Deep within his consciousness, Jie Ming sat cross-legged before the gates of the Great Dao Book Pavilion.
The imposing white jade pavilion stood quietly in the chaos, its entire body flowing with a warm, soft, lustrous glow.
Countless jade slips swirled around him like stars, flying to Jie Ming's side as his will guided them, then returning to the sea of books. A vast torrent of information transformed into streaks of light, flashing before his eyes.
Jie Ming had been sitting here for a long time.
He had already perused over ten thousand types of techniques, divine abilities, and secret arts.
But every time he opened a jade slip, his brows furrowed deeper.
If he only wanted to continue entering world fragments for experiments, he wouldn't need to go through all this trouble.
A simple clone technique or avatar technique—splitting off an avatar with only one percent of the original body's power—would be enough to easily slip into those small world fragments, only a few dozen kilometers in diameter.
He wouldn't even need to browse the Great Dao Book Pavilion; the Wizard Civilization's ready-made puppet arts could solve it. By creating a high-level puppet with no direct law connection to the original body, then projecting his consciousness into it, research and experiments could proceed almost without any difference.
But what Jie Ming truly needed to solve was another, more troublesome problem.
Planar warfare.
In conventional planar warfare, the planar barrier fissures that could be torn open were usually only a little over a hundred kilometers wide.
Under normal circumstances, that size was sufficient—enough for vast armies of wizards to pass through.
But...
Jie Ming looked down at himself and sighed softly.
A spatial fissure normally enough for an entire army to traverse would be pitifully narrow before his five-hundred-kilometer true body. If his five-hundred-kilometer-tall true body tried to force its way through, it would be firmly stuck by the nearly infinite repulsive force of the planar barrier.
Forget fighting.
Even taking a single step would be difficult.
And that was not even considering the future.
According to the deductions of the Sovereign Self True Scripture, once the third Dharma Aspect was cultivated, his true body would swell to two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. By then, even the spatial fissures of the Infernal Sulfur Plane itself would need a specially redesigned "wide version entrance," or else he couldn't even leave his own home.
Thinking of this, the corner of Jie Ming's mouth twitched involuntarily.
He gently rubbed his brow, suppressing those somewhat absurd thoughts.
Ultimately, what he really needed was not an avatar.
It was a method that could truly compress his own rank and the essence of his existence.
On this basis, Jie Ming also hoped it would neither weaken his combat power nor reduce his survivability.
Ideally, it would maintain all his laws, all his power, and all the characteristics of his current five-hundred-kilometer true body.
Only then could he freely enter and exit planar barriers in the future, and also re-enter those world fragments.
With that thought, he opened another jade slip beside him, which recorded an avatar technique.
After a moment, he silently put it back.
No good.
Let's try another one.
Still no good.
A jade slip on avatar arts slowly closed and flew back into the book sea. Jie Ming leaned against the white jade steps before the Great Dao Book Pavilion, letting out a long breath. Though he had only browsed less than half, he already understood.
Simply searching among avatar-type methods would most likely never yield what he wanted.
Because the two worlds were fundamentally different.
The world of the Wizard Civilization was primarily the Endless Chaotic Void.
Each plane was an independent world, born separately, with a complete spatial structure.
Planes were separated by endless void.
Entering another plane was essentially entering another space.
Thus, if the true body was too large, it would naturally encounter the problem of being unable to enter spatial fissures or cross planar barriers.
But the immortal cultivation world was entirely different.
Based on the information he had gathered while browsing the Great Dao Book Pavilion, the cultivation civilization existed in a universe-type world.
That was a truly infinite, vast universe.
Though there were countless stars and civilizations, everything existed within the same infinite cosmic framework.
They were not separate spaces, just different coordinates within the same space.
There, a huge size was never a problem.
After reaching a high level of cultivation, one could simply move about in the universe.
After all, the universe was vast enough.
Jie Ming even remembered reading in an ancient text about "Star Gods."
The so-called Star Gods were not deities born from planets, but terrifying beings whose bodies spanned entire galaxies.
Some Star Gods were so enormous that a single eye could cover an entire galaxy.
Compared to such beings, his current five-hundred-kilometer true body was no different from a grain of sand.
Of course, the immortal cultivation world also had independent spaces like grotto-heavens, secret realms, and small worlds.
These places also had entry restrictions.
But the primary restriction in such areas was not size, but cultivation level.
As long as a cultivator's cultivation did not exceed the limit that the grotto-heaven could bear, they could almost certainly enter the gates of the secret realm.
After all, demon beasts of the same realm were often much larger than cultivators.
Many secret realms or grotto-heavens were originally created to establish a complete ecosystem.
If the entrance weren't large enough, those demon beasts would never be able to enter.
Moreover, most cultivators normally only needed to maintain a low-consumption avatar.
Almost no one would specially study how to compress their true body.
Thinking of this, Jie Ming gave up on continuing to browse avatar-type techniques.
He raised his hand, and with a thought.
Inside the Great Dao Book Pavilion, countless jade slips trembled slightly at once.
The search conditions began to change rapidly.
The classifications for [Avatar Type] and [Clone Type] were all canceled, and the previously useless keyword [True Body Compression] was also directly removed.
New keywords emerged.
[Rank Condensation] ... and [Existence Projection].
As the screening completed, the torrent of jade slips that had covered the sky abruptly decreased.
In the blink of an eye.
The sea of books that filled the entire sky shrank to just the number of one bookshelf.
