Another hundred years passed.
One day, Jie Ming was hunched over his workbench, deeply focused on researching the Temporary Enlightenment Technique.
The desk was piled high with a thick stack of experimental records, nearly reaching the ceiling, looking like a solid wall.
He flipped through the records while using his spiritual power to observe a test tube that had been enlightened, shuttling back and forth between the culture tank and the reagent rack, carrying samples. This wasn't the original one.
The original test tube had long since taken up residence on the shoulder of a Black Giant Priest, following the most senior transport team in the main lab and becoming a half-unofficial member.
The current one was the thirty-seventh batch of test subjects he had specially enlightened to control variables.
It moved in tiny, quick steps, much more fluid than the first batch.
Occasionally, as it passed the culture tank, it would unconsciously pause, tiptoe, and peer inside… though it had no eyes.
Jie Ming watched its serious demeanor while carrying samples, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
Just as he was about to record the behavioral deviations of this batch of enlightened entities, a very subtle tremor surged from the depths of his spiritual sea.
It was as if a jigsaw puzzle that had slumbered for over a thousand years slowly turned over in the depths of his consciousness, finally snapping the last piece perfectly into place. Jie Ming paused, lifting his gaze from the experiment.
Without hesitation, he set down the experimental records, rose, left the laboratory, passed through the teleportation array, and traveled all the way to the cosmic space outside the Infernal Sulfur Plane.
The universe was silent and vast.
There was no wind, gravity, or any other unnecessary interference, only the faint light from distant stars.
In the next instant, dark golden light burst forth from within Jie Ming.
His thousand-meter true body unfolded in the void.
The dark golden giant, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, rolled his shoulders and stretched his limbs. The three eyes on his two faces lit up simultaneously, like six clusters of golden flames. Then, he manifested his second Dharma Aspect.
A five-hundred-kilometer golden phantom slowly rose in the void.
This time, the outline of the Dharma Aspect was much more solid than before, but it still had somewhat illusory edges.
It resembled a divine statue not yet fully cast, awe-inspiring in presence yet still lacking that final breath to be truly solidified.
Jie Ming didn't rush to feel the power.
He sat cross-legged at the very center of the Dharma Aspect's chest, slowly closing his eyes.
Within his spiritual sea, everything accumulated over the thousand years in the Dao Integration Realm began to operate with a roar at this moment.
His deep analysis of the Spiritual Qi Law, his understanding of alchemy, his cross-system research on soul studies, his countless deductions of the All-Heavens Star Grand Array…
All knowledge, understanding, insights, and accumulations, like a vast ore vein thrown into a furnace, began to melt in the high heat and then crystallize anew.
The planar origin of the Infernal Sulfur Plane responded first.
Deep within the main continent, the golden planar origin slowly rotated, emitting layers of ripples.
In the next moment.
The elemental tides of the entire plane seemed to be drawn by some invisible will, converging toward the depths of the cosmos.
Sensing this obvious change, the Black Giant Priests almost simultaneously paused their work, looking up at the sky in astonishment. At the center of the continuously converging elemental vortex, the Dharma Aspect began to change.
Edges that were previously slightly illusory gradually became sharp.
The illusory golden halo began to contract inward.
After the mist of light dissipated, what emerged was no longer a translucent phantom but a solid dark golden entity as dense as the true body.
The surface of the Dharma Aspect now displayed muscle striations identical to the true body; the joints of every finger, the edges of every nail, the direction of every strand of hair, all gradually transitioned from phantom to solid.
Meanwhile, the true body within the Dharma Aspect grew increasingly ethereal.
The dark golden light of the thousand-meter true body shifted from dense to translucent.
The outlines of bones and muscles melted away in the light beam by beam.
The thousand-meter true body began to disintegrate inch by inch; every piece of flesh, every strand of sinew, reverted into the purest streams of light, surging toward the solidifying Dharma Aspect around it.
It was as if a statue had melted itself and recast into a colossal divine effigy.
The essence of Dharma Aspect techniques was never about layering a larger phantom over the true body.
From beginning to end, Dharma Aspect techniques were a type of biochemical transformation surgery. When each layer of Dharma Aspect reached its peak, the original true body would fully merge with the Dharma Aspect, making the Dharma Aspect itself the new true body.
When the final stream of dark golden light surged out from the old true body and completely infused into the Dharma Aspect, what sat cross-legged in the void was no longer a thousand-meter golden giant with a five-hundred-kilometer phantom surrounding him.
Instead, there was a truly solid entity five hundred kilometers tall.
Dark golden skin, a broad-shouldered and thick-waisted silhouette, two faces front and back, a golden vertical eye at the brow.
That was Jie Ming's new true body.
Jie Ming slowly opened his eyes and stretched his new body in the cosmic space.
Merely the motion of raising his arm stirred a visible ring of space ripples in the void, like ripples spreading outward in layers after a stone falls into deep water.
