Liya watched Shen's entire self get rebuilt from the ground up.

First, his stats dwindled away. Strength, agility, and resistance slowly went from D+ to E to F- to G. His qi also left his body, and his cultivator core ceased to exist. He became no different from a random commoner.

By his screams of anguish, the process was anything but pleasant.

Then, he became weaker than G-rank. Even the little qi that most commoners were made of abandoned him. He became brittler than dried mud, more fragile than paper-thin crystal. A strong wind could unmake his body and soul.

Only a single particle of qi remained.

That particle was unnoteworthy at first but suddenly shone with the power of a billion suns. The golden light carried might beyond anything Shen had ever accomplished. Even Liya's system-blocking sphere shook. Although admittedly not created for battle, the sphere should be beyond a D-rank's ability to impact.

The light shone for hours.

Before reaching B-rank, Liya wouldn't have understood where so much energy was coming from. Now, however, she felt the edges of phase space like seams on the fabric of normal space. The qi particle was pulling phase energy to fuel its light effect. That should be impossible at D-rank except for races with a natural connection to phase space, but it was happening right before her.

At last, the light dimmed, revealing the qi particle in all its glory; and glorious it was, at least from Shen's perspective.

It had become the perfect reflection of Shen's Path, which was displayed in a novel way.

Liya was impressed by the construct's concision. Individually, six of the seven Conceptual parts were twisted and almost useless. Together, they became a solid whole. Even the Concept of Boundlessness, which felt as if it was striking the other Concepts down, strengthened everything instead.

The construct was more robust and faithful to his image than his True Path had been—but weaker and less purposeful than a Realization would be.

Liya decided to call it Idealization.

That qi particle immediately started destroying Shen. It was slow, one quark at a time, yet fast enough that it shouldn't take longer than a week to finish the process. As soon as a quark of his became preonic dust, the qi particle also pulled everything together into a new quark just like the previous one.

Structurally, Shen's every cell, atom, and photon remained the same. A commoner wouldn't be able to tell what was different. Yet, the meaning behind their existence changed utterly. They no longer had the same intent. Their connection to the Laws of Life had been hijacked by others at some points.

It wasn't just his body, either. His soul was slowly destroyed and remade without getting infiltrated by foreign Laws. The cohesiveness and certainty of his Idealization rebuked any invasion attempt.

The history of the Path Shen had walked until now and the destination he sought to reach became part of his very DNA and was branded on his soul.

Shen was being rebuilt into his Idealized Path.

Liya was awed.

Such a step between True Path and Realization should make it much easier for someone to Realize their Path. She knew cultivators were more likely to reach A-rank than any Guardian. She had also felt a few Ethereal Harmonization realm cultivators before and could tell they fit their Path better than Guardians.

Liya had previously assumed it was because of how their realms worked. Now, she knew it was because of this. The specialness of their realm was merely the consequence of what Shen was doing.

Becoming the Idealized image of his Path made Shen half-human, half-vessel. He was preparing his existence to physically accept his Path into himself and grow with it. The Laws he touched would be much closer to him than they had ever been to Liya before she Realized her Path.

It was impressive. Enlightening. He was imposing his Path in his existence in a way she was sure was impossible to accomplish with mana.

It had a downside, though. At a glance, Liya could tell Idealized cultivators would have a much harder time changing any conviction than a Guardian with similar willpower. While it might help them in their Path, it also explained why she had felt the Republic's culture and laws had changed too little during the many centuries of judicial rulings she had read.

Put less nicely, it elucidated why cultivators were so obnoxious to interact with.

That saddened her because Shen was defenseless, laid bare before her, and she noticed something about him she had never imagined: Shen had a self-esteem issue.

It wasn't a generalized problem that affected his every decision. For instance, in the demonstration's C-tier rift, he hadn't run away in illogical fear. That had been a realistic assessment of his power.

No, Shen only felt unreasonably lacking when Liya was involved.

Liya wasn't reading his mind, but the ripples in his soul were unmistakable to someone trained to recognize them. Her barely formed Realization was the missing piece in the puzzle. Whenever his soul rippled in anxiety and self-doubt, it was connected to the strings of karma linking him to her.

In hindsight, that should come as no surprise. Drow training mentioned some trainees might grow timid after brutal training. Shen had been repeatedly told he was worthless, then almost died against an Ethereal Realm cultivator. Then, he had to seek asylum with the drow because he was too weak to protect himself after he took the antidron. He was also played with by Uk'Gaar.

Many of his experiences after his training pointed at her being correct when she had said he was useless.

