After splitting from the others, Ace followed Ariana into the Yin-Yang mountain, but instead of going up, Ariana used her Identity card to open up a secret passage underground.

  “I had no idea this was down here,” Ace said as he followed the Pavilion’s guardian all the way into the depths of the mountain.

  “The library you saw he top of the mountain holds all the teiques and teags needed for mortals, but this library holds teags for and about the various immortal realms,” Arianna expined calmly. “inally, we all believed Julius would be the first oo be taken down here as he’s only a few years from stepping into the profound realm of prehension himself, but sinao step into that realm on your own, it’s best you learruth about cultivation after being immortals to make your path a little bit easier.”

  When they reached the bottom, Ace looked around in surprise.

  “What’s wrong?” Arianna asked when she saw her husband’s disciple’s rea.

  “Nothing,” Ace replied. “I just thought it’d be more… showy than this.”

  In the main library, there were hundreds of bookshelves, each holding dozens of books ohing from spells and warrior teiques to the various types of fauna and pnts that be found in the Yun ti.

  Ace doubted whether the Ernst Institute or the War God’s Academy had suformation held in their library for their students to read, so when Arianna told him that this was the library detailing cultivation for immortals, he thought there’d be more than a singur bookshelf with only a couple dozen books and scrolls.

  “Haha, I guess it is a bit pin, isn’t it?” Arianna chuckled as she walked over to the bookshelf and picked up a simple scroll. “But cultivation after being an immortal is much simpler than you would likely believe. Plus, it’s a lot more personal than cultivation as a mortal, so there’s only so much you teach others with books, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves now.

  Here, things will beore apparent after you read this.”

  As Ace began to read the tents of the scroll, his eyes widened in surprise before being overwhelmed by uanding.

  The more he read, the more fasated he became. Arianna watched as Atered a trance-like state of focus.

  Though it wasn’t enlighte as his prehension didn’t actually progress, but to Ace, it was no less helpful as it gave him a clear path on how tress.

  The scroll simply expihat to bee a saint, one must have started prehending one of the seven ws of nature or one of the four edicts.

  Each of the seven ws of nature are posed of six profound mysteries:

  Profound Laws of Fire:

  1.  Essence of Fire

  2.  Profound Mystery of Heat

  3.  Profound Mystery of Explosions

  4.  Profound Mystery of Fmebody

  5.  Profound Mystery of Mirages

  6.  Profound Mystery of Spiritual Fmes

  Profound Laws of Water:

  1.  Essence of Water

  2.  Profound Mystery of Ice

  3.  Profound Mystery of Illusory Fog

  4.  Profound Mystery of Circur Softness

  5.  Profound Mystery of Waves

  6.  Profound Mystery of Waterbody

  Profound Laws of Wind:

  1.  Essence of Wind

  2.  Profound Mystery of Velocity

  3.  Profound Mystery of Spatial Winds

  4.  Profound Mystery of Sound of the Wind

  5.  Profound Mystery of Doppelganger

  6.  Profound Mystery of Wind Walking

  Profound Laws of Earth:

  1.  Essence of Earth

  2.  Profound Mystery of Strength

  3.  Profound Mystery of World Walking

  4.  Profound Mystery of Gravity

  5.  Profound Mystery of Vitality

  6.  Profound Mystery of the Throbbing Pulse

  Profound Laws of Lightning:

  1.  Essence of Lightning

  2.  Profound Mystery of Movement

  3.  Profound Mystery of Thunder

  4.  Profound Mystery of Lightning-Body

  5.  Profound Mystery of Bioelectricity

  6.  Profound Mystery of Judgement

  Profound Laws of Darkness:

  1.  Essence of Darkness

  2.  Profound Mystery of Dev

  3.  Profound Mystery of Dark e

  4.  Profound Mystery of Shadows

  5.  Profound Mystery of Evil

  6.  Profound Mystery of Dark-Body

  Profound Laws of Light:

  1.  Essence of Light

  2.  Profound Mystery of Lightspeed

  3.  Profound Mystery of Light Doppelganger

  4.  Profound Mystery of Refra

  5.  Profound Mystery of Purity

  6.  Profound Mystery of Light-Body

  Though he skimmed over all of the ws, he, of course, paid the closest attention to the Profound Laws of fire, and it was then that he thought back to the moments before he died in his st life.

  ‘I’m su idiot!’ Ace thought to himself as a helpless sigh escaped his lips. ‘I was so focused on making my fmes bigger and more powerful that I fot to focus on the aspect of fire that made it so dangerous in the first pce – Heat!’

  Ace suddenly raised his right hand in front of him and created a small fme no bigger than his palm, but what caught Arianna’s eyes was the fact that he was imbuing it with the power of a profound mystery she hadn’t seen him use previously.

