So when exactly had it begun?
Perhaps it had been during their confrontation with the Lower Four Sects.
During that time, as they gradually began dismantling and suppressing the Lower Four Sects' forces, quite a few of the sects' powerful members had hunted them down.
With Lu Qiufeng's adoptive father around, however, they had initially been able to cope.
Still, the Lower Four Sects had sheer numbers on their side, so there were always times when the group had more than they could handle.
When Lu Qiufeng's adoptive father was tied down, they had to face opponents whose Soul Power far exceeded their own.
At first, their cultivation had only been around the Soul Ancestor level. Ye Lingling was a support-type Soul Master with no combat abilities, while Lu Qiufeng's Soul Ring configuration was downright unpresentable.
It was easy to imagine how many brushes with death they had endured back then.
Thus, in the beginning, Ye Lingling and the others had relied mainly on surprise attacks, rarely fighting head-on.
Yet even an occasional encirclement by experts from the Lower Four Sects had nearly cost them half their lives.
But it was precisely under those life-or-death circumstances that Lu Qiufeng had successfully discovered Autumn Edge's innate ability.
By absorbing vitality and Soul Power, he could improve his cultivation and even increase the ages of his Soul Rings.
When Tang Liu had first observed Lu Qiufeng, he had found something familiar about the way he was set up. After some thought, he remembered that Lu Qiufeng's Martial Soul possessed precisely the innate ability of an Evil Soul Master.
However, Martial Souls with Evil Soul Master abilities would more or less affect their owners' minds. Otherwise, later generations of Soul Masters would never have called them Evil Soul Masters.
Somehow, Lu Qiufeng had