In fact, "complex" didn't even begin to describe the Republic.

Cultivators and mortals had the same base rights from birth. Then, either could gain more rights—the same in both cases—by becoming a citizen.

Citizenship was acquired by accepting serving a fifth of every year of your life in the military, which was often "paid in advance." In there, mortals were given tools to improve their minds and work in bureaucratic functions, like a learning ability upgrade.

Then, you became a political entity. As part of the Republic's political engine, you could vote for your representatives and be voted on if your clan met the requirements.

If at least seventy percent of a clan's members were citizens and their members corresponded to at least one percent of a city's population, they would run for the position of a Mayoral Clan in that city. Not could, would. There was no choice; they became part of politics regardless of their opinions. The only way to prevent that was not to let your clan grow that much or spread it over multiple cities.

Any citizen of that city could vote. The winner became the Mayoral Clan, responsible for the local bureaucracy: collecting taxes, ensuring laws were followed, and policing the city, like the executive branch of a modern government.

However, it was a double-edged sword. Of course, being in charge of the public machine gave one a measure of respect, authority, and influence. However, non-citizens of Mayoral Clans had to become citizens or be forced to leave. Moreover, the clan had to use their own economic means to run the government machine. They were expected by law to ensure some minimum parameters of governance. Failing to meet it came with consequences, though going beyond the line of duty was also rewarded.

Things only became more complex after that. Every Mayoral Clan elected a province's Senatorial Clan among them. The Republic had nothing less than nine hundred provinces, each with at least sixty major cities and many minor ones.

When a clan became a Senatorial Clan, ninety percent of their members, obligatorily their strongest, were forced out of the city they had won in. The other ten remained behind to run and protect their business. The one-fifth-of-every-year military service became two-fifths for the clansmen, including the ones who stayed behind.

Shen could only imagine how that affected struggles and schemes.

Senators—the citizens who had left the city—could decide on province-level laws by voting among themselves. It gave a Senatorial Clan a lot of power and was the primary goal of any Mayorial Clan.

The only things preventing them from becoming tyrants were that they couldn't go against Republic-level laws, couldn't enter their origin city to protect their business, and that their city of origin would be exempt from any laws they approved until the end of their current term. In other words, if they pushed too many boundaries to benefit themselves, their opponents would organize themselves to cripple their source of income, which they needed to run their public duties.

There was a careful balance between outright vengeance and politics to be played there. Many nuances, too.

Senatorial Clans then selected thirty-three of them in the entire Republic to become High Senatorial Clans. High Senators decided on Republic-level laws. Every citizen in them also had to leave their origin province to serve in the Capitol, which was inhabited exclusively by the High Senatorial Clans.

When a Mayorial Clan became a Senatorial Clan, it stopped being a Mayoral Clan. When a Senatorial Clan became a High Senatorial Clan, it also ceased being a Senatorial Clan. In both cases, new elections were called.

Finally, the High Senatorial Clans elected a single Grand Senator. It was a privilege and a sacrifice. The High Senatorial Clan who won the elections ceased being such, ending up without any political power except internally electing the Grand Senator and trying to influence their decisions. They were still forced to stay away from their hometown. And, to make matters worse, they had to pay for the costs of the daily governance of the Capitol.

The Grand Senator was the Supreme Commander of the Military and the Supreme Justice of the Judiciary. The former ensured the protection of the Republic against external threats, while the latter made sure the law was obeyed internally. The Grand Senator also had the deciding vote on the very unlikely event of a vote tying for every single citizen of the High Senatorial Clans—who were all individually High Senators. Finally, and one of its most potent political powers, it could veto any law or discussion except those about evicting him from his seat.

The Grand Senator had a lot of power, but it could also be swiftly taken away by a simple majority vote in the Senate.

It had never happened.

The Republic had only had a single Grand Senator since its inception: Carl Jones. The man either was a great leader, had established an outstanding brainwashing system in the military, or had deals in the shadows.

The most interesting part of it all was that a cultivator's power only mattered at the high-levels of the military, where mortal mind enhancement couldn't cut it anymore. In civilian politics, a mere mortal and an Ethereal Harmonization cultivator had the same voting power, and even mortals could create clans at will. Of course, people who lived for tens of thousands of years and had a mind capable of touching upon the very Laws of Reality had a significant political advantage if they wanted, but most chose not to pursue public service. They preferred to leave matters to Fate Origin cultivators or weaker beings.

