After Edward's successive rounds of special training, Jason had gained a glimmer of insight, but he hadn't managed to grasp it.
Inspiration during cultivation was like that: it flashed by in an instant. Someone like Linley, who could gain insights whenever he fought and grasp them whenever they came, was the exception.
Jason had previously wondered why Edward, as a Saint-level expert, didn't settle down to cultivate.
Edward's answer had been: "Once you reach a certain bottleneck in cultivation, you can't simply cultivate whenever you want to. Most of your time is spent waiting for an 'opportunity,' and that opportunity could be hidden anywhere. It might come while I'm giving Jason special training, while I'm sleeping, or while I'm out enjoying myself.
"As for cultivating other Profound Mysteries of the same element, that's incredibly difficult too.
"Once you've comprehended one Profound Mystery of an element, you develop a fixed way of thinking. It's like solving a problem: you unconsciously use the approach you're most familiar with. The closer you bring a Profound Mystery to mastery, the more deeply ingrained that way of thinking becomes. Breaking out of it also requires an 'opportunity.'
"In short, once you reach the limit of the Saint level, life becomes very leisurely. In fact, all Saint-level experts stuck at bottlenecks lead very leisurely lives.
"They try all sorts of things they've never done before. Right now, I'm trying to train Jason. When I was emperor, I barely paid any attention to my children and grandchildren, so I want to see what that feels like with Jason."
After several days of fighting, Edward realized that sparring with Jason wasn't producing good results. Perhaps the gap in their strength was too great, and besides, they specialized in different elements.
So Edward took Jason to challenge some of the Saint-level experts in the Rhine Empire, visiting old friends along the way.
Thanks to Edward's introductions, Jason gained a rough idea of how many Saint-level experts there were in the Rhine Empire.
Not counting the Rhine Clan and the Violet-Eyed Family, there were twenty to thirty Saint-level experts in the Rhine Empire. Half of them were unaffiliated and might travel to other countries at any time. Nineteen Saint-level experts had explicitly sworn allegiance to the Rhein Imperial Family.
The Rhine Clan's direct branch, including clan members and their relatives, had twenty-three Saint-level experts. The reclusive Violet-Eyed Family in the Rhine Empire had twenty-six Saint-level Violet-Eyed Bladewing Fiends, all of whom possessed Peak Saint strength thanks to their innate talents.
What other countries feared most was that the Rhine Clan controlled the largest group of necromancers on the Yulan Continent. Almost all of them were members of the Rhine Clan and were extremely loyal. If the nation faced a fight for survival, the numbers of both its Saint-level experts and its rank-and-file troops could at least double!
(When Linley led his people to attack the Radiant Church's Holy Island, the church had struggled to gather the thirty-six people needed for its Radiant Formation. Given that the Holy Union was an alliance, it probably also had Saint-level experts outside the church's control, as well as some who had defected out of fear of Linley's might, so the total would have been somewhat higher.
Blumer was the War God's twenty-seventh personal disciple, and the War God also had nominal disciples. Even if only a third of them broke through to the Saint level, War God Mountain alone would have had around thirty Saint-level experts. Adding those within the country who were loyal to the imperial family, there should have been fifty to sixty Saint-level experts. There were also some Saint-level experts who did not answer the nation's call.
Therefore, a normal country should have between fifty and eighty Saint-level experts.)
Edward and Jason went from door to door, and they were surprisingly welcome.
Most of the experts were in much the same situation as Edward.
Their long lives meant they had no shortage of time for secluded cultivation, but bottlenecks were unavoidable. The vast majority of them had long been stuck at thresholds on their cultivation paths, unable to advance an inch for hundreds or even thousands of years.
That was why they welcomed newly advanced Saint-level experts who came to spar. They could get to know the newcomers and see how their Profound Mysteries differed from or resembled their own. These were all good opportunities to break through their bottlenecks. When senior Saint-level experts heard of someone who cultivated the same element, in particular, they would take the initiative to visit.
They were unlike Linley, and they weren't even as gifted as Jason and Ailin.
