Ouroboros becoming a Core Beast was not merely a fluke as after only a dozen lives he had reached the rank of a Core Beast once again. The gap became smaller and smaller until he had been able to become a Core Beast consistently in most of his lives while not instantly dying to his enemies.
After this Ouroboros set his sight on the next step in the path of cultivation. Thus he continued cultivation and accumulating more powerful or versatile knowledge and techniques.
Lives continuously passed, each one feeling like the mere blink of an eye. During this phase Ouroboros had created a Qi absorption technique that had no rival, having taken him hundreds of lives to refine and improve until it had no flaws he could fix. He named this technique Myriad Lives Coiling Snake technique and it had nearly 100 percent effectiveness, being able to absorb nearly the entirety of the qi that he was absorbing from and being very effective at absorbing volatile or foreign Qi.
This technique greatly quickened the pace of Ouroboros' improvement and his cultivation journey continued unperturbed.
Just like all the ranks before him Ouroboros was stuck at the pinnacle as a Core Beast but that didn't affect him as he knew in his heart that as long as he kept going without giving up he would be able to overcome that barrier especially now that he had solidified his path and was no longer being aimless.
Then it happened, in his 10892nd life.
Similar to his first time reaching Core Beast, Ouroboros was surrounded by the various cultivators he had offended in different ways, however the only difference was that these cultivators were vastly more powerful than the ones when he was first ascending to be a Core Beast. Not a single one of them were at nascent soul, they were all at least early stage Soul Formation cultivators.
So they were walking bags of flesh with an incredible amount of Qi stored within themselves.
Ouroboros sat in the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation which was an immensely improved version of the Azure Turtle Unlimited Ascension formation that Ouroboros himself had made the improvements on.
Ouroboros was currently advancing to the rank of Soul Beast but he knew that if he didn't get any new energy fast then the ascension would fail as he was only putting up a facade of ascension. The enemies he had created were not from stealing treasures, they were mostly because Ouroboros had either publicly killed their disciples or family or because Ourobors had destroyed important monuments of the organisation he was intentionally trying to enrage.
His plan to enrage them worked even better than expected as most of the Soul Formation cultivators were attacking his defensive formation in outrage while screaming at him and throwing profanities.
"Not only do you have the audacity to slaughter every single one of my disciples and burn down the sect founder's grave to a crisp, but now you're even trying to advance to Soul Beast right in front of me!?"
"You vile beast, you assassinated my entire family and destroyed my garden that I have spent over a thousand years nurturing, I will kill you and torture your soul for a thousand years in exchange for the time I spent nurturing my garden!"
"How dare you infiltrate my clan and assasinate my dearest successor in which I have spent fortunes on, I will skin you alive and continuously torture you while keeping your mind and body constantly active with my elixirs you gutless coward."
As the Soul Formation cultivators kept going on and on with their threats, Ouroboros was waiting for the perfect moment to strike, and after he had all the Soul Formation cultivators where he wanted them to be he finally enacted the final piece of the plan as an absolutely gigantic formation revealed itself which shocked all the cultivators greatly as they had not sensed it at all until ouroboros had activated it.
They tried to escape the area of the formation but found themselves trapped inside unable to leave and every attack they threw at the formation only made it stronger.
One of the cultivators spoke to an old man.
"Ancentor Wang, you are the greatest formation master in our group, can you help us destroy this formation?"
Ancestor Wang had a strained expression and buckets of sweat pouring down his face as he was desperately attempting to decipher the massive formation that was keeping them all inside before he replied in a fatigued tone.
"I will need to take days to even understand a part of this formation, not to mention break it. I think the way to escape the fastest is to kill that insidious beast as it seems to be the one controlling the entire formation."
All the other cultivators agreed with Ancestor Wang but they were all inwardly flabbergasted that a weak beast that wasn't even a Soul Beast had managed to control a formation that even Ancestor Wang had extreme struggle deciphering.
If they discovered that the beast was not only controlling the formation but was the creator of it they would be vomiting blood in disbelief.
Right as the cultivators went back to attacking the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation, Ouroboros began stage two of the massive mysterious formation. Even though Ouroboros was old beyond comprehension he was still struggling to control his ascension to a Soul Beast plus having to control the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation and also control the mysterious formation. He could do the previous two with ease but controlling the mysterious formation was where most of his struggle arose from.
As Ouroboros began stage two, the formation went from being white to becoming blood red and the various Soul Formation cultivators suddenly started feeling bouts of weakness.
"What the hell is happening, why is my Qi getting siphoned to that bloody formation."
"The longer it goes on the stronger the suction is getting, soon we will be turned into empty husks!"
