After getting 100 Furnace Pills, Shang left.
He traveled for about a minute and arrived at a certain place within the Hibye, the center.
In the very center of the Hibye, there were several tall buildings. There were about 50 of them, and each one was over a hundred meters high and nearly half a kilometer wide.
All of these buildings were mansions.
And the people living here were the Mage Lords under Lucin and Lucin himself.
Naturally, each mansion had several expensive Magic Circles that enhanced someone's speed of comprehension, and a couple of Mage Lords were essentially always present.
The Bolts working under Lucin worked in shifts of 33. Each century, the shift would change.
This meant that a Bolt working under Lucin had to work for one century and then got two centuries off.
During these two centuries of free time, the Bolts either trained at their house, traveled the world, or went to different places to comprehend more Concepts.
But at least five were always at home.
As for Lucin, since he had effectively already reached the peak of his power, he worked all the time.
Most of the time, Lucin was inside his house or floating somewhere near it. The reason for that was the size of the Hibye and the location of Lucin's house.
Just like the Clouds, Lucin had a fourfold Spirit Sense, and since a normal Mage Lord had a Spirit Sense with a radius of 10,000 kilometers, Lucin had a Spirit Sense with a radius of 40,000 kilometers.
Since the Hibye was around 100,000 kilometers wide and long, this meant that Lucin could see nearly the entire thing as long as he was in the middle.
Lucin was the biggest reason why the Hibye was so safe from external threats.
Nearly all the clouds were under constant supervision by a Peak Mage Lord with a fourfold Spirit Sense.
Even the Clouds had it extremely difficult to hurt anyone without Lucin's permission.
And, sure enough, Lucin was above his house right now, looking at his Communication Crystal.
Shang stopped a couple of kilometers away from the mansions and sat down on a random hill.
Of course, Lucin had noticed that Shang had arrived, but he could already guess why he was there.
This was an obvious solution to Shang's problem.
Shang knew that several people might decide to target him, but since doing something like that was forbidden, the perpetrator would need to do it without anyone noticing them.
Therefore, the best way to deal with such a hidden threat was to stay in the most public and safest place, which was directly beside where all the Bolts and Lucin lived.
It was one thing to kill someone at the edge of Lucin's perception, but it was something completely different to kill someone just a small distance away from him.
After sitting down, Shang took out the bottle of Furnace Pills and grabbed one of the pills.
Lucin didn't look at Shang, but he still sighed.
Shang was quite close to Lucin's house, which kind of made it difficult for Lucin not to look at him. He didn't really want to see Shang eat a Furnace Pill, but there wasn't really anything he could do.
Surprisingly, there were no other Clouds near the mansions of the Bolts, even though this had to be the safest place.
The reason was the Bolts' and Lucin's annoyance.
Being close to the mansions was akin to someone sitting directly in front of someone else's house.
It was just weird, annoying, and awkward.
Because of that, all the Mage Lords that were in the mansions stared at Clouds that came here with their Spirit Senses.
You want to weird me out? I'm going to weird you out!
Since being looked at by several people was very distracting, comprehending Concepts or creating new Spells became very difficult at this place. After all, Mages needed focus and concentration.
Sure, they weren't forbidden from coming and training here, but they would barely make any progress under the constant distracting stares.
But Shang didn't care.
He didn't need any focus or concentration for his current training.
Without hesitation, Shang threw the Furnace Pill into his mouth and swallowed it.
A couple of seconds later, Shang began to grit his teeth and clench his fists.
This was painful, even for him.
SSSHHH!
Shang's skin began to turn red, and a white mist of Mana left his body.
Shang remained silent.
Some seconds later, a quiet noise of something tearing could be heard.
Shang's skin had torn in a place, revealing the flesh beneath.
The sounds happened more and more frequently, each one accompanied by another cut opening on Shang's skin.
After a minute, Shang's entire body had turned into essentially a mass of cuts.
Surprisingly, the cuts didn't bleed.
SNAP!
Then, a couple of Shang's blood vessels tore apart.
Yet, what came out wasn't blood but something else.
It was a bubbling red mass of flesh.
The red mass expanded and grew out of one of Shang's cuts, tearing it and the surrounding muscles apart.
As the muscles tore apart, they began to sizzle.
And then, they fused and solidified.
The same thing happened on more and more spots of Shang's body.
His body began to cramp all over, and his blood began to grow out of him uncontrollably.
After just three minutes, Shang looked barely human, and his entire body had been distorted into inhuman shapes.
Several parts of his body were being fused and then ripped apart again.
This was what a Furnace Pill did.
It was called a Furnace Pill because, just like a furnace, it changed the properties of everything that was put inside.
Originally, Furnace Pills had been designed to torture people. While the victim would be under unreal pain and fear, there was no life-threatening danger to them. A huge component of the Furnace Pills was a steady supply of life energy.
This meant that a Furnace Pill completely kept changing and mutating someone's body without killing them.
One Furnace Pill would do this to someone for two full weeks.
However, even though the original purpose of Furnace Pills was to torture someone, a different use for them had been found as well.
Training physical power and training willpower.
Most of the Furnace Pills were given to captured beasts to tame and train them.
Some very few Furnace Pills were also used by some crazy Mages that believed that they needed more willpower, which was why they were undergoing this kind of torture voluntarily. Naturally, these Mages were very few, and the effectiveness of increasing someone's willpower was also debatable.
As for Shang, the Furnace Pill put a lot of pressure all over his body, tearing everything apart.
Including his Mana Pathways.
The force that damaged the Mana Pathways was an increase of outward pressure inside of them. The Mana inside the Mana Pathways was expanding steadily and crazily until the pressure was just too much, and the Mana Pathways burst.
This was exactly what Shang needed.
By constantly expanding the Mana Pathways, they would become bigger and gain more elasticity.
After consuming about 100 of these Furnace Pills, Shang could enter the Isolation Chamber to compress his expanded Mana Pathways.
This was how Shang had trained for the last 20 years, and this was how he would continue training.
