Man!

"Hall Master of Mingde Hall, Jing Hongchen..."

Hearing this name, which had occupied a great deal of space in the Original Work, Chen Ming's expression turned slightly strange.

How should he put it? If they had said from the beginning that they wanted to use connections to have him become Jing Hongchen's disciple, he definitely would have been delighted. After all, Jing Hongchen was a major figure in the Sun Moon Empire's court, the Hall Master of Mingde Hall, a Rank 9 Soul Engineer, and a formidable man believed to possess combat power comparable to a Level 98 Super Douluo through his arsenal of Soul Tools.

But because Kong Deming had been mentioned earlier, hearing Jing Hongchen's name now made Chen Ming feel somewhat...

Still, considering that he was just a Small Fry, Chen Ming quickly adjusted his mindset and carefully considered what he stood to gain and lose by taking Jing Hongchen as his teacher.

After thinking for a long while, Chen Ming realized that aside from being branded as someone from Jing Hongchen's faction, everything else was beneficial. There did not seem to be a single genuine downside.

This could work!

"Grandpa Sect Master, that works. I think Hall Master Jing Hongchen is a very good person. I've heard of this great figure before, and I've also read some of the instructional books he wrote for beginner Soul Engineers in the sect. Having such a top-tier figure in both strength and Soul Tool Technology as my teacher would be wonderful."

Chen Ming did not say anything about whether he could actually become a disciple. Matters like pulling strings and calling in favors had to be handled by the older generation. He only needed to demonstrate his own abilities well.

"Good, then it's settled. Once we return, I'll begin making arrangements for your apprenticeship and tell you what you need to do."

Seeing Chen Ming's response, Chen Li nodded.

In truth, even with personal connections, becoming Jing Hongchen's disciple was not so simple.

Jing Hongchen was not merely an ordinary Titled Douluo and Rank 9 Soul Engineer. He was also the current head of the Hongchen Family, one of the Sun Moon Empire's great noble houses; the Hall Master of Mingde Hall, the empire's highest institution; and a towering figure in court, second only to the emperor himself. He could even influence the wishes of the current emperor, who had ascended the throne after killing his own brother.

Far too many people wanted their juniors to become his disciples, and quite a few of them had connections as well. Jing Hongchen rejected most of them. At most, he would accept a very small number as nominal disciples in name only.

To become a true disciple, connections alone were not enough, no matter how substantial those connections were. Chen Ming's talent had to be displayed well enough, and the Dragon Elephant Sect also had to prepare a sufficiently valuable gift before this master-disciple relationship could truly be established.

"Old Apple, I remember you still have that top-grade Dragon Marrow Crystal that had already crystallized when you found it during your training years ago. That stuff is a material used only in a tiny number of extremely rare top-tier Rank 9 Soul Tools. Even a negligible amount can greatly improve the stability and conductivity of Soul Power within an array."

"You've been stuck at Level 8 for all these years, so you probably haven't used much of that Dragon Marrow Crystal, right..."

Chen Li secretly transmitted his voice to Chen Ping, blatantly reaching into his old brother's pocket.

"You damned Chen Three-Fatty. I thought it was bad enough that you were black-hearted when we were young. Who would've thought that after all these years, you'd still be this much of a bastard? Are you even human?"

"Twenty years ago, when I advanced to Titled Douluo, I got drunk and mentioned my treasure to you once. You've been quietly coveting it for twenty damn years? Are you even human?"

Upon hearing that the damned Sect Master had set his sights on the most valuable possession of his life, Chen Ping truly wanted to leap up, activate Martial Soul Possession, and smash his elbow into Chen Li's head. But looking at Chen Ming, who was sandwiched between them and knew nothing, Chen Ping forcibly held himself back.

He strongly suspected that Chen Li had brought this up now precisely to use Chen Ming to keep him in check, making it awkward for him to lose his temper.

As for later...

Put it this way: the White Armored Earth Dragon was relatively poor at attacking, and this Level 91 Titled Douluo had broken through through Drug Abuse. Under normal circumstances, even if Chen Li stood still and let him attack, Chen Ping might not be able to break through his defenses even after punching until his hands went numb, assuming he did not use Soul Tools.

