It turned out Liam had underestimated himself, severely so.

After achieving complete mastery over rank 2 ingredients, Liam had moved to experimental projects. The most immediate ones had been tests on his smoking powder and drugs tailored to Grace to improve her cultivation, but there had been room for more.

Since developing the nineteen minor roots that existed beyond the realm of the Heavens promised to take a while no matter how many resources Liam had access to, he had decided to make use of his six flasks from the violet Rainbow Roses immediately.

With the veiled suppression from the battle cages, the leader being a branching expert, Ray’s involvement, Jessica still being around, and the unknown leafing expert seemingly having taken an interest in Liam, he had felt the urgency of adding another trump card to his arsenal, and the project had succeeded.

The experiments on the violet Rainbow Roses were complete, so Liam had only needed to perfect the rank 2 part of the recipe, learn to handle that superior compound concoction, and succeed at the final step of mixing the two.

However, with the mastery over rank 2 concoctions and Liam’s far deeper understanding of life, the compound version had been surprisingly effortless. His mind had endured it quite well, and the same went for his Qi reserves.

With how well Liam knew the rank 3 ingredient, perfecting a rank 2 foundation had also been rather easy, his deeper insight into poisons playing a big part in that success.

Finding the right number of spirit stones to use as charcoal had required some failures, but only in terms of money since Liam had performed those tests without ingredients.

The only real challenge had been the final step, when he had to pour the refined rank 2 ingredients into the other cauldron. That phase had required a few steps that his previous compound connections had lacked, but six attempts had been enough to produce a success.

Liam studied it inside his black ring. Among his vast collection of poisons, a dark-purple pill stood out, its deadliness scaring him despite how attracted he was to its properties.

The Master’s Pride was one of Liam’s most complex alchemical products, meaning he couldn’t do its rank 3 version as a rooting expert. It required multiple rank 3 ingredients, which Liam didn’t have and lacked the necessary Qi to handle in a single concoction.

Instead, the Poisonous Cloud Pill was one of Liam’s first creations, a recipe coming directly from his great Master that he had continued to rely on and perfect. It was the alchemical weapon he knew best, as well as one of the simplest to concoct.

Naturally, the dark-purple pill wouldn’t just create a poisonous cloud, but that was for Liam’s opponents to find out.

’Now, when to use it?’ Liam wondered. ’We need the right opportunity to leave. They might just stop or intercept us otherwise. I also have to kill Jessica before abandoning the border.’

Doing all that in Liam’s predicament sounded impossible. There were simply logistical issues since stopping to kill Jessica would give others the opportunity to corner him.

Yet, Liam wanted it all, so he tackled the issue like a hunt, preparing himself mentally so that he could be ready as soon as the opportunity presented itself or he created it.

The only real variable was the unknown leafing expert, but that issue was so outside Liam’s power that he found it pointless even to add it to his plans.

Liam soon focused on the cauldron and dealt with the new wave of commissions, arranging them in a specific area and adding labels so that Grace would have an easier time distributing them.

Experiments followed. Liam needed better products for Grace’s cultivation, tests on his smoking powder, upgrades through the more powerful venom his glands produced, and more.

Lastly, Liam recorded everything in his jade, smoking nonstop, eventually closing his eyes to experience an event he had been waiting for. Inside his reddish canvas, another minor root had just finished developing. He had finally reached the Heavens’ limit.

Liam had been unable to savor the experience in the foundation stage, but it was impossible to ignore now. His body experienced a quivering stemming from his very cultivation at that checkpoint, and his surroundings reacted to it.

A slight tremor ran through the floor, rocks, furniture, and very air, as if they were tissues that had reached the limit of what they could support. Liam could feel it. He just needed a little more, a sliver of additional weight to his existence, and the world would bend.

In theory, that ability belonged to branching experts. Only their existence was superior enough for the world to make way at their passage. Only they were unshackled from those natural limits, unburdened by virtue of their superior standing as living beings.

However, the world was in the realm of the Heavens. Eighty-one minor roots was the absolute limit, meaning anything beyond was above what was commonly known as the rooting stage, and there was only one thing next.

’The higher the stage,’ Liam thought, ’The bigger the power differences within it can be. With nineteen minor roots still to go, this feels more than a simple, unique higher threshold.’

Liam felt himself, comparing it to how the world reacted. That was beyond raw power. It was more complex than the ability to break a brittle reality. He was on the verge of surpassing it, to enter the superior state of existence before the breakthrough, changing his understanding of that threshold.

’It’s like a quasi-branching stage,’ Liam considered. ’No, with the breakthrough bringing most improvements, it’s a superior rooting stage, one only I have access to.’

Liam immediately recorded the event on the green jade, only to tilt his head in confusion. He had understood the importance of naming things after creating his own aggregate of knowledge, but he couldn’t decide on one for his discovery.

Realistically, since the threshold was closer to the weaker stage due to the transformative barrier that was the breakthrough, its name should have something to do with it, but Liam didn’t like anything that came to mind.

’Well, quasi-stage is cooler,’ Liam eventually settled on a slightly inaccurate name for totally reasonable reasons.