He slowly took a breath, and within hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the elements simultaneously vibrated, triggering an elemental storm in the cosmos.
Jie Ming looked down at his hand in some amazement.
He could clearly feel the surging power within his body, more than an order of magnitude stronger than his old true body.
The Law-Crystallization Domain also rapidly expanded during the transformation between Dharma Aspect and true body.
Now, without deliberately deploying it, Jie Ming could smooth out all elements within hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
He floated quietly in the void, feeling the subtle sensations from every inch of his new body.
That feeling was strange, as if his entire being had been recast, more stable and more real than before.
Counting the years, he had been in the Dao Integration Realm for over a thousand years.
Thanks to the peculiarities of the Dao Integration Realm and continuous learning, over a millennium of accumulation had finally allowed the second Dharma Aspect to complete its ultimate evolution. According to the cultivation pattern of the Sovereign Self True Scripture, the next step was the third Dharma Aspect.
The first Dharma Aspect evolution expanded from a mortal body under two meters to a thousand-meter true body.
The second Dharma Aspect evolution expanded from a thousand-meter true body to a five-hundred-kilometer true body.
Extrapolating from this ratio, the final height of the third Dharma Aspect should be 250,000 kilometers.
At that level, it would no longer be describable by the word "giant."
It would be a colossal being that made ordinary planets seem minuscule.
Jie Ming paused quietly in the void for a moment, then slowly retracted his body.
The five-hundred-kilometer true body shrank back like a tide, layers of dark golden light receding, until he resumed his usual human form.
When he passed through the teleportation array and returned to the main laboratory of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, a group of Black Giant Priests was already waiting beside the array.
Standing at the front was the priest who always carried the animated test tube.
The test tube leaped down from his shoulder, trotted over to Jie Ming's feet on tiny steps, tilted its slender tube body up, and waved its "hand" at him.
"We congratulate our lord!"
The vertical openings on the chests of the Black Giant Priests opened and closed simultaneously, emitting low, respectful vibrating sounds.
The animated test tube imitated their actions, raising its hair-thin little arm and tapping its own quartz tube twice, producing a crisp "ding ding" sound, looking utterly earnest.
Jie Ming nodded to them, then hurried back into the laboratory.
Once he closed the lab door, his previously gentle expression crumbled, and he couldn't help but frown slightly.
Because Jie Ming felt that the surrounding world had suddenly become extremely fragile.
The originally vast Infernal Sulfur Continent now seemed, in his perception, to have shrunk into a cardboard box.
He had to carefully squeeze himself inside, and if he wasn't careful, he might burst the box.
The main laboratory's ceiling was three stories high, yet he instinctively ducked his head, afraid of bumping into something. The metal floor beneath his feet could bear the weight of his transformed form.
But he could feel that the rock layer below the floor was trembling slightly under the pressure of his mere presence.
Fortunately, the actual size of the Infernal Sulfur Plane was now large enough.
After merging with the Tentacle Tree Plane, the periphery of the continent had expanded into a cosmic space spanning hundreds of billions of light-years in diameter.
In such an environment, unfolding his true body didn't feel cramped at all.
When he had spread out his five-hundred-kilometer true body in the void earlier, it was like an ordinary person standing on an open prairie; there was plenty of room to move freely.
However, as his Dao Integration continued to advance, his true body would only grow larger.
Right after completing the second Dharma Aspect, it was five hundred kilometers.
As he continued to accumulate "Dao," this number would keep growing until it approached the threshold of the third Dharma Aspect.
And the threshold for the third Dharma Aspect was 250,000 kilometers.
That was already several times larger than an average star.
Although the cosmic space of the Infernal Sulfur Plane was vast, the continental region for daily activities would eventually become a "cardboard box" again in the face of such a scale.
Jie Ming raised his hand to press his brow, then thought of another more practical problem.
Several world fragments were still floating around the periphery of the Infernal Sulfur Continent.
Those fragments stored a large number of his aberrant samples, high-risk experimental materials, and research items related to the Reflection Dimension.
And the world fragments themselves were ultra-small planes stripped from independent planes, each only tens of kilometers in diameter.
Back when his true body was a thousand meters, he could barely squeeze in using special stabilization arrays.
Now with a true body of five hundred kilometers, the internal spatial structures of the world fragments could not withstand the law-based pressure of his true body.
Forcing entry would only cause the spatial structure inside the fragments to collapse from the law level.
Thinking this, Jie Ming subconsciously touched the experiment, and the experimental runes began to fluctuate chaotically.
That was the effect of a suddenly elevated rank.
Jie Ming sighed, looked up at the laboratory dome, and wore a subtle expression.
"First, I need to remodel the lab… For such troublesome matters, I'll have to go to the Great Dao Book Pavilion and do some digging."
To see if there were any techniques or methods that could deal with this kind of problem.