Barn wasn't being presumptuous. He was genuinely confident he had a chance.
The main reason was that the Fate Law remained shrouded in mystery to him. The insights he had previously absorbed into the Fate Law belonged to Barn's original body. They ultimately hadn't come from his own experience. While that didn't cut off his prospects of advancement as completely as refining a Divine Spark would, he still found it difficult to grasp the law's essence, let alone develop his understanding further.
By comparison, comprehending the Water Profound Mysteries went much more smoothly. First, water was his natural affinity. And with his powerful soul, now at the level of a Holy Magus, all he needed was an opening. After that, he could develop his understanding of the Profound Mysteries far faster than ordinary people.
Second, from the scattered details in the original work, Barn had already pieced together the names and characteristics of four of the six Water Profound Mysteries: the Ice Profound Mystery, focused on control and attack; Circle Softness, centered on resilience and support; the all-around Water Body Technique; and the most basic Water Element Profound Mystery.
As for the Water Profound Mystery used by the original owner of the spear Mist Hidden, Barn wasn't in a hurry to uncover it. Once his mastery of the Water Law reached the Godlevel and his spiritual force could fully resonate with the Divine Artifact, he would surely unlock clearer fragments of memory and learn the truth.
One of the Water Profound Mysteries remained a complete mystery to him, but the five he knew were more than enough to support him in reaching the Midgod level.
For now, if he wanted to quickly begin learning another Water Profound Mystery, he had a shortcut no one else could replicate: the accumulated wisdom of Chinese civilization over thousands of years in his previous life.
--
A civilization with five thousand years of history might not seem especially great beside a world like Coiling Dragon, which had endured for countless epochs. But the philosophical wisdom distilled through the efforts of generations of Chinese sages was more than enough to help Barn get started on a Profound Mystery.
"Supreme goodness is like water. Water benefits all things and does not contend." "Softness overcomes hardness; hardness and softness complement each other." As Barn's spiritual force surged to its limits, the wise sayings he had encountered in China in his previous life rose vividly in his mind, one after another.
He mulled over their meaning again and again, comparing them with the patterns of the Water Law as he searched for a point of resonance through reflection and perception.
Time slipped by. Just before half of the Lion Suan's corpse had been consumed, Barn finally broke through.
"Circle Softness—I've finally grasped this Profound Mystery!" He gripped the spear Mist Hidden tightly, a wisp of water-elemental magic power swirling freely around his fingertips. His face was alight with delight. The original work had barely mentioned Circle Softness, but the ancient sages' insights into nature that Barn remembered from his previous life happened to align with the heart of the Profound Mystery. His comprehension had come as naturally as water flowing into its channel.
Barn quickly weighed his options. The original work says Circle Softness is easy to begin learning but difficult to master. In that case, since I only recently began learning the Water Body Technique, the best choice is to start combining the two Profound Mysteries as soon as possible.
Combining two Profound Mysteries might be no easier than bringing one to mastery. But his overall strength had already reached the limit of the Sanctuary level. If he focused on just one Profound Mystery and still couldn't break through to Godlevel, then no matter how deeply he understood it, it would do little to improve his overall strength in any decisive way.
By contrast, quickly attempting to combine two Profound Mysteries was the most cost-effective choice at the moment.
However, even the most ingenious cultivation plan had to be set aside for now. His most urgent task was finding food.
There was almost nothing left of the Lion Suan's corpse. The Gobada Abyss was never short on danger, and a steady food supply was the foundation of cultivation.
--
Declan slipped into the shadow beneath the ground first, feeling his way along while chattering to Barn through Soul Transmission. "May the Overgod of Fate watch over us and help us find food—preferably a fat magical beast, big enough to keep us fed for ten years!"
This hunt was going far less smoothly than the previous two. They hadn't run into any formidable foes along the way, but they also hadn't seen any weaker Sanctuary Beasts.
Barn was much faster than Declan, but if he ran at full speed, he would make too much noise and scare off their prey. So he had no choice but to crawl along the ground with Declan, and soon fell behind him.
Suddenly, Declan stopped. His Soul Transmission carried a hint of caution. "Huh? There was a strong energy fluctuation here just now."
