Shen clenched his teeth from the pain of having his stats taken from him. Then, he grunted at the anguish of having his cultivator core unmade. Lastly, he writhed in pure agony as he slowly disintegrated.

Without qi, he couldn't even cut off his pain receptors. He felt everything, bit by bit. It was hell.

In a past tribulation, Shen had been skewered, cut, and electrocuted. It had been worse than what he was going through, but not by much. It had also been much faster instead of however long this was taking.

At least this time, he could still think, and the pain was immediately replaced with wonder as he was remade, metamorphosed into something new.

Shen recalled the moment he started walking a True Path. He had instantly made his body more compatible with his Path. He had considered it to have become a perfect reflection of his Path.

How ignorant he had been.

Everyone always felt they were their Path, but the more he walked it, the truer it became. It was a long journey that saw him change in every conceivable way. It wasn't just his power that increased; his inner self was slowly but surely being rebuilt to his Path's Image. Each step pushed him further away from his mortal existence and into something closer to the Laws governing all Reality.

Shen hadn't realized the danger when trying to turn himself into a Spear, but it was evident now. He was becoming something more. He was still human but for how long? How would his Path affect him after this?

In fact, how much had his Path already affected him?

Did Shen have enough willpower to stop the very Laws of Reality from pushing him in a direction he would rather not take? Would he have accepted such changes to himself if his Path didn't have sway over him? Would he have given up on growing more powerful if he had been his pure self, without Concepts being part of him?

Shen didn't know the answer to that—but he did know his Image let him find things in himself that definitely shouldn't be there.

His Image was him in such an intimate way that he immediately noticed an infiltrated influence after enough of himself was changed. He could also identify its source: the Realization Impartation.

It, fortunately, had no ill intentions. The influence remained out of his lack of power to deal with it. Shen could follow it up to his feelings and thoughts, to past decisions and actions. He did feel he was lacking compared to Liya, but not as much as all that external regret and feeling of inadequacy made him believe.

Paradoxically, noticing it made him even more certain that he should take time away from Liya. The Realization Impartation had only affected him beyond its original intent because his emotions were exploitable. Shen needed to know himself better before opening himself even to someone he trusted. Otherwise, he might be manipulated even without his partner's intention.

At the very least, that would be a disservice to them, as it might hinder his growth, and he should be the best version of himself to anyone he ever decided to spend his life with. At worst, it would turn him into someone he wouldn't have become by himself.

Well, at least the Realization Impartation wouldn't be an issue anymore. Shen erased it twitch of his will.

He was now impervious to non-targeted non-hostile external influence, even from A-ranks. More importantly, he was also immune to the indirect effects of non-mastered Laws. If he fought the gnoll again with his... Imagined Path? Imprinted Path? Materialized Path?

Ah! Idealized Path. That word fit well.

If Shen fought the Void Embryo again with his Idealized Path, he would have had a much easier time.

Rather than grow inebriated in the feeling of power, Shen was more interested in how a single qi particle could do everything it had been doing.

Qi was energy. Limited energy. A particle could only do so much. Yet, that one particle seemed inexhaustible. Infinite.

A possible explanation was that it had the same control over Reality as Yinhu Lanfen. She could control lightning without using any qi. It made her long-range attacks weaker than qi-fueled lightning, but they were still Law-powered bolts, strong enough to damage him even after being weakened by all his external defenses. They ignored Shen's innate soul defense, too, like a Guardian using mana but pulling it at the last second before it was countered.

But that didn't sound right. He could barely feel an echo of an impression of a different energy fueling his qi particle...

Shen suddenly identified where that energy was coming from: the depths of space. He had felt it in the demonstration's rift, but only because a barrier prevented the omnispider's existence from bleeding into it. And now, he only felt it because he had felt it back then.

Sapphire had called it phase space. Was that place the source of qi? That shouldn't be right; everything was qi, except when replaced with another metaphysical energy, like mana. The energy he felt also was not qi.

It felt familiar... So, so familiar... Where had he felt something like this before?

Another of his atoms was destroyed and remade using that energy. The pain helped trigger the memory. It was just too similar to what he had felt back then.

Too similar to the Law fragments Yinhu Lanfen had left in his body.

Comprehension opened the door of his senses. Knowing what to expect, he knew what to look for. He could see exactly how the energy was made of Law fragments.

