Twin Spirits Concept

"Trouble. Fire and earth attributes mixed together—my true attribute is not fire as the primary force, but lava as the king. Yet most soul beasts only have one prominent attribute, so my pool of possible targets is much smaller."

Yan looked at his palm. Above his fair skin, beneath the dark-red flames, there seemed to be a thin layer of crimson radiance in a different shade. That was his true source power: Lava Force formed from the fusion of fire and earth attributes. In other words... magma.

The top-tier Beast Soul, the mutated Flame Lord, possessed Lava Force born from the fusion of fire and earth attributes, making it stronger than pure fire or earth. This was naturally a good thing, but having two attributes also made it difficult for Yan to fully develop his innate potential.

Although the current soul master system had distinctions such as control-type and assault-type soul masters, as well as the so-called Extreme Flow and Balanced Flow, most soul masters ultimately specialized in developing a single attribute. Only then could they go farther.

The number of soul rings a soul master could obtain was limited. The best choice was naturally to select soul beasts whose attributes matched their own, or even soul beasts of the same type as their Martial Soul, maximizing the benefits. Randomly absorbing rings under the guidance of some so-called master only worked because the Blue Silver Emperor had a solid foundation and could withstand such abuse. If it had been someone else, they would have been crippled long ago.

Yan now faced the same problem. Which attribute of soul ring should he absorb in the future? If he chose pure fire-attribute rings, would that not waste his earth attribute? But if he wanted both, he might end up ruining them both.

He had considered taking the Extreme Flow route with pure fire, but then the innate earth attribute within his Martial Soul would be wasted. It would also make his Martial Soul insufficiently pure, making it difficult for his fire attribute to reach its peak. Choosing pure earth brought the same problem; in the end, the attribute would not be pure enough.

He had naturally considered alternating between fire-attribute and earth-attribute soul rings, but the result might be that neither attribute underwent sufficient evolution, ultimately ruining his future.

Think of it this way: a four-ring Soul Ancestor had all four soul rings enhancing the same attribute. But if he took one ring for each attribute, he would have two fire rings and two earth rings. Would that really be enough evolution? Even he deeply doubted it.

There was, of course, another option: absorbing soul beasts that possessed both fire and earth attributes. It was not as though such soul beasts did not exist; there were simply exceptionally few of them. And if he chose that route, his soul skills would only match his attributes. Their power would be difficult to guarantee.

Yan had just gone through the Compendium of Soul Beasts. There were so few soul beasts possessing both fire and earth attributes that he could count them on both hands, and none of them were particularly powerful. If he truly chose this path, his soul rings would be limited to only a few kinds, and his strength would likely be affected as well.

"Conventional methods make it difficult to bring both attributes to their limits. I will inevitably have to make a choice."

Yan looked at his palm as a dark-red halo slowly flowed across it. At that moment, his eyes also glimmered with crimson light of a different hue, while a curtain of light moved through his mind.

"If I truly want to uncover all of my potential, I must take risks and sacrifice some of my current potential. Spirit Mutation, Regression Twin Spirits—although this is risky, it will give me more choices."

Yan opened the notebook he kept by his bedside. It contained a bold plan he had designed over the past few days to uncover the potential of his Martial Soul's dual attributes. It was only a hypothesis, but if it succeeded, he might gain a better future.

Spirit Mutation, Regression Twin Spirits. This was a method he had deduced after much painstaking thought with the help of the intelligent computer Dawn.

Spirit Mutation, as the name implied, meant guiding a Martial Soul through acquired mutation. A relatively successful example was Dai Luoli, the younger brother of Huo Yuhao, in Peerless Tang Sect.

Dai Luoli's original Martial Soul was a Mutated White Tiger, a weakened sort of mutation whose Martial Soul was not particularly powerful. But later, Huo Yuhao used a special method to awaken the spiritual attribute within his Martial Soul, allowing it to evolve into a Mutated Blood Tiger. That was an example of acquired Spirit Mutation.

This sort of acquired mutation was more likely to succeed in an innately mutated Martial Soul that had already undergone Spirit Mutation. Yu Xiaogang's Luo Sanpao could actually use this method to gradually advance into a true Golden Sacred Dragon. However, the method was exceptionally difficult and painful. As for Yu Xiaogang, if he truly tried it, he would most likely fail.

Yan's Flame Lord Martial Soul was also a type of mutation. An ordinary Flame Lord should have fire as its dominant attribute, rather than being like his Flame Lord, where fire and earth fused to create Lava Force.

Yan was quite confident regarding Spirit Mutation after studying the relevant materials and sensing his own Martial Soul. But the next step was the key reason for his hesitation.

Regression Twin Spirits meant that his Martial Soul's mutation would actually proceed in the direction of regression. Calling it regression was not entirely accurate, however. More precisely, he intended to split his originally complete Martial Soul into two, and its quality would certainly suffer.

That was right. He planned to separate the two major attributes of his Martial Soul and split them into two Martial Souls of different attributes. With Twin Spirits, he would be able to obtain eighteen soul rings before reaching level one hundred and becoming a god, while the range of soul rings he could choose from would expand enormously.

Yan's idea sounded like pure fantasy. Twin Martial Souls were even rarer than ordinary mutated Martial Souls. How could one possibly obtain Twin Martial Souls by splitting a Martial Soul?

Yet his hypothesis did have a theoretical basis: the relationship between Spirit Mutation, Martial Soul Fusion, and Twin Spirits.

Twin Spirits were, in essence, a special kind of Spirit Mutation. When the paternal and maternal Martial Souls were similar in quality yet had no points of compatibility whatsoever, they could not fuse into a brand-new mutated Martial Soul. That was how Twin Spirits came to be.

Yan's theory of Martial Soul regression was derived by reverse-engineering Martial Soul Fusion theory. The subject of Self-Martial Soul Fusion seemed somewhat abrupt in the first Douluo Dalu series. The true examples should have originated from two owners of Twin Martial Souls in Dragon King's Legend.

Several owners of Twin Martial Souls appeared in the third Douluo Dalu series. Two of them were especially unusual: Xie Xie, who possessed the Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger, and Wu Siduo, who possessed the Hell Spirit Cat and White Tiger.

Wu Siduo was a descendant of the current Star Luo Royal Family. She could independently complete Martial Soul Fusion and unleash a Self-Martial Soul Fusion Skill, forming the Hell White Tiger.

Xie Xie went a step further. His Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger eventually fused and evolved into an entirely new Martial Soul, the Space-Time Dragon. The success of these two proved that compatible Twin Martial Souls could indeed fuse and evolve into a brand-new Martial Soul.

Reasoning backward from this, if Martial Soul Fusion and evolution existed, then Martial Soul splitting and regression might also exist. For Yan, who was currently trapped by two attributes and unable to fully develop their potential, it was a method worth trying.

If he succeeded, he would possess Twin Martial Souls. Even if their quality declined in the early stages because of the split, he had ways to seek opportunities to compensate for it and continue improving them.

There were still many opportunities in the Douluo Dalu world that could raise the quality of a Martial Soul, especially at this point in the timeline, when the vast majority of those opportunities remained untouched. Once he made up for the loss in Martial Soul quality, then fused and sublimated them again after reaching the Titled Douluo realm or an even higher level, he would have a far brighter future.