The Kids Caused Big Trouble (Part 2)

"Big Brother Barus, is it really okay for us to sneak off to the Nanshan Rainforest like this?"

Wearing a children's swimsuit made of silk, the young Elf girl Elena sat on Barus's back. He had shrunk down to a mere five meters long.

"Don't worry, it's fine. Even if Dad comes to catch us, he'll hit me first."

Barus spoke with his dragon's mouth.

Wandering across the lake beneath the waterfall, Barus brought the soaking-wet Elena to the dry shore. When he'd brought her to play in the Nanshan Rainforest this time, he'd also swiped a few household items from her home.

Barus set Elena on the rug by the campfire, lifted a towel with Soul Power, and dried her hair, which had been soaked by the lake. Then he wrapped her in a bath towel.

Yes, Rus Wang had written down everything he knew about the past lives he feared he might forget, as well as the information he knew about Douluo 2 and Douluo 3 and the essential differences between Elves and humans. He recorded it with a brush on paper or carved it into stone tablets, then hid it in a modified cave in the core area of the Nanshan Rainforest—much like turning a cave into a home in Minecraft—and protected it with a magic array.

But no matter how carefully he'd guarded against every possibility, he'd overlooked the little troublemakers at home.

In the Elf Kingdom, you needed money to buy things, and the five kids had none. They didn't want to get into serious trouble, but then one of them had a bright idea: they remembered their father often sneaking off to this cave to treat himself to a little extra food. So while their father was in the royal capital, Ravenna, listening to the Elf prime minister's report, they barged into Rus Wang's cave and gleefully stole and ate the basic ingredients he'd bought from the Elves.

Two-year-old Barus happened to discover the information about Douluo 2, Douluo 3, and the Elves that his father had carved into stone. He committed it to memory.

So on the surface, Barus was still a carefree fool of a son, with no plans whatsoever for living independently in the future. But deep down, he'd always felt anxious about humanity, the Soul Beasts' natural enemy whom he'd never met, and impatient with how slowly his father was advancing the coexistence of Soul Beasts and Elves. (Rus Wang: I'm not even worried as their father, but my son's already getting worked up.)

Just as his father had recorded on the stone tablets, humans awakened their Martial Souls at the age of six, but most of them couldn't wield Soul Power. All Elves gained Soul Power when they turned twelve, ranging from Innate Level One to Innate Full Soul Power. But because they lacked that thing called a Martial Soul, they could only use Soul Power on its own. They couldn't use it to activate the abilities their Martial Souls granted them, as humans with Soul Power could.

Growing up under his father Rus Wang's influence and often visiting the Elf city, Barus understood that a bond built on mutual benefit was the strongest kind. That was why he'd always wanted to strengthen the bond between Elves and Soul Beasts. His idea was to modify the Soul Spirit Contract Method so that Elves could share the abilities of Soul Beasts without having Martial Souls of their own, and could use Soul Skills through Soul Rings like humans, even while the Soul Beast remained alive. But under this method, the Soul Beast absolutely couldn't inhabit a human's Sea of Consciousness like a Soul Spirit. Instead, the Elf and Soul Beast would be equals, and either party could end the Spirit Ring Sharing on their own.

"How's your meditation going?"

He'd raised Elena from a young age for just this reason. Now, Barus leaned close and asked her in a low voice.

"It's pretty amazing. But even I'm a little scared of how quickly this power grows. It's so easy to become greedy. No wonder my parents and the prime minister uncle don't dare reveal it to everyone."

Elena replied after a long silence, her expression thoughtful. As the child of someone in the Elf Kingdom's inner circle, her body might have been young, but she hadn't wasted the twenty-six years she'd lived.

Three years ago, Barus had formally told Elena about the information on the stone tablets. Using the human Meditation Technique he'd described, she'd advanced from Innate Level Six to Level Nineteen in just three years. She'd felt the increase in her strength firsthand, and understood why her parents' generation hadn't dared to reveal this system of extraordinary power.

"My mental power has also broken through its limits. My Sea of Consciousness has clearly expanded quite a bit."

"It's a shame that everything Dad carved on the stone tablets is linked to strings of numbers. If it weren't, we might have been able to understand it more clearly instead of groping around blindly."

