Xu Tianran's Gift: Meteorite Iron from Beyond the Heavens

The Dragon Elephant Sect had been rooted in the Sun Moon Continent for four thousand years. Besides Chen Ming, the Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul had appeared only three times in total. Naturally, the Sun Moon Empire's Imperial Family kept detailed records and paid close attention to this Martial Soul, which could be considered among the very best on the Sun Moon Continent.

Of those three, one had been born at the wrong time and perished after encountering a Level 99 Extreme Attribute Peerless Douluo from Shrek Academy. The other two, without exception, had been renowned powerhouses in the history of the Sun Moon Continent.

Things such as challenging opponents above their rank while still low-level had been as ordinary as eating and drinking for them. Even after becoming Titled Douluo, they had continued to fight above their level and even kill stronger opponents.

Once, a Level 94 wielder of the Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul had directly slain a Level 97 Super Douluo elder from the Sea God Pavilion of Shrek Academy's Inner Court on the battlefield.

Although he had died less than a year after returning due to the side effects of having burned through all his blood and vitality, it was still enough to demonstrate the sheer strength and tyranny of this Martial Soul.

The other had been a Level 95 Super Douluo. During a war between the Sun Moon Empire and the Three Douluo Kingdoms, he had single-handedly defeated the encirclement of six Titled Douluo from the Offering Halls of the Three Great Empires, leaving four dead and two severely wounded.

Had the Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul's speed not been such an obvious weakness, the remaining two would not even have had a chance to flee.

Looking at Chen Ming's body, which was even more robust and powerful than his own, Xu Tianran seemed to have found his answer.

But when he thought of how the three people seated before him were all his peers, then looked at the vast difference in their heights, a strange thought inevitably crossed Xu Tianran's mind.

"Jing Hongchen seems to be only around one and a half meters tall, doesn't he? Yet this disciple he took in is already over one point eight meters tall at seven years old. Following the Dragon Elephant Sect's traditions, growing to three meters or even taller in the future shouldn't be a problem."

"Wouldn't he be afraid of heights after taking in a disciple like that?"

Xu Tianran entertained the presumptuous thought for a moment before suppressing it and casually chatting with the three of them.

Given what had happened today, Xu Tianran's words contained none of the usual intent to recruit them or the family forces behind them.

Instead, he centered the conversation around the Fourth Prince's actions today and, in his capacity as Crown Prince, "sincerely" apologized to the three on behalf of his foolish younger brother.

To express his apology—or rather, gratitude—Xu Tianran gave it some thought, then selected several treasures that he normally kept carefully on his person from his Storage Soul Tool and presented them to the three.

Xu Tianran knew their circumstances well, so the gifts he gave were highly targeted.

The item he gave Meng Hongchen was an Inner Core produced by an ice-attributed toad-type Soul Beast known as the White Jade Toad.

This Soul Beast originated in the Core Area of the Extreme North Land and was an exceptionally rare top-tier Soul Beast.

As a toad-type Soul Beast, it possessed an ice attribute and contained no poison, yet it had the ability to suppress all poisons beneath heaven. It was also known by such names as the Snow Toad and Jade Toad.

Every inch of its flesh and blood contained an immense amount of pure life energy, making it a great tonic for both Soul Beasts and Soul Masters. As a result, it was frequently hunted by all manner of Soul Beasts and humans.

Although White Jade Toads, as toad-type Soul Beasts, had decent reproductive abilities, only a tiny number lived to breeding age. Of the new generation they produced, most did not even survive past infancy.

Thus, despite being a top-tier Soul Beast with respectable reproductive capabilities, the White Jade Toad had enemies everywhere. Its numbers were even lower than those of the Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bears, the super Soul Beasts of the Star Dou Great Forest.

A White Jade Toad with Ten Thousand Years of cultivation was even rarer than an ordinary Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast. The pure energy produced within such a Soul Beast was enough to make Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts and most Fierce Beasts that had survived one Heavenly Tribulation covet it.

The Jade Clear Ice Toad Martial Soul was extremely unusual. Its body was ice while its eyes were fire, and the alternating heat and cold generated deadly poison. It lived along the outer border of the Extreme North Land and was known as the king of the cracks. Although its quality did not compare to the clans of the Extreme North's Three Heavenly Kings, it came fairly close.

