A Comparison of Changes

"Yan, your First Soul Skill can enhance yourself, but in the early stages, you'll still be at a disadvantage when fighting others, especially opponents with powerful attack and long-range Soul Skills."

On the Golden Lion Plains, after hearing Yan's explanation of his First Soul Skill, Liya was rather worried about him. It was not that she thought he had failed to consider things carefully enough.

In the long run, percentage-based enhancement Soul Skills were certainly stronger than purely offensive or long-range skills. But in early combat, they would most likely put him at a disadvantage.

Yan did not refute her. However, his choice of a percentage-based enhancement Soul Skill had been made after considering both the novels he had read in his previous life and the circumstances of this world.

A Soul Master's first and second Soul Skills could at most come from hundred-year soul rings. They were useful in the early stages, but by the middle stages, especially after reaching Soul King level, their contribution to combat power became negligible because the soul rings' age and grade were too low. This was particularly obvious for offensive Soul Skills.

Take Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun as examples. Both reached Titled Douluo in the later stages of the original story. Comparing their early and late battles made the issue easy to spot.

In the early stages, Phoenix Firewire and White Tiger Light Wave were often their standard means of fighting enemies, and this remained true until the end of the Soul Master Tournament.

Yet during the final battles much later on, they basically only used Soul Skills that came from ten-thousand-year soul rings. The power boost from those two early offensive Soul Skills was too small. With the time spent casting them, they could gather Soul Power for a burst attack with even greater power. The cost-effectiveness simply was not there.

But compared with Ning Rongrong, another member of the Seven Devils, the situation was different. As an auxiliary-type Soul Master, all her Soul Skills provided percentage-based enhancements. In the later stages, when all her soul rings erupted at once, she could directly double her teammates' combat strength. Her early hundred-year Soul Skills remained useful even in the late stages; only the duration of their enhancement differed.

Still, Sister Liya's words made sense. For fire-attribute Soul Masters in the early stages, purely offensive Soul Skills did indeed hold a greater advantage.

More precisely, in low-level battles, if one person only had pure enhancement-type Soul Skills while the other possessed offensive or long-range Soul Skills, then in a confrontation between them, the one with pure enhancement skills would basically be guaranteed to lose.

That was because percentage-based enhancement Soul Skills in the early stages were support skills. And even if both were hundred-year Soul Skills, yours might only provide a fixed one- or twofold increase, while the other side's could increase their power by more than ten times. This was especially apparent at the first and second ring stages.

Yan had just tested the limits of his own Soul Skill. Before absorbing his first soul ring, he could only manage within two or three meters in front of himself. After gaining his First Soul Skill, nearly everything within ten meters counted as his effective attack range. His attacks were fairly powerful within five meters, but beyond ten meters, they had almost no accuracy or power.

Those figures might seem quite good, but compared with other Soul Masters, there was no need to mention the ranges of Ma Hongjun's Phoenix Firewire and Dai Mubai's White Tiger Light Wave. Just consider Tang San.

Tang San's First Soul Skill had come from a hundred-year Mandala Snake with poor compatibility, and it was still a control-type area Soul Skill.

After absorbing the soul ring and testing the skill, he could control Blue Silver Grass to launch attacks from any location within fifty meters, covering an area of ten square meters.

Tang San could create a ten-square-meter net of entangling Blue Silver Grass anywhere within fifty meters. Compared to Yan's pitiful ten-meter effective range, setting aside attribute suppression, it was obvious whose Soul Skill held the greater advantage in the early stages.

Even a control-type Soul Master like Tang San had such an attack range. One could imagine the power of other attack-type Soul Masters' skills. At least in the early stages, hundred-year Soul Skills, the trump cards of low-level Soul Masters, could unquestionably increase combat power tenfold when unleashed.

That was why early-stage percentage-enhancement Soul Masters had it rough. In a fight, they would basically get kited. Their opponents would never let them keep stacking buffs and then close the distance.

If this problem could not be solved, and he lacked sufficient combat power in the early stages, he might die at any time. Where would any future come from then?

Of course, Yan had his own considerations. Compared with ordinary Soul Masters, his greatest advantage was the cheat he possessed. With the intelligent brain's assistance, he could avoid long-range attacks to the greatest extent possible. And once he got close, it would come down to whose wild punches were stronger.

"Yan, your martial soul has recovered quite a bit, hasn't it? The temperature of your flames seems to have risen considerably. They're almost back to what they were before."

Liya did not dwell too much on Yan's First Soul Skill. Instead, she turned her attention to the changes in his martial soul. She could sense that after absorbing his first soul ring, Yan's martial soul's flames had become much hotter. Although they were still inferior to when he had been a Flame Lord, they had grown much stronger.

"The Inferno Demon Lion soul ring gave me a huge boost. As expected of a top-tier king-class soul beast."

Yan had noticed the changes in himself as well. Absorbing the soul ring of a top-tier king-class soul beast that was nearly four hundred years old had greatly improved and transformed both his physical constitution and Soul Power.

This transformation also made him understand certain things. He realized the flaws in some of his ideas and recognized even more of his own shortcomings.

According to a certain master's theory, after Soul Power reached level ten, continuing to cultivate would not raise one's cultivation level. But once one obtained a soul ring, all the accumulated foundation would erupt at once, allowing one to rise several levels in succession or even reach the maximum level directly.

As everyone knew, the physical constitution of a six- or seven-year-old child was absolutely incapable of comparing to that of a teenager. So, could a child reach level ten and refrain from attaching a soul ring, instead continuing to train their body and break through the limits of what they could endure?

This might very well break the limit, allowing the first soul ring to reach more than five hundred years. Then, after reaching level twenty and continuing to temper the body, the second soul ring might directly start at a thousand years.

It was a good idea. Some Soul Masters with weak martial souls could use this method to continuously absorb higher-quality soul rings beyond their limits, transforming their martial souls and steadily narrowing the gap between themselves and the children of top martial soul families.

There was nothing wrong with Yu Xiaogang's theory, and there was no shortage of clever people in the world. If Yan could think of it, there was no reason others had not. Why had he barely heard of anyone doing this before? That involved a question of efficiency.

For two people with equal talent, a level-ten Spirit Scholar and a level-eleven Soul Master cultivated at entirely different rates. It was like the difference between an innate martial artist and an acquired martial artist—completely different levels. Their daily limits for absorbing energy differed, as did the efficiency with which they could refine it.

If you followed the normal process, attached a soul ring, and cultivated, it might take five years for a level-eleven Soul Master to rise to level twenty. But if you kept suppressing your Soul Power and cultivated for five years at the level-ten Spirit Scholar stage, the Soul Power you accumulated might not even amount to five levels.

Even if you could later absorb a soul ring more than five hundred years old, it still would not make up for the gap in Soul Power between you and those at the same stage. One step behind meant falling behind at every step afterward.

The returns from this method of suppressing Soul Power during cultivation were too poor. Unless one needed to cultivate somewhere like the City of Slaughter, where there was no other choice but to suppress Soul Power, it was best to cultivate and advance step by step under all other circumstances.