Barn focused his senses too, his brows furrowing. "I noticed it as well. If it was the disturbance from a battle, it was far too weak. But if a Sanctuary-level being was moving underground, it was too strong. That doesn't fit the stealth habits of the Sanctuary-level beings in Gobada."
"Could it be a new arrival? Someone who hasn't learned to hide their aura yet!" Declan's eyes lit up, his voice full of anticipation.
New Sanctuary-level beings were banished into Gobada every so often, far more frequently than Barn had originally expected.
The reason was that the number of Sanctuary Beasts in the ocean far exceeded the number on the Yulan Continent. Beirut had always focused on matters concerning the Yulan Continent. As for the boundless oceans beyond the continent and the Arctic Ice Plains, he generally left them alone unless they involved his core interests.
That gave the Plane Overseer Hodan plenty of room to act. Every hundred years, he banished several Sanctuary-level beings to Gobada.
After all, as the Plane Overseer, his core duty was to maintain the stability of the material planes and send as many Sanctuary-level beings as possible to the Four Supreme Planes and Seven Divine Planes.
The Four Supreme Planes and Seven Divine Planes were vast and teeming with life, but Sanctuary-level beings there were among the lowest of the low. They spent their days scrambling to protect their lives and fortunes, wishing they could devote all their energy to cultivating until they broke through to Godlevel.
Unless they were protected and deliberately kept by a god-level being, Sanctuary-level beings had few opportunities to have descendants.
Thus, Sanctuary-level beings from the material planes became an indispensable source of population for the higher planes.
On the material planes, some Sanctuary-level beings acted recklessly and slaughtered indiscriminately as soon as they broke through. Others were established powerhouses who envied the talented and persecuted newly advanced Sanctuary-level beings. Such behavior hindered the material planes from supplying strength to the higher planes, making those responsible prime targets for Hodan to eliminate and banish.
The faint, sluggish fluctuation the two had sensed was most likely from a newly banished Sanctuary-level being who hadn't yet adapted to Gobada's rules.
"Barn, let's go!" Declan's Soul Transmission was edged with impatience. He could hardly wait to attack.
Barn hesitated briefly, but didn't stop him. With their current strength, even if they faced a powerful lone Sanctuary-level being and couldn't win, escaping unharmed would be no trouble.
They used the same familiar tactic as before. Declan slowed down and stealthily crept underground, inching closer to the source of the faint fluctuation.
As they went, they continued to communicate through their soul link. Declan sounded certain. "That guy's terrible at hiding. His aura keeps flickering in and out. I doubt he's very strong."
"Can you tell what race he is?" Barn asked.
"Feels like a human," Declan replied vaguely. Clearly, he hadn't sensed it very well.
"No way." Barn's heart stirred. "There are hardly any human Sanctuary-level beings left in Gobada."
He knew that ever since the great war ten thousand years ago, all the other continents of the Yulan Plane had sunk beneath the sea, leaving only the Yulan Continent and the Arctic Ice Plains. As a result, there were hardly any human Sanctuary-level beings left anywhere in the plane outside the Yulan Continent.
Beirut rarely banished human Sanctuary-level beings from the Yulan Continent to Gobada. As for those Hodan banished, they were either magical beasts from the sea or the surviving inhabitants of remote islands. Barn himself had been thrown in because Hodan had abused his position to settle a personal grudge.
Ten thousand years had passed. The human Sanctuary-level beings who had once made up a significant portion of Gobada's population had either broken through to Godlevel and risen above the bottom rung or perished in the endless slaughter. By now, they were a rare sight indeed.
Declan smacked his lips, disappointment in his voice. "Human Sanctuary-level beings don't have much meat on them. They're really not worth the effort. I'll go test him first. If he's trouble, we'll retreat right away and look for another target."
******
(In the original work, when Olivia destroyed the Bosha Dike, Beirut mentioned that the Plane Overseer would banish a few Sanctuary-level beings to Gobada roughly every ten thousand years. That number seemed far too low. Given how the book described Gobada's brutality, with constant slaughter and few opportunities for its inhabitants to reproduce, sending just a handful of people there every ten thousand years wouldn't be enough to replace those lost.)
(I've changed it to a few every hundred years here, though that still seems a little low.)
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