Truth be told, the X-Men's family drama was low on his list of cosmic concerns.
The first order of business was far more mundane: returning the car he'd borrowed to the man he'd met on that strangely pleasant first day at the restaurant. Even a cosmic interloper has to mind his manners; extorting a simple man leaves a bad taste in your mouth no amount of divine energy can wash away.
With that done, speaking about tastes, he bought a bag of snacks ~ indulgent, greasy things that made his biological body sigh in ways his old soul never could ~ and took the scenic way home. Instead of simply bending space or teleporting ~ which always feels so abrupt, like skipping the process ~ he chose to fly.
In the middle of all the cosmic revelations and growth, I always forget I am not in a race.
He propelled himself through the air, manipulating forces around his body to push at the absolute limit of what this new, fragile form could withstand.
There's something to be said for feeling the rush of air and the push of minor shockwaves against your skin, unprotected by any Qi barrier. It's different from riding a sword in my cultivation days. Maybe it's the way a biological body perceives the world - the hormonal rush, the neural fireworks - versus the soul simply feeling it.
It reminds you you're alive in some way. Things my past life would consider miraculous and impossible seemed ordinary, while ordinary feels ... extraordinary and precious here.
The taste of unhealthy street food, the exhaustion after a day of honest work of .... island building, the idea of sleep, the simple warmth of a shared smile with a mortal stranger, driving a car, using old timey infotainment, music systems that felt like archaeology.
But concept of internet only just began recently nothing there to explore on.
****
But he wasn't just joyriding.
He used the journey to visit a few... let's call them 'research facilities.' ~ some public, some tucked behind enough security to deter curious gods.
Scientific labs and hidden centers where they poked and prodded at the mutant question and other magical things. He wanted to verify his theories blurring line between two seperate fields. Interestingly enough field of biology is miles ahead of any other fields, just shy of military technologies.
I needed to see for myself how the activation of the rare alpha mutant - gene transcipt the unknown portions in DNA strands, and how that compared to the rarer, more esoteric powers that are clearly fueled by magic.
Comparing his predictions to the wild mutant powers and their X gene activation trail he theorized. He is basically at 99.999% certainity now.
***
It was on the return leg of this trip that he felt it ~ a shift within. A tremor rippled through his internal universe. His scope of Creation energy jumped to 74 miles.
My internal world, that self-sustaining universe inside me, had achieved another layer of complexity, another Sanskrit domain. The cosmic template I'd recreated was refining itself, and with each cycle, the scope of my own existence subtly expanded. The well of creation energy I could draw from grew just a little deeper.
But progress often comes with instability. As the refinement hit a critical threshold, the structure of his meal ~ the template universe energy stream he was using began to destabilize faster than he could refine when unfrozen even a small segment.
The stones themselves, the anchors of reality, began to fracture. He felt the annihilating energy start to bloom from within the sphere, a chain reaction ready to eat the almost entire structures and powers into oblivion.
With a mental sigh, he froze the entire process. Just stopped it cold.
Well, there's my next project, I thought. It looks like understanding those stones ~ I'd 'borrowed' from the TVA ~will have to move to the top of the list, right after I finalize an optimized mortal shell for myself and my companions.
"One project at a time," he muttered. "Body first. Stones later."
The super -flight did sent out measurable shockwaves, alerting defensive war systems across multiple continents. It was nice, that Nations just lost few Nukes to play around with amidst cold war tensions otherwise this would have escalated.
Even invisible as he was, he'd made a ripple.
So, he did the prudent thing. Mid-Pacific, stopped flying and simply teleported the rest of the way home. No sense leaving a energy trail straight back to my front door.
For a few frantic minutes, NORAD and Soviet Air Defense forces went to their highest alert, fingers hovering over buttons, each convinced someone or the other had launched an undetectable first-strike weapon.
The trail vanishing without a trace over the Pacific only deepened the paranoia, fueling a top-secret, multi-billion-dollar hunt for a ghost.
***
## Retreat
A little time passed.
