Very simple: the Time Court has carried out a detailed stratification of Levels.

Among Time Controllers, they constructed a strictly hierarchical ranking system.

Although those of the Upper Rank are required to guarantee the Lower Rank’s safety and room for growth, everything beyond that can be seized at will.

So even if you become a Time Controller, you can only act with impunity within your own world, toward those who are not Time Controllers.

But so long as your talent is insufficient, or you lack the ability to become stronger, then in the world of Time Controllers you will have no dignity at all.

Like that Time Controller we just saw in that Martial Arts World, the one who sat on the throne at three years old.

He may be worshiped by the people of his own world, but in the world of Time Controllers he suffers every kind of humiliation.

He is nothing more than the bottom rung.

And his world, dragged along with him, can only barely manage to struggle on and keep breathing.

Dignity, wealth, status—none of these exist for them.

Of course, compared to before he appeared, the situation is already much better.

A civilization with not even a single Time Controller is nothing but slaves, or even livestock.

As a core member of the Association, however, High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu’s investigation naturally would not stop at superficial phenomena.

His probing went extremely deep.

He locked directly onto the Life Court as his target, and tried to infer the purpose behind the creation of such a world through some of the Life Court’s actions.

First, the primary goal is definitely the growth of Extraordinary Rules.

Otherwise, they would not preserve the soul and consciousness of Time Controllers.

After all, the more holders there are of Extraordinary Rules, the more advantageous it is to the Extraordinary Rules themselves.

High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu even suspected they have some method of accelerating the evolution of Extraordinary Rules.

Because, judging from the information he obtained, those who fall into the Time Cage each year are actually not few in number.

Under that harsh hierarchical system, all Time Controllers will do everything in their power to become stronger, which inevitably leads to competition of interests with others; and whether they fail, or merely slip up, it will result in their being thrown into the Time Cage.

Over these countless years, the number of Time Controllers of every Level and every tier inside the Time Cage must have grown to an astonishing magnitude.

If you say those people are just locked up like that with no function at all, no one would believe it.

Besides this, High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu also realized that the Life Court’s emphasis on civilizations is actually not low.

Even civilizations that have not produced any Time Controllers, or have lost all their Time Controllers, may be of low status and suffer heavy casualties.

But so long as they possess even a single one, the Life Court can guarantee such a civilization’s basic right to exist.

It’s just that they will be extremely poor and struggle bitterly.

This is, in fact, understandable. After all, even if this force cares only about Time Controllers, the larger the base population of a civilization, the more Time Controllers will eventually emerge.

In a world that values only Extraordinary, the greatest role of civilization is to serve as the foundational cradle from which powerful Extraordinary are born.

"It looks like a rear logistics base that is continuously developing and expanding according to a preset plan." High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu arrived at this conclusion from his investigation.

However, regrettably, he also failed to uncover the inner workings of the Time Court.

Because the most core commands are dispatched directly from the Extraordinary Source.

Even those powerful figures who travel to various places to punish rule‑violating Time Controllers actually do not know the core of the Time Court.

With secrecy at that level, it almost goes without saying that this must be the fallback arrangement Force One left in this world.

Unfortunately, what cannot be found simply cannot be found.

High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu could only retreat to a secondary objective: if he could not locate core members, then he would first do his utmost to gather all information outside the core circle.

In the end, when High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu returned to the Association with all relevant intelligence, all the various Shen Yus gathered together.

They conducted a joint analysis.

"We can be sure the Time Court is hiding many methods." The intersellar world Shen Yu was the first to speak. "At least two complete systems. One of them is a fully realized All Heavens simulation device, capable even of simulating an All Heavens system equivalent to a Taiyi True Immortal."

This alone was already astonishing enough.

Although the vast majority of All Heavens Forces will, with high probability, advance to the stage of All Heavens simulation and conduct related experiments, in practice, the difficulty of such All Heavens simulation is extremely high.

It is not as simple as installing different Extraordinary Rules onto a few worlds and calling that All Heavens simulation.

It has a core requirement.

Within this system, new worlds must be able to naturally give birth to Extraordinary Rules that are randomly generated.

They must be random.

Strictly speaking, it means different Extraordinary Rules colliding, overlapping, and fusing with each other on certain Levels.

Ultimately forming new Laws and manifesting in new worlds.

The difficulty of achieving this is incredibly, incredibly high.

Even the Association, at present, can barely reach the Earth Immortal tier.

Compared to the Taiyi True Immortal tier, that is still two major realms apart.

This may be the residual heritage of Force One, but Shen Yu is more inclined to believe that this is in some way connected to the Time Law.

In any case, High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu did not discover any control devices or computational systems related to this All Heavens simulation system.

They must be hidden away.

At critical moments, they can unleash an extremely powerful deterrent.

"The second is a powerful system built entirely upon Material Rules." The intersellar world Shen Yu continued, "One of the key reasons the Life Court can maintain such mystery lies in the fact that no one knows how they locate those rule‑violating Time Controllers. Yet once someone violates the regulations, no matter how covertly or cautiously they act, the Life Court always finds them at the first opportunity. This has already formed an incomparably powerful deterrent."

The unknown is the most terrifying.

Those powerful Time Controllers have no idea how the Life Court locks onto them.

Thus, when facing the Life Court, they naturally harbor a deep‑seated fear.

But the critical point is that even High-Level Martial Artist Shen Yu could not uncover their methods.

On the Extraordinary Level, this is practically impossible.

The answer can only lie on the material level.

"Can you crack this kind of technology?" Shen Yu looked at the intersellar world Shen Yu.

"With the current intelligence, I cannot give a definite answer." The intersellar world Shen Yu shook his head slightly and explained, "The rules on the material level are fundamentally different from Extraordinary Rules. First of all, there is no concept of rank of being; our higher life level does not automatically grant us suppressive power over all lower‑rank rules. In the Domain of Material Rules, even if you are far stronger than your opponent in overall power, you can still lose because you’re unfamiliar with a specific material Domain, or because you’re missing certain key pieces of knowledge."

This is one of the unique charms of Material Rules.

For example, let Human Civilization in a non‑magical 21st century fight a war against its own self from fifty years ago.

In conventional warfare they would, of course, completely crush the past. But what if it became an unconventional war?

What if it escalated into a nuclear war?

The Human Civilization from fifty years ago would still possess methods to drag the enemy into mutual destruction.

That is Material Rules.

Therefore, without knowing which specific technical Domain the other side is using, the intersellar world Shen Yu did not dare to make any promises.

After thinking it over, Shen Yu spoke to the other Shen Yus with a solemn expression:

"I suspect the reason this Life Court can hide itself so completely, yet still achieve de facto control over the entire civilization, is heavily tied to the technological systems they possess on the level of Material Rules. They have, in all likelihood, also used Material Rules–level technology to complete their control of the whole world. If we can defeat them on this level, then we have a high chance of seizing control—or at the very least, of digging out far more intelligence."