Things they had talked about suddenly had a deeper meaning. The most obvious example was when he said, "It speaks very poorly of me that my almost-girlfriend thinks she owes me apologies for not writing poetry while being tortured." Liya hadn't given it too much thought, but it showed he believed it was his fault somehow that she felt she should've done more.

Shen thought he was the issue in their relationship.

It angered her at first; how dare he be so self-centered? Then, she got furious at her first judgment. How could she blame him for it?

Liya was the older and more mature one. She should have seen it happen. She should have protected and guided him.

Fuck, he was right; she sounded like a groomer.

Maybe the age difference wouldn't matter as much in a different scenario, but the way they had met and interacted for over a year twisted everything that came after. Their codependence was unhealthy. Liya saw him as a trigger for many good changes in her life and Path. Shen saw her as a paragon whose expectations he repeatedly failed to meet.

What they almost had had, had been fated to fail from the beginning.

How she regretted the way she had said many things.

For one, she hadn't mentioned that the fault for the smell in his hand was hers. He probably blamed himself for it, too. She had cleared his smell on her hand but let him do it himself in his hand. She had been so absorbed in trying to reach an artificial equilibrium with him that she didn't think of supporting him. Then, she regretted not protecting him.

She wasn't perfect, but that was a grotesque mistake. It was stupid, silly, unthinkable. And it only went to show how out of depth she was. How confused she felt. How her feelings—and she had never dealt with emotions before!—messed with her decision-making.

She had definitely underestimated the influence of her unleashed heart on herself.

Liya wasn't ready for such a complicated relationship. Not even close. It had come too soon for them both.

Maybe they would find a light at the end of the tunnel hundreds of years from now, but only if he figured out a way to change the self-esteem issues that were being written on his very self—

"What in the actual fuck?!" Liya swore, astonished.

His low self-esteem had just vanished. It wasn't that she couldn't find it anymore. Shen's Idealization, consciously or not, noticed the issue and fixed it. There was no space for such targeted self-doubt in his existence.

How was that possible?! Even she couldn't do that with her Realization. If something became part of her, changing that took effort—

Suddenly, a faint phantom of an ethereal karma thread came from his body. It reached the horizon and instantly snapped.

Liya wouldn't have known who the target was if she also weren't connected to him: one of the cthulhus.

She understood it, then. She was the source of Shen's issue, but it had been artificially empowered by the Realization Impartation. Shen had grown more mature and acquired other things from it, but it looked like it was heavily filled with regretful experiences. It had contaminated his Path without his or her notice, and he was now getting rid of it.

In hindsight, Liya could also see the seeds of this development in their conversation. Shen had decided to get away from her before she said anything. But although he thought only time and distance could solve it, without even knowing it was partly the fault of an external influence, his Idealized Path saw it as nothing but an inconvenience to be easily swept away.

Liya chuckled in self-mockery. Shen thought he wasn't good enough for her? Well, she was sure she couldn't understand half of the wonders he showed her.

And so, her own insecurities grew.

She hadn't lied to him about that. In fact, many of the things she regretted, communication-wise, came from her lack of confidence. How could she fully open up to say she was sorry for liking him when she felt he was only with her because he didn't know better? All the conviction she felt about her Path after her Realization was nowhere to be found in the face of that romantic unknown. Her power held no sway over matters of the heart.

Liya was, indeed, little less than a well-informed commoner when it came to romance.

And, paradoxically and ironically, realizing it only strengthened her Realization. It only made her step a little further in her Path. It showed a weakness to be fixed: letting herself be controlled by anxiety about the future

Liya's gratitude for such enlightenment episodes was one of the reasons she felt so close to Shen. Yet it was both one of the reasons she didn't feel she was good enough for him at times and worryingly close to obsession.

Now that she knew her anxiety was on the way, she decided to improve herself. It wasn't as simple as what Shen had just done, but enough willpower and practice would see it gone in a few years. Opening up to Shen about it would help. Pointing out the infiltration and change in his Path might even help him avoid similar pitfalls in the future if he wasn't already aware.

But she would say nothing—for Shen.

Liya would go back to being his mentor and nothing else. Outside combat training, she would hint at ways to notice his failings and improve himself but leave him to walk his own Path. That was the best way for him to grow in wisdom and willpower. Protecting him from himself would cripple him—and was another reason they had to spend time apart.

That was really self-evident in the end, wasn't it?

How blind to the truth had their feelings made them?

Liya sighed in regret and continued to watch over her student—only a student, nothing else.