Because of the limitations of the bodies of the Jin clan, namely the incompatibility with mana, unless they were in an intense battle, advancing through the levels would be extremely slow.
This was because they needed to generate ichor and then use it to refine the body. When not under stress the body wouldn't generate much ichor and even then it would take a long time to integrate it with the body.
The most optimal way to advance through the basic stage was to break bones and use Ichor to mend them, as it filled the cracks it would refine the bones and bone marrow, but this wasn't practical so the impacts and stress of battle would force it in and achieve a similar but weaker effect.
But for Ray, this was a non issue.
With another little bit of mana… *snap* another broken bone.
With his masterful control over mana he could easily break his own bones, even if they were strengthened via the golden body refining technique, and then use the massive amounts of Ichor generated to mend them.
This was unimaginably painful, if it happened from an outside source his talent could suppress the pain, but since he was doing it to himself it didn't act. But he powered through it and endured.
He was focusing on his left arm and with every break an extremely loud explosion shot out from his body. His bones were extremely sturdy and breaking them took a lot of force.
If he wasn't so deep underground the noise would be heard clearly in the village outside the forest even if he was in the dead center.
Most people wouldn't do this. Not only could they not bring themselves to cause such damage to their own bodies, but they wouldn't be capable even if they wanted to.
The level of control over mana, even if it was his own, required to safely and effectively break his own bones that were harder than adamantine at the drop of a dime was unimaginable.
For every fracture it was done almost surgically and that is a level of strength and precision that couldn't be imagined.
He carefully went through his left arm as the yellow bones and red bone marrow slowly turned a dull gold.
It took him 2 months to complete just this one arm and when he was finished he was hungry beyond belief. Because he was doing it so slowly, he could identify the source of Ichor and he determined it to be a unique combination of mana and soul power created in his body using calories.
As long as one doesn't use too much soul power it would slowly regenerate to its original capacity, but it wouldn't grow like this.
This was to show just how much genius this cultivation method was. Even with all of the technology and knowledge that humans had they were still struggling to even capture and isolate soul power in an effective manner.
Yet here was an ancient clan that would even be considered unintelligent, backwards and barbaric that managed to bypass their own limitations and not only use the limited amount of mana in their bodies effectively, but also combine it with their own soul power in a non destructive manner and use it to refine even their genes, even if they didn't know that's what they were doing.
This was effectively a mystic technique, though very, very limited in capability.
With Ray's extreme amounts of mana as well as his rich soul power and control over his body, he quickly found a way to create this ichor without having to damage his body. That was just an impetus to accelerate its production and not an actual necessity.
He made a water drop sized portion on his finger and he almost instantly collapsed. The sheer amount of energy it required to suddenly make this much almost completely drained him.
This caused him to lose his focus and drop it and what he saw astounded him. If it was a very diluted portion it would have simply not done anything, it wouldn't be able to against the mana stones that made out the ground, but such a large concentrated portion corroded a hole straight through it and made a small hole that was too deep for even him to see.
This made him sweet bullets. If that dropped on his leg then it wouldn't show any resistance and he wouldn't even be able to benefit from the injury.
"What the f*ck was that. How can something so powerful be so unassuming. If I flick a little bit at someone, they wouldn't even dodge yet it would go straight through their head as if it wasn't there."
This was the ultimate hidden weapon, but he didn't see any part of this being stated in the book. It wasn't as if the Jin clan wasn't aware of this, it was just that for them Ichor was a valuable resource and no single member could possibly hope to condense a meaningful amount on command and attack with it.
Ray being Ray was the only reason that he could do this, and it was just barley.
He quickly pulled out some meat and medicinal herbs and started to stuff his face. He ate over 50 lbs. of food before being satiated and started on his right arm.
But this time he was going to do it differently. If he did it the same way as his left arm for the rest of his body, fracture by fracture, then it would take him at the very least 5 years before he finished the basic stage, blazing fast for members of the Jin clan but a total waste for someone with a perfect foundation.
He carefully covered every bone in his right arm with mana and with a quick motion *crunch* all of them turned into fragments. These were about half an inch wide and his arm dropped to the side.
He made some muffled screams as his face turned green. This was even worse than when he fell from the sky. Not a single bone in his arm was spared and he was fully conscious as he did it.
It should be known that after the first transformation his pain tolerance should have been unimaginable so if he felt like this now, then if he did something similar back then he might have died from the pain alone.
He was struggling to remain conscious as he reassembled his arm using ichor as a glue and when he was done he was at about 60% of his left arm. What took him more than a month before he did it in a few hours now.
"No pain no gain I guess."
With another cycle his right arm bones were also a dull gold, but he noticed that they were slightly more shiny than his left. This was extremely difficult to spot, especially since they were inside of his body where there was no light, but when he saw it he couldn't un-see it.
"Hold on, is dull gold not as far as it can go? That was the color of the skeleton so I assumed that's as far as it went, but my eyes do not deceive me." He thought about it for a few seconds and went with another cycle in his right arm and now it was painfully obvious. "Okay now I am convinced, dull gold isn't the limit."
"Well in that case…" Using mana he suppressed the pain receptors in his arm and covered the bones in his right arm with an even thicker amount of mana.
He calmed himself before *crush*, all of the bones from his shoulder blade down got pulverized. His arm laid limply at his side, but because he suppressed the nerves he could hardly feel it.
If he could then there would be no way he could do what he was going to do next, he would barely be able to see directly in front of him, much less do highly detailed surgery.
He grew a breath of life flower and planted it in front of him with some soul soil, and with its assistance he slowly reassembled his bones using Ichor. But this time instead of a dull gold, they were so shiny and transparent that he could see his golden blood being produced.
But it wouldn't stay like this. Using Ichor to restructure his bone's wouldn't increase his stats, as a matter of fact simply restructuring any part of his body wouldn't increase his stats.
What it did do was increase the ceiling of physical power, with the golden body refining technique he reached the highest point of physical power for a human his size. Naturally more mass meant more mana, so unless he waited a few years and grew to his full height he was capped on how strong his body could get.
By restructuring in the way that he did, he would use ichor to infuse it with this new bone structure which would then increase his stats. This was the same way that normal Jin clan members would do it, but because of their limitations they couldn't reach the same heights as he did.
For them the ichor would turn it from dull gold to shiny gold, and for him he would end up in the same place visually, but he would have higher prospects because of the purity of his body.
Seeing that his experimentation was successful, he covered his entire skeleton in mana to contain the bone powder as well as to give his body structure at the same time.
He suppressed his nerves again and with no hesitation he powderized all of the bones in his body. Again he didn't feel anything, but he underestimated just how complex it would be to try and restructure all of his bones at one time.
And he had to do it all at once, otherwise his vitality would force them to regenerate and he would have to do it all over again. Numbing all of his nerves would leave him painless, but the feeling of floating in an empty void and feeling nothing wasn't a pleasant feeling.
He focused on the task at hand and began to slowly reconstruct his entire skeleton from scratch.