From within the heart of the temporal array, the two women emerged ~ serene, focused, and luminous with restrained anticipation. Their energy is overflowing from within slightly. Their final internal refinement was complete standing at the peak of their realm. The moment had come.
Without a word, they stepped into the tribulation array ~ an ancient formation encoded with stabilizing vectors and law-absorbing runes - now modified by Han Chen himself for the rare chance that two cultivators might attempt a synchronized breakthrough. The tribulation will only come once, but strength is doubled. The sky above, though artificial within the array, shimmered with an uneasy stillness, like breath held before a storm.
They sat down in perfect symmetry, facing each other, lotus-positioned, and began chanting the scriptures of the Radiant Lotus Canon ~ an esoteric cultivation method passed down in fragments by Han Chen. As their voices entwined, harmonic and measured, their dual yin-yang spirit roots resonated with the natural energies around them.
It began subtly.
A glow pulsed at their cores, and their ten-petaled foundation lotuses—refined through years of painstaking cultivation and combat training—began to rotate and collapse inward. Yin Qi and Yang Qi surged in arcs, intertwining, flowing through meridians with magnetic elegance. Their soul essence, physical refinement, and inner Qi converged into a vortex of balance and tension, a slow forming Yin-Yang disk—not symbolic, but real. Its edges shimmered, etched with primal law.
The moment the disk reached critical coalescence, the environment responded.
Heaven's Will had taken notice.
A ripple of invisible force spread out surrounding them. And then - the core coalesced. Not ordinary. Not even fully refined. But transcendent already with yin yang laws engraved.
A saint-grade Golden Core, half-formed and already entangled in higher-dimensional resonance, began stabilizing. Their bodies were no longer bound by normal mortal framework—they had breached the shell of a greater path. Even if their head is blown of they won't die until the core remains with essence.
Heaven responded swiftly.
The first bolt of tribulation descended—white-blue lightning laced with yin yang law-encoded punishment. It struck like divine judgment. The second followed with deeper layered same law energy, stronger, and as it landed, the sheer force disintegrated their outer garments.
The surrounding spiritual Qi even self refined. But their bodies, tempered by sacred body refinement techniques, withstood the damage — trembling but, silvered, and glowing faintly from within.
By the third tribulation, the burden grew beyond what flesh could manage—but the array responded. Designed to share the load, it diverted the excess energy and rerouted it into secondary circuits. That allowed both cultivators to receive not just punishment—but baptism. The physical gates within the body rapidly channeled their essence as per Han Chen's silent instructions, increasing the endurance and strength of body with the restrained and mild energy from array.
Law energy flooded them. Their cores, previously embryonic, now swelled with energy density, echoing the pure signature of law alignment. They began to wield fragments of law directly—not as insight, but as authority. The derivative laws have already been transcended.
Then came the fourth and fifth layers: higher-level Law Tribulations, each one testing their comprehension of the laws and baptizing soul preparing for the final one. Gravity, motion, entropy, harmony—these derivative forces were no longer abstract. They became effortless to grasp, as if they had always known.
Finally, the most dangerous struck—the Soul Tribulation.
Their convictions were laid bare. Their deepest fears surfaced in spectral illusions. The memory of helplessness, of loved ones dying, of futures lost—played in brutal waves. But both women, forged in adversity by Han Chen's previous illusion training, held steady eventually. Their wills flared like celestial swords. Their souls burned, not in destruction ~ but in purification. It was not ecstasy they felt but a numb sensation passing through them. When the storm ended, their souls had grown — not just brighter, but denser. Sharper.
Their bodies bore scars, faint traces of where the heavenly lightning had seared them. But before even a breath could pass, the scars closed. They learned how to wipe away the energy of the laws from the wound on their own. Their lifeforce now moved with law-bound precision, restoring flesh and essence in harmony and Physcial gates of body cultivation rapidly stabilized their strength and control.
What stood in place of who they were… was twentyfold in strength.
Their spiritual senses expanded, encompassing nearly fifty three miles from the previous few miles. The ground no longer felt like a boundary. The air, a mere medium. The law of gravity folded gently around them like silk—they no longer walked. They rose.
Unconsciously, they levitated several feet into the air, floating in silence. New understanding of how reality is structured began to surface, as if they were blind to such common sense before.
Then came the realization. They looked at one another, then pointed downward—flushed instantly with color.
They were still naked.
With startled gasps and flailing limbs, they descended hastily, darting for the spare robes Han Chen had thoughtfully left nearby. Han Chen didn't understand their embarrassment. Both were perfectly okay in bed disrobing each other, but now they act as little maidens.
He sat beneath a pavilion nearby, reclined in a wooden lounge chair, lazily chewing on melon seeds and watching the chaos unfold with unreadable amusement in his dark eyes.
"Why didn't you warn us?!" Yue Lan's voice cracked between laughter and mortification as she yanked a robe around her trembling form.
Han Chen's shoulders lifted in a maddeningly slow shrug. "Mrs. CEO, you were deep in transcendence, lost in those sensations. Would've been cruel to interrupt ~ even my wives deserve their moments of enlightenment. Besides, it's not like I haven't already seen~"
Twin glares sliced through his words like daggers.
Finally robed and somewhat composed, though their cheeks still burned with memory, the two women stepped from the array. Their movements carried new grace, Qi flowing like still water over an endless ocean. Something ethereal had awakened in them, a subtle change that made their mortal disguises feel almost... quaint.
