Martial Soul Evolution Theory (1)

A transparent Soul Ring appeared, circling You Chen.

Success! It had to succeed! First Soul Ring, absorb!

With You Chen's furious roar in his heart, the Soul Ring rapidly contracted and merged into his body.

Joy immediately flashed across You Chen's face.

It worked! It really worked! He had actually begun the absorption smoothly!

Even though years of theoretical research had given him a deeper understanding of this world's underlying laws, and he had already guessed this possibility, You Chen could not help but feel excited.

To dispel distracting thoughts, You Chen immediately closed his eyes and began absorbing the Soul Ring with all his strength.

As he absorbed the Soul Ring, You Chen continuously guided his Soul Power, seemingly trying to actively form a soul skill—a soul skill that best suited Stardust Dragon's abilities!

There were generally two types of soul skills born after absorbing a Soul Ring. One developed the Martial Soul's own abilities—it might produce a skill entirely unrelated to the Soul Ring's source soul beast. The other was related to the soul beast that had produced the Soul Ring—it might have absolutely nothing to do with the Martial Soul itself, such as a blade of grass developing the ability to stop time.

There were only these two tendencies; the difference lay merely in their proportions.

Yet within this process, a Soul Master's subjective initiative and individual will were by no means without influence.

"Meme and Gene" was a work he had published at the age of twenty-five, proving the influence of human spiritual will upon Martial Souls and soul skills.

And when he obtained his Fourth Soul Ring at twenty-eight, he had verified it upon himself as well.

This did not mean one could obtain whatever soul skill one wanted. Just thinking about it made it clear that gaining a soul skill was not a purely idealistic process.

It was constrained by the soul beast chosen by the Soul Master. The more closely it matched the Martial Soul's fundamental power, the easier it was to develop the Martial Soul's own abilities. The incompatible, indigestible parts naturally became "waste."

And this pure First Soul Ring, which contained no soul beast power whatsoever, was like a blank sheet of paper, one that could be freely painted upon according to the Soul Master's will!

Developing the Martial Soul's own abilities and constructing soul skills suited to it was undoubtedly the best choice for maximizing the Soul Ring's energy and allowing the Martial Soul to evolve!

For You Chen, it was like having seen the answer key in advance. He would sketch out the Martial Soul's evolved abilities, then guide the Martial Soul through its evolution!

When You Chen had first arrived in this world, he had been somewhat blindly devoted to the concept of "absorbing Soul Rings beyond one's limit."

He had seen this sort of process in countless fanfictions. A protagonist of average talent would absorb a suitable soul beast's Soul Ring beyond their limit, allowing their Martial Soul to break through its shackles and evolve from trash into something powerful enough to crush everyone present.

But with even a little careful thought, the flaws became obvious.

Suitable soul beasts—could those families and sects that passed down Martial Souls generation after generation possibly choose worse ones than he could discover through his own research?

Take Bibi Dong and Tang San. How many hundreds or thousands of years beyond the optimal limit were their second Martial Souls' Soul Rings?

If it were really that amazing... then the strength of Tang San and Bibi Dong's second Martial Souls should have easily reached god-tier.

Yet in reality, the combined Soul Ring age of Bibi Dong's two great Martial Souls differed by at least several hundred thousand years, but there was no qualitative difference in the quality of the Martial Souls themselves.

Tang San had also absorbed Soul Rings beyond his limit when he first cultivated Blue Silver Grass, yet it had not even caused Blue Silver Grass to reveal any of the Blue Silver Emperor's traits early.

Absorbing Soul Rings beyond one's limit... Why should absorbing Soul Rings beyond the conventional age limit allow a Martial Soul to evolve? Did pain and squeezing out one's potential bring about evolution? But conversely, wouldn't an evolution that came naturally, like Pokémon evolution—one that was not only painless but also comfortable and exhilarating—make more sense?

Simply equating absorbing Soul Rings beyond one's limit with Martial Soul Evolution was clearly rather presumptuous.

Once he broke through this barrier of understanding, You Chen quickly figured this out.

