Almost immediately after pushing past the threshold of 10,000 his entire body was overcome by a blinding pain.
It's not like he wasn't expecting this to happen, he even knew that he would have to experience it again before becoming a deity equivalent, but he wasn't expecting it to come so soon.
He was planning to fight his way up the mountain, collect whatever it was that was blocking his mana sense and then in the protection of the subspace he would welcome it with open arms. He didn't expect that the little phantom fighting in his head would have been enough to push his wisdom so far that it forced it onto him.
But you know what they say, if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans.
Under the sudden pain he almost passed out, which would be fatal in this environment, but he quickly shook himself awake. He knew that he only needed to endure the pain for so long before his talent would kick in.
And just as he expected after a few seconds of agonizing pain, a cool feeling and golden light washed over his entire body and mind completing his transformation with no issues.
For those who became a saint via the pure mage path, this would turn the mana core from a foreign structure into one that was native to the body. It would effectively become an organ, but it wouldn't gain anywhere near the same advantages as the heart of mana. They would then have to form another core, or another pool would be grown automatically, which would serve as a store of soul power.
This would lead to a quantitative power boost and lead to a large gap between a grandmaster and a saint. A saint had 100 times more power while also having a higher capacity. They effectively had 2 tanks of higher quality fuel while also having a more powerful while also more efficient engine.
But Ray was different. Like a true cultivator he became a saint via the strength of his body but because of his heart of mana things were different.
For a pure cultivator who used mana to increase the strength of their bodies for combat, instead of growing an additional core or pool to store soul power, the existing mana core would dissipate, and mana pool would dry up leading to the mana being absorbed by the rest of the body, increasing its strength permanently. Next a core would reform and the pool refill but this time with soul power and not mana. This is why cultivators that take the easy path have stunted growth, they set themselves up for one future and with their weak wills they end up going down the wrong path.
One on one a saint tier pure mage should never be able to contend with a saint tier pure cultivator, but at the same time a group of cultivators can easily be wiped out by a well placed and prepared mage. This is why it is good to practice a good portion of both, but not in the way of most human cultivators. They are not cultivating both, merely starting down one path and then suddenly switching to another.
But as one with the heart of mana who suppressed themselves and didn't absorb any additional soul power, things were different for him. If he did absorb some soul power then his blood vessels would also store soul power making him stronger than any other saint, but as he increased the strength of both his body and mana to such a stage then something entirely different happened.
But with the absence of the necessary additional soul power an entirely different change happened. As being, a Saint was fundamentally different from a grandmaster. Some change had to happen but the lack of soul power to act as a catalyst and added to the fact that every single corner of his physique was not only as strong as it could be, including his very soul, but extremely purified then something entirely different happened.
Every single cell in his body was being restructured. From their cell walls all the way down to the very DNA.
And this wasn't in the same way as the first stage-empyrean level of the Jin clan's Golden Overlord Physique. For that the DNA was simply refined, making them more uniformed, removing certain harmful mutations and promoting good ones, but for this it was changed entirely.
With his attainment of saint-like power without the use of soul power he became an entirely different being. Stronger, faster, smarter, longer living, better looking and superior in every way to before. In fact he technically was no longer human, not in the same way at least.
Homo altior, a higher man.
That was the name of those few humans, and their descendants, who managed to achieve the impossible and go through a race change. It was in essence the same as when greater beasts reach the saint stage and transform into a humanoid form.
Hobgoblins to goblins, True dragons to flood dragons and High humans to humans.
And as he went through a race change, he looked like it. His curly golden locks grew to just above his waist, his canines and nails came to a sharp point, he became even more handsome, and his muscles shrank down to being almost non-existent. Though they won't stay like that, it was just that as a high human a mere 10,500 in strength and vitality wouldn't be enough to have the same bulging muscles.
As his body settled into its new form in the future as well as when he became 250 years old, which was the age of 'puberty' in high humans, he would slowly have a natural increase in strength as well as muscle mass.
All in all, not that different from a human compared to the massive differences between hobgoblins and goblins, but that would be until one stepped back and took a proper look at him.
As a 17-year-old he was a toddler for high human standards but even then, he grew to stand just over 8 feet tall, and it was an all-around increase in size, not a simple vertical stretch.
But this wasn't strange for a high human. As a species they were on par with the 9 offspring of the mother of all beasts, so their bodies behaved like it. They hit 'puberty' at 250, adulthood at 1000 and became fully matured at 5000. As for max age, they had none. Aging was a process of genetic decay as well as the leaking of soul power, but neither of those things happened to high humans.
Their genes were simply too strong to simply 'decay' and at birth they had the strength of true saints so their soul power was not only at 10,000 stat wise, but they would also not lose it.
When it came to height, they were even more impressive. At birth they were the same size as a normal human baby, but they would quickly increase in size and become larger than a fairly tall human male.
At 250 they would be about 15 feet tall, at 500 50 feet, 1000 about 200 feet, and the average fully matured adult would be anywhere from 1000 to 1500 feet and the 'tall' ones could stretch to 2000.
But it wasn't that simple, a max of 2000 feet would be for someone who just became 5000 years but high humans, similarly to the ancient behemoth as well as its offspring, continued to grow larger as they aged though nowhere as fast as when growing up. Meaning that there wasn't necessarily a max to how big they could get.
This would be an issue for Ray if not for one of the many features of high humans. With a simple flex his giant body compressed back to its normal size.