Shen knew that because the antidron also contained a compilation of all political and judicial decisions in the past ten thousand years—counting from whenever the antidron was sent. The few Ethereal Harmonization cultivators who tried any insurgence were swiftly caught, prosecuted, and executed. Sometimes entire new laws had passed quickly in the Senate just to guarantee they could be killed.

Even idiots could take the hint: the Republic was fair to all—to a point. There was a clear vision that couldn't be challenged. Such a vision materialized as the political system.

If someone didn't like it, they could discuss it and share their ideas—which was one of the rights citizens, and only citizens, had. That often led to some changes, according to the records Shen received. But from the moment words became anything more, all involved were silenced with an iron fist.

That could lead to abuse, of course. It always could. Power was the multiversal language for a reason.

But from the decisions Shen randomly examined—there were too many for him to go through every single one—things looked great. There was peace, security, fairness, justice, no poverty, and a lot of individual and clan freedom. Unbelievably, a strong sense of honor had also bled from cultivators to mortals, in the best of senses: people behaved honorable so often that when a rare crime was committed—other than corruption—it shocked the entire society.

Speaking of shocked people, the Republic also had the most conservative people Shen had ever found; things had not progressed in that direction. Probably because propriety was part of the Immortal Emperor's core values.

Even then, while sexual freedom was widely frowned upon, it wasn't forbidden by law. In fact, any attempts to judicially curb lawful—even if culturally frowned upon—manifestations of any form of individuality never succeeded. And then, the ones who started the lawsuit were punished instead because trying to attack individual liberties was a crime.

Really, from what he had seen modern society cry for in social media, the only things lacking were universal suffrage—citizenship could be acquired by any, but came with a price—and societal equality.

Shen didn't care for the limitation on voting rights. He found it abhorrent that anyone could decide who would rule over other people without having to do anything to earn that right. Even letting mortals have the same rights as cultivators despite the former's potential assistance in any war being limited was already pushing his boundaries.

As for societal equality, he saw it as impossible in any place where resources could improve one's power, be it personal power or an organization's. Even if an ideology that preached equality ended up being established, how could it perpetuate itself without unequal power and opportunities over others?

Some inequality would always exist.

Or so he believed, though he also had to admit he hadn't researched the subject. He barely recalled something about the issue being private companies or individuals having that unequal power and opportunities instead of a democratically elected government. But he didn't think now was the time to consider those things.

In the end, Shen wasn't surprised the Immoral Emperor would convey his lands were a utopia while the Cultivator Association was a den of evil.

So, it greatly surprised him to find a strange political ruling: Feng Yang, former leader of the Feng Clan, was to be considered a national hero for services rendered to the Senate. Even stranger was to find a judicial battle: the Senate wanted the Feng Clan to revoke the traitor status from Feng Yang. The Senate lost the action and had to pay reparations.

Shen still thought of his father as a traitor. He wasn't sure whether he would do the same in the man's place; he didn't know how it felt to have a son. But that didn't change the hard, cold fact of his actions: he had betrayed the clan. Having the Senate trying to interfere in a clan matter like that made him very angry, no matter whether he was part of the Feng Clan.

The populace of the time shared his sentiment. Almost every single High Senatorial Clan was removed in the next elections. The Feng Clan, conversely, cemented their position.

The new High Senators' promises of removing the Grand Senator from office—for being the one to push for that lawsuit—were strangely not kept.

All that made Shen reevaluate why the Emperor had sent him the techniques. It wasn't as permission to start his own clan. The Grand Senator couldn't give him that permission because he was not a citizen and thus couldn't receive it. The only way of becoming a citizen was also by joining the Republic, but that was also out of the question for now. The Senate's messages stated Shen needed to become an Ethereal Harmonization cultivator to be accepted back into the fold.

So, the techniques were a gift through and through. Shen was to do with them as he saw fit.

After taking that all in, he took a deep breath and sat to cultivate and meditate.

Shen opened his eyes, which were filled with resolve. He had made six important decisions in the past few hours:

First, he would roam the Association and the Republic before joining either. While the Emperor was likely speaking the truth, a long time had passed since that message arrived. Things might've changed in both places.

