The First Soul Ring and Soul Skill

This was actually a Hundred-Year Soul Beast?

Zhou You stared in surprise at the yellow Soul Ring floating in midair.

Did the mere Jincheng Mountains actually have a mighty Hundred-Year Soul Beast cultivating in seclusion here?

After grumbling inwardly for a while, he gradually began to understand.

Although a Soul Beast like the Armored Monster Bug had cultivated to the hundred-year level, it had no powerful direct attacks. It had put all its abilities into defense.

A Soul Beast was not necessarily powerful just because it was old. Blue Silver Grass, for example, was little different from a weed even at the hundred-year level. And a Soft Bone Rabbit, even if it cultivated to the thousand-year level, could only flee when it encountered a natural predator with a mere hundred years of cultivation.

You couldn't expect a Soul Beast that was weak from birth to evolve into a predator simply by accumulating more years. That wasn't how things worked.

A Soul Beast's actual threat level had to be judged from multiple angles. Besides its years of cultivation, its species mattered too.

Generally speaking, only Soul Beasts that already occupied a predator's ecological niche matched people's image of how dangerous Soul Beasts were.

The monster bug clearly wasn't a predator. It occupied a low ecological niche among Soul Beasts, so its survival strategy was to make itself so tough that nothing could gnaw through it, while its innate skill reflected damage.

That way, Soul Beasts capable of cracking it open disdained it for being too young, while those that craved it couldn't break through its defenses and might even suffer reflected damage.

That made the returns from preying on it very low.

Simply put, eating it was both troublesome and not worth the effort.

Feidian might well have understood that, but Soul Beasts were simply too rare here, especially a Hundred-Year Soul Beast with so little attacking ability. He didn't want to miss this feast.

The little fellow simply couldn't crack it open himself. If Zhou You hadn't helped, he could only have watched his prey slip away before his eyes.

Sure enough, before long, the little fellow followed the scent over and began gutting the dead monster bug with his front paws.

Zhou You only glanced at him before paying him no further attention. He sat cross-legged on the ground and began restoring his Qi.

The battle had been brief, but it was intense, and it had nearly drained all the Qi stored in his body. The emptiness in his dantian made him feel terribly insecure.

As soon as he began refining Qi, he was surprised.

In his inner vision, wisps and strands of gentle energy suddenly appeared throughout his body.

This is Soul Power! Zhou You understood.

The Soul Power refined by his Martial Soul was now flowing into his Twelve Primary Meridians. As it circulated through the Lesser Heavenly Circuit, it naturally merged into the meridian-dantian system.

"So it can work like this too." Zhou You was thoughtful. Soul Power could be further processed into Qi!

An old memory surfaced, and Zhou You recalled that Tang San in the original story had actually cultivated both systems as well. The Mysterious Heaven Skill had been his foundation, while the Soul Masters' Meditation Method served as a supplement.

This amply demonstrated that the internal circulation system represented by the meridians was compatible with the Soul Masters' meditative cultivation system.

The Martial Soul Origin was, after all, also part of the Soul Master himself, so Qi and Soul Power were by no means as distinct as the waters of the Jing and Wei rivers.

He also discovered that his Martial Soul absorbed Heaven and Earth Vital Energy far more efficiently than he could through his own breathing exercises. This might have been thanks to the quality of the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella.

A Martial Soul born with its own Soul Skill was presumably quite rare, and its efficiency at refining Soul Power was extraordinary as well.

Zhou You entered meditation again, sinking his mind into his Niwan Palace and finding the illusory image of the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella.

He carefully observed the manifestation of his Martial Soul and used his mind to direct the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella to absorb Heaven and Earth Vital Energy.

Zhou You didn't know that, in doing so, he had grasped a Meditation Method on his own, without a teacher.

With this new sequence of "Heaven and Earth Vital Energy → Soul Power → Qi" in operation, the Qi in his body recovered very quickly.

This confirmed his idea once more: Soul Power could be circulated through the meridians and transformed into acquired Qi, more efficiently than by directly breathing in Heaven and Earth Vital Energy.

Before long, Zhou You felt his dantian fill up again.

Zhou You opened his eyes, his gaze bright and spirited.

He was in a fine mood. This time, he had stumbled upon an efficient method of refining Qi entirely by accident.

Sure enough, cultivation had to be adapted to local conditions. He couldn't blindly copy the Undergraduate Curriculum.

To him, his Martial Soul was not only a companion weapon but also an accelerator for cultivation, and he valued the latter function even more.