The island remained undisturbed beneath the makeshift barrier he had erupted; no one had come to poke around. As he stepped within, the cold mountain air brushed his skin, a sharp contrast to the salt winds of the coast. He paused, closing his eyes to listen to the rhythmic pulse of the deep ocean.
He spent the day sightseeing his own creation on foot. He moved like a gardener across a private canvas, spreading seeds and rare flora he had gathered from the corners of the globe. Crimson flowers from volcanic slopes took root in the black, adamantine-rich rock; pale blossoms from Himalayan valleys bowed in the sea breeze, and a strange silver vine from the Amazon shimmered faintly under the sun.
The ecological cycles were already waking up. The soil trapped the sun's heat, the central mountain snagged the passing clouds, condensing moisture into the first true rainfall. Sea creatures, sensing the nutrient-rich upwelling, began to congregate around the once-empty reef, and the low-flying birds were finally granted entry through his shroud.
Changing his armor for casual wear he'd picked up along the way, he felt the breeze against his skin and the stars above. Just shy of the beach, along the green he sat - legs wide without any pretense.
He felt a peace that had been an impossible dream in his first life. Back then, living in the grit of the city amidst the race for survival and buzz, even a weekend at a beach was a luxury.
Now, he owned the horizon.
The sun was a swollen, golden-orange sphere dipping toward the waterline, casting long, honey-colored shadows across the radial valleys. His divine sense captured the vision of distant star being slowly shadowed by planet at foot.
Everything within feels so close to him. The atmosphere was so clear that as the light faded, the first stars pricked through the indigo zenith like quiet witnesses. The clouds were feathered in shades of bruised plum and burning rose - a perfect balance of color.
He mused on how humans would envy him if they could perceive the full spectrum as he did.
But in the midst of this perfection, a solitary, melancholic melody with a trace of graceful hymn may be....began to drift through his mind. It was a theme drawn from distant memories, unbidden confusing him what's being reminded of, until he saw the vision followed soon after, accompanied by flashes of a purple face on a makeshift porch.
He recognized the resemblance to that "retirement" and felt a flicker of irony. Shaking his head to keep from ruminating on the comparison, he simply snapped his fingers - not to erase life, but to hum along to the rhythm of his own world.
As the light died, he turned from the sunset and walked back toward his castle.
***
Back on his remote island, secure within his domain, he finally retreated to his meditating space. As soon as he sat down, a flood of inferred analysis from the Soul Library of Heavenly Paths filled his mind, centered on one pressing question:
How should I proceed with having a physique, mutant or whatever else?
His priority was a form that mirrors his soul's innate appearance, a conduit designed to interface with both magical and mutant circuits, letting his adaptive physiology handle the messy integration. Why not do it until now?
The delay stemmed from a fundamental problem: his soul's architecture was foreign to this reality, which prevented him from accessing mutant powers or any cosmic powers even if he had his body figured out.
A body was easy. A body was assembly. A body is just... fake.
The problem was his soul; for the soul is a conduit for channeling abilities. He couldn't just replace it.
Foreign architecture. Incompatible metaphysics. His very essence lacked the ports this universe used to channel power. Local souls were elegantly modular. His was unified yet layered. A perfect organism in the wrong ecosystem.
The Consciousness
The Phoenix energy he'd restored was no help. It was a hungry, incomprehensible force, devouring chaos and faith energy with no output. Introduce a human genome to it, however, and it would amplify and translate it - a tantalizing, useless clue for his needs.
So, he turned his focus to the locals of earth. Every being here has a soul that's a tangible, metaphysical energy, distinct from the body. And under Eternity, it seemed there was a strange equality - a universal limit imposed, making every human soul nearly identical in its fundamental essence.
How do they channel power? he wondered, his focus sharpening.
The answer, it seemed, was consciousness. A layered, almost bureaucratic structure but emerging from indeterminable chaos:
The Psyche: The raw "I," the pattern of self and personality that operates on the Astral Plane. It's a spectral form that persists after death, but it's... empty, without memory. It can grow on its own feeding of psionic energy and with memories. It is all there is; others all are supporting structures for existence.
