True Hearts Earn True Hearts; Debts of Gratitude Are Hardest to Repay

"Bless us, ancestors! After a thousand years, our Dragon Elephant Sect has finally produced the legendary Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul once more! May your spirits in heaven bless this child with healthy growth, that he may become an unrivaled powerhouse and overthrow that vile Shrek!"

Deep within the underground ancestral hall of the Dragon Elephant Sect, the current Sect Master, Chen Li, held Chen Ming as he faced the coffins of countless ancestors, weeping excitedly until he was covered in tears. Though he was nearly a hundred years old, at this moment, he was no different from a child who had found the toy he had long dreamed of. His heart had been completely overtaken by emotion.

Beside him, Great Elder Chen Ping, also in his nineties, was not as visibly excited as Sect Master Chen Li, but his eyes gleamed brightly. He kept stroking the beard he usually maintained with great care, while his whole body trembled faintly.

According to the legends of the Dragon Elephant Sect, the strongest Martial Soul was the Angel Martial Soul once possessed by the Angel lineage Ten Thousand Years Ago, born with level-twenty Soul Power and multiple Extreme Attributes. Beneath that came the Dragon Elephant Sect's mutated Vajra Dragon Elephant, as well as the Blue Silver Emperor Martial Soul of the legendary Sea God Tang San.

Of course, of course, those legends were far too subjective and steeped in personal grudges. But the Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul truly was an absurdly powerful Martial Soul, one that had changed the fate of the Dragon Elephant Sect.

It could be said that if not for the emergence of this Martial Soul and the support of that benefactor, the Dragon Elephant Sect might not even exist today. The White Armored Earth Dragon and Diamond Mammoth, those two top-tier Martial Souls, would have long since become mere symbols of history.

The White Armored Earth Dragon Martial Soul excelled at strength and defense. It was said to be a top-tier Sub-Dragon with Mountain Dragon bloodline. Not only did it possess immense strength and high energy resistance, it also had extraordinarily tenacious vitality. Even injuries that would leave ordinary people gravely wounded and near death could not affect its combat power. In fact, it would grow fiercer with pain.

The Diamond Mammoth likewise excelled at strength and defense. Though it was called the Diamond Mammoth because of the diamond-like crystal on its head, it was actually a Golden Soul Beast of pure bloodline. Its immense defense was even called "absolute defense" by some Soul Masters. Combined with its brute strength, it could be said to possess both offense and defense.

And what about the Vajra Dragon Elephant?

This Martial Soul did not merely possess the traits of both Martial Souls and even better attributes. It went a step further, adding together the vast majority of their base stats.

Powerful defense, immense strength, vigorous vitality, berserk transformation when injured, top-tier resistance, plus the stats of both a dragon and an elephant...

In the legends of the Dragon Elephant Sect, every generation of bearers of this Martial Soul possessed bodies that surpassed Soul Beasts. They could tear apart giant dragons with their bare hands, kick colossal elephants away with a single foot, charge through armies without a scratch and scatter them with ease, or be besieged by several Soul Masters of equal or even higher rank and still effortlessly kill them all in return. Their physical attributes were simply unreasonable.

Strength was an attribute, but it differed from other attributes. The ultimate of Extreme Fire was high temperature, while the ultimate of Ultimate Ice was extreme cold. These things had traces to follow and principles to rely on; one could sense where their limits lay. But when it came to strength, it was difficult to determine what the ultimate of the strength attribute truly was.

The Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul possessed top-tier Gold-Earth Dual Attributes and a strength attribute so powerful it could be called beyond convention. Even if it was not a Martial Soul with Extreme Attributes, it was still on the same level, with no gap in quality. In history, there had truly been a Soul Sage who crossed twenty levels with pure physical strength and directly confronted a Titled Douluo.

Chen Ming subconsciously clenched his fist. Although he had only just awakened his Martial Soul and was still unfamiliar with how the Soul Power within his body operated, or how much of an increase Martial Soul Possession would grant him...

By his own estimation, his pure physical strength had nearly doubled after awakening his Martial Soul. When he clenched his fist with force, the slightly loose clothes he had worn before awakening would immediately be stretched high by his swollen muscles. If he used Soul Power, he could unleash even greater strength with ease.

Even though he only had one Martial Soul, he was certain that this was absolutely not an ability any ordinary Martial Soul should possess.

After all, around this time last year, when he was five, he had arranged to fight on the Arena with a friend who had just awakened his Martial Soul, imitating the sect elders. In the end, Chen Ming was left bruised and battered from punches, while that friend who had just awakened his Martial Soul had two ribs broken.