Jason had comprehended a Profound Mystery early, before reaching the Saint level, and had comprehended nearly a third of one element's Profound Mysteries without encountering any major bottleneck. In terms of talent, he had already surpassed over ninety percent of the Saint-level experts on the Yulan Continent.
Jason was currently fighting a Saint-level Frost Wyrm.
The Frost Wyrm was the magical beast of a Saint-level dual-element mage of the Rhine Clan, who cultivated Necromancy and the Wind Element.
Among dragons of the ninth rank, Frost Wyrms were second only to Spined Iron-Armored Dragons. Because Frost Wyrms had wings and could fly, some people considered them slightly stronger than Spined Iron-Armored Dragons.
After breaking through to the Saint level, a Frost Wyrm was no weaker than those magical beasts born at the Saint level.
The one Jason faced cultivated the Water Body Technique. Combined with the formidable physical strength dragons already possessed, its physical attacks and defenses were terrifyingly strong.
The Water Body Technique was a lower-level Profound Mystery of the Water Element that allowed those who comprehended it to turn their bodies into water elements. When using it, a cultivator could enhance their physical strength and recovery. Once they had cultivated it to a certain level, they could replace their body entirely with water elements, and the parts that had once been vulnerable to fatal blows would no longer be a danger. At later stages, it allowed cultivators to merge into water and move faster through it.
To hone himself, Jason deliberately used only Water Element Profound Mysteries. He relied on the Profound Mystery of Roundness for defense and the Water Body Technique for attack.
The Frost Wyrm's attacks did limited damage to Jason, but Jason also found it difficult to break through its defenses.
And so the man and the dragon reached a stalemate.
But Jason knew that if the fight dragged on, he was certain to lose. The Frost Wyrm fought using its physical strength and the magic power in its magicite core, while Jason relied entirely on Battle-qi and had far less endurance than the dragon.
Four people were watching: Edward and the Frost Wyrm's master, as well as Dante and Ailin.
When Dante, the Violet-Eyed Bladewing Fiend, heard that Edward was taking his descendant to spar with other Saint-level experts, he brought Ailin along and followed them.
"Did you gain any insight?" Dante asked Ailin.
"No." Ailin shook her head.
Edward and the Saint Magus beside them shook their heads as well.
It wasn't just the two fighters; the spectators were also trying to find an opportunity in the battle. But clearly, opportunities didn't come so easily.
The fight came to an end when the Frost Wyrm sent Jason flying with a thrust of its horn.
In the end, Jason was no match for a Saint-level dragon that had cultivated for thousands of years.
Afterward, the Saint Magus and Ailin sparred to compare their understanding of the Edicts of Death.
To Jason's surprise, the Saint Magus actually pulled out a flexible sword and fought Ailin at close range.
"They're both Saint-level experts who've lived for thousands of years. It's only natural for them to raise their Battle-qi to the Saint level when they have nothing else to do," Edward said with a smile.
The Edicts of Death the Saint Magus of Necromancy had comprehended were hard to describe. They seemed to contain a little of "withering," "Deathly stillness," "Soulfire," and "Power of Death." Ailin's, by contrast, were clearly "withering."
"For Saint-level experts who cultivate the Four Edicts, that's how it should be once they've spent more and more time comprehending them. It's hard to describe their understanding with a single 'ability.' The 'cultivation books' in the clan that discuss the Four Edicts only describe them that way because it's clearer. The Four Edicts are elusive, and even the Edicts comprehended by Saint-level experts are hard to summarize simply," Dante explained to Jason.
Speaking of which, the Violet-Eyed Bladewing Fiends and the Rhine Clan shared a common origin, and older Saint-level experts like Dante and Edward still cared quite a bit about the ties between the two families.
As Jason met more Saint-level experts, he also found that those in the Rhine Empire were much more modest than the ones Linley had encountered in the original story.
When discussing their own Profound Mysteries, they didn't treat themselves as peerless experts. From Dante's tone as he had just explained things to Jason, he regarded himself as a "beginner."
Jason guessed that perhaps the Deity-level experts hidden in Bloodshadow Valley, along with things like the "cultivation books" and "Blue Jade Fruit," had led the Saint-level experts of the Rhine Empire to unconsciously set their sights very high.