Inside the thatched cottage.
Listening to the Martial Saint's account, Jiang Ning felt shaken.
Rebirth from a drop of blood, a mist of blood reassembling in an instant, the body left utterly unscathed.
Even to him now, such a feat seemed almost inconceivable.
"Then... have you reached that stage, Senior?" Jiang Ning asked.
The Martial Saint, his hair gray and withered, shook his head. "No! Refining the billions upon billions of flesh-and-blood particles throughout the body requires an incomparably powerful physique, one that can bear the imprint of your spiritual will forever. It also requires a spiritual will that perceives the finest details, seeing your own body as you would the cosmos."
"The cosmos?" Jiang Ning looked puzzled.
"All time, past and present, is its temporal span; all directions, above and below, are its spatial expanse," the Martial Saint explained.
For an instant, Jiang Ning was inwardly speechless.
Having lived two lives, how could he not understand an explanation like that?
Now he also understood what the Martial Saint meant.
Not heaven and earth.
But the cosmos.
This was a higher level.
Vast though heaven and earth were, compared with the cosmos, they were as insignificant as a speck of dust.
Heaven and earth generally referred to the observable world.
The cosmos, however, referred to the endless stars, the vast depths of space, and the convergence of time and space, past and present.
"Then what level have you actually reached, Senior? After eight hundred years or so, you took that step and attained the Martial Saint realm. With your talent, another eight hundred years should have brought you a great deal further," Jiang Ning said.
The Martial Saint, his hair gray and withered, nodded, then shook his head.
"You're both right and wrong!"
"Eight hundred years ago, I took that