Soul Beast Age and Cultivation.

Under circumstances where the god position had long since been decided in advance.

No matter how outstanding he was, his final end would at most be nothing more than another Tang Chen.

In the Original Work, Tang Chen's failure, Li Chang'an felt, should also have been inseparable from the Asura God. One had to know that according to attribute divisions, the Rakshasa God was a Main God under the Asura God's command, in other words, a subordinate. With such a status, what virtue or ability did she have to interfere with the successor of a dignified God King?

If a God King's power could be interfered with by a mere Level One God, then this God King was far too pathetic.

So the facts were already very clear.

This was all an act, casually finding an excuse to make the Rakshasa God take the blame. And they even had her inheritor, Bibi Dong, serve as a whetstone for his own inheritor.

After killing the Rakshasa God and the Angel God, with this record to his name, Tang San would also be better able to convince the masses after ascending to the God Realm and inheriting the great position. The Asura God had used this pitiful mother and daughter as stepping stones for his successor to farm reputation.

As for the Sea God's inheritance, the Dual God Positions were an unexpected joy. They were not part of Asura's original plan.

Therefore, if Li Chang'an wanted to find a god position to inherit, the Sea God was the closest, and also the god position he was most likely to obtain.

Star Dou Great Forest.

A hidden underground cave.

Li Chang'an slowly woke up.

After waking, he discovered that the surrounding space seemed to have become a little narrower. Or rather, it was not that the space had become smaller, but that his own body had grown larger.

After eating his own eggshell.

When he woke from his sleep, Li Chang'an's body length had directly surged to ten meters. His cultivation age had also grown from less than ten years to around a hundred years. From this, it could be seen just how nutritious that eggshell had been.

A soul beast's age did not refer to how long the soul beast had lived. Age was merely a kind of level division, just like the titles for each stage of human Soul Masters. Therefore, a ten-thousand-year soul beast had not truly lived for ten thousand years. Otherwise, no matter how many soul beasts there were, they probably would not be enough for humans to kill.

According to the enormous demand human Soul Masters had for soul rings, combined with the fact that the profession of Soul Master had existed for thousands of years even if not ten thousand, if soul beasts could only grow by slowly grinding through time, then after so many years of hunting, soul beasts would probably have gone extinct long ago.

Moreover, aside from being hunted by humans, because of the natural law of the strong preying on the weak, battles would also break out between soul beasts... In that case, the number that died would be even greater. So age truly was only a title. Age did not equal actual years lived.

After becoming a soul beast, through the inherited information in his bloodline, Li Chang'an knew that a soul beast with a top-tier bloodline might only need to cultivate for a few hundred or a few thousand years to grow into a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast. Of course, this process could also be shortened. One only needed to consume some heavenly treasures, or be in an environment rich in Heaven and Earth Energy, and growth could be accelerated.

For a concrete example, one could refer to the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm from Douluo II. That fellow was the most typical case of relying on eating to grow into a Million Year Soul Beast.

The soul beasts of Douluo Continent were actually just like the demonic beasts of immortal cultivation worlds. They all relied on bloodlines and instinct to absorb Heaven and Earth Energy in order to increase their strength and lifespan. The only difference was that the gods of the God Realm had placed a lock on soul beasts. Their strength could never break through to the God-level, and after reaching one hundred thousand years, they would even face heavenly lightning strikes. It was clearly meant to drive soul beasts to their deaths! They were not given even the slightest path to survival.

And the race of Li Chang'an's current body was the Azure Serpent Emperor, a top-tier existence among soul beasts. The emperor among snakes, the king among poisons!

There was naturally no need to say much about his aptitude. Even if he went nowhere and simply continued nesting in this underground cave, cultivating behind closed doors, he would only need a few thousand years to naturally grow into a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast.

So one absolutely should not be frightened by soul beasts constantly being called thousand-year or ten-thousand-year.

Sometimes, they really had not lived that long.

As for a soul beast's cultivation, it was actually simple to explain. It relied on its own bloodline to continuously breathe in and absorb the energy between heaven and earth, strengthening its body as well as the Soul Power inside it. To soul beasts, this was an instinct like breathing. They did not need any cultivation method or circulation route.

The higher-grade a soul beast's bloodline was, the stronger its efficiency in absorbing external energy to strengthen itself would be, and the faster its cultivation speed would be.

On the other hand, for those soul beasts with inferior bloodlines, their cultivation speed would naturally decrease accordingly. There might really be situations where they only gained one year of cultivation in one year, becoming a true Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast that had lived for "one hundred thousand years."