Jie Ming's spirit instantly lifted.
There was hope.
He immediately began to peruse them one by one.
Time passed unknown.
Until a jade slip emitting a faint golden light slowly floated before him. Jie Ming reached out and caught it.
Just a glance at the name, and his eyes lit up.
"Mustard Seed Contains the Dao True Body Art."
He immediately probed his divine sense into it.
The first sentence of the jade slip made his eyes brighten suddenly.
"Contain the immeasurable Dharma body within a mustard seed; hide All Heavens' Great Dao within a inch-sized body."
Jie Ming continued reading, the light in his eyes growing brighter and brighter.
The core of this divine ability was not forcibly shrinking the true body.
Instead, it sank the colossal Dharma Aspect true body completely into the Inner World.
Then, by leveraging the laws of the Inner World, it re-projected an ultimate combat form equal to an ordinary human.
The entire process was not simply compressing the body, but completely shifting the foundation of the true body's existence from the external world into a grotto-heaven. Then, using the power of the grotto-heaven as a blueprint, it re-projected itself into the real world.
It appeared to have shrunk millions of times.
But in reality, it was equivalent to concentrating an entire world plus the power of the whole true body into a body of ordinary size.
The entire divine ability consisted of three steps.
Step one.
Dharma Aspect Dissolution.
Actively disintegrate the colossal Dharma Aspect true body, turning it into pure Dao resonance.
Like reducing a towering mountain into scattered sand.
Step two.
Inner World Smelting.
Guide all the Dao resonance particles into the core of the Inner World, completely merging them with the Inner World's Five Elements power, spiritual energy circulation, and even time flow laws. During this process, every inch of skin texture, every bone, and every drop of blood of the true body will be redefined as part of the Inner World's power.
Step three.
Reflection Projection.
Using the Primordial Spirit as a coordinate, project an entity of ordinary human size outward from the depths of the Inner World.
This is not a mere illusion or avatar, but a true physical body condensed by the combined power of the Inner World and the true body. Each strand of hair carries the mountains and rivers of the Inner World.
Each breath pulls at the spiritual energy tides of the entire Inner World.
The more Jie Ming read on, the brighter his eyes shone.
After cultivation, the original pressure of the true body would be completely compressed into a body of mere feet.
Every punch would be equivalent to the combined force of his own power and the entire Inner World bearing down simultaneously.
Every collision would carry the weight of a world.
Simply standing there would cause the world's spiritual energy to actively converge around him, forming a terrifying spiritual pressure vortex.
And this was only the basic effect after completing this method.
Besides the simple and crude numerical boost, relying on the special state between the true body and the Inner World, the cultivator could also obtain two special abilities.
One was a movement method.
After cultivation, the cultivator no longer moved the external body, but the projection coordinate within the Inner World.
To the outside, it might appear as just one step, but by adjusting the coordinate within the Inner World, they could have crossed hundreds of kilometers.
Projected into the real world, it was almost equivalent to a divine ability like "Ground Shrinking to Inches."
As for the final ability, it even made Jie Ming's heart skip a beat.
Formless Shift.
During battle, he could actively sink a part of his body back into the Inner World.
The corresponding position on the outside would directly turn into a void with no physical existence.
If an enemy thrust a sword at him, he could instantly turn his chest into a grotto-heaven state, allowing the blade to pass through his body without any injury.
Seeing this, Jie Ming finally couldn't help but smile.
Perfect.
Truly perfect in every sense.
Not only could it reduce his five-hundred-kilometer true body to ordinary size, completely solving the problem of entering and exiting planar barriers and world fragments.
It also further elevated the density of power to an inconceivable degree.
Close-combat strength would increase rather than decrease.
More importantly, the most troublesome cultivation resource for this Mustard Seed Contains the Dao True Body Art was having a grotto-heaven of one's own with sufficiently high quality. According to the method, as the cultivator's cultivation improved, once the grotto-heaven could no longer bear the true body, this method would fail, and the cultivator would have to find a new grotto-heaven.
Coincidentally, Jie Ming did have a grotto-heaven.
And it was a very rare one that could upgrade in sync with his cultivation!
On the other hand, if he cultivated this method, the Inner World, originally primarily responsible for storing resources, maintaining logistics, and transporting troops, would completely transform into a core component of the combat system.
Jie Ming continued flipping to the end. When he saw the grade, his movement paused slightly.
Immortal grade.
Jie Ming was silent for a moment, then lightly smiled.
He wasn't all that surprised.
Instead, he found it only natural.
If such a nearly heaven-defying divine ability were merely at an ordinary level, that would be strange.
He gently put away the jade slip, holding it in his palm.
In the short term, being unable to enter world fragments didn't matter.
At worst, he could use the Wizard Civilization's high-level puppet arts as a stopgap.
Research wouldn't stop.
Experiments could still continue.
For now, he didn't plan to reach the sky in a single step.
Just completing the first half—merging the five-hundred-kilometer true body completely into the Inner World to escape the current predicament of restricted movement—was enough. As for the later steps of Inner World projection, law projection, and truly concentrating a world into a body of mere feet...
He could cultivate them slowly.
Jie Ming slowly stood up.
Before the white jade pavilion, countless jade slips returned to silence.
He looked down at the "Mustard Seed Contains the Dao True Body Art" in his palm, a long-lost anticipation appearing in his eyes.
It seemed that for a long time to come, he would have plenty to do.