Chapter 6937 My Humanity Ves could no longer keep track of the ongoing surgical procedures anymore. He had no idea whether the doctors had already begun to implant the lesser Arcis organ. This was the most risky and exotic phasewater organ out of the set. The surgeons wanted to save it for last because it had a greater chance of causing incidents than the other phasewater organs. Ves should have tried to pay close attention to this process, but his connection to reality had diminished to such an extent that he had no idea what was going on anymore! If everything went according to plan, then the surgeons should have judged that Ves was no longer in a good condition to integrate a new phasewater organ. However, he did not get the sense that the session had come to an end. His body may have projected enough apparent stability that the surgeons figured that nothing was amiss. There was also a chance that when Maria Abselon requested Ves to communicate whether he wished to proceed, he might instinctively respond in the same way as before! This was the only reasonable explanation that Ves could come up with to explain why he was about to integrate a lesser Arcis organ! His current mind state was very weird now that he thought about it. He could no longer feel his body, and his connections to his incarnations had become dampened to the point where they might not even exist anymore. Yet for whatever reason, Ves felt as if his consciousness had become unmoored from its physical anchor. He had entered a state of nothingness. Parts of his awareness were fuzzy while other parts remained razor sharp. Was this the sequelae of integrating 4 new phasewater organs in rapid succession? Ves had severely underestimated the dangers of what should have been a relatively straightforward physical operation. He still hadn't figured out for certain whether his body's phasewater concentration spontaneously increased, and where all of the phasewater was coming from. His body couldn't have possibly spawned it directly since he was still lacking a Phasewater Production System. Did it come from an external source? Impossible. He may have been paying less attention to the environment as time went by, but he was pretty sure he did not attract another lightning tribulation this time! Yet he still felt quite certain that his true body had grown while simultaneously experiencing an increase in phasewater concentration! This meant that he had to have gained a huge amount of phasewater given the scale of physical growth. It was a good thing that Ves and the Design Department had yet to complete the Defiled Light Project and the rest of his phase lord gear. He would have hated it if he completed the design and fabrication of his personalized gear, only to learn that he needed to scale them up by 30 percent, 50 percent or even 100 percent! If his true body continued to grow in size with the insertion of every new phasewater organ, then it became even more important for him to ensure his combat equipment could easily be resized. If Ves still had control over his true body, he would have scowled by this time. He truly did not like it when these unforeseen complications occurred. He was no stranger to variables, but he preferred that they happened within the range of his expectations. What now? Ves did not even know how much time had passed. His perception of time had blurred, just like the rest of reality. He had lost his frame of reference. He should have felt worried or afraid about his increasing detachment to everything. It was as if his liberation from his body caused him to care less about reality. After all, it was hard for him to muster up his feelings for a dwarf galaxy that seemed to move further and further away from his own reality. No. This was wrong. Ves tried his best to convince himself that it was normal for him to feel this way, but it was an uphill battle. He lacked the extraordinary willpower that could reshape reality around him. He felt as if he had fallen victim to an unknown phenomenon that was greater than he anticipated. What was happening? Though Ves was not able to muster up any sense of alarm or concern about his abnormal state of mind, he at least managed to direct his thoughts in the right direction by feeding into his curiosity. Whatever targeted him may be able to remove his fears and concerns, but it could not repress the infinite curiosity in his heart! As a mech designer, Ves always sought to explore new territory and break new ground! It was baked into his approach towards mech design. The moment he gave up on exploring novelty was the moment he lost his passion for his profession. Though Ves still found it difficult to develop an interest in his strange state, his boundless curiosity and desire to obtain answers prompted him to think about his situation from a different angle. He quickly formulated a few assumptions. First, the implantation surgery unknowingly initiated a ritual of evolution. Second, he was being subjected to an unknown effect that separated his consciousness from his body. Third, not a single violent lightning tribulation rained down on his body. Fourth, tribulation events did not always manifest in the form of lightning and thunder. They could also take on different forms in order to challenge a cultivator in various different ways to test if they were truly worthy to wield a new level of strength. When Ves gathered all of these clues together, he came up with an improbable but realistic-sounding possibility that they had already become entangled with a tribulation! It was this time the tribulation did not test his ability to withstand storms, but instead sought to challenge him on a mental basis. Ves thought that made sense. To use a standard lightning tribulation on a phase lord was not a challenge to this ilk was a complete waste in his opinion! Only by targeting the cultivator's weaknesses would it become more effective at testing one's piety and commitment. Since Ves was undergoing a major physical transformation, it should be logical that those who transformed to the new race would first experience a test on their mind and