Second, he would create a clan because he believed in its structure. A group of friends traveling together was all fun and games until an issue arose without a hierarchical structure to resolve things. Taking it to justice took time and usually didn't account for more nuanced considerations. Shen would grow his clan slowly as required instead of pushing for recruitment.

Third, he would share everything in the antidron with everyone on Earth. Whoever hadn't become a Guardian couldn't anymore for another hundred years, and he wanted to give them the power to protect themselves without the responsibility of taking them into his clan. He also wanted them to know the Association was coming for them without the burden of doing something about it himself.

However...

Fourth, if Earth decided to join the Republic to be protected from the Association in a hundred years, he would find a way to make that happen.

Fifth, he would kill the mole D-ranks if Marzia could identify them and was willing to reveal their identities.

This last decision had taken the most time. He didn't see himself as part of modern society, but the Alliance did. He was Earth's Rising Star and wasn't willing to part with the Racial Title. That came with its own share of responsibility.

As he saw it, one of those responsibilities was protecting Earth from malign alien agendas that didn't align with Earth. Within reason, of course; he wasn't about to fight the entire Alliance for humanity.

Currently, sharing the antidron's information with everyone was benign. He also believed the moles were part of a malign ploy to be stopped once and for all. He might be wrong, but he had already come to terms with the fact that power brought him the right to decide matters. That included deciding whom to believe. He would learn to live with his mistakes as he made them.

Shen sighed.

He could only admit that he had started seeing life as a cheap thing. Cheaper than the consequences of not being decisive when needed, at least.

Being a Rising Star meant he could kill any human without System consequence, and he would take advantage of that.

He would also protect Earth from the Republic if he saw the need. The antidron suggested only Shen had been contacted. He doubted it.

Now, he only had to find out how to share the antidron's information with everyone, which included his sixth decision: he would give the antidron to the Drow Maiden.

The hexahedron wasn't really useful to him. It had taught him that he could give it commands to stay in a place, follow him, and manage who had access to it. The issue was that giving access to anyone also meant letting them manage his access. It didn't have a read-only mode or admin privileges. Worse, because it had a sentience, even an artificial one, it couldn't be stored in his spatial ring.

So, carrying the thing around was the same as putting a big target on one's back.

The antidron couldn't be forcibly accessed or taken away without self-destructing, but it didn't mean someone couldn't be coerced into giving it to someone else. Leaving it behind for humanity to freely access it meant letting everyone manage access, which would result in someone stealing it sooner or later. Leaving the antidron with a trusted person to compile the information and share it might result in that person getting endangered eventually—no secret lasted forever—not to mention they would be bound to Earth until he returned. If they left Earth's relative safety to bring the antidron to Shen, they might get them captured by someone strong before Shen could do something about it. Not that he would be strong enough to protect it either, even if he became C-rank. Bringing the antidron with him would end up with him being forced to give it to them or sell it to someone.

So, the best he could do was give the Drow Maiden access, get her to share all the information online, then let her have it. She was also the strongest being he knew, and he trusted her enough to negotiate for the thing instead of stealing it.

Not only was this solution more practical than any other, but Shen also owed her. Gifting it to her would be a way to start repaying his debt. And if he later found out it was worth more than what she had done to him, which he doubted, he could just talk to her about it and reach an agreement then.

So, he said, "Drow Maiden, I know you can hear me."

He didn't know that, but he felt her domain on his skin, and she had taught him a domain was effectively the entirety of the person's Path pushed beyond their body. It didn't make her omniscient, but calling her would undoubtedly make at least part of her pay attention to what he would say next.

"I want to talk to you about this antidron besides me," he informed.

Her answer came at once:

| Liya, the Drow Maiden (C): Teleport to me.

Shen smiled slightly. Having him go to her instead of the opposite was a small but noticeable powerplay. The request itself was also a statement: she wouldn't discuss it if he didn't purchase the B-rank Teleportation Privilege as she had suggested. And both things together also showcased that she didn't want to waste time with this matter unless he did the bare minimum to be deemed worthy of her time.

The Drow Maiden had taught Shen and given him a lot, but he should never confound her with a friend he could randomly call to share some exciting news. Their relationship had boundaries that were honestly extraordinarily complex to see and navigate.

Now, it became apparent that whenever Shen crossed any line, she would make sure to point it out to him.