Of course, this method of creating an entirely new body made out of runes was not without its own challenge. For one thing, it required him to stuff his body full of millions of runes in just a day or two. He was fortunate that drawing them inside his own body would temporarily shield them from the Dragon power as long as they were inactive, but he still needed to complete everything before he was forced to use his time warps and undo all of his progress.
Forget about a rune every hour, he would need to be able to draw hundreds of them every second. A daunting task, but far from impossible, especially now that he had a veritable lake of mana at his disposal. He only needed to practice his control to the extreme.
A more fundamental problem was designing what the runes would do. He needed to build a new body he would be comfortable living with for the foreseeable future. The heavens would greatly enhance it through Nirvana, but he needed to lay down the foundation for it to be perfected. He had already given up in making his runic body equal his mortal body in all ways, preferring to focus on nailing the few abilities he desperately desired.
On earth, it had been trivial to construct a machine that hit harder than any creature on the planet. There were plenty of vehicles that traveled a thousand times faster than the fastest animal, another that was infinitely agile or precise, or telescopes that could see better than any other eye. However, it was almost impossible to make something that equaled nature's design in all ways.
He did not care about being strong, he did not care about being fast, and he certainly did not care about being handsome. In truth, he only really cared about two things. One was to escape, and the other was to pursue the Tao in peace.
He wanted to be free to pursue his ambitions in peace, like a leaf in the wind, able to flow with the current, not fighting against the world but going along with it, a ghost that no one could catch.
This was the general theme according to which he designed his future body. To be able to avoid any harm, any disturbances and complications without worrying about anything, able to witness the magnificent world and Tao without interfering or being interfered with.
Following the old adage of “less is more”, Avery dismissed every other strength a normal immortal body should have. He did not make it strong, fast or agile, regenerating or invulnerable. In many areas, he barely even matched the physique of an average mortal. He only made it adaptable, able to withstand anything, and fit in everywhere. There were only two notable exceptions to this.
The first was a pair of wings. A pair of simple, intangible wings that could appear on his back at will and with very little effort.
A fallen leaf flowing in the wind had not truly reached detachment, for without a way of guiding his movements, then the tumultuous elements would simply become another prison. He needed not fight against the world, but he had to be able to guide and choose the current he chose to follow, so that the world would propel him ever forward, like a sailboat taking advantage of the capricious winds.
He did not design his wings to be extremely fast or give them a ridiculous carry weight. He only had one wish, and that was for them to have an infinitesimally small energy requirement, and cause as little disturbance as possible. He wanted to make sure that no matter the situation, he would always be able to use them, and never again be stranded in an abyss again.
The second was a pair of eyes to study and change the world. The eyes were the windows to the soul, and to the Tao.
His right eye would reflect the moon, and through the power of extreme yin, it would become an all devouring black hole of knowledge and energy.
The mechanics of how it worked was very complicated, but the results were very straightforward. It would simply create an immense spiritual suction force, accumulating knowledge and energy at a terrifying rate, albeit in a very disorganized manner. This was meant to complement his Dao vision, gathering and storing all of the information he needed so that he could easily digest it with his Dao vision.
The one major drawback was that it abandoned any concept of subtlety or concealment. Any use of it would greatly disturb the laws in the areas, and any half-decent cultivator nearby would immediately sense what he was doing. This was not meant to be an ability he used everyday, but rather a tool which he could use to decipher the most profound mysteries, or to absorb energy to power his second eye.
As for his left eye, it hosted extreme yang in the image of the sun, it's purpose was the opposite. Instead of absorbing the truth of the world, it would be a tool to help Avery Impose his will upon the world, in the forms of runes.
Its use was only limited by his imagination, but the functioning principle was very simple, because it was basically an enhanced version of the stylus had provided him so long ago. It served to amplify and condense his intent, so that his every rune would have world changing powers. The idea was to use runes as spells, rather than as a forging process.
If Avery carving a rune normally was like pointing a flashlight at the world, then his left eye would transform it into a deadly laser, with no theoretical power limit.
This time the drawback was a fraudulent energy expenditure. He had focused on precision and limitless scaling, so the energy requirements were insane. It would be okay if it was just a normal rune written on a sword, though at that point he would still be better off simply using his finger as usual.
Unfortunately, the energy expenditure grew exponentially, so if he wanted to become a wizard casting spells around indiscriminately, the only way would be to first use his right eye to power it.
To be honest, he was not too attached to the sun’s eye. Tracing runes with his fingers was more than enough for him, and his fantasies of being a magician did not excite him anymore. The primary purpose of this eye was to function as his twin opposite, to balance yin and yang, so that the powers of both were maximized. One received and the other projected, and under the blessing of the sun and moon, their powers were multiplied.
Of course, all this was still at a very rudimentary stage, as he had barely started designing the blueprint, much less practice actually drawing so many minuscule runes at a breakneck speed. This was just another project of his, a new practical application of his cultivation.
Getting to the point that he could engrave so many runes in a short time frame would require nothing but practice, but actually choosing the runes he had to draw and arranging them together so that they formed a complete body suitable for life was the real challenge.
Technically, he could be content to draw a single rune and call it his new body, but such a simplistic body would not let him actually do anything, and he would end up worse off than if he remained a mortal. To truly accomplish his goal, he needed to build himself a body suited to his needs, and for that, he needed to link up countless runes together to form a coherent whole, mimicking the trillions of cells of the human body.
The first hurdle was to choose which rune he would use. He had bought every rune the system offered, and contrary to his earlier belief, there were not 3000 runes, and they did not represent the Daos. There was an infinite number of runes that could represent anything in the five elements.
He had discovered a long time ago that runes were always composed of the same 5 strokes and their mirrored versions, arranged around a circle. He did not know what to do with this information, but now, it only took a brief period of study for him to finally understand what they meant.
Each stroke represented one of the five elements, with their two mirrored versions signifying if they belonged to yin or yang. Then, their arrangement, how each stroke linked up with each other, their size, orientation and placement would describe something in a stylistic manner, and the rune would end up having that effect.
Since everything in the world was composed of these same five elements, a rune could represent anything he could accurately describe through the five elements. They were only limited by the extent of his knowledge.
This meant that he did not need to limit to the runes he had learned about, but could design his own, and optimize them so that as a whole, they would function as a complete body. There was a lot of academic work involved in this project, but with his deep comprehension of the Tao and its laws, he was confident he could complete it in a reasonable time frame.
