy, first aid and cooking. Any form of production and processing could benefit from ichor.
But the main benefit was the refining of the physique. This was where the power of the Jin clan came from and why their unique cultivation method could allow them to surpass the power of a deity tier.
By treating the body, mind and soul as an artifact, as long as there are artifacts stronger than deities, why would their power stop there? No one could possibly know what was the absolute limit of strength, but it certainly wasn't just slightly above deity tier.
And if there was one thing that remained a constant, it was that people were always accompanied by tools. Farmers have their hoes, scholars have their pens, warriors have their swords and cultivators have their artifacts.
But even for inanimate metal, artifact refining is a strain full process, so one could only imagine what would happen if one did it to their own body without being prepared.
This was the purpose of the golden body refining technique. For Ray it increased his overall power, but for normal members of the Jin clan it would increase their vitality and strength so that their bodies wouldn't immediately collapse.
This meant that his vitality and strength would have been lower than the requirements, but with the behemoth physique as well as the 400% boost from his talent he blasted through the threshold many times over.
After clearing the cave of all of the bodies and soul power, he looked into Itroth's soul. What he was going to do would leave him immobile for the time being so the right decision would be to enter into his soul sea to ensure his safety, but it would also be very loud so the babies would make a lot of noise upon hearing it.
He would need optimum focus and he naturally wouldn't kick them out so he was going to do it here. After finding what he wanted, he pulled out a few plain mana stones and with a knife he began to etch a few markings into them.
He was going to make an array out of a defense formation as well as a camouflage formation. He was clumsy at first but he quickly got the hang of it.
These two formations are actually extremely simple, with only a few etchings for each segment, but their effectiveness scales with the quality and type of mana stones.
The higher the quality the better, but for defense formations earth, metal, and space are the most optimal elements and for camouflage light, water, air and spirit are the best.
The mana stones that were all around him had most of these, but the other elements are more of impurities than extra additions. Plus the mana stones that he was using were far more pure than these.
At the bottom of the giant mana ocean, which he finally measured to be about 20,000 feet below the 'sea' level, many extremely pure mana stones were being formed.
Under that much pressure and an environment of practically nothing but pure mana, stones naturally began forming and the lowest purity of them all were at about 98%.
These were the first few and because they removed all of the impurities with their formation all the others were at 100%, and he had hundreds of thousands of these. Even if he opened up a current max sized portal, which was slightly bigger than a hand, and dumped them on the ground he still wouldn't be able to compete with their production.
The hundreds of thousands of mana flowers were producing so much that the sea level almost increased to the point of submerging the second continent a few times, but thankfully they stop producing when the mana level is too high.
He didn't know when but as he wasn't paying attention the numbers of the mana flowers kept increasing. The mountains that were sparsely populated were now extremely dense.
"Another thing that I need to fix after I am done with this." He finished etching the mana stones, and while not as good as properly produced formation plates, their quality would make up the difference.
He set them around the hole that he made in the tunnels and quickly he noticed the effects. It was hard to tell from the defense formation, but the camouflage formation was extremely obvious.
The hole that he made got filled up and even the giant hole in the ground above him was magically filled with soil. In an array with a defense formation it would even feel real, though one wouldn't be able to move it and it would crumble under a supremacy ranked pressure.
The mana stones would only last for a year in new world time, but that was more than enough for what he wanted to do.
He created and planted a few mana flowers in the area to ensure that the mana levels would remain high as he sat down to mentally prepare himself for what was about to happen.
The Golden Overlord Physique's first segment was separated into 5 parts named Basic, Proficient, Advanced, Masterful, and Empyrean. These 5 parts represented what part of the body was refined with basic relating to the bones and blood, proficient relating to the muscles and skin, advanced relating to the internal organs excluding the heart, lungs and brain, masterful relating to the heart, lungs and brain and Empyrean relating to what the Jin clan called the essence of man.
He was a little confused as to what that meant, but after using context clues he figured out that it was talking about genes. This was why only those who have the blood of the Jin clan can master the Golden Overlord Physique, only those who inherited genes that were at least partially refined could hope to complete the rest.
Outsiders could only hope to achieve the Masterful level, but anything beyond that was simply dreaming. Messing around with your genes isn't something to be taken lightly, especially with the high vitality required to even begin practicing it.
With a high vitality, any change to a gene would be immediately noticed, whether it be good or bad. With a lower vitality one could make a change and slowly observe and make adjustments, but with a high one all of your cells are constantly being repaired so a change in one cell would quickly propagate to the rest of the body.
Doing a small adjustment and having your arm suddenly fall of wouldn't be strange and by taking the wrong turn you could mentally retard yourself.
But this limitation wouldn't apply to him. Having a perfect foundation wasn't just for show and he was confident that even if he did f*ck it up tremendously and do substantial damage to his genetic code his talent would quickly fix it.
'Either way I can only theorize about it for the time being. For now, I should focus on the basic level.'
He calmed his nerves and with a little mana… *snap*.