If everyone received such a massive boost, then the one who had two ribs broken last year and was smilingly dragged away for treatment by a Healing Soul Master and his parents should have been him.

No, Chen Ming had no parents in this life.

Sect Master Chen Li cried for quite some time before finally coming back to himself and turning his attention to Chen Ming. He rubbed Chen Ming's head, his eyes carrying a few traces of eager warmth.

"Xiao Ming, your parents passed away early, so you have been somewhat withdrawn since childhood. But if I examine my conscience, everyone in the sect likes you very much. All these years, have you ever lacked anything that a child of the sect should have? Has anyone in the sect ever dared gossip about you? Has anyone ever bullied you because you had no parents to stand behind you?"

"That is true. The sect has treated me very well. Everyone has taken good care of me over the years, and no one has bullied me." Chen Ming nodded and answered sincerely.

His origins in this life were somewhat awkward. When he was only half a year old, his mother broke through to Soul Emperor and took his father hunting Soul Beasts. Yet in their search for a high-quality Soul Beast, they accidentally ventured too deep into the Soul Beast Forest and failed to make it out. He had lost anyone to care for him before even reaching the age of one.

But the Dragon Elephant Sect truly treated its members well. It could not be said that they had reached a selfless, egalitarian standard akin to a world of great harmony, but there was a profound familial affection among them. The entire sect was one family.

Though he had lost his parents, the sect immediately found several professional wet nurses to care for him. Someone remained by his side twenty-four hours a day. The instant he showed any sign of wanting food or needing to relieve himself, someone would take care of it.

Moreover, because his physique had been somewhat unusual from birth in this life, the milk he drank each day at the time was more than four or five times that of ordinary children, and the amount only increased as he grew older.

To keep him from going hungry, the Sect Master personally went into the Soul Beast Forest that year and captured a Ten-Thousand-Year Tiger Type Soul Beast that was nursing, bringing it back to serve as his wet nurse.

Although Chen Ming's reincarnated body had been too young at the time for him to think much, he remembered every scene from those years clearly. That slightly fishy yet energy-rich milk still left a deep impression on him even now.

Though he had already grown a full mouth of teeth by the time he was half a year old in this life, and could sit at the table at barely one year old and casually grab large chunks of professionally prepared meat taken from Soul Beasts to chew on, he was not weaned until he was two.

During that time, tiger, leopard, bear, and cattle type wet nurses had been replaced more than once. Not a single one had been below the Ten-Thousand-Year level. If Dragon Type Soul Beasts with relatively pure bloodlines produced milk, there would surely have been some dragon milk mixed into his meals.

Forget mistreating him—even if his parents in this life had been alive, they could not have managed such treatment.

As for discrimination or targeting him... that was even less worth mentioning...

When Chen Ming was three in this life, one child with no filter mocked him for having no father or mother. That very night, the child's parents hung him upside down in the sect square and whipped his backside with vines. After a brutal husband-and-wife beating, his butt had been whipped raw, and they had to find a Healing Soul Master to heal him.

The Dragon Elephant Sect was arrogant and domineering toward outsiders, but internally it prized unity. Their own people stood together, and anyone who undermined that unity was no longer one of their own.

At the beginning of last year, the Sect Master was commissioned to help someone hunt a ninth Soul Ring in the Star Dou Great Forest. In the end, he brought back the entire corpse of a Thirty-Thousand-Year Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear. Aside from a pair of bear paws that he kept as personal property, the whole bear was turned over to the sect, its hide and bones processed into cultivation resources for the sect's Soul Masters.

When the Sect Master celebrated his birthday later that year, he reluctantly took out the right paw and had a chef prepare it as a dish. But when he saw a crowd of children staring longingly from the side, he covered his face in pain and shared the bear paw with them.

The other children each received only one or two bites before they could no longer eat because it was too nourishing. In the end, he gave Chen Ming an entire remaining finger, letting him take it away and gnaw on it.

That was a claw nearly a meter tall. Even one finger had plenty of meat on it, and because it came from a Ten-Thousand-Year Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear, a top-tier existence in the food chain, it contained exceptionally abundant energy. An ordinary person would feel heat coursing through their entire body after just one bite.

Chen Ming gnawed on that one finger for three full days. At the time, he had nearly gotten a nosebleed from all the nourishment. Even now, the finger bone, licked clean five or six times until not a shred of meat remained, was still in his room as a decoration.

In any other family, unless he were a beloved direct blood relative, who would simply hand out such a rare treasure?