Transforming back into their mortal appearance effortlessly, a little aged and mild appearance, they left the world bead back to the real world. In the outside world they immediately felt the law energies hidden beneath the structure of universe in ever present fields. It was completely obvious to them just a day ago.
A day has passed since they start to adapt back to normal life. Their core stabilizes the realm gradually.
On the way from a drive around evening market, he felt domain size is growing in size beyond some threshold again and but could feel transformations unlike before began to trigger in his Golden Core. Feeling then urgency he felt, he returned back soon to help himself.
... ... ...
"Spend more time with those you cherish."
Han Chen's parting words carried weight that seemed to press against their chests. Both women felt it ~ that creeping sense of finality, of time running short like sand through an hourglass.
His Golden Core had long since shattered conventional limits ~ already refined beyond the norm for even immortal-grade core but progress? ~ it had plateaued. Not due to lack of effort, but because the very fabric of his inner space time manifold had reached an inflection point.
Within the manifold that comprised his core, the preliminary law derivatives had reached the critical Fifty-First Layer ~ a threshold theorized and uncharted for whatever its giving birth to.
Seeking solitude, Han Chen excused himself to cultivate. Han Chen didn't retreat to his world bead this time.
Instead, he abandoned Earth entirely, rising through atmosphere and exosphere until only the cold silence of space embraced him. Past planetary orbits he warped, beyond the star's radiation, seeking that perfect emptiness where reality stripped away all pretense.
Here, in the void between worlds, the dao laws revealed themselves naked and pure. Days dissolved into the cosmic dark. A week passed like a breath in enlightenment.
Then ~ breakthrough.
Heavenly Dao laws didn't just advance; they erupted past their fifty first layer thrshold in cascading waves. Laws of Creation and Destruction, Order and Chaos, Time and Space, Illusion, Alchemy, Fate, Spirit formed a cosmic symphony.
Derivative laws followed ~ elemental laws , sever , forces, probabilities, layered realities ~ each finding its perfect resonance.
His domain expanded wildly in the outside world, but his focus remained inward. His cultivation technique began to run itself as if sensing something. Perfect resonance with the great Dao.
For within his core, something unprecedented was unfolding. The laws coalesced for the final time. It was the mark of a higher transformation: the forging of Immortal Avenues, which in actual cultivation is a long way off from where he is now, but atleast it's happening to the golden core not him, besides control was not his any longer.
Primal paths took shape - avenues forming even when he hasn't even explored the final layers of laws.
The Trinity Refinement Sutra hummed through him, its ancient chant guiding the birth of deeper truths even though he was not consciously directing anything;
Dao of Truth. Dao of Form. Dao of Flow.
Dao of Opposites. Dao of Union. Dao of Return. Dao of Perception.
Energy spiraled into rebellion, beyond his control into a node — yet it obeyed the sutra's will, then submission, condensing at his core's heart where his soul anchored itself to existence.
Then ~ emergence.
For one crystalline moment, Han Chen was the Dao. Clarity beyond mortal ken flooded through him. Unity with all existence. Perception that devoured infinity itself.
The void unmanifest has no form,
No form has no limit.
Comprehension crashed over him like a tsunami as final puzzle pieces clicked into place. His soul remembered the past forgotten comprehensions. But as soon as the intended effect achieved, it was gone. Inside the golden core, a chaos and order emerged.
Within his being, a microcosmic universe born. Higher order energies transformed, degraded, restructured. Avenues branched like cosmic rivers while laws spawned derivative children and fundamental rules of physics rewrote themselves with explosive release of energy.
Elemental energies churned. Law derivatives wove into Taiji—the first duality. Yin and Yang polarized. Motion birthed structure. Form arose from the memory of shape; void preserved the essence of what was not.
As if under a conscious control, a favorable turns of event for existence happened on its own. The inner spacetime manifold folded into a shell, the void and inside that embryonic shell, elemental forces churned like the birth of a starfield. Void froze the expansion of space.
Even the surrounding cosmic void, once still and patient, now trembled as if found a sink, drawn to the growing singularity radiating from his transformed core. Void energy flowed toward him for an entire day like a gentle breeze. Space-time around his floating form began to distort, only then did Han Chen halt the absorption. The feeling of impending collapse faded.
As the inner universe started its quiet transformation in stability, he felt a feed back to his golden core which is now beyond stable as the void within it stabilizes it from inside. He finally notices his domain size which went past 1000 miles from his previous one hundredth of it. It swept past his spirit sense.
The comprehension of laws also crossed 55th layer sharply and progressing due to the after effects of enlightenment. The final traces of energy that went past the void baptized the core. Since his core was regularly refined with higher layer law energy it only trembled a bit and then greedily absorbed the essence. He felt he has crossed even the theoretical limit of golden core just like back in foundation establishment thirteenth unstable realm.
His domain gave birth to a new sensation, law field sense or law sense. The feeling is difficult to describe. It felt to him as if field asking whether he want order or chaos. His domain size is gradually increasing as if seeping all over the universe and with increasing comprehension he felt the field accelerating. It was a totally unfamiliar feeling even not from his memory. Returning to his senses, he remembered he is still in space.
Its been a week since he took a breath and started staying in the dark of space. Its time to go back.
Space folded at his will ~ not through technique or warp manipulation, but through sovereign mastery of law itself. One thought, and the cosmic void released him back to Earth's outer space, reality bending like a servant to its master's whim in a perfect sling. His mastery of law energy layers has nearly crossed the threshold for existence of this universe.