As his inner world and his flesh body tried to coexist, Jack felt himself strained. For a moment, he thought he’d die. Understanding arrived then.
He had an idea. In an instant, amidst the warring realities of his body and inner world, he knew what to do. And, to achieve it, he needed tremendous amounts of energy.
The inner world and his body were fiercely attacking each other—both of which were tempered to the extreme. Their cataclysmic clashes were suppressed by Jack’s Dao, but he let that go for a moment. Intense ripples spread outside his body, like he’d swallowed a blacksmith hammering an anvil. They crashed into the walls, shaking the entire pyramid. The various treasures lining the shelves of this room were also sucked into the ripples. They burst apart, unable to endure the impacts. There were dozens of them, many being Overlords cores or items on the same level. All their power erupted at once, filling the chamber with a completely terrifying amount of energy. Jack was suffocating. This was more than enough for multiple people to break into the A-Grade, and the pyramid’s enchantments kept it from dispersing.
He realized Brock had closed the door. Good bro.
Jack felt his body cracking under the pressure and quickly got to work. His Daos burst into action, sucking in the energy like vacuums, forming several colored whirlpools around Jack. The massive amount of energy came under his control, if temporarily. He immediately put it to use.
His body and inner world, which were fiercely clashing, were forced to fuse. Energy was funneled into them, ironing out their differences. Jack’s Daos worked at full force. The fusing proceeded, all problems solved by his Daos or hammered down by his fist, the two realities slowly becoming one.
His organs turned into planets. His stomach, lungs, spleen, those and all else were now covered in tiny continents. His flesh dissolved into energy, turning into the starry vacuum of space, with its properties dictated by the Dao of Life to operate the same way flesh did. The purple fist sun took the place of his heart, and his bones absorbed its radiance before exuding it, turning into mini suns themselves. His blood turned into rivers of stars which brightened the cosmos. Only his skin remained the same, turning dark and starry from the inside to resemble the endless horizon of space.
Jack opened his eyes to find he was no longer human. He had transcended. His new reality was hard to come to grip with, but he knew it would happen. For now, he remained in breakthrough. The tons of energy he’d unleashed before had been partly consumed to fuel the fusion of a small universe into his body, but parts of it still remained, and Jack intended to use them to make his breakthrough as perfect as possible.
The portals to the Black Hole World and Green Dragon Realm had been pulled into his body alongside his inner world. They now hovered aimlessly, sticking out like sore thumbs. Jack knew they could be better.
With a tug of will, he reached through the portal to the Green Dragon Realm and pulled it in. The entire realm disappeared from the dimensional sea and reappeared inside Jack’s body. Its intense Life energy spread out, helping Jack adapt to the change—and, at the same time, the stability of his laws reinforced the realm, which had been slowly deteriorating for millions of years.
The Green Dragon Realm wasn’t empty. It contained many animals and a few cultivators—Jack had let them live there a long time ago. His body didn’t reject them, which was good. Their power was too low to be a problem anyway.
On their side, the beasts and cultivators of the Green Dragon Realm witnessed the change. The ground shook under their feet. They saw the sky above them distort, then get ripped away like cloth to reveal an odd starry dome. A purple sun hung in the distance—vaguely shaped like a fist. Long celestial bodies hovered in various directions, some glowing more than others, all reflecting the light of the sun like moons. Rivers of stars crossed the cosmos, while the far distance was also littered with stars, sparkling in various intensities and colors—this was the inside of Jack’s skin, where different areas simulated the glittering stars of the universe.
On the surface of the Green Dragon Realm, a frog-eyed man and a human girl watched the sky with a mix of terror and marvel. “What the hell...” Borkuren Madiba muttered.
Sassa gazed upward, her mouth hanging open, the stars reflected in her eyes. “It’s beautiful...” she said.
Between them, their teenager child balled its fists, excitement rising inside it as it sensed the laws of the world subtly change.
His mental image descended again. He stood over the oceans and blew into them, upsetting the waters. Tiny organisms were infused. He stepped back and let them grow, watching them multiply and evolve as they populated his planets. Amoebas turned into fish, which turned into amphibians, which turned into land animals. Birds appeared. The worlds of his organs grew richer, the lifeforms on them sporting great diversity.
His stomach held large, dinosaur-looking lizards. His spleen was a world of poison, its creatures colorful and deadly, while his lungs became windy realms populated mostly by flying creatures. His intestines sported long worms. It was interesting how the nature of each organ affected the growth of its inhabitants. At the same time, the influence of Jack’s Dao of the Fist was prevalent, his every planet favoring the birth of fist-wielding animals. Most species were barbaric and warmongering, but they also enjoyed their lives, living fairly and straightforwardly.
Jack found himself loving them like a father.
His ability to accelerate time lessened again, burdened by the many souls he now contained, while the creatures inside him kept evolving. He saw the first sapient beings appear, not all of them humanoid. They multiplied and developed. The moment they acquired true sapience, his time-accelerating abilities fell out hard. He could still do it, to an extent, but the flow of time inside him now approximated the real world. It was perhaps only ten or twenty times faster. He assumed it would accelerate again as he delved deeper into his Daos, but the creatures inside him would also grow stronger and more populous, restraining him further.
The growth of an A-Grade cultivator depended on two things—resources and time. The more resources one had, the more treasures would be created inside them, and the thicker the Dao would be, letting their newborn cultivators grow faster. The more time they let pass, the more their inner cultivators would progress, growing their overall strength and therefore the A-Grade cultivator’s.
In time, he pictured his organ-planets covered by sprawling civilizations, using the rivers of stars which were his blood to travel from one organ to the next, spreading and exchanging insights. It would be glorious. He really looked forward to it.
Jack possessed incredibly rich Dao. He was certain his inner world would develop far more efficiently than most, but there was nothing he could do to lessen the restraints of time. His next breakthrough wouldn’t happen for a while. Probably until long after the Crusade had ended. This was the highest realm he would reach for now, any further gains limited to his Dao and techniques...but he didn’t mind. He had a feeling this would be enough. His current strength was unfathomable—certainly near the very top of the universe.
Elder Hero wouldn’t know what hit him.
As Jack thought about these things, his inner world had kept growing. The Dao was so rich that it practically begged the native creatures to discover it. Jack found a host of gorilla sapients. With a smile, he descended to them invisibly, nudging their minds in the right direction.
A golden-furred gorilla going through a life-or-death struggle suddenly grasped something majestic. Its entire aura changed. It used these fledgling powers to defeat the beasts attacking it, then gazed at its fist.
This was the first creature in Jack’s universe to touch the Dao. More would come, their overall strength quickly rising. The moment the first appeared, the Dao in Jack’s body began to circulate subtly, propelled by the insights and utilization of its cultivators. A self-contained system.
At the same time, the moment that golden-furred gorilla touched the Dao, Jack knew he’d truly broken into the A-Grade. His inner universe had stabilized. He opened his eyes, gazing at the dark and destroyed room around him, sensing the massive changes inside his body. Everything felt different—now that he no longer needed to guide the development of his inner universe, he could take some time to get used to his new body.
For now, however, he couldn’t stop grinning.
He had ascended. He had transformed. And he was ready to kick some Immortal ass.