"This item did not come from the hands of human Soul Masters—at least, not originally."
His very first sentence jolted Ding Huo.
"About half a month ago, after a medium-scale Beast Tide attack on Rosette City was repelled, our people were clearing the battlefield and examining the corpses of the slain frenzied Soul Beasts when they found this item buried deep beneath the neck fur of a Shadow Leopard. It was a Soul Beast with roughly fifty thousand years of cultivation, renowned for its cunning and speed."
Tang Lan narrated calmly, as though he were discussing something ordinary.
"At the time, it was not this intact. It was more like a small piece that had fallen off or been damaged from a complex device."
It was embedded deeply between the Shadow Leopard's cervical bones and muscles, seemingly forming some bizarre connection with its nervous system.
When they removed it, the lingering Soul Power within the Shadow Leopard's corpse began fluctuating chaotically. Deep within its pupils, faint black patterns seemingly of the same origin as this item flashed past.
He pointed at the fine patterns on the black metal fragment.
"After preliminary analysis, these patterns were not merely Soul Tool formations. They contained a great many complex structures related to soul guidance, forced conversion of Life Energy, as well as intense mental suggestion and suppression.
"We deduced that its core function was likely to forcibly embed itself into a Soul Beast's vital points, releasing a special kind of Mental Power fluctuation and energy field to interfere with, overwrite, or even alter the Soul Beast's innate consciousness.
"It would stimulate its most primal urges for slaughter and destruction, and perhaps receive simple commands from some 'source' at a specific frequency, thereby driving large-scale, seemingly organized Beast Tides."
Tang Lan paused, looked at