The next opponent was someone from a different background. He took the battle much more seriously and played tricks too. Jin tried his best to reproduce his incredible previous performance but without success. He had been in the zone then. And while it gave him a lot of insights, it didn't turn him into a master. He would have to work hard and consolidate his earnings.

He spent the day fighting and trying to reproduce and comprehend the way he fought in that fight he won. Sometimes he succeeded in hitting the opponent and sometimes he failed. Sometimes he even ended up hitting himself. Controlling so much different entities at the same time wasn't simple.

As the twelve hours ended, he left the arena and went straight to the training grounds. Half the team of healers went with him as they had learnt in the last few days that he would need them. And he certainly did.

After a few days spent like that, he had a new breakthrough. In his soul sea in fact. Since he was controlling many different entities, that he named 'flows', at once and they looked like spears, he thought he could use the spears in his soul sea to train. It would be a way for him to train more safely. And it worked.

In his soul sea, he could control all the spears however he wanted. The amount of focus needed was the same as it had been for the flows. The difference was that the 'flows' could be separated and integrated with one another and create many variations. But! This was a first step in gaining mastery of the technique. At least, the basics. He was tired of hitting himself to be honest. And it was understandable.

Pain remained painful regardless of how many times you feel it.

"Pain...Right. Pain is an element too, isn't it?"

This was the moment where he considered the 12th category of elements. Though he kept it to the back of his head for now. He needed to first master the use of 'flows' and he spent weeks working on that.

As he did, he felt the limits of liquid wind and liquid earth. These things weren't too great. They didn't have much of an effect when they hit. A lot of cultivators actually picked to be hit by those instead of the others when they were trapped. They even managed to stage comebacks from that from time to time.

As he won more and more times and other fights became longer, he decided to switch the two element states.

He decided to pick earth in a solid form, as grains of sand. It worked better. Sand was thin and could be separated and integrated as well. It had great chemistry with liquid fire and the extreme-cold water. It was quite bad with the thunder though. After more trials, he switched sand for grinded copper grains. They were tougher and good at conducting the thunder element.

As for wind, he switched to the gaseous form. He kept a few cyclones in his spatial rings. How it worked, he wasn't sure. But he wasn't one to question these things, only to make use of them. And that he did. In this form, the wind was very strong. It could fuse with all the others and boosted them greatly.

From there, his entire move pool grew and his use of the elements was getting more and more impressive. He was finally winning more times than he lost.

What had stopped him from doing so beforehand was his lack of experience in using the weapon known as spiritual energy. Now that he could do it rather well, his battle sense could finally play a role. He was efficiently combining the spiritual energy, the elements and his martial arts into one.

After some more time, he began to consider more variations in his use of the elements and created many different patterns of crisscrossing elements. Fire + Wind + Thunder, Earth + Thunder + Wind, Water + Thunder + Earth... Only fire and water weren't very compatible for fusing but the possibilities available were more than enough to create surprise for his opponents on stage.

The cultivators were obviously not confined to the use of one single element either but they tended to only do so. Because the element they had picked for their core had a great impact on their power. And that was the downfall of quite a few of them since Jin could elementally counter them much more easily.

Of course, he was still being destroyed by the stronger ones which amounted to more than half of those still fighting him now.

As he was in the training grounds spinning his spear around along with a dozen flows, Min-Su approached him. He had made a lot of progress as well but he strangely didn't grow as much. He was always feeling as if something wasn't right and couldn't really get into it. The elements felt alien to him and while he could now manipulate his own flows like Jin, he wasn't as powerful. His mastery lacking.

Today, he came to ask for guidance. Jin agreed as teaching helps one understanding. They had mocked battles from then on. But Min-Su remained as he was, as if he had reached a bottleneck.

After some time, he stopped going to spar with Jin and went to ask his Master. His Master pondered for a moment before he told him so: "You come from a clan who always stuck with two elements, seal and space. Why don't you try them out?"

Min-Su walked away with a lot in his mind but no answers. What his Master said was the truth but he couldn't comprehend how he could use 'space' or 'seal' in flows... As he went to discuss this with Jin, he was told: "Why not use them in a different way then?"

He didn't have a breakthrough right away but this changed his point of view and it was one step forward.