spirit! This was a weakness common to all phase lords and phase whales, yet many of them were still able to persist and grow stronger despite not deliberately strengthening their psyche. What if the phase lords and phase whales tempered their mentality through tribulations? If this was the case, the Red Ocean could ruthlessly cull all of the weaker unqualified phase leaders, thereby preventing them from wasting enormous amounts of resources in a small dwarf galaxy. From the moment he suspected that he had fallen into a tribulation event, Ves somehow felt as if he had pierced through an invisible veil. Though he still was not able to feel any urgency, his desire for answers kept growing. That was good. Doing something was better than doing nothing. As Ves tried to explore the nature of his current state, he kept trying to figure out what he needed to do in order to pass the current test. Right now, he felt as if his mind was floating away from his body. The disconnect between his thinking and his physical anchor kept growing worse. Now that he thought about it, this was not a good development. What would happen if he tried to reverse this pattern? Ves tried to exert his mind and will into doing so. He did his best to imagine a state where he was back in sync with his true body no matter what had changed. It was difficult for him to imagine his true body now that it had undergone implantation surgery. He knew what his previous true body was like, but now that it had replaced 1 phasewater organ and gained 3 additional ones, Ves belatedly discovered that his familiarity with his new physique had plunged! Ves felt as if he had parked a shuttle and moved away from it for a while before returning to find his vehicle had been moved from its original landing zone! This was not supposed to happen, but now that it did, complaints were pointless. What mattered was getting back to his body. In order to return to it, Ves tried his best to visualize its recently upgraded state. He thought it would have taken a lot more minutes or even hours to produce a clear result. He became completely surprised when his true body appeared in a mindscape that was no longer filled with amorphous blobs! The current state of his true body looked almost identical to the body that Ves was familiar with, but there were definitely nuances. Ves appeared to have grown in strength and height. It was difficult to identify that based on the projections alone. However, as he strengthened his awareness and conception of 'self', he faintly managed to glean more information from his true body. This was how he was able to confirm that his body had definitely grown, and by a significant margin no less! Now that Ves was able to conjure up a reflection of his true body in the current realm, he could sense that his awareness continued to improve. As he became more enthused by this development, his true body's expression shifted to convey his joy! He was making progress! Yet… after manifesting his true body in this strange realm, nothing else happened. Ves kept thinking about different subjects related to himself, yet he did not feel as if his connection to the material realm had moved closer to the old level. It was as if he was a balloon tethered to a tree. He kept whipping around in the air and could go loose at any time. If he wanted to return to safety, then he needed to find a way to reel himself back to solid ground. How? Ves contemplated several possibilities before developing a theory about this tribulation. What if he was being tested on his ability to maintain his conception of himself? What if the tribulation was designed to cull people who altered their biological forms so much that they no longer recognized their original identities? Ves seized on his latest assumptions and enthusiastically tried to center his mind around the idea he was a human being! This immediately induced a change in the current realm, but it was not one that he expected or desired! The reflection of his true body started to become increasingly more transparent. Ves could feel his connection to his physical form starting to fade. He was regressing! This was not supposed to happen! Ves immediately stopped, not because he was afraid that he would permanently become unmoored from his physical anchor, but because it did not give him new experimental data! Obviously, reversing his progress presented less new data to him than continuing to strengthen his connection to his true body. He successfully managed to stop his decline, but that did not necessarily mean he was able to move forward again. Why did he regress? He recalled that he tried to cling onto his identity as an ordinary human being. Yet the instant he tried to commit to this idea, his tether to his true body immediately began to degrade! It was such a strong reaction that it left Ves with no ambiguity that the tribulation punished him for clinging to this belief! Wait. If embracing the identity of an ordinary human being was so problematic, then what about the opposite? As his focus continued to observe the reflection of his true body, Ves began to deduce the correct way to solve this tribulation. Ves tried to be a human because he valued this identity. Yet he knew that the more his body evolved, the further it moved from its original roots. What if he began to think of himself as a human phase lord? What if he embraced the current form of his true body, which had most definitely grown tall enough to exceed the length of some small starships? What if the way to pass this tribulation was to let go of his original identity and accept that he was no longer a member of the human race? The more he thought about these questions, the more his connection with his true body began to bloom. Ves was moving in the right direction! If he wanted to ensure that his mind and spirit remained completely in sync with his abruptly transformed true body, then he needed to accept the fundamental conclusion that he was no longer human anymore! Yet… could he truly throw away his own humanity in order to feel comfortable in his own oversized skin? Was this even the right decision?