From greater heights to deeper depths.

Liang Chen closed his eyes as the arrays whirred to life around him, he could feel the energy lurking within them surging to the surface, seething violently as they twisted the air. He closed his eyes to focus, to blot out the surrounding world as he focused on himself, on his own world. And then, then came the pain.

He could feel his skin crackle and split as the lightning landed on him. His flesh burned and his blood evaporated, expanding and rupturing his veins as it tried to escape. The wind felt like icy knives sliding across his charred skin, like maggots as it crawled in through every opening it could find.

It pushed up underneath his skin, filling up empty spots that should never have been empty. His face felt bloated, like half of his head had suddenly swelled up from the thick and violent wind that crawled up through every wound it could find.

But worst of all was perhaps the water, or perhaps it just felt worse than the others because it was the one element he couldn't control on his own. The wind, the lightning, they both struck his body from the outside, they assaulted him like monsters. But the water, the water was insidious, sinister in its approach.

His open mouth, his nostrils, his ears, the edges of his eyes, it latched onto every opening it could find. It forced itself into his body, filled his throat and lungs until his chest felt like it was filled with lead. His eyes felt like they turned to mush as the water forced itself past them and filled up the bone socket around it. But worst of all was perhaps the sound, the incessant drumming reverberating through his skull as the water pierced his eardrum and pounded against the cochlea in a desperate attempt to reach his brain.

He had altered himself, his flesh and blood was a coagulation of his laws held together in the shape of a man. But the sheer vastness of the energy fueling these arrays gave them such power that they could tear through his altered body, completely ignoring the alterations he had made. Granted, he could absorb these invading elements to heal the wounds they left, but the agony remained all the same.

Was he screaming? Could he even scream with so much water flooding his lungs and throat? Liang Chen didn't know the answer to either question. All he knew right now was focus. All he saw right now was that internal image of his own brain, jiggling slightly thanks to the water's assault, and his own heart, thumping desperately as it tried to push the evaporating blood through his veins.

He was in agony, but he was composed, focused on the task ahead. And thus he knew, this agony wasn't enough. This pain, this torment, it was far from enough for what he wanted to achieve. So his energy moved, his thoughts moved. And to respond to those thoughts, the world provided the last two agonies he needed.

First out was time, ever-present and endless. It flowed all around him, surrounding him like an ocean yet flowing down set paths. He tugged on the paths, called in the ocean. Here was a being trying to go against it, here was a being exempt from the paths it had set down. So come, come and punish this being.

And punish him it did. Like a vengeful snake it coiled around him, tied itself around him like a knot as it tried to drag him down the stream of time. Charred flesh healed, cracked skin stitched itself back together, wound after wound becoming a gnarled scar. But the scars were only temporary, they aged so fast that they quickly vanished, his skin turning dry and wrinkled.

From dust he was born and to dust he would return, that was the decree of time as it dragged him along. Wrinkled skin faded to white, dried flesh slid off the bone, aged bones turned to dust before any lightning or wind could harm them. To dust he would return, but from dust he would rise. The very time that returned him to dust was then used to restore the arm it took, bones, flesh, veins, all of it growing back so that it could be returned to dust once more.

And lastly, was void. The nothingness that was the end, the nothingness that signalled the beginning. It was nowhere, and yet it was everywhere, locked away from the rest of the world, a veneer that was both as thin as paper yet as sturdy as metal separating the two. Liang Chen reached out to that veneer, that silken sheet he saw all around him. And he tore it apart like a piece of wet paper, welcomed the nothingness of the end and the beginning.

Did it make a sound as reality tore? Did the world groan and creak from the strain? Or did the eerie silence leaking out from that eye-like tear drown everything else? Once again, Liang Chen had no answer, he only had agony.

But perhaps amusingly enough, the void was the kindest of the agonies, the gentlest. There was no pain, no soul-rending horror that could make him scream. There was only silence, a despondent silence that was born from nothingness and brought nothingness. What it touched simply vanished, it faded from existence as if it had never existed. It brought with it the peace of nothingness and the despair of oblivion. Gently, painlessly, equally.

From nothingness, all was born, and to nothingness, all must return, such was the decree of the void. But it was from this very nothingness that Liang Chen was formed, it was he who commanded it, who decided what would and would not return to nothingness. And it was he who was exempt from it, the very void that gave him oblivion giving him peace as it returned what it took.