The fragments were infinitely tiny, mere dust compared to the fragments Yinhu Lanfen had branded in his body to stop him from healing. They were Laws made metaphysical and broken down. Here, they were mixed together and replaced qi.

With all his mental advantages, that was the final clue for Shen to understand what deep or phase space was.

It was a place devoid of metaphysical energy as he knew it. A higher or lower realm—or both!—superimposed on normal space.

Shen recalled Liya's lesson on how Reality worked. It had three Aspects—Space, Time, and Will—and three Expressions—Change, Sentience, and Energy. Laws came to be when Sentient Energy eventually Changed into new rules of Reality.

Yet, in deep space, natural Energy like qi was replaced with fragments of those Laws, which couldn't have come to exist without qi. It sounded both like a paradox and an evolution. It was like using shattered glass in place of sand, which sounded terrible in some areas, like a beach, but could be useful in others—maybe aesthetically?

Reality was experimenting, growing beyond its base components.

Shen could only imagine what treasures could be birthed in such a place. And the dangers. What did it look or feel like?

Shen didn't waste much time on such conjectures. He lacked the context to make more educated guesses. Instead, he focused on perceiving how exactly his qi particle turned Law fragments into his new self.

He could tell the "energy dust" pulled from deep space had a specific Law ratio. He could only poorly feel Spear, Wind, Water, and Lightning. Different Laws he had previously encountered for a while had merely left some impressions on him. That was still enough to tell that every "handful" of energy had many fragments that he guessed to be Life, plenty of the four belonging to his Path, and smaller quantities of others.

His Path was much more plentiful than in his old body. That was likely the main reason for his increased resistance to external influence.

Unfortunately, that's all he could tell. His rebuilding process was beyond him. His atoms disintegrated one moment, then the Law fragments suddenly just became new atoms.

After a while, Shen gave up on understanding the details of what was happening to him and focused on the broader picture.

He knew he was undergoing a natural process. Modern humanity would call it supernatural, but it was part of the fundamental rules of Reality. When he took the last step in his cultivation, his qi particle became the Idealized form of his Path. The instant that happened, Shen had to be made anew. The Laws of Reality couldn't accept anything else, though he didn't know why. It was so crucial that it was forced upon him. Reality itself was controlling whatever was going on with him.

Cultivation was man-made, artificial. However, over the ages, men and women wiser than he had glimpsed at the secret workings of Reality and used that knowledge to produce a Path that cultivators could tread to gain power and attain immortality. Cultivators went against the rules of Reality that would see them live and die as weak mortals, but in a way that was paradoxically in tune with Reality itself. So, it progressed fluidly, except for the tribulations, which might come from the Heavens resenting cultivators for stealing their secrets.

Cultivator cunningness—or shrewdness?—was especially evident in what was happening to him. Reality's rules forced it to rebuild him, which it did by using Law fragments. That increased his resistance against the very Laws of Reality and prepared his existence to grow even more powerful.

In fact, Shen was specifically becoming much more resistant to Law fragments that didn't fit his new existence. Not impervious, but close enough. A lot of Law attacks would have to pierce his body or soul before he became incapable of getting rid of the Law fragments they left behind. Someone with unmastered Laws would probably kill him before reaching the saturation point. Someone with a mastered Law would bypass his defenses altogether.

All those thoughts about Laws made Shen's mind turn to his future.

To the Ethereal Harmonization realm.

Shen was already harmonizing himself with his Path and the etherealness of his very Laws. This was the midway step between the Fate Origin and Ethereal Harmonization realms.

So, he wondered: why not take the whole step at once?

Cultivation was filled with secrets. Path Idealization was one. It was clearly also a preparation for what came after. He was becoming much more compatible with the Laws he was supposed to harmonize with to reach the next realm.

But didn't it also give him an unmatched opportunity to link himself with those very same Laws?

He was being remade from Law fragments, including the ones he was supposed to connect with!

Now wasn't the time to break through, of course. Only those who reached Qi Saturation could survive the Harmonization Tribulation. He wasn't so arrogant as to believe that didn't apply to him.

But he could start comprehending those Laws right now.

Shen fully focused on the Law fragments remaking himself. He would "evolve" his seven Concepts into Laws and enter the Ethereal Harmonization realm right after his Path Idealization was done, which would automatically also conclude the Qi Saturation step.

Shen would leave that room as an Ethereal Harmonization cultivator—or die trying in the tribulation.