They cultivated until all the members were satisfied, and all of them had their jobs to return to. Frank had to go to the Qi absorption technique development hall and start working on developing the technique to work for rank 3 cultivators, he didn't want to be stuck in the 3rd rank as long as they had in the 2nd.
Frank had turned back to his usual quiet life, he appreciated every moment, but recently he had loved going out and doing stuff be it fighting beasts or sparring fellow disciples, he would frequent the body technique development hall to find a way to combine the freezing aura with the body cultivation technique.
Everything remained quiet until Lex summoned all the disciples to the meeting hall, this was one of the new buildings they had commissioned to be built, they held many meetings and this would help a lot in that. It had been a month after the advancement test had ended so it was probably good news.
"Brace yourself everyone this is gonna be long" spoke Lex wanting everyone to relax.
"Recently many have been happening in this minor sect of ours, all this started from one basic idea, we wanted to be something better than cannon fodder, and so we did. We developed some of the best techniques any of us would never have the opportunity to have otherwise, of course, I can't forget who started this all, Frank the Mad Dog, he made one promise on the day all this started, it was to help anyone in need. All of us are like brothers and sisters, wouldn't want anything to happen to any of us. but we have grown bigger than any of us would have individually, this would make our target of harassment from many higherups but so we should probably try to keep whatever we are doing silent for a while, as the famous saying goes tall trees catch much wind, enough of this negativity lets move onto the important topic the REWARDS" Lex gave this speech from the bottom of his heart, he was genuinely grateful for this opportunity that fate had given him.
He went on the rewards, from the discovery of the alter to each person's contribution to the advancement test, the first reward was for the entire sect, everyone was given the right to join in the exploration of the newly discovered hidden realm, they didn't have to participate in the upcoming contest, this was because the alter was the reason they had discovered the hidden realm. Then all the members of the hunting party were given spears, these spears could control the wind to a slight degree.
They had taken the 7th position in the improvement test, they were strong but not strong enough to beat some of the minor sects made of nobles. They were still happy, they had tried their hardest and were paid for their effort.
The other rewards were from the minor synchronous elemental sect to anyone who had contributed something. Every disciple was awarded an elemental pearl to help break through to rank 3 cultivator. Some other rewards were given before the ceremony concluded, and everyone returned to their old life.
Frank checked out the crafting recipe but found nothing to be craftable and went back to researching a method to combine the properties of the Frost giants hand and the body cultivation technique. He had found some success but wasn't something he wanted, he wanted the cooling ability to be an active skull but no matter how he tried it would turn out passive much like the light Qi in the eyes and metal Qi for the bones. He was working alone on this project so his speed of development was slower than he wanted.
The hidden realms were filled with danger they needed to be ranked 3 before they even thought of entering, Frank had two choices, to ignore this cause he would have to learn a water-based technique to use it to its fullest extent, or learn whatever they developed next even it it wasn't something he wanted. Frank had agreed with the already two elements selected for the modification, the eyes and the bones but wasn't that keen on the idea of using another passive elemental ability to his body cultivation technique.
He knew that he could ask the body cultivation technique hall into cooperation but he would have to explain how he found this arm, he couldn't lie because whenever he did something there was always someone else with him. And he didn't want to look suspicious and break their trust.
Contemplating his decisions he came up with a plausible solution, walking towards the cultivation hall he stood in front of the octopus elemental beast, the octopus had not increased in size, it remained the size of a small car, but the aura it radiated far exceeded that of any disciples he had ever seen.
"You have grown a lot stronger," said Frank petting the floating octopus.
The octopus would always float in liquified elemental Qi all over the cultivation hall only returning to the well when they had to cultivate. He was also friendly, floating to any disciples who came to the cultivation hall, he had also matured and gained intelligence equal to that of an adult human, but still couldn't talk.
Taking out the Frost giant arm Frank tossed it to the octopus, sensing the arm the octopus ran and held on to it for dear life, Frank understood that this arm had to be something extremely special, no matter what the disciples tried to feed the octopus he wouldn't even look at it. Frank tried for a while to tell what he wanted the octopus to do, promising to give it the arm and succeeded.
Frank has seen the octopus helping out the other disciples whenever they fell short in their cultivation technique, he wanted to know if the octopus could help him somehow. Frank left the cultivation hall with the octopus flying all over the place in excitement.
This time Frank went back to his regular job at the Qi technique development hall, they still needed to modify the technique to work with rank 3 cultivators, for the next month he spend his time between his job, the octopus and sometimes looking for items to forge something in the random craft system.
During this time the octopus had come up with a simple technique for Frank to use the ability of the arm however he wanted. He just had to store large amounts of ice Qi in the bone marrow of his arm and release it whenever he wanted to activate this freezing ability, the only drawback being he had to transplant some of the Frost giant arms tissue into his arms bone marrow to adopt his body into storing Qi in the bone marrow.
The octopus was the one who came up with this method, it could already use this technique to use this freezing ability with its tentacle, there were stills some disadvantages to using this technique like hardening the hand for as long as the technique was active. The octopus had performed the surgery to transplant some of the tissue of the frost giant arm into his arm. After the procedure had been done whenever he would cultivate the body technique he could feel ice Qi gathering and getting stored inside his arm. He couldn't use the ability until all his arm marrow had been transformed to store ice Qi, from his calculation it would only take about a week or so.