The various cultivators were extremely experienced people and they all began to use various of their techniques to escape, but the blood barrier blocked every path, whether it be teleportation, intangibility, communication to the outside world and much more the mysterious blood barrier blocked them all.
All the stolen Qi went straight to the blood formation and then it all streamed to Ouroboros who was at the centre of the formation. This thus fueled his ascension to Soul Beast. Ouroboros chose to feed on enemies much higher rank then him instead of on treasures because with the treasures he would have many living enemies that chase him to the end of the world so ouroboros chose that for the Soul Beast ascension that he would use his enemies to satiate the Qi needed for the ascension so he would get the required Qi and all his enemies would be dead, unable to pursue him.
Two birds, one stone.
Though the plan did have some flaws that he would need to refine and get rid of in his next lives, the main flaw and really the only important one was that the giant blood red formation was still an imperfect formation, Ouroboros was using this life to see how far the imperfect formation he had created would take him, and to see where its flaws were and to fix them in his next lives.
He had currently not bestowed to the formation a name, he would only do so when it was perfected.
While Ouroboros was deep in concentration, the cultivators on the outside of the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation were getting desperate. They were sending their most powerful trump cards and techniques at Ouroboros trying to break the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation that was blocking them, They were in a frenzy even using techniques that would use up their lifespan to try get to ouroboros and stop the blood formation from turning them into husks.
The techniques they were sending at Ouroboros were incredibly powerful and ordinarily would even destroy the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation but the only reason it was still standing strong and shielding ouroboros perfectly was because that formation and the blood formation were compatible and so the blood formation was sending the qi it stole to both ouroboros and the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation helping strengthen it and protect Ouroboros from the onslaught of trump card attacks.
The blood formation worked much better than Ouroboros expected as he managed to succeed in ascension and become a Soul Beast. However when he reached that rank he quickly noticed something was wrong, the blood formation was still sending energy to Ouroboros and the soul formation cultivators were still quite far from being dead. He tried to make it so the blood formation would send all of the Qi to the Cyclical Serpent Unlimited Ascension formation but the flaws in its structure were showing themselves and Ouroboros couldn't stop the energy from coming to him.
While Ouroboros was trying his best to control the endless amount of energy that was rushing into him he knew that either he would have to stop the blood formation prematurely and let the soul formation cultivators live or would explode due to having too much Qi stuffed into him, and he had tried to only disable stage two of the blood formation but that was where another of the formation's flaws came out as he could only stop stage two by disabling the whole formation.
It wasn't only Ouroboros who noticed that but also the cultivators, they looked much skinnier and frailer than before and were getting more pitiful looking by the second.
"Hey it looks like your plan has already succeeded and you have gotten enough energy from us to breakthrough, but if you don't stop that blood formation, you're going to explode and die."
"Yeah I am willing to forego my grudge with you temporarily as long as you disable the blood formation."
"Just stop the formation now or both of us are going to die."
They made very logical remarks but when Ouroboros weighed both options, he realised that not stopping the blood formation and dying with all the cultivators would be most beneficial to his future.
That was because if he let the cultivators survive and escape then word of his mysterious blood formation would spread far and wide and people would be much more cautious of it and try to make a counter of it even if they don't know exactly how it works. Knowledge is power and by letting his enemies who have seen the formation leave he would be giving them power over him as they would most definitely make the information they have on it public and that would make it harder for Ouroboros to ascend in future lives using that formation as people would be wary of it.
As Ouroboros had finished contemplating he turned to the various cultivators who were pleading to him and replied back with a vicious grin.
"Then let us die together!"
Ouroboros' statement immediately outraged some cultivators and put the other cultivators into despair.
"You're an insane fool!"
"In the end he's only a brainless beast, why can't he just fall over and die!"
"There's no hope… You can't reason with crazy individuals."
These remarks kept streaming in as the cultivators tried everything possible to escape, but eventually they became too weak to even speak as when the formation had taken all their Qi it began to syphon off their lifeforce, fully stealing everything that the cultivators had.
But before all the cultivators had died, Ouroboros had absorbed too much energy to control and exploded into a massive explosion of energy that eradicated all his blood, flesh and bones into not even dust, however he was not worried about the surviving cultivators leaving after he died due to no longer controlling the formation as he had set a self destruct function in the red formation which would activate if Ouroboros died.
The explosion of the formation was massive as it destroyed enough mass that it would make a great canyon in which it would be present for tens of thousands of years, it fully killed all the surviving cultivators and got rid of any trace of the blood formation.
Ordinarily, Ouroboros' consciousness and memories would travel around the world and occasionally onto other worlds at incredible speeds to find a compatible body but this time his consciousness was floating up instead of going around the world, it kept going up and up without any signs of stopping.