This made Zhou You even more interested in the Soul Master cultivation system. If he could fully understand the principles behind it, could he use them to feed back into Threefold Reversal and make up for its flaws...?

His experiences in his previous life had given him a vague sense that Threefold Reversal might still be missing something.

While Zhou You was lost in thought, something suddenly touched his lower leg.

He looked down and saw that Feidian had pushed the shell of the bug's corpse over to him.

The bug's shell was round like a bowl, and half the bug's meat remained inside.

To Zhou You's surprise, the monster bug's meat was actually translucent and glistening, looking a little like raw crab meat.

Feidian pushed the bug shell toward Zhou You, reluctance plain in his eyes. He pointed at the meat inside with a little paw and cooed, as though telling him to eat.

The meat of a Hundred-Year Soul Beast was quite a nourishing supplement for a Soul Scholar.

Seeing this, Zhou You reached out and rubbed Feidian's little head, his affection plain to see.

"At least you have a conscience, little fellow. Eat the meat yourself. Having this is enough for me." Zhou You pointed at the yellow Soul Ring still floating in midair.

Yes, he intended to absorb this Soul Ring.

During the battle just now, he had seen the monster bug's abilities. A skill that combined powerful defense with a counterattack at the critical point suited the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella quite well and should be able to strengthen the canopy's defense.

Moreover, when he had just sunk his mind into his Niwan Palace, he had received a revelation from his Primordial Spirit. That was important.

So Zhou You didn't hesitate. His spirit was whole and his Qi abundant, putting him in excellent condition to absorb this Soul Ring.

He immediately summoned the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella and drew the Soul Ring over.

The yellow Soul Ring immediately settled around the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella. Immediately afterward, a current of scorching energy surged wildly through the Martial Soul into his palm and began violently scouring his entire body.

With a thought, Zhou You took the initiative to guide this violent Soul Power through the meridians throughout his body.

He first drew the Soul Power into the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. These eight meridians were far wider than the Twelve Primary Meridians, enough to contain the Soul Power that had surged in a short time and blunt its edge first.

Then he methodically guided this energy to disperse slowly into the Twelve Primary Meridians and merge into his Five Viscera and Six Bowels.

In his inner vision, the surface of the illusory Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella in his Niwan Palace changed. Scale-like armor appeared on its canopy, making it sturdier while also giving it some strange biological features.

The next moment, a powerful resentment abruptly appeared and struck at his mind.

It was the dead Soul Beast's final trace of hatred.

No life was born deserving to die. It should hate, and it had the right to hate!

Zhou You kept his mind fixed on his Primordial Spirit, utterly unmoving. No matter how the lake of his mind churned, his true self remained outside it all, watching coldly and untouched by the foreign resentment.

Before long, the resentment gradually weakened, unable to sustain itself.

Zhou You sighed. "Natural selection, survival of the fittest. You and I are merely two among the multitude, struggling to cross the great tide. I won, you lost; I live, you die. That is all."

"Why not be gone!"

As the words fell within his mind, his Niwan Palace shook violently. His Primordial Spirit shone in every direction, and the final remaining trace of resentment instantly dissolved. His Spiritual Terrace returned to tranquility.

In the real world, Zhou You opened his eyes, his gaze full of vigor.

He looked at the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella in his hand, and at a thought, a yellow Soul Ring lit up.

The Soul Skill naturally surfaced in his mind. As expected, he had obtained the monster bug's ability.

The Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella had gained a skill that absorbed damage and released it through a shockwave, with the timing of the release at his discretion.

But this depended on the opponent's attack power not exceeding the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella's defense. Moreover, while the Soul Skill was active and accumulating damage, the Martial Soul could not be dispersed. All the damage had to be released before it could be dismissed.

Besides that, because their attributes were compatible, the Soul Ring also gave the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella two passive boosts: a 20% increase in base defense and a 20% reduction in consumption.

The reduction in consumption might not seem large, but it belonged to the prized category of independent multipliers.

It meant that whenever Zhou You used his Martial Soul and incurred any expenditure, all consumption could be effectively reduced by 20% while maintaining the same effect.

It brought more varied tactical possibilities, and its effect on Zhou You's overall combat power was obvious.

For him, however, the most important gain was that he had finally broken through the level-ten bottleneck, expanding his dantian.

This meant Zhou You could continue refining and accumulating acquired Qi, and his progress in the Three-One Pile Skill could advance once more.