Despite its overwhelming power, its poison was even stronger than that of the Jade Phosphorous Serpent Martial Souls possessed by those who called themselves descendants of the Dugu Family from Ten Thousand Years Ago on Douluo Continent.

Yet corresponding to that strength was extreme danger.

This was one of the rare Martial Souls explicitly recorded in history as having an enormous chance of causing its wielder to die suddenly even through normal cultivation.

This Martial Soul was already scarce to begin with, and no one in history had ever cultivated it to the level of Titled Douluo. Even its most outstanding wielder had died from Backlash at the Soul Douluo level.

The greater one's talent, the faster one cultivated, and the easier it was to die suddenly. It was a vicious cycle. Even Jing Hongchen did not dare guarantee that he could solve this Martial Soul's problem; he could only do his best to help Meng Hongchen keep it under control.

The Inner Core of a Ten Thousand Year White Jade Toad naturally could not completely eliminate the risks Meng Hongchen would face in her future cultivation, but it could indeed effectively reduce the possibility of losing control.

At the very least, before reaching Soul King, Meng Hongchen would not suffer Backlash from her own poison so long as she did not deliberately court death. Even after becoming a Soul King, it would still be of considerable help to her.

The gift Xu Tianran gave Xiao Hongchen, meanwhile, was a special metal the size of a human head, filled with dense, pure, and incomparably violent Gold Attribute energy.

This metal was extremely strange. Even on the metal-rich Sun Moon Continent, it was one of a kind. Two thousand four or five hundred years had passed since it was first excavated, yet no second piece with the same properties had ever appeared.

The metal itself was extremely durable, and the Gold Attribute Soul Power within it was exceptionally pure and seamlessly fused with the metal itself. No method could remove that metallic Soul Power while preserving the metal's inherent properties.

Such traits should only have belonged to extraordinarily rare top-tier materials. A piece of metal this large could have played a role in countless high-grade Soul Tools.

Yet for some reason, the Gold Attribute Soul Power inside it held a pure rejection toward nearly every kind of Soul Power.

It was especially intense toward Soul Masters whose Martial Souls possessed dragon attributes, and it even seemed to carry a faint suppressive quality. Even the Sun Moon Empire Imperial Family's Purple Blazing Heaven Dragon Martial Soul felt obvious revulsion toward this metal.

Although it was a top-tier metal, its awkward properties meant that adding even a tiny amount to a Soul Tool would greatly reduce that Soul Tool's compatibility with Soul Power and could even increase the risk of the Soul Tool self-destructing.

After circulating across the Sun Moon Continent for a thousand years, this metal had been collected into the Sun Moon Empire Imperial Family's treasure vault. They had attempted to use its unusual Soul Power to create a unique Soul Tool.

Yet no matter how many Soul Engineers came or how many experiments specialists from various fields conducted around this metal, the Sun Moon Empire never discovered a way to properly utilize its properties.

After an unknown length of research, they finally determined that this metal was likely a substance that had not originally belonged to either Douluo Continent or the Sun Moon Continent.

Perhaps its original form had been a meteorite that fell onto this planet in ancient times, remaining wrapped within the mantle for countless years before becoming what it was now.

A thousand years had passed, and the Sun Moon Empire could at most crudely extract the unusually potent Gold Attribute Soul Power within it and use it as fuel for certain Soul Tools, employing its strength like a cannon to kill a mosquito.

But as the conversion efficiency and technological standards of Soul Tools gradually improved, that crude method had also been abandoned by time due to its poor cost-effectiveness.

Thus, this metal, too useless to keep yet too precious to discard, had remained locked in the treasure vault for a hundred years. Then, after Xu Tianran completed an "answer sheet," Xu Pingye gave it to him as a reward.

Such a metal was certainly precious, but to Xu Tianran, something without practical value was equivalent to having no value at all.

Rather than continue keeping it in his hands and waiting for some unknown number of centuries or millennia until Soul Tool Technology could make use of it, Xu Tianran preferred to exchange it for Xiao Hongchen's goodwill.

After all, Xiao Hongchen's Three-legged Golden Toad Martial Soul could cultivate by absorbing the power within metals. The metal's own properties did not matter; it only needed to contain Gold Attribute energy pure and powerful enough.

However, Xu Tianran failed to notice that the moment this metal appeared, Chen Ming's previously calm expression stiffened slightly. His pupils abruptly dilated, and even the Martial Soul within his body seemed to begin trembling faintly.