Star Dou Great Forest, Obtaining the Fifth Ring (2)

But for the Stardust Young Dragon to evolve further, it could no longer follow the path of a single attribute.

Because wind-element power had already reached its limit.

After the Wind Hatchling Dragon evolved into the Stardust Young Dragon, it naturally developed extremely weak stellar and holy powers.

What came next was increasing the strength of those two powers.

An energy boundary did not refer only to an upper limit; it also referred to a lower limit.

After the Wind Hatchling Dragon evolved into the Stardust Young Dragon, the strength of those two inherent powers became the lower limit of the Stardust Young Dragon martial soul in those aspects.

From another perspective, that probably meant that raising those two powers to the lower limit of the "Stardust Dragon" would allow the martial soul to evolve.

This gave rise to another hypothesis, a more practical one.

Given You Chen's personality, he naturally would not stop there.

That was how he discovered the "energy ratio."

While raising the three fundamental attribute powers, You Chen noticed subtle differences in the martial soul's state throughout the process.

After a long period of research and observation, he discovered three states of a martial soul—or rather, of its martial soul origin.

"Active State," "Relatively Stable State," and "Stagnant State."

To state the conclusion directly, when the distribution of a martial soul's power approached a ratio conducive to evolution—that was, when its Evolution Degree was relatively high—the martial soul origin became relatively active.

Conversely, when the Evolution Degree represented by that ratio was roughly the same as its current state, the martial soul origin became relatively stable.

And when the martial soul's power distribution completely deviated from ratios conducive to evolution, its origin would enter an inert state, and even the circulation speed of soul power would decline.

In other words, there was always a ratio that possessed the highest Evolution Degree and was most capable of guiding a martial soul toward evolution.

From these two "key points," You Chen reached two conclusions on how to make his martial soul evolve as much as possible.

First, once a power reached its upper limit, it should receive less attention. Allocating even a single additional resource to it was a waste. Conversely, since the lower limit could not be determined, attribute energies with lower energy levels should be raised as much as possible.

Second, the ratio between the energy levels of the three powers should be made to approach the "Perfect Evolution Ratio" as closely as possible.

Now, with the Stardust Young Dragon evolving into the Stardust Dragon, You Chen's conclusions had basically been verified.

It seemed that the evolutionary difficulty of the Stardust Dragon series of martial souls increased gradually. The Wind Hatchling Dragon only required a single-element power to reach its boundary before it evolved, but when the Stardust Young Dragon sought to evolve again, there was no sign of evolution even after a single-element power reached its upper limit.

Only after You Chen filled in the energy levels of the holy and stellar powers did it complete its evolution.

And as his martial soul evolved once more, You Chen returned to this old step yet again.

This time, however, he did not need to repeat the long road of research from the beginning.

As a byproduct of exploring the "Perfect Ratio," he had developed a small skill for this purpose through the Distraction Control Soul Refining Art.

Unlike the Flame Lord, the Stardust Dragon did not possess an innate and powerful control over energy. Even with You Chen's ability, he could not use a single type of power independently.

However, favoring the use of one type of power was not a problem. It was simply that, in the process, the other two types of power would naturally be mobilized as well, wasting a large amount of soul power.

This kind of operation held little practical combat value, but it had its uses in measurement.

Able to divide his attention into at most four parts, You Chen used three parts to mobilize the three types of power separately, while the last part sensed the martial soul's state.

It was like using three ropes to pull the martial soul in three different directions, making it easy to distinguish the strength of the influences acting upon it.

At least with You Chen's capabilities, the massive amount of information generated during the process was enough for him to calculate.

It was practically plugging numbers straight into a formula.

After all these years, it had become nothing more than routine procedure.

Yeah, that was the confidence assembly-line work gave You Chen!

Then, You Chen quickly discovered that his holy power energy level had already faintly reached the peak of the Stardust Dragon, the so-called "boundary."

Among the three powers at present, their strength ranked as holy > wind > stellar.

However, although there were differences between them, all three were rated at 3, "strong performance." There was no qualitative gap.

Based on the information already available, the Stardust Dragon's power was likely centered on wind and stellar power, with holy power secondary. Only by raising both the Stardust Dragon's wind and stellar powers to a rating of 4, top-tier performance, could they reach the "boundary."

Through these past few days of "measurement," You Chen had already roughly deduced the Stardust Dragon's "Energy Perfect Ratio."

Wind: stellar: holy. The answer was most likely one of the following:

2:2:1; 3:2:1; 3:3:2; 5:4:3...

Then there was only one answer!

"Use this list to find the target. The age should be at least twenty thousand years, and preferably no more than twenty-five thousand years."

You Chen gave his answer and handed over a drawing.

Di Wan took it. It depicted simple sketches of more than a dozen soul beasts, along with methods for judging their approximate ages.

Di Wan vaguely recognized quite a few of them, because several wind-element soul beasts he had once regarded as targets were clearly listed there.

As Di Wan memorized them, he frowned slightly and asked, "Twenty-five thousand years? Are you sure? I know that after you discovered Whale Rubber's true effect, the optimal age limit for soul masters generally rose to nearly that of the next ring. But if I remember correctly, before that, even the optimal age limit for the sixth ring was only twenty thousand years, right? Even if most of these are not soul beasts with top-tier bloodlines like Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bears, twenty-five thousand years is still dangerous enough."

You Chen merely replied calmly, "When have you ever seen me do something I wasn't sure about?"

Di Wan spread the empty hand at his side. "Are you conducting some new experiment again? Fine. Just don't blame me if you explode while absorbing the soul ring."

The moment he finished speaking, Di Wan's third purple soul ring abruptly lit up.

Third soul skill, Eagle Eye Vision!

Di Wan's eyes instantly turned golden, radiating the pressure of an apex predator.

Even while maintaining extremely high-speed flight, none of the conditions of the many soul beasts below could escape his eyes.

Having a Soul Douluo inclined toward the Agility Attack System lead him on a soul-beast hunt felt absolutely incredible.

Eagle King's six-dimensional ratings:

Martial soul: Eagle King (top-tier martial soul)

Strength: 4 (top-tier performance)

Speed: 4.5 (quasi-superior performance)

Toughness: 3 (strong performance)

Endurance: 4 (top-tier performance)

Energy: 4 (top-tier wind-element energy, enhanced by the soul power quality of a normal top-tier martial soul)

Special Ability: 2 (premonition, able to perceive a brief future in which he might suffer severe injury or death; versatile ability)

Total score: 19.5 (+2)

The reason Di Wan was said to be a soul master inclined toward the Agility Attack System was that this fellow was not only fast, but also possessed considerable strength and endurance. He could fully be considered a Power Attack System soul master.

In truth, high-level soul masters were basically all like this. Aside from a very small number of exceptions, once their martial soul strength and Soul Power Level rose, none of their attributes would be too poor. Unless they faced a superior martial soul, it was essentially impossible for them to be defeated by someone of a lower rank.

Of course, having no weaknesses was one thing. Having multiple strengths and being able to fill multiple roles was another.

You Chen believed that although both were "eagles" and both were Soul Douluos, Di Wan could be an "Eagle King" while Flender could only be a "Flying Horn," and he himself deserved great credit for that.

Yeah, hands on hips.