He was born. In the lightning that tore him apart, he was born. In the wind that cut him up, he was born. In the water that drowned him, he was born. In the time that dragged him to his final end, he was born. In the nothingness that spoke of oblivion, he was born. They killed him, and so he was born. He was born, and so they killed him. That was Liang Chen, the lord of the storm, its eternal victim and its eternal deity.

But to him, this death was only surface level. It scratched the surface but never ventured to the depths, the death never reached the core. And so, the core would never be born, it could not be born without death, and it could not die without being born. Now, now it was time for death to reach the core, it was finally time for it to be born.

That death lurking on the surface, he dragged it down with him into the depths, forced it away from its home and pulled it towards the core. It was indiscriminate so the death followed him eagerly, tore up and birthed equally as it pierced deeper and deeper.

Through the skin. Through the flesh. Through the veins. Through the bones. It dug deeper and deeper, followed the beckoning so that it could reach the core and grant it death, grant it life. And when it reached that untainted core, it brought with it life and death, it brought with it a loss of control.

The brain, the first of Liang Chen's targets. It controlled everything that went on in the body, it was responsible for everything. And now it was dying, twisting and fading thanks to death, flashing and growing thanks to life.

The occipital lobe was the first to fade, taking Liang Chen's sight with it. The senses he was using to inspect his insides vanished and darkness swallowed everything. His brain was getting eaten so his senses and body were forced to pay the price. But luckily, Liang Chen had a part of himself that didn't rely on his brain, his soul. So when his senses failed him, his soul rose up to fill the gaps, displaying his brain so that he could keep eating it.

Dull pinkish and faintly red brain matter faded and disappeared, striking grey flooding in to replace it. The grey matter moved like liquid, it occupied the empty space and moulded itself into a replica of what had been lost. Brain matter, blood vessels, nerve fibres, all of it rose up one by one to replace what had been lost. And as they were born, they connected themselves to the rest of the brain to bring death, to bring birth.

The parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the cerebellum, they were closest to the occipital lobe so now it was their turn to die. One processed sensory information, one processed memories and auditory information, and the final processed balance and coordination. As they died, so too did the sensation of the earth against Liang Chen's body. Hot or cold lost all meaning to him, his tongue felt like nothing more than a lump of wood in his mouth.

His memory also started getting affected, it felt like they were fading one by one as the temporal lobe died. His first kiss, his first kill, the joy he felt when he received his 5th birthday present, the sorrow he felt when his sister died. One by one they felt like they were getting more distant, less important. But where his mind forgot, his soul remembered. The burning pain. The agony of helplessness.

The wrath... oh how it remembered the wrath. Flames burning within, lurking within the depths to hide, but always there nevertheless. They flickered and roared now more than ever. Things he couldn't forget, things he weren't allowed to forget, things that no one was allowed to take from him. Now they were all fading one by one, and he burned as a result. In wrath he saved them, in wrath he maintained them, with wrath he punished himself for almost letting them fade.

His soul also maintained his clarity, it didn't allow him to forget what he was doing, what he was holding back above. He lost his balance and fell to the side as his cerebellum faded, but compared to everything else it could only be considered insignificant. Since death reached his cerebellum it also reached his brain stem, his heart rate turning irregular as his clogged lungs stopped even trying to work.

But he didn't even have a brain right now so what need did he have for oxygen, what need did he have for a beating heart or breathing lungs? Right now, the very same energy that was killing him was the only reason he was alive, his body took whatever energy it needed directly from them. And in doing so, what was lost was replaced, the already altered nervous system in the spinal cord connecting with the slowly altering brain stem.

Brain matter faded, colours faded, replaced by striking grey. Death faded, replaced by birth. Distant memories, faded emotions, the sensation of earth beneath him and the air around him, one by one they returned as death faded. And as death faded from one part, it moved on to the next.

The frontal lobe, the final piece of the first core. Luckily, the frontal lobe was a bit less, if that was even possible, important than the others. It mainly handled cognitive skills such as impulse control, emotions, memories, and a bit of motor function. One by one they faded as the frontal lobe died, but one by one they were kept intact by his soul as his brain slowly reformed itself.

At this point, his brain was just about done. The different lobes had all been altered and the connection with his spinal cord was now perfect, that which had faded and died had all been returned and born again. He didn't know how much time had passed in the outside world, time wasn't a concept that existed to him as he tortured himself like this. But no matter how much time had passed, it was time to move on to the second core.

The death that had ravaged his brain sank deeper into the depths, passed through flesh and bone, throat and ribs, finally settling around the heart. It hammered to push evaporating blood through ruined veins, thundered to deliver oxygen to a newborn brain. But in death it fell silent, in birth it would be quiet.

