Li Shun had crossed into this world and risen from an ordinary laborer in Cold Mountain County to where he stood today. Square Inch had been indispensable to that journey.
Square Inch could turn others into puppets, and once they became puppets, they gained all manner of incredible abilities.
When Li Shun took in a puppet, he gained all its memories. Through his puppets, he could make others' cultivation experience and insights into the Dao his own. That was how he had displayed such heaven-sent talent and made his way into Great Qian's Imperial Academy.
Puppets were neither alive nor dead. They could manifest in the outside world, and even if their manifested forms were destroyed, Square Inch itself would remain unharmed. Given time, they would repair themselves, serving as fixed "save points" to which they could return at any moment. They could also grow stronger in the outside world, with that strength carried over to their true bodies in Square Inch Space. That was why Li Shun could act through his puppets without fear of consequences.
Puppets could also serve as resources to be consumed. Square Inch's power could extract special physiques and traits from them. It could even refine their fates, experiences, and intersections of Causality, using these as the foundation to forge the embryonic "divine body" that belonged to Li Shun alone in Square Inch's central core.
If a puppet could condense Heaven-and-Earth Mystic Yellow Qi, Li Shun could even use it as a "Heavenly Eye" to observe its world or surroundings from afar and store what it saw for later review.
Under Square Inch's protection, every harmful influence a puppet encountered—Outer God corruption, impacts from the source of a Great Dao, and the like—remained confined within that puppet. None of it could reach Li Shun's