At the Saint level, if Su Ze wanted to ascend to a higher evolutionary rank, he had to continuously strengthen and upgrade his own skills.

For a Saint-level Overlord to break through to Saint-level Paragon, the threshold was to absorb one vial of Tier Five extract and raise all of their other skills to Tier Four.

On the surface, the demand for extracts seemed to have lessened, making evolution appear easier. In reality, however, it was far more difficult and expensive. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

After becoming a Saint-level Overlord, an ordinary evolver would possess twelve skills. Excluding the three Tier Four skills absorbed during the Butterfly Stage, this meant they would have nine skills below Tier Four.

All nine of these skills needed to be upgraded to Tier Four. This would require an enormous amount of evolutionary materials and extracts to accomplish. The financial and mental cost of such an undertaking was unimaginable.

Even if one succeeded, it was merely reaching the threshold to a higher level of life. Whether the evolution was successful or not still depended on the quality of these skills and one’s personal foundation.

Because of his "Divine Grace of Evolution" skill, Su Ze had more skills than others. This also meant he had more skills to upgrade, resulting in a greater expenditure.

Of course, greater effort would naturally yield greater rewards. If he could upgrade all of his skills to Tier Four, his success rate for his fifth evolution would far surpass that of others.

Moreover, ever since the Pupa Stage, he had been continuously strengthening and upgrading his skills. It could be said that he had started doing the work of a Saint-level evolver long in advance.

This saved him a lot of trouble and time after he became an Overlord.

With Liou Wenxin’s help, Su Ze first compiled a list of all his skills and categorized them one by one.

So far, he possessed a total of sixteen skills.

They were: Rhino Charge, Ant Power, Needle Strike, Regeneration Body, Furious Waves, Knowledge is Power, Celestial Sea Wings, Gravity Dust Sand, Thunder God Body, Eye of Truth, Unyielding Will, Liquid Life, The Strongest Punch, Impact Cannon, Expansion, and Divine Grace of Evolution.

First, he excluded the skills that were already at Tier Four or higher. There was no rush to upgrade these; they were the type to be strengthened if he happened upon suitable materials, but he wouldn’t force it otherwise.

These were: Unyielding Will (Tier Four C-Rank), Liquid Life (Tier Four S-Rank), The Strongest Punch (Tier Four S-Rank), Impact Cannon (Tier Four A-Rank), and Expansion (Tier Five B-Rank).

Although "Impact Cannon" was only Tier Four A-Rank, when paired with "Expansion," it could unleash power that rivaled any Tier Four S-Rank offensive skill. Furthermore, it paired well with "The Strongest Punch," making it more useful to Su Ze than a typical Tier Four S-Rank skill.

Similarly, while "Unyielding Will" was only Tier Four C-Rank, it played a crucial role for Su Ze.

In addition to these, there were other skills that, after Su Ze’s later upgrades and enhancements, Liou Wenxin assessed as having reached Tier Four strength as well.

These skills were: Regeneration Body (Tier Four S-Rank) and Knowledge is Power (Tier Four S-Rank).

It was within Su Ze’s expectations that "Regeneration Body" reached Tier Four S-Rank after multiple upgrades. However, he was surprised that "Knowledge is Power," which was originally a Tier Two S+-Rank skill, was rated as Tier Four S-Rank by Liou Wenxin after only a single upgrade.

In Liou Wenxin’s words, a skill that could directly strengthen Su Ze at a cellular level—and do so multiple times with significant enhancement—was definitely considered an extremely precious skill even among Tier Four abilities.

If one day Su Ze could upgrade the "Knowledge is Power" skill to the point where it could directly enhance him at the genetic level, then the skill would have definitely crossed the threshold into the God-tier!

Excluding those seven skills, and also accounting for the un-rankable and un-upgradable "Divine Grace of Evolution" skill, Su Ze had a total of eight skills left to upgrade.

Every single one of them was a Tier Three skill; Su Ze no longer had any skills below Tier Three.

These eight Tier Three skills were: Rhino Charge, Ant Power, Needle Strike, Furious Waves, Celestial Sea Wings, Gravity Dust Sand, Thunder God Body, and Eye of Truth.

Among them, with the exception of "Furious Waves," all were either Tier Three S-Rank or S+-Rank skills.

"Furious Waves" was originally a Tier Two S+-Rank skill. Since he had obtained it, it had only undergone one minor enhancement, which was the addition of extra ground damage.

However, since it was already an S+-Rank skill, Liou Wenxin’s assessment was that even with just this one minor enhancement, the skill had reached at least Tier Three B-Rank, or even A-Rank, in strength.

And what Su Ze had to do next was upgrade all eight of these skills to Tier Four!

The simplest and most reliable method to upgrade a skill was to find an extract containing a higher-tier version of the skill and absorb it to overwrite and upgrade the existing one.

Ideally, Su Ze only needed to find eight vials of Tier Four extracts to upgrade all eight skills to Tier Four.

But in reality, the higher-tier versions of some skills were extremely rare. It was even possible that no mutated beast on the entire Blue Star possessed them.

For instance, many of Su Ze’s skills were exceptionally rare, with some even originating from unique mutated beasts, making it impossible to find their higher-tier versions.

When faced with this situation, one had to search for other evolutionary materials. These materials could come from mutated beasts or Spiritual Plants. Some of these materials might happen to be able to upgrade a specific skill or strengthen a particular aspect of it.

Many of Su Ze’s skills had been upgraded and strengthened through various evolutionary materials, such as Spirit Root Tree Marrow, Tier Four Coral Worm Tentacles, Evolutionary Liquid, Earth Core Potatoes, and so on.