After hearing Elena describe her condition, Barus scratched his chin. To be honest, his father Rus Wang had recorded his mental power entirely in strings of numbers, so Barus couldn't offer Elena any help. She could only sense for herself whether she'd made a breakthrough in mental power.

"Is this the first time you've felt this?"

"Yes, I think so. But it's different from before, when I couldn't gather mental power in my mind. Now I can control it."

"I see. Then you've probably reached the Spirit Connection Realm."

The Spirit Connection Realm had one very distinctive feature: mental power control began to take shape. You could truly control your own mental power and use it as you pleased, and it could support two yellow Soul Spirits or one purple Soul Spirit. As it happened, Barus was now a Soul Beast with a cultivation of over four thousand years. By the Soul Spirit standards, he was a purple Soul Spirit.

"Let's connect my mental power to your Sea of Consciousness. We can run an experiment."

"Huh? How do we connect?"

Elena nodded, but looked a little puzzled. How could one creature connect to another's Mental World?

"According to the two humans on the stone tablets, we should press our heads together and then connect with mental power."

As he spoke, Barus grew until his shoulder height was 1.8 meters, and his whole body grew along with it.

"Huh?"

"Let's give it a try, Elena. Those two were still alive after their mental connection ended."

"All right, then."

Iyuda, the second sister on lookout above the waterfall, saw her carefree big brother tinkering with something again alongside his Elf friend Elena. She felt exhausted.

"Brother, who's the eldest here, you or me? Seriously, I'm always the one who has to watch out for Dad coming to catch us."

Iyuda turned to look elsewhere and continued keeping watch, completely unaware that her big brother was doing something reckless.

Barus didn't know much about the Sea of Consciousness Elena had described. All he knew was what she'd told him: it was like a tiny world, an empty, pale-gold ocean with nothing around it, and Elena could walk across the surface.

And now Barus and Elena had appeared together inside Elena's Sea of Consciousness.

"I can't believe it actually worked."

Feeling that she really was inside her own Sea of Consciousness, Elena looked at Barus's body beside her in disbelief.

"Then let's not waste any more time. We'll start testing the power-sharing method I adapted from the Soul Spirit Contract Method, Elena."

Barus glanced around and got straight to the main reason they'd entered Elena's Sea of Consciousness.

"But Barus, the Soul Spirit Contract Method isn't—"

"I know, Elena. But only practice can give us enough experimental cases. Otherwise, it'll all stay theoretical."

Barus reassured her.

"If it fails, I'll take responsibility with my parents. They're not unreasonable. If we want to form a deep bond with the Elves, we'll have to keep doing what you and I are doing now. We're just getting started early."

Bakus and Bazel kept shooting the [Skill: Water Play] at each other as they played, until a stream of water unleashed from farther away hit them.

The two brothers, Bakus and Bazel, looked toward it in confusion. The water hadn't come from their big brother. It had come from Elena. Their third sister, Ilian, who hadn't been caught in the spray, floated on the lake and watched with keen curiosity.

"What are you standing around for? Join in!"

At Bakus's words, all the dragon kids who'd been stunned to see Elena use the ability to unleash water immediately started playing with her and Bakus. Once the novelty wore off, they gradually scattered.

Elena was overjoyed. Unlike Soul Power, this time she'd truly shared Barus's ability to control water. That meant Barus's dangerously daring experiment had worked on the first try.

"Elena, you said that after making a contract with you, I could use your abilities too. What would happen if we made a contract with our mental power, in theory?"

Barus had no intention of stopping there. He wanted to take advantage of their success and keep experimenting.

"But, Barus... is that really okay?"

Elena hesitated.

"It should be fine, right? Think about it, Elena. Since you can use my ability, that means your mental power is at least at the Spirit Connection Realm described in this book. Your mental power should be able to withstand a Soul Beast like me, with a cultivation of over four thousand years."

Barus asked Elena to make a Mental Contract with him in the Sea of Consciousness and conduct an experiment on Spirit Ring Sharing, though neither of them knew what the result would be.

"All right, I understand. If it fails and I turn into a Soul Spirit, I... I'll take responsibility."

The dragon and the Elf entered the Sea of Consciousness once more to conduct another experiment. But unlike the small ripple from before, this time a massive surge of Soul Power formed around them. It shook the four siblings who were resting and keeping watch around the Great Waterfall. They all looked toward the dragon and Elf lying unconscious on the lakeshore. Sensing that something was badly wrong, the four dragons immediately went to check on their big brother and his Elf friend.

