Xiao Hongchen: I Am Second to None!

Xiao Hongchen woke up halfway there. Afterward, he watched Chen Ming with a melancholy gaze. Whenever Chen Ming turned to meet his eyes, Xiao Hongchen would instinctively look away, pretending he had not been watching Chen Ming at all.

Though the act was clumsy, no one paid it much mind. He was a child, after all. His unwillingness to admit defeat was understandable.

After leaving the martial arts arena, Jing Hongchen headed to a place within Hongchen Mansion used for developing various medicines and summoned a Healing System Soul Emperor.

After three soul skills, he had fully recovered without even needing his bones set. Aside from his still-depleted Soul Power, he was practically back at his peak.

Feeling the emptiness of his Soul Power, Xiao Hongchen naturally took a Small Jade Bottle from his Storage Soul Tool. He poured out several pills and was about to put them in his mouth when Chen Li stopped him.

"Brother Hongchen, this... is this how the child normally replenishes his Soul Power?" Chen Li looked at Jing Hongchen doubtfully, his voice carrying a trace of hesitation.

Chen Li did not oppose drug abuse. In fact, he supported Soul Masters using pills. But there was a prerequisite: medicine had to be taken in proper amounts, without allowing its effects to cause backlash or damage the body.

Watching Xiao Hongchen casually prepare to replenish his Soul Power with pills, Chen Li thought of the boy's excessively high Soul Power compared to Soul Masters of the same age.

Even if both possessed Innate Full Soul Power, Chen Ming had been born with strong drug resistance, absorbed Soul Rings of higher age, and trained brutally. That was how he had reached level fifteen and begun advancing toward level sixteen just over half a year after his awakening.

The Soul Power gained this way was utterly legitimate even by the standards of traditionalist Soul Masters.

But what about Xiao Hongchen? Was his level fifteen Soul Power obtained reasonably and legitimately?

Pills that rapidly restored Soul Power would more or less leave behind certain issues. Only their manifestations and metabolic times differed. If the situation required it, taking pills to recover was perfectly reasonable.

But Xiao Hongchen was in an extremely safe environment, and he had only used up Seventy Percent of his Soul Power. For an ordinary Soul Master, that would merely mean weakness, not any real danger.

Taking pills at a time like this was clearly not a rational choice. He had simply grown accustomed to drug abuse, become too lazy to recover Soul Power properly through meditation, rest, and food, and habitually ignored the medicine's side effects.

Chen Li could sense that Xiao Hongchen's Soul Power was unstable. It was clearly the result of rapid enhancement through external means.

If Jing Hongchen really was some drug-crazed maniac, Chen Li could only offer a word of advice, then privately warn Chen Ming and have him undergo drug tests at regular intervals.

It would be bad if his precious boy got ruined by drugs and ended up with the Left Brain attacking the Right Brain.

As he had said, taking pills was fine. Using pills in cultivation was not a problem either. But pills had to be taken with rhythm, planning, and limits.

The medicinal effects absolutely could not cause backlash or exceed what the body could bear.

Jing Hongchen sighed, reached out, and smacked the bottle from Xiao Hongchen's hand. He stuffed the pills straight into his Storage Soul Tool, then gave Xiao Hongchen a disappointed glare.

"Brother Chen, please excuse the laugh. My grandson is just like this." As he spoke, Jing Hongchen slapped the back of Xiao Hongchen's head.

"He is like Xiao Ming—he also possesses Innate Full Soul Power, and his Martial Soul is equally unusual."

"Our Hongchen Family's Martial Soul is the Golden Toad. Its quality is merely high-grade, but it possesses an extremely high rate of mutation. At least Thirty Percent of the clan members have Martial Souls that mutate from the Golden Toad, further raising their grade and granting new abilities."

"My Martial Soul is the Three-Eyed Golden Toad, mutated from the Golden Toad. It gained the Spirit Attribute, which is one reason why my path as a Soul Engineer has gone so smoothly. And these two little ones, Xiao and Meng, have also mutated in advantageous directions."

Jing Hongchen pointed at Meng Hongchen.

"Meng's Martial Soul is the Jade Clear Ice Toad, a special Martial Soul with both ice and fire attributes. Its body is ice, its eyes are fire, and through the transformation and erosion between ice and fire, it possesses an intensely lethal poison. As for Xiao..."

"Xiao's talent is a little better than Meng's. Meng has innate level-nine Soul Power, while Xiao possesses true Innate Full Soul Power. Moreover, unlike those of us whose toad-type Martial Souls mutated other attributes, Xiao's Martial Soul surpasses the limit that our Hongchen Family could normally reach."

"During his Martial Soul awakening, he awakened a trace of the bloodline of the Three-legged Golden Toad, the ancestor of all toad-type Soul Beasts and a Divine Beast. He successfully underwent atavism and became a Divine Beast Martial Soul."

"Though the Three-legged Golden Toad is not an exceptionally powerful Divine Beast from legend, Xiao's Martial Soul is still among the very best of top-tier Martial Souls. He was born with formidable perception and control over all kinds of metals."

"But this brat..."

Jing Hongchen sighed helplessly again.

"The Three-legged Golden Toad can recover and increase its Soul Power by absorbing the Soul Power within metals. Besides regular cultivation and taking medicine, this brat often uses practicing Soul Tools as an excuse to secretly take rare metals and absorb their energy, all so he can raise his Soul Power faster."

"Brother Chen, you know that using pills to raise Soul Power is indeed a proper path, but the premise is controlling the degree and not overdoing it."

"After taking pills, one must stabilize one's condition through training. Yet not only does this little brat Xiao fail to seize the time to stabilize his Soul Power, he instead absorbs the power within metals and makes himself even more unstable."

"Because of his talent and the speed at which his Soul Power grows, he is even somewhat lax in his daily life."

"Xiao's First Soul Skill has far too little presence for ordinary Soul Masters. Taken on its own, it truly has little use, so I have been turning a blind eye. As long as he was not doing anything self-destructive, I pretended not to see it."

"I had originally planned that once this little brat Xiao obtained his Second Soul Ring, I would immediately entrust him to an Old Friend of mine from the military and have him train Xiao properly."

"By then, intense training could properly temper the brat's body and Soul Power, teach him a lesson, and clear his head. But now..."

"Brother Chen, I recall that the Dragon Elephant Sect's methods of tempering the body are the accumulated crystallization of generations, the pinnacle of body forging in the Sun Moon Empire. Would Brother Chen be willing to let Xiao train alongside Xiao Ming when the time comes?"

At this moment, Xiao Hongchen had no idea what kind of cultivation his grandfather had found for him. He merely scratched his head awkwardly before looking toward Chen Ming.

Xiao Hongchen had also felt it during their spar just now. Chen Ming's body was absurdly powerful, and his Soul Power was exceptionally solid.

If the Dragon Elephant Sect truly possessed such methods for tempering the body and Soul Power, Xiao Hongchen would not mind setting aside extra time to train properly and make his already outstanding self even more outstanding.

After all, he, Xiao Hongchen, was the number one genius of the Sun Moon Empire—self-proclaimed. Although his current soul skill setup made his displayed strength somewhat awkward.

Still, he believed that as long as he completed the four-ring soul skill coordination according to his grandfather's plan, he would certainly become a peerless genius capable of crushing everyone his age.

In that case, what hardship could he not endure? What tribulation could he not accept?

It was merely cultivation. How could it possibly cause any trouble for the number one genius of the Sun Moon Empire?