After Li Chang'an adapted to the changes brought by his body's growth, he swung his body and prepared to leave first. Now that he had become a hundred-year soul beast, he more or less had a certain ability to protect himself.

Under ordinary circumstances, as long as he did not encounter soul beasts with bloodline levels higher than his own, or Soul Masters who came to hunt soul beasts, his safety was still quite guaranteed.

The underground cave was not completely sealed off. It also had many passages leading outside.

Li Chang'an flicked out his snake tongue. Based on the scent information carried through the air, he judged that no one had visited this place for at least several hundred years. As a cold-blooded animal, this body's birth mother did not have the instinct to nurse her child. Therefore, the greatest possibility was that she had found this safe place to lay her egg, then left on her own.

The snake egg would hatch by itself as time passed.

I wonder where I am right now?

Is this the Star Dou Great Forest, or the Sunset Forest? Or some other unknown Soul Beast Forest?

As Li Chang'an thought this, his long Snake Body began to sway. He casually chose a passage and moved unhurriedly toward the place where fresh air flowed.

The outside world.

A place covered in fallen leaves suddenly bulged upward.

Immediately afterward, a triangular emerald-green snake head quietly emerged from within the fallen leaves. Its amber-like eyes cautiously looked around. Only after judging that there was no danger did the snake body slowly crawl out.

Li Chang'an could not determine whether the environment he was in contained any existence that could threaten his life. Therefore, he acted with extreme caution, burrowing into the grass and using the cover of Emerald Green to conceal his body.

Snakes were born extremely skilled at hiding. Therefore, as the Azure Serpent Emperor, Li Chang'an was naturally an outstanding example among them.

He silently shifted his body, moving through the grass. He carefully observed his surroundings, his snake tongue constantly flicking out, gathering information left in the surrounding environment.

Very soon, he saw a soul beast.

This was a rabbit whose entire body flickered with faint white light. Judging from the Soul Light on its body, it was a rabbit of several decades.

When Li Chang'an saw this rabbit, the hunting instinct originating from his bloodline instantly made him somewhat eager to move!

He did not hesitate. Twisting his body, he slowly approached that rabbit.

The rabbit that had originally been happily nibbling on Blue Silver Grass suddenly paused for some unknown reason. Immediately afterward, its scarlet eyes swept left and right with some vigilance. Its long ears kept trembling, collecting sounds from every direction.

The result was naturally that it immediately sensed the danger coming from behind!

At once, it kicked off with both legs and quickly ran into the distance.

Seeing that his prey was about to flee, Li Chang'an could no longer be bothered to hide. His body moved. In an instant, he turned into a green afterimage that shot out like lightning, his target directly locked on that rabbit.

At the same time, an aura belonging to a top-tier predator involuntarily spread out.

The rabbit that had originally been sprinting madly instantly seemed to be struck by lightning. Its four limbs stiffened, and following the inertia of its run, it rolled several times on the spot before lying on the ground and shivering!

Soul beasts were a race that placed extreme importance on bloodline.

The young snake Li Chang'an had possessed had a noble bloodline. From birth, it had the bloodline level of the Azure Serpent Emperor. Toward some soul beasts whose bloodlines were inferior to his own, it naturally had a suppressive and intimidating effect.

If a Thousand-Year Soul Beast with an inferior bloodline ran into him, it probably would not even be able to muster the will to resist and would flee with its tail between its legs. Let alone this rabbit before him, which was not even a hundred years old.

Li Chang'an soon arrived beside the rabbit. Looking at this rabbit that was shivering and not resisting at all, he directly opened his snake mouth and spat out a faint wisp of Poison Smoke!

In an instant, the rabbit that had still been shivering kicked its legs out and was poisoned to death on the spot.

A White Soul Ring condensed into shape above the corpse, seemingly waiting for someone to absorb it.

Li Chang'an did not pay attention to that White Soul Ring. Looking at the wild-boar-sized rabbit before him, he could feel his body's instincts continuously transmitting the desire to eat! At once, he no longer hesitated. He opened his large mouth and, like a python, slowly swallowed the plump rabbit before him.

The entire process went very smoothly.

The Azure Serpent Emperor was called a snake, but it possessed the trait of giant pythons being able to swallow prey more than ten times larger than themselves. Therefore, it was able to swallow this fat rabbit in one bite.

And after swallowing this rabbit, Li Chang'an did not feel any psychological or physical discomfort, because his current body was that of a snake, and its senses were different from a human's. A scene that might seem bloody and cruel to humans was not worth mentioning at all to an animal.