The Moral Imprint: This isn't human morality, but a fundamental energetic alignment - the weights of empathy and conscience. It's the compass that soulless beings lack.
The Ego Shell (Homunculus): The Psyche and Moral Imprint fuse to this bridge. It's the psychic container that houses memories and allows the Psyche to maintain individuality, serving as the metaphysical body in the Astral Realm. It's the crucial link that binds consciousness to a physical form.
These three together constitute the Mind. And the Spirit is the term for both the Soul and the Mind. The Soul itself is just the core life force - the battery, the life Qi - that animates the whole structure, connecting it to the multiverse's Life Field.
It exists in the Astral Plane, anchored by a Silver Cord. That's how magicians project themselves, and why demons treat souls like currency - they're harvesting the emotional resonance.
Everything so fragile and ordered.
Wonderful.
Architecture of my spirit
And that was where his problem lay. His architecture was… in reverse.
Before reaching Martial Ancestor, his memories slept within the Soul Core. But the adaptive integration of his body and spirit elevated everything. Mind crystallized into a unified Ego. His physical body cultivated a technique to fuse with this spirit, forming the very astral dimension that housed his internal universe.
His life level let his spirit soul transcend the need for both astral and material planes. His Mind was a unified, monolithic whole - his complete Ego, a constellation of brilliant, incomprehensible light points containing everything he was.
His Soul, however, was layered. The Soul Core, and above it, the Saint Soul Spirit, a refined essence containing the entire memory of his Internal World - every grain of it.
So, how do I douse my own foreign, monolithic consciousness in a higher form of energy - Psionic energy - I don't fully understand?
He'd been exposed to it, but his mind shield severed any real connection, leaving the energy to float freely in his consciousness field, harmless and useless.
That was his roadblock. To build a body that works here, he didn't just need a shell. He needed to tether his foreign soul into the local system.
He needed a bridge.
A way to tether his foreign soul to the local metaphysical systems ~ to mimic an Ego Shell and Silver Cord so psionic flow knew where to go.
Pondering this, he dissipated his current template body to avoid the maintenance hassle. The domain shifted back to the heavenly world to breathe spiritually, while the barrier outside continued feeding on his power.
He was back in his internal world, a Qi soul running experiments ~ one part of him testing soul interactions with Psionic and Phoenix energy remnants, another part exploring the depths of his own consciousness.
***
Long hours of meditation followed by self introspection.
Time passed.
Eight months passed in this retreat of constant "what-if" analysis and flaw correction via the Library of Heavenly Paths.
Outside, he watched research vessels pass 200 miles south, scavenging orbital debris, oblivious to his existence.
Eventually, he found a thread to pull.
The mind shield... I can't turn it off by intent alone. He tried a risky gambit, employing creation energy to copy his conscious self.
It failed ~ for the first time.
So, he went back to his roots.
There is a process of creating a high-level clone body in the Draconic Ruins world, bodies that are consciously aware of what they are and what must be done ~ sentient, but could also house the spiritual form of ancestor-level souls within, in case of unaccounted situations...
Similarly, there are numerous ones in the Source World, named the Evil Spirit Creation Method and so on. Since they have to adhere to the ability of the cultivator, it can form or even replace the soul and duplicate the consciousness of the one inside. Even he had to appreciate it; evil or whatever, whoever created that was brilliant.
He split the techniques and extracted the previously hidden spirit creation method from it ~ a very high application of it. He refined it over and managed to first create a sentient energy field. Basically, apply it to any object and it will become self-aware.
Returning back to his self outside, he looked around. He took a rock in his hand and applied the same with his divine energy.
In moments, a thought echoed in his mind. "What am I?" It was in a language of thought, not abstract.
The results varied with the energy used. One, infused with his Annihilation Divine Dao, simply exploded in his hand as is its instinct.
Now I know what to do. Excited first, he shifted the rules of reality a little bit native to here's own, adding to the previous.