Martial Soul Evolution Theory (2)

As his vitality neared exhaustion, his Soul Power grew increasingly vast. As the number of soul rings binding a Martial Soul increased, the Martial Soul became increasingly stable.

Just like the evolution of living things in nature, evolution was a beneficial mutation. As an organism's genes gradually stabilized through evolution, the likelihood of mutation became lower and lower.

In other words, as a soul master's rank increased, their Martial Soul became more stable, and it became increasingly difficult to trigger its evolution.

From this perspective, absorbing soul rings beyond one's limit—especially doing so with the first few soul rings—could indeed accelerate a Martial Soul's evolution far beyond what normal-limit soul rings could achieve.

But Martial Soul Evolution was definitely not as simple as "stacking quantity."

How did a soul master's absorption of soul rings enhance the original power of their Martial Soul and cause it to "mutate"?

First, what changes did soul rings bring to soul masters?

Soul skills, physical fitness, Soul Power, mental strength enhancements, and the original power of the Martial Soul.

Among them, physical fitness, Soul Power, and mental strength could collectively be called improvements to the three aspects of Essence, Qi, and Spirit.

Soul skills would be set aside for now.

The Essence of Martial Souls was a gift and miracle bestowed by this world when Essence, Qi, and Spirit merged into one.

Thus, these aspects passively promoted the strengthening of a Martial Soul's power.

However, for a Martial Soul to mutate, these were merely supplementary factors. To avoid straying from the subject with too many words, they would not be discussed in detail for now.

Excluding those two aspects, what remained was the direct and apparent enhancement of a Martial Soul's original power.

The first thing to consider here was the absorption rate.

The absorption rate mainly depended on the compatibility between the Martial Soul and the soul beast.

For example, if a Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul absorbed a Soft Bone Rabbit soul ring, their compatibility would definitely not be high. Less than ten percent of the energy would likely directly promote the Martial Soul's original power.

That brought them to the second step... which aspect of the Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul's origin did this portion of energy enhance?

Probably only its "vitality."

Blue Silver Grass was a very simple Martial Soul. Its fundamental attributes were mainly "the growth and seeding of plants," "the vitality of the Martial Soul itself," "the Toughness of the Martial Soul itself," and "perception, mainly between Blue Silver Grass plants."

If the ultimate evolutionary form, the Blue Silver Emperor, was the cultivation goal, then "the growth and seeding of plants" and "perception" were clearly the most important, followed by "vitality," with Toughness coming last.

Yet absorbing a Soft Bone Rabbit soul ring was only ten percent efficient to begin with, and even that ten percent clearly did little to improve the two most important aspects.

If the goal of absorbing a soul ring was to evolve the Martial Soul, then this was clearly a failed absorption.

By this point, everyone should be able to see the three key points of soul ring absorption for Martial Soul Evolution.

First, the stability of the Martial Soul.

A Martial Soul could not be overly stable; it needed a certain degree of plasticity.

To sum it up, fewer soul rings were better, lower Soul Power was better, fewer soul bones were better, and younger age was better.

Second, the amount of origin energy.

The higher the soul ring's age, the more origin energy it contained.

The greater the soul ring's compatibility, the higher the rate at which a Martial Soul's origin improved per unit of energy.

Third, the type of origin energy.

Different Martial Souls had different conditions for evolution.

The simpler the Martial Soul, the fewer types of origin power it possessed; the opposite was true for more complex Martial Souls.

Only by specifically enhancing one or several types of origin power could one reach the critical point for a Martial Soul mutation.

And now, during the absorption of this first soul ring, You Chen felt as though he had truly returned to the time when he absorbed his first soul ring.

He could not feel the restraints imposed by his original four soul rings at all. Even his Soul Power had been restricted by the laws of the world to the bottleneck of level 10...

The state of his Martial Soul seemed to have returned to the free and restless state of his youth twenty years ago...

There was no need to question the compatibility of a soul ring bestowed by the system.

What it brought was precisely the power needed to pry a Martial Soul into mutation.

The only thing You Chen needed to consider was the third point: "the type of energy."

What You Chen was doing was first locking in the soul skill, thereby indirectly locking in the changes to the Martial Soul's origin power brought by the soul ring.

Just as Blue Silver Grass had the Blue Silver Emperor as its marker.

The Stardust Young Dragon also had the Stardust Dragon as its marker.

Compared with tool Martial Souls, beast Martial Souls clearly had far more complicated categories of origin power.

There was no need to mention the usual things like strength, agility, and endurance.

Beyond those were all sorts of miscellaneous factors, such as body size and the composition of scales and skin.

These were common categories shared by nearly all beast Martial Souls.

They were collectively called "physical attributes."

Only then came the countless elemental attributes, such as earth, fire, water, and wind.

Generally speaking, for "physical attributes," it was enough to look at whether the soul ring's compatibility was high enough.

As long as the soul ring's compatibility was high, the Martial Soul basically would not grow crooked.

For a Martial Soul to evolve, what mattered was whether the growth of its "elemental attributes" was correct and sufficient.

The initial form of You Chen's Martial Soul was called the Wind Hatchling Dragon, which had led him from the very beginning to pursue a cultivation path toward "ultimate wind."

But only after his Wind Essence had grown to a level comparable to that of a high-grade Martial Soul, evolving his Martial Soul into the Stardust Young Dragon, did he discover the flaw in his path.

The Stardust Dragon was indeed a dragon with wind-element power, but it was by no means a dragon that possessed only wind-element power.

Its ultimate form possessed light-element power, and the two juvenile-form cards, Stardust Little Dragon and Stardust Young Dragon, were both light-element as well.

Then there was the Stardust Dragon's effect, its signature skill, Sacrifice Sanctuary, which could negate effect destruction...

All of this plainly showed that the Stardust Dragon was not a Martial Soul that followed the path of ultimate wind.

Starlight, wind, and holiness—these three powers lay hidden within its body.

That was You Chen's conclusion.

His first three soul rings had already gone far enough down the wind-element path.

Thus, when choosing his fourth soul ring, You Chen had specifically selected a soul beast with the power of starlight.

Yet even so, the Stardust Young Dragon had remained far from reaching the threshold of evolution.

According to You Chen's original estimation, his Martial Soul would likely only have a chance to evolve further after he became a seven-ring Soul Sage.

By then, it would probably also be the final limit of his life.

Yet the system had given him another chance.

What the future held, and whether he would ever have another opportunity to obtain a system soul ring, was completely unknown.

You Chen staked everything on this one soul ring, pouring all his hopes into it!

The soul skill he intended to construct was naturally—Sacrifice Sanctuary!

The core ability written on the Stardust Dragon's card!

If he could completely engrave the Stardust Dragon's signature ability as written in its card description, his Martial Soul would definitely complete its evolution! It would also open a path toward the Stardust Dragon!

The color of the adaptive soul ring swiftly began to change.

White quickly became yellow, then orange-yellow, before taking on a hint of purple...

An hour passed, and the soul ring had already turned black as ink.

The fluctuations of Soul Power finally subsided.

A pair of dragon wings suddenly unfurled, and the gust they stirred knocked over every object in the room.

"Phew."

You Chen let out a soft breath and opened his eyes, the corners of his lips rising.

First soul skill—Sacrifice Sanctuary! It worked!