To uncover the true reason behind it, You Chen began conducting in-depth research.

With Spirit Hall's wealth of knowledge, he soon established one point.

First, absorbing Soul Rings beyond one's limit could indeed improve the quality of a Martial Soul and even evolve it. But on the real Douluo Continent, it was absolutely nowhere near as miraculous as fanfictions made it out to be.

It was one thing for an intermediate Martial Soul to evolve into an advanced Martial Soul with one Soul Ring, but reaching the peak with another two or three Soul Rings, then evolving a trash Martial Soul into a super Martial Soul by the Soul King, Soul Emperor, or even Soul Sage level?

Were all those great families with centuries and millennia of inheritance just sitting around doing nothing?

For the overwhelming majority of people in this world, Martial Soul Evolution was a gradual process requiring the efforts of countless generations.

Take You Chen as an example. Under normal circumstances, after relying on Whale Rubber and his Second, Third, and Fourth Soul Rings beyond the age limit to break through the shackles of his original talent, he would continue cultivating step by step. If he trained diligently for his entire life, he might have a chance of reaching the Soul Emperor rank and evolving his original intermediate Martial Soul into an advanced Martial Soul.

Then, if he married and had children, the odds of his descendants inheriting an advanced Martial Soul would rise greatly.

Generation after generation, passed down like this for ten thousand years, perhaps a new naturally top-tier Martial Soul might truly be born.

You Chen could not be certain about other Martial Souls, but his own Stardust Young Dragon Martial Soul definitely possessed such potential!

Because after absorbing his Fourth Soul Ring and evolving his Martial Soul, You Chen had realized that his Martial Soul's true form had never been the Wind Hatchling Dragon! It was Stardust Dragon, the ace monster of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's protagonist Yusei Fudo!

It had merely degenerated into this form because his aptitude was insufficient, leaving his Martial Soul innately deficient.

Back then, he had been multitasking—rewatching Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's for the fourth time on his computer while reading Douluo fanfiction on his phone—when he had inexplicably transmigrated here.

He had thought this transmigration was only related to the Douluo fanfiction he had been reading. Turns out Yu-Gi-Oh! had come along too!

After his Martial Soul evolved for the first time, You Chen had felt somewhat regretful.

If he had learned the truth about his Martial Soul earlier, his Soul Ring choices could naturally have been made closer to perfection. Perhaps his Third Soul Ring might have allowed his Martial Soul to complete its first evolution, giving him more opportunities and possibilities to complete the next evolution.

But it was definitely not too late now.

He had another chance now!

And that brought him back to You Chen's research into Soul Rings and Martial Soul Evolution.

Through his observations and research, You Chen discovered that aside from the special Seventh Soul Ring, which was fixed as the Martial Soul Avatar soul skill, the first three Soul Rings were far more efficient at evolving a Martial Soul than the later ones!

If one absorbed an optimally compatible four-hundred-year Soul Ring as the First Soul Ring, the evolution it brought to the Martial Soul would be no worse than the evolution a Soul King gained from absorbing an ordinary ten-thousand-year Soul Ring as their Fifth Soul Ring!

Just as in the original story, Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures were better absorbed the earlier the better. All of it pointed to one word: early.

With this inspiration and insight, You Chen began researching along this line of thought.

What exactly affected the Martial Soul Evolution brought by absorbing Soul Rings?

The youthfulness of one's vitality and blood? The number of Soul Rings already possessed? Soul Power, physical fitness, spiritual power? The compatibility between the acquired soul skill and the Martial Soul?...

Over more than twenty years, across the long passage of time, relying on his astonishing intellect, he had finally obtained an answer!

An answer that could not be called absolutely correct, one that was vague, but still enough to let him see the road ahead clearly.

Was vitality and blood a limitation? Correct!

Were Soul Rings and Soul Power limitations? Correct!

Was Soul Ring compatibility a limitation? Correct!

And at its root, Martial Soul Evolution was essentially a mutation caused by the enhancement of a Martial Soul's fundamental power.