High in the sky some distance away, Rus Wang had come to catch the kids. As a Seer Elf Soul Beast with a cultivation of over two hundred thousand years, he naturally sensed the disturbance too. It was a fluctuation in mental power.

"Crap! My stupid son!"

Rus Wang cursed. How could he not tell that his kid had caused a huge mess? Did he think anyone could just mess around with mental power? Even Huo Yuhao, a specialist in mental power, had been left dizzy when he ran into Wang Dong'er's Santang-brand safety measure, despite having support from that useless hundred-thousand-year white insect. What consequences did two clueless little brats think could come of playing around with mental power?

Rus Wang's huge body soon landed in the Great Waterfall area. He saw his four kids gathered around the unconscious Barus and Elena, looking anxious. He lowered his dragon head over the two unconscious figures and sniffed them repeatedly. Once he confirmed that they were unconscious for some reason but weren't in any danger, he turned to his second daughter, Iyuda, and asked if she could tell him what her big brother and Osuen's second daughter, Elena, had done.

"Dad, I... I was keeping watch above the waterfall the whole time, so I really couldn't see any details. Then there was a surge of energy, and Big Brother and Elena both passed out."

How was Iyuda supposed to know? As the second oldest, she'd stayed above the waterfall, on watch for possible danger, while her brother played with his Elf friend anywhere and everywhere, even neglecting the job of keeping watch. She'd kept the other three siblings free to enjoy themselves. When the incident happened, she'd been the farthest away from her troublesome big brother, Barus.

"Dad, I think I heard a few words. They seemed to be talking about a Meditation Technique, mental power roaming, 'I'll show you my Mental World,' and power sharing." Bakus thought for a moment before answering.

"Oh, right! Now that fourth brother mentions it, I remember. Before he passed out, Big Brother pressed his forehead against Elena's and released this same kind of energy. It just wasn't as strong as this time. After that first time, Elena somehow gained the ability to unleash water. We had a lot of fun playing with her. Then Big Brother suddenly came up with some strange idea and started experimenting with her again."

Ilian had been swimming around in the lake the whole time instead of playing with Bakus and Bazel. Naturally, she'd noticed more.

There was no way to solve it from what they'd heard so far. Rus Wang could only lift Barus and Elena with Soul Power and take the other four kids to the Council Forest in the core area of the Nanshan Rainforest. He also summoned the Dragon Race to discuss the matter.

When Barus opened his eyes, he felt that his cultivation had somehow increased, and sensed the constant mental connection between him and Elena. He knew that his experiment had succeeded. He'd killed hundreds of ten-year Soul Beasts and dozens of Hundred-Year Soul Beasts, studied their Soul Rings, and gambled his own life on the experiment.

Overjoyed, he started to get up and look at Elena, but a huge dragon claw pressed down on him.

The feel of his mother's dragon claw! Barus had been scolded too many times not to recognize it.

"You're awake?"

"Mother?"

Seeing Barus perk up the moment he woke, and then seeing the sight of Elena—who had jumped from Level Nineteen to Level Twenty-Five, according to her husband—kneeling with her head on the ground as tears streamed down her face, with a dazzling purple Soul Ring behind her, left Thalassa's dragon brain struggling to process it all. The other female dragons were just as bewildered.

"So, did our kid become a Soul Spirit or not?"

Looking at her firstborn son, Barus, at the thousand-year Soul Ring behind Elena, who stood beside him, and feeling Barus's living heartbeat and signs of life, she couldn't make sense of it.

Rus Wang and the female dragons who'd investigated how humans captured Soul Beasts and refined them into Soul Spirits all had question marks in their minds. They'd never encountered anything this bizarre.

"Elena, are you all right? Dad, Mom, Aunties, this has nothing to do with Elena. I was the one who insisted she help me."

Barus woke up and saw Elena in that state. Without caring how small and weak he was in front of his elders, he shielded her with his body and took all the blame upon himself.

"You little fool..."

Before Yanjin—the Crimson Fire Dragon—could fly into a rage, Panyan—the Earth Rock Dragon—and Lingyi pulled her back as though they'd seen something unbelievable.

"Feel this child Barus's cultivation."

