In Wang Qi's current worldview, the word "structure" occupied an exceedingly important place.
His own mathematical theories took "structure" as their core.
In mathematics, for any nonempty set that served as an object of study, one could define a series of "relations." These "relations" necessarily satisfied certain "axioms." The sum of such a "base set" and "relation set" was a mathematical "structure."
The core of the Bourbaki school.
And this viewpoint had further shaped his understanding of the field of the flow of heavenly things.
"Matter" and "the structure of matter"—the sum of these two was the entirety of the "objective world."
And all cultivation was a combination of "occupying more matter" and "optimizing structure."
Going further, the overwhelming majority of phenomena occurred because of changes in "structure"—perhaps macroscopic structure, perhaps microscopic structure.
"Life" was the same. It was precisely because living beings possessed highly complex structures that they had all manner of marvelous, harmonious functions.
And death, in essence, was also the destruction and irreversible disappearance of "structure."
This "destruction" existed on both macroscopic and microscopic levels.
Macroscopic physical damage, organic lesions, microscopic hydrolysis of the Path of Living Beings Source—all were destruction of structure.
And "corpse transformation" was precisely when a corpse, a lifeless object with a complex structure, made use of that existing structure through a fortunate coincidence and transformed into a new "living being."
Precisely because of this, corpses capable of transforming were mostly well preserved. At the very least, their macroscopic structures could not have suffered any damage.
But those Ice Corpses did not possess such conditions at all. A single ice blade had nearly cleaved their bodies apart, while the extreme cold had destroyed the microscopic structures of those cultivators' flesh from the very root.
If he had to put it this way, perhaps