Forget standing there and letting him vent by beating him up once—even if Chen Li stood there and let him beat him for a month, it would still be useless.

"That fist-sized Dragon Marrow Crystal would be worth nearly sixty million Gold Soul Coins even at the lowest market price. How can you be so ruthless?"

When Chen Ping said fist-sized, he meant the size of his own fist. To an ordinary person, it would be a chunk as large as a head.

Dragon Marrow Crystal was an exceptionally special type of crystal. It could only form when the corpse of a pure-blooded True Dragon was wrapped in earth veins after death; while the body decayed within a gemstone mine, it exchanged the power of various gemstones into its Dragon Bones; then it remained buried underground for tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years without suffering any contamination from Exotic Species Soul Power. Only then could this top-grade material emerge.

This crystal not only retained the complete properties of the Dragon Bone itself, but because it had fused with the power of various gemstones and the pure Earth Attribute within the earth veins, it was practically a natural and stable superconductor of Soul Power. It was the kind of material every Soul Engineer dreamed of obtaining.

A dragon's corpse was simply too full of treasures, and those treasures were far too versatile.

There were countless possible ways for a dragon corpse to transform, and any additional interference could easily cause its evolution to head in a different direction.

Under such circumstances, the rarity of Dragon Marrow Crystal, whose formation conditions were so demanding, was easy to imagine.

To Soul Engineers, this thing was the equivalent of an Immortal Herb for Soul Masters. Though money could supposedly buy it, whether it could actually be bought was no longer a matter of money.

The Dragon Elephant Sect might be powerful, but if news of such a large Dragon Marrow Crystal got out, a whole crowd of Level 8 and Rank 9 Soul Engineers with backgrounds so formidable that the Dragon Elephant Sect would not dare drive them away would trample the sect's threshold flat.

Faced with Chen Ping's Soul Power voice transmission, whose transmission density was nearly comparable to DOSS, Chen Li stubbornly said nothing. He let Chen Ping curse out his entire family while gazing at the moon as though nothing had happened, though a trace of embarrassment showed in his eyes.

After all, although Chen Li was only a Level 7 Soul Engineer, he was no clueless outsider. He knew the value of the stuff.

To put it bluntly, if not for his fear of wasting materials and his reluctance to forcefully make up for his own lack of skill with Dragon Marrow Crystal—

Then despite Chen Ping being only a Level 8 Soul Master, he could still use materials to forcibly create a Rank 9 Soul Tool.

If he were willing to be ruthless and make a few more of them, perhaps he might really find some opportunity to break through and become a Rank 9 Soul Engineer himself.

"Godfather, Godfather, just one-third... no, just cut off a piece the size of an ordinary person's fist, alright? You know that the few decent Soul Bones in our Dragon Elephant Sect are already on you and me. We can't exactly kill someone on the spot to take a Soul Bone, can we?"

"There has to be something good for the apprenticeship gift. Otherwise, wouldn't Xiao Ming be looked down upon?"

"Godfather, help me! The sect will cover the other materials for the apprenticeship gift, and I'll personally make up another twenty million Gold Soul Coins to you later! Dad! Dad! You wouldn't want talent like Xiao Ming's to be delayed, would you!"

Chen Li had completely abandoned his old dignity and shamelessly pestered Chen Ping. After being nagged for a long time, Chen Ping finally sighed helplessly and admitted defeat.

"Fine, fine. Consider it selling it cheap in exchange for a favor. But not a single Gold Soul Coin can be missing from the twenty million you personally owe me!"

"When are you planning to pay me? Why do I feel like you don't have that much money? Have you been embezzling the sect's funds behind my back all these years?"

"We're both still young. We should be able to live at least another fifty years. How about this? Let's discuss it. Can I pay you the twenty million Gold Soul Coins in installments over forty years..."

On his first night in the Star Dou Great Forest, Chen Ming had the honor of witnessing a five-hundred-pound fat man leap through the air as though possessed by a helicopter, then drive his elbow into another fat man weighing more than six hundred pounds.