  His ability to turn his body intangible inated from the profound mystery of ‘Fmebody’, and his ability to create a rge fist-shaped fme came from the profound mystery of the essence of fire, but this time she could feel the heat in the surrounding area start to rise from the small fme h above his palm.

  ‘This boy really is the most talented child I’ve ever seen!’ She thought to herself while silently watg Ace meditate on the profundities of ‘heat’.

  An hour ter, Ace finally opened his eyes, and a wry smile appeared on his face. ‘If I had made this realisation earlier, I would’ve been able to awaken my devil fruit, and that idiot, Akainu, never would’ve been able to burn me.

  And to think I actually believed him when he said that va was hotter than fire wheruth was that it was simply the va from his awakened devil fruit that was hotter than my non-awakened one.’

  Ace seemed tet that Arianna was still with him as he focused his attention ba the scroll to finish reading its tents.

  It was there that he learnt that cultivation wasn’t as simple as just prehending each of the six profound mysteries of your chosen w. The end goal was actually to fuse all six into a singur w.

  ‘Iing…’ Ace thought to himself as he began to think about what that would look like.

  “Finished?” Arianna asked softly when she saw the teen in front of her lower the scroll onto the ground.

  “I am,” Aodded as he returhe scroll to his master’s wife. “Thank you, that helped me a lot.

  But I did have a couple of questions. Why is it that each of the seven ws of nature has five individual profound mysteries but all share one? What does the essence of a refer to?”

  “I guess it is a bit vague, but I’m surprised you have to ask as you’ve already begun prehending that specific mystery,” Arianna replied whilst pg the scroll ba the shelf.

  “So the essence of a really does just refer to one’s ability to trol its shape and size?” Ace asked.

  “Pretty much,” The blonde-haired saint answered. “The essence of a chose is by far the most simple of the profound mysteries; as such, it tends to be the one most choose to start on as it’s the fastest way to bee a deity, but thereihe first and biggest mistake most make.”

  “Mistake?” Ace asked, not following his martial aunt’s logic.

  “The first thing you o uand is that although the increase in power after being a deity is like nothing you imagihe same is true for the increase in difficulty when prehending the ws,” Arianna expined seriously. “You see, there are many factors in py when prehending the profound ws, but there are two that stand above the others:

  The first is the soul – the more powerful one’s soul, the better their perception.

  The sed is that every time you make a breakthrough into a higher realm, it bees signifitly more challenging to prehend each w.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Ace replied. “The old man said that every time you breakthrough into a higher realm, your soul bees that much stronger. Surely that increase in spiritual essence would beore pronounced after being a saint and as a deity, in which case, wouldn’t your perception rise drastically as well?”

  “I don’t uand it much myself as I’m still just a mere saint, but the way my grandfather expi when I was just starting to prehend the ws was that essentially there were two factors in py. First was the internal factor, I.e. your soul, and sed was the external factor – heaven.

  Acc to my grandfather, the universe was created in such a way that mortals have a much stronger e to heaven than immortals. Still, because of their iritual essehey’re uo truly prehend the profundities of the various ws.

  Still, as you grow strohough your soul is also getting more and more powerful, your e with nature is waning at a higher rate. That’s why rushing to a higher level is rarely the best way tress.

  It's also why I made sure eay disciples put a rger emphasis on their prehension than blindly rag through the ranks.

  And it’s especially true for those like your mother and especially you. As a warrior of the fifth rank and mage of the third, your soul is already equal to a newly promoted saint. So the more you prehend as a mortal, the easier it’ll make your time as a saint; likewise, the more you prehend as a saint, the less you’ll struggle as a deity.

  Do you uand?” Arianna asked, her tone unnaturally serious.

  Though he wasn’t her disciple, he was still part of her martial lineage; she couldn’t bear to see him waste his talent.

  “I uand,” Ace replied seriously.

  Ace had dreams of standing at the very apex of this world, and he uood that the best and fastest way to do that would be to create the most solid of foundations as early as possible.

  “Out of curiosity, how many ws have you prehended so far?” Ace asked with a hint of anticipation.

  After reading that scroll, he was finally able to uand why it was Arianna; despite only being at the mid-stages of the saint realm as both a warrior and a mage seemed far more powerful than any of the other peak saints he’d ever seen, including Shelia – The Dark Empress.

  “I’ve prehehree so far, but I’m not going to make my breakthrough until I’ve pletely fused all three of them,” Arianna replied lightly, not seeming to take any pride in it.

  Ace, though, looked at her with wide eyes. He couldn’t be sure as he had no idea how powerful deities were, but he believed that despite her only being a mid-staged saint was no weaker than the average deity.

  “, we should head back out,” Arianna voiced. “The rest of your cssmates have returned.”

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  P.atreon./ACoilingDragon

  Book 5 - Chapter 16