The dragons examined him carefully, and sure enough, they sensed something different.

"Yesterday he was over four thousand, and today he's suddenly over five thousand!"

Feeling how the eldest son of their eldest sister Thalassa had jumped from over four thousand to over five thousand years of cultivation, Lingyi found it unbelievable. As a dragon who'd seen what happened to Soul Spirits enslaved by humans, she knew they had to get humans to kill other Soul Beasts to steal their cultivation and raise their Soul Ring age. But Barus had made some kind of Mental Contract with an Elf and could keep his body while increasing his cultivation. She'd never seen anything like it. (It was now 120 years after the end of Huo Yuhao's timeline, and the Spirit Pagoda still hadn't invented the Spirit Ascension Platform.)

"Could this self-created method of Barus's allow Soul Power Sharing with Elves?"

Ximing, the Heavenly Sun Dragon, speculated.

"Maybe, but that's not the important part. What matters is whether this new method differs from those servant-like Soul Spirits. If it doesn't, then we might as well do without it, though it'd be a shame for Barus."

Xingyue said nothing. She looked at Elena, who was standing dazedly beside Barus now that all the dragons had gathered, and her expression was grave.

For Soul Beasts, becoming a Soul Spirit was no different from being hunted by humans; it was merely another way to die. One meant being imprisoned forever, while the other meant truly dying.

"Whatever the case, son, can you sever your Mental Contract with Elena?"

Since they couldn't reach any conclusions through discussion, Rus Wang asked Barus if he'd considered whether the method left Soul Beasts a way out, unlike the Soul Spirit method, which trapped them forever.

"I can, Dad. Either one of us can end it, or we can end it together. But that's only in theory. Elena, let's go into the Mental World and conduct one final experiment. We'll end the sharing contract."

"O-okay."

Barus nodded. Their Soul Power immediately dispersed. Elena's Soul Power Level dropped from Level Twenty-Five back to Level Nineteen, while Barus returned to the cultivation of over four thousand years the dragons sensed in him. The Mental Contract had ended just that easily.

The female dragons exchanged glances, as if faced with something they couldn't understand. For a moment, none of them knew what to decide.

But then Rus Wang said something that made the female dragons' eyes light up.

"This Mental Contract method can be ended as soon as you make it. It's fundamentally different from the Soul Spirit method humans use to enslave us. We can widely promote it in the future to deepen the ties between Soul Beasts and Elves. I just don't know whether, if an Elf becomes a Titled Douluo one day and makes a Mental Contract with one of us Ferocious Beasts, instantly gaining a hundred thousand years of cultivation will trigger a Heavenly Tribulation, or not."

"Rus, should we start sharing it with the Elves now and try it once they produce a Titled Douluo in the near future?"

Yanjin, the Crimson Fire Dragon, thought about it. If the Mental Contract was truly as miraculous as it seemed, didn't take a Soul Beast's life, and the Elves could already slowly increase their cultivation without hunting Soul Beasts for Soul Rings, it would be a good way to strengthen the bond between Soul Beasts and Elves.

"We can't rush it, Yanjin. The Elves have only just left their primitive state. With a power this extraordinary, there'll inevitably be plenty of disorder among the common folk. We should wait until their civilization is more advanced, then choose someone with strong mental power to test it with a Hundred-Year Soul Beast."

Rus Wang shook his head at the excited female dragons, telling them that now wasn't the time. Then he left Barus standing to one side. While Barus watched, his father spoke with his mother and eight other aunts in a soundproofed space for a while. Afterward, Rus Wang looked at his son with a mischievous grin.

"Son, even though you accidentally created a Mental Contract method that we have to take seriously, you secretly brought an underage Elf into the core area of the Nanshan Rainforest. You'll be spared the death penalty, but you won't escape punishment."

"Ah!"

Barus let out a scream.

"Come on, Dad! Elena's still here! Please, spare me a little dignity!"

Seeing his eldest son beg, Rus Wang grinned. How could he not know what the boy was up to? He was just using Elena's presence as an excuse to try to escape punishment.

"Fine. Take Elena home first. When you get back, you'll accept your punishment. But if you don't come back, heh heh..."

Barus wailed inwardly. But there was nowhere he could hide that his father wouldn't find him, so he could only take Elena home first and then return to accept his punishment.