He deliberately chose to do his brain before his heart. The heart pumped blood around your body to send oxygen and nutrients to the rest of your body, the brain above all. But now? Now his brain no longer needed oxygen, all it needed would be one of the elements that formed it.

But in the end, the heart still served as another centre of the body. All the veins connected to it, all the blood flowed through it. As long as his heart wasn't altered, the blood flowing through it, the veins connecting to it, all of them had to be careful so that they didn't ruin it. Once the heart was ruined, even if he didn't need one, it would heavily impact the flow of energy in his body, it would become sluggish and unstable as his blood stopped flowing.

Death swallowed his heart, the beating of life falling silent as fresh red slowly gave way to striking grey. He could feel his body thrum. His veins were humming as his heart changed, their source, their core, was finally becoming a place they could connect to fully.

Liang Chen kept going, more and more veins humming joyfully. His blood felt like it was seething more violently than the death that assaulted him. Soon it would be complete, soon it would be able to flow freely, as wildly as it wanted. And then, then Liang Chen completed altering his heart, a familiar thud ringing out from his chest. But that thud served as a signal, it was the bell tolling for doom.

His veins suddenly flared to life with energy. The power gathered in the arrays around him, within the stream of time around him, within the tear in reality above him, his veins voraciously sucked it all up. But rather than saying that it was his veins, perhaps it would be better to say that it was his meridians doing it. They moved within his veins, so when the source of the veins got fully altered, they too rejoiced that they could now act freely.

The meridians were the path his Qi followed, it was within them that most of his energy flowed, they were the ones who had to show the most restraint when it came to his unaltered heart, but now there was no more need for that restraint. There was no mention of altering them in the original Ocean God's Physique, but Liang Chen had gone ahead and altered them when he first noticed that they remained unchanged even after he altered his veins. They were a semi-conceptual thing, but he had been able to alter his soul so doing his meridians was simple.

As a result of doing this, the speed at which his Qi flowed had drastically improved, he could call it forth practically instantly. In fights between people of the same level, this was a massive advantage that could easily turn the tide. It was also useful to him in battles against those stronger than him, it helped him keep up with the speed they got from forcing out their energy as fiercely as possible.

But now he would learn why the original technique didn't include the meridian, and he would have to learn it with his own body.

The energy drawn in by the meridians was far too much for his veins to bear, it spilt out and flooded the rest of his body without his permission or control. But his meridians simply kept on drawing in more energy, bringing death and birth to everything that was Liang Chen. His intestines, his lungs, his kidneys, the organs he had purposefully left aside for now were assaulted one by one, altered one by one in ways they shouldn't be, ways that didn't align with the Ocean God's Physique.

The Ocean God's Physique altered your body, transformed it into one formed by pure elements. But did this turn you into an Elemental, a Demonic beast formed when a certain element gained sentience? The answer was no, turning a man into a Demonic beast wasn't something done so easily, not even taking in a bloodline could do that.

So what separated a man from an Elemental? In this case, the answer was the meridians. They were the shackles, the anchor that kept you from going all the way into the Elemental territory. They were a thing very few people would ever get in contact with, and even fewer would ever find a way to alter them in some way.

But Liang Chen had come in contact with them, and using his experience with his soul he had been able to alter them. And thus, that final shackle, that anchor that should have kept him as a man, or whatever he was counted as, was removed. Had he not changed his meridians, they would not draw in as much energy as they did now, they would not spill out so much energy that the rest of his organs were forcibly altered ahead of schedule. Nor would he have to suffer the consequences of the complete altering.

But it was already too late to talk about what he could have avoided by doing things differently in the past, now it was time to pay the price. The overflowing energy conquered all his organs, forced them to conform to the state that the rest of his body was in. And then, when the last of his organs, even his Dragon Lotus, was altered, the time to pay came.

What was an Elemental? It was a mass of elemental Qi that had gained sentience and cobbled itself together, forming a core that kept it from dispersing and returning to the elements. But Liang Chen had no such core, he was just a mass of elements held together by a technique he had stopped following.

And with nothing to hold him and his elements together, the only fate left for him was to drift apart. It was as if he was melting, flesh and skin that continuously changed between his various elements slid off of his body, turning into droplets that rose into the sky one by one. Bit by bit he fell apart, returning to the elements that formed him, a piece to the wrathful lightning, a piece to the quiet water, a piece to the drifting wind, a piece to the flowing stream of time, a piece to the endless void.