Jin picked up the manual Bao Kun had given him — a treatise on the Intent Reformation first devised by the Star Shattering Emperor.

The text spoke of two grand divisions: The Art of Expansion (Kai Rou Pian) and The Art of Refinement (Lian Rou Pian).

The Art of Expansion (Kai Rou Pian)

The first reformation focused on the principle of growth through evolution.
Its foundation lay in the Rebirth of Sinew, a technique inspired by beasts capable of developing new muscle fibers even after birth.

By circulating intent and vital energy through the Sinew Meridian, practitioners could awaken dormant essence within the flesh, compelling the body to birth new fibers and thus expand its capacity for strength.

The second technique, The Million Nerve Accord, refined the bond between body and upper dantian. It strengthened the conduits through which willpower traveled, allowing the practitioner’s intent to flow seamlessly into the body. With this art, even the faintest thought could summon precise, overwhelming motion — each impulse sharp, deliberate, and absolute.

The final method of expansion was the Heavenly Alignment Pattern.
Muscles, the text explained, were composed of two essential parts — a hook and a rope. The hook grasped the rope and drew it inward through contraction. When these hooks worked outside their optimal range, their power waned.

The Heavenly Alignment Pattern trained the practitioner to regulate this range with intent, ensuring that every contraction occurred at its most efficient point. The result was perfect alignment — each motion resonating in harmony, each strike reaching its maximum potential.

The Art of Refinement (Lian Rou Pian)

Where expansion sought growth, refinement pursued condensation.
It consisted of two complementary techniques: Filling of the Empty Grain and The Grain-Shrinking Method.

Filling of the Empty Grain was built on the realization that each muscle contained countless smaller arrays — the very hooks described in the Heavenly Alignment Pattern. Through focused intent and controlled Fire Qi, these inner fibers could be compacted into a tighter space, allowing more hooks to coexist within each strand. The denser the arrangement, the greater the strength per measure of flesh.

The second technique, the Grain-Shrinking Method, addressed the limits imposed by the human form. A body could hold only so many of these flesh arrays before reaching saturation. This art refined the cellular structure itself — reducing wasted space, optimizing each micro-array, and allowing more of them to fit within the same physical boundaries. By reaching the end of the manual Jin was in shock. He was shocked by how diverse and synergistic the body was.

He was also shocked by the depth of the reformation arts, it felt as though the art had accounted for every minor array within the body.

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The shack was silent but for the low hum of gathered energy.
The single oil lamp flickered uncertainly, its flame bending toward Jin as though drawn by the heat pulsing from his body. His skin glowed faintly crimson, the mark of energy compressed beyond safety.

He sat cross-legged in the center of the room, bare-chested, the Intent Reformation Manual open before him — its pages darkened with age, its diagrams faintly alive under the touch of intent.

Jin exhaled once, slow and steady. Then he began.

The Art of Expansion — Kai Rou Pian (開肉篇)

He guided his consciousness inward. His body unfolded before him like a universe of red-gold threads.

Rebirth of Sinew came first.
Intent and qi surged together, coursing through his meridians like molten metal. His muscles trembled, tearing open and reknitting as new fibers bloomed in their place. Each rupture came with a jolt of pain so sharp it blurred his vision — yet every tear brought new life.

He could feel himself growing — each fiber denser, each contraction more absolute. His skin strained to contain the storm beneath it, faint steam curling from his arms.

Next came the Million Nerve Accord.
Lightning crackled behind his eyes as his nervous system awakened. Intent threads wove through the delicate network of nerve pathways, reforging their flow. Every sensation sharpened — he could feel the pulse of air against his pores, the slow stretch of his heartbeat, the electric whisper of thought turning to motion.

For a brief instant, he was his body — every impulse, every flicker of energy, every breath perfectly aligned.

Then came the Heavenly Alignment Pattern.

He visualized the countless microscopic “hooks and ropes” that made up his muscles. With intent as his guide, he forced them into harmony — each contraction tuned to the narrow band where strength reached its peak.
The pain shifted. It no longer tore him apart; it pressed inward, as if heaven itself was sculpting his body from within.

A low hum filled the shack — the resonance of flesh and will in perfect unity.

The Art of Refinement — Lian Rou Pian (煉肉篇)

Without pause, Jin advanced to the next stage.
Expansion without refinement was chaos — a beast’s strength trapped in mortal form. Refinement would condense that chaos into something enduring.

He centered his intent around the first technique — Filling of the Empty Grain.
His awareness sank deeper, past muscle and blood, to the microscopic lattices of his flesh. There, each fiber appeared as a cluster of tiny luminous grains. With focused will, he compressed them — compacting the structure until the grains merged seamlessly.

The pain was different now — not explosive, but suffocating.
Each breath felt like dragging iron chains through his lungs.
Still, he persisted, driving the process forward. The fibers compacted further, the gaps between them closing until they became a single seamless weave. The density of his flesh multiplied — strength rising not by addition, but by unity.

Then came the Grain-Shrinking Method.
Jin turned his focus to the cellular level — the smallest units of his being. His intent brushed against each one, folding it inward, compressing it without crushing it. The structures inside — the organelles, the spiraling cores of energy — tightened and reorganized, growing smaller but infinitely more efficient.

The agony was indescribable.
Quadrillions of cells screamed in chorus as they were dismantled and reforged. He felt his body buzzing under the pressure, like molten glass trying to retain its shape. Every part of him — every atom — seemed on the verge of collapse.

He could not tell whether minutes or days had passed.

Then came the tribulation.

The Pain of Defiance

The temperature dropped sharply. The flame in the lamp guttered out, leaving only Jin’s own glow to illuminate the shack.
The heavens had noticed.

A deep, invisible pressure descended, filling the air with the weight of judgment.
The boards beneath him creaked and split. Dust lifted from the floor, suspended in the stillness before the storm.

Then it struck.

An impossible force crashed through him. Every fiber, every cell, every atom convulsed — broken down into raw matter. His consciousness fragmented, pulled apart into a billion threads of awareness.

He could feel it — each cell being dismantled, its components rearranging, the walls of reality bending to accommodate new design. Pain beyond measure swept through him, but beneath it all was understanding:
He was rewriting what it meant to be alive.

Through the haze of agony, Jin held onto a single thought — his intent.
He anchored his will in the heart of destruction, weaving through the chaos, shaping it, commanding it to rebuild. Slowly, agonizingly, the storm subsided. The pressure lifted.

Jin finally regained his bearings and opened his eyes, the light of day graced him through the gaps of the shack. Every sensation felt far more real than ever before. His body had changed to an unprecedented degree. Every cut and curve felt as though they had been chiseled by a master craftsman.

The feeling of movement itself had changed completely, he could feel almost every muscle in each movement. Each step brought forth an unreal sense of flow, as though his movements were akin to water flowing through a river. He felt as though he could wield his halberd without even drawing on momentum.

Jin could feel an unprecedented degree of perfection. As though this was truly the height of quality one could reach. Although he could still develop his strength by increasing the mass of his musculature that would only be a quantitative change. Instinctually he understood the limit he had reached 'The limit of flesh, the foundation has reached its limit. The only way to grow further was to change the building blocks themselves'.