In some novels where humans transmigrated into animals, there were often scenes where the protagonist became a tiger and felt very disgusted the first time he ate raw meat, even vomiting. To show that he was still civilized, he would even go to great lengths to start a fire and roast the raw meat, saying that eating it that way was more nutritious and delicious, and that he was still human at heart and so on.

But in truth, all of that was nonsense. If you really transmigrated into a tiger, then a chunk of fatty meat full of fresh blood would be the supreme delicacy to your senses. If it were really cooked, it would instead become dry and tough, like chewing wax. It would not taste good at all.

The senses of humans and animals were ultimately different.

After Li Chang'an swallowed that rabbit, he could clearly feel the process of that rabbit being slowly digested inside his body.

This process required some time. He needed to find a safe place and patiently wait for the prey in his belly to be fully digested.

Thus, he returned to the underground cave where he had been born, lay down on the ground, and peacefully closed his eyes.

Time quietly passed.

The originally round and bulging state of Li Chang'an's abdomen also faded away as time went by.

And as the rabbit was digested, what followed was a stream of Soul Power that began nourishing his body while also strengthening the Soul Power within him.

By the time the rabbit had been completely digested.

A day had already passed.

Li Chang'an opened his eyes again. He could feel that his age had increased by at least more than ten years.

One must not think that a soul beast of several decades only increasing his Soul Power by more than ten years was too little. One had to know that reality was not a game. Even under the same level, due to differences between individuals, the quality of energy within soul beasts of the same level, the nutrition of their flesh, and all other aspects were different. Moreover, loss would also occur during digestion.

For a soul beast of several decades to increase his cultivation by more than ten years was already very high.

Of course, the reason it could increase so much now was mainly because his level was still very low. Once he broke through to the thousand-year level, then if he swallowed this kind of Ten-Year Soul Beast rabbit again, the energy it provided would have an extremely slight effect on improving him.

Hunting soul beasts seems to be a shortcut that can rapidly increase my level!

Soul beasts can originally improve their strength by devouring each other. Therefore, this habit of soul beasts eating soul beasts must be a common phenomenon. But why were the Man Faced Demon Spider and the Dark Demon Evil God Tiger in the Original Work collectively rejected by soul beasts?

Could it be because their appetites were too large, and they ate too much, seriously affecting the ecological balance?

Li Chang'an was somewhat curious. In his heart, he felt that the reason was eighty or ninety percent this. After all, in the original text, it had been said of these two kinds of soul beasts that because they possessed devouring abilities, their own cultivation was very slow. They could only rapidly improve their strength by devouring large numbers of soul beasts.

Then if they devoured soul beasts on a large scale and ate all the soul beasts in an area clean, would the other soul beasts not have nothing to eat?

And for those carnivorous soul beasts, if all the food in their territory was eaten clean by other soul beasts, would they not have to kill that culprit?

Therefore, the reason the Man Faced Demon Spider and the Dark Demon Evil God Tiger were jointly rejected by soul beasts and humans in the Original Work had nothing to do with whether they were evil or not. It was purely because they ate too much and touched the interests of other soul beasts. If the populations of these two kinds of soul beasts were truly allowed to grow large, the other soul beasts would have nothing to eat.

The reason was just that realistic.

The so-called idea that soul beasts rejected them because they were born evil was only what humans assumed. In reality, just how evil could a soul beast be? Could it even run into the human world to kill, burn, and commit every crime imaginable?

At most, its appetite was just a little bigger and it ate a little more. But this was merely the natural law of the strong preying on the weak. Were other soul beasts not the same?

After confirming that devouring soul beasts could accelerate cultivation, Li Chang'an did not hesitate. He swiftly began searching around his birthplace for soul beasts he could devour. Very soon, he found a wild boar as large as a rhinoceros. Its age was around several decades, and it had rough skin and thick flesh. Its combat strength was far stronger than that rabbit's.

But to the Azure Serpent Emperor, a top-tier predator, it was completely insufficient. Just by slightly releasing his aura, the natural suppression that came from a higher soul beast toward a lower soul beast made this wild boar stiff all over, unable to move.

Li Chang'an twisted his snake body and slowly approached. When he was several meters away, he stopped, then opened his mouth and spat out a faint poisonous mist. He did not dare approach this wild beast. If he pressed too close, and its instinct for survival overcame its bloodline fear, making this wild boar dare to attack him, that would not be pretty.

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