You Chen Wasn't Maliciously Playing Young!

"You Xing, don't you find this boring? Aren't you sick of it?"

Xiao Wu looked bored as she watched You Xing meditate on his bed. Then she suddenly waggled her brows and said, "You've spent all these days focused on cultivation and barely gone out at all. Want me to take you out and show you around?"

"Sure."

You Xing suddenly got to his feet and nodded.

Xiao Wu had been the one to invite him, yet when You Xing actually agreed, she froze on the spot.

After all... this was far from the first time she had invited You Xing.

And without exception, he had rejected her every time before.

"What wind's blowing today? Grandpa You Xing is finally willing to budge from his nest?"

"So you weren't planning to go with me? Forget it, then. I'll keep cultivating."

"Ah, no, no! When did I ever say that was what I meant?!"

"Oh. Then let's go."

The one so skillfully putting on airs, appearing passive while actually gripping all the initiative in his hand and running Xiao Wu around in circles was naturally no ordinary nine-year-old.

You Xing, whom many believed to be You Chen's illegitimate son, was actually You Chen himself.

Well, perhaps some had guessed part of it, but they assumed this You Xing was merely a clone You Chen had created with his Starlight Avatar. In reality, it was the complete opposite.

The current You Chen could not maintain a clone twenty-four hours a day. Ten-odd minutes was his limit at most.

That day in the dormitory, the adult You Chen had instead been a temporary clone he created.

As for himself, he had remained in the true body of You Chen (II)—Little You Chen—living in the first-year dormitory all along.

Huh? What about his job at Spirit Hall?

It had been stated in the first chapter: You Chen's original plan had been to remain marginalized in this Border City until he could simply leave Spirit Hall altogether.

Whether he was dismissed or had his salary and benefits withheld, You Chen did not care in the slightest.

After deciding to create this alternate identity, You Chen gradually began skipping work. After leaving behind the words, "I'll be entering secluded cultivation recently. If anything comes up, come directly to my house," he had basically stopped showing his face at Spirit Hall.

Still, he had worked enough days this month, so no one had noticed what he was planning for the time being. The branch hall would probably only start reacting next month.

As for whether cultivating as Little You Chen would reduce his cultivation efficiency?

It would, but not by much.

The biggest issue was that raising his Soul Power Level with the soul power of a Soul Master was far less efficient than cultivating with the body of a Soul King.

However, in the eyes of those in the know, You Xing attending school was merely secondary. He was probably only here to experience life and interact with children his age, so he would not grow up without a childhood or lack the necessary social experience. His actual education still came from his personal master.

So long as You Chen returned home and cultivated his soul power through the Meditation Method, that would be enough.

Many fanfics spoke of the concept of "saturated cultivation," and You Chen had also discovered that every soul master did indeed have a daily limit on how long they could practice the Meditation Method.

This concerned the essence of the Meditation Method. It was a method akin to using one's will to resonate with one's martial soul, absorbing the spiritual energy drifting between heaven and earth, then converting and refining it into soul power.

This imposed a certain burden on both a soul master's body and martial soul. Once cultivation reached a certain point, one had to rest for a while before continuing.

He was not entirely sure how the Mysterious Heaven Skill worked, but considering that its effect in this world seemed more like a more complete Meditation Method in the original work, there should be no fundamental difference.

You Chen guessed that because martial souls existed in this world, the Mysterious Heaven Skill gained an additional process of connecting with the martial soul, allowing inner power to transform into soul power.

You Chen cultivated in Little You Chen's state not only so he could disguise himself and approach Tang San later, not only to divert the attention of people like Bibi Dong for future schemes, and not only to make fuller use of his advantages to create an identity distinct from his true self.

There was another important hidden purpose—his own cultivation.

After absorbing Big You Chen's fifth ring, he was now level 54.

In theory, he could absorb Little You Chen's second and third rings and reach level 60.

Then he could absorb Big You Chen's sixth ring, reaching around level 63, before filling in Little You Chen's fourth, fifth, and sixth rings... reaching the seven-ring Soul Sage realm as quickly as possible.

With the advantage of dual accounts running simultaneously, he would not need more than a few years. While Tang San was still at three rings, he would definitely become a Soul Douluo.

Within ten years—at most, a dozen or so years—he could at least reach the Titled Douluo realm.

But Titled Douluo had never been You Chen's goal.

Even before obtaining the system, before being struck down by his own limits and his failure to change fate, he had never intended to stop at Titled Douluo.

Much less was that the best way to fully exploit the advantages of dual accounts running simultaneously.

At the very least, for the first three rings and the seventh ring, which were immensely important in You Chen's theory, he intended to make them flawless.

When he absorbed the first soul ring given by the system, he had been puzzled by its twelve-thousand-year age.

That question had not simply been set aside. If anything, You Chen had kept thinking about it.

After absorbing his fourth ring, the normal age limit for his next ring should have been twenty thousand years.

In theory, Little You Chen's first ring should have been around twenty thousand years old.

Yet in reality, it had nearly been cut in half.

He had considered whether, when he absorbed the system's first ring, the system had assessed his physical strength based on the body he possessed without any soul rings.

That was most likely indeed one reason.

By the middle and later stages, the physical strength of tool martial soul masters would not lag too far behind that of beast martial soul masters. Besides their own training, a large part of that came from the enhancement of soul rings.

More than ninety percent of that enhancement came from the soul rings themselves, while the remaining portion came from the transformation and strengthening caused by the energy directly entering the body after absorbing a soul ring. Thus, if a soul ring was shattered through ring detonation or locked due to something like amputation, a soul master's physical strength would also plummet.

But that was only one of the reasons.

You Chen had never stopped training his body. For example, even now, after switching to Little You Chen and possessing only one soul ring, his physical strength was comparable to that of an ordinary Soul Ancestor.

What was more, equipping soul rings itself placed a burden on the body. In theory, he could sustain soul rings of even greater age.

His body's endurance was not an issue, and his spiritual power was even more terrifying... Eliminate all the misleading possibilities, and the remaining answer was obvious.

Soul Power Level, or rather... the balance of the three elements: Essence, Qi, and Spirit.

The latter was easier to explain, but the former had always been an important factor people overlooked.

After all... every soul master had the same Soul Power Level when absorbing soul rings at each stage. Who would care about how that affected a soul ring's age limit?

After researching and analyzing it for this period of time, You Chen had finally confirmed it.

But... how could he calculate the optimal soul ring age limit at level 20, or at level 30? Or even... derive a formula directly?

He needed more data to study.

That was also why he had Di Wan gather that information.