He shook his head and continued walking.
The Soul Spirits sealed in the next few storage rooms were of a higher grade.
A Shadow Leopard, pitch-black from head to toe, crouched at the bottom of its nutrient tank. Dark patterns occasionally flickered across its fur. The nameplate listed it as 3,100 years old, with a dark attribute and an assassin-type build.
There was also a Steel-Armored Earth Dragon over 2,000 years old. Its scales reflected a metallic sheen under the lights, each one the size of a palm, with edges sharp as blades.
A defensive type, 2,800 years old, top quality.
He Zhiqiu noticed Lin Qingzhou's gaze linger on the Steel-Armored Earth Dragon for an extra second. Thinking Lin had taken an interest in it, he was about to give a detailed introduction, but Lin had already looked away.
None of these were enough.
It wasn't that they were weak. They just didn't match the two forces inside him.
The Silver Dragon King Bloodline and the End-of-All Martial Soul: one was a fragment of the Dragon God's other half, while the other was the Power of End that had destroyed the entire Divine Realm.
If an ordinary Soul Spirit entered him, it would either be suppressed or assimilated. It would never be able to serve its proper purpose.
He Zhiqiu led the three of them to a separate storage room at the end of the corridor.
This room was clearly different from the others. A layer of pale golden soul-conduit reinforcement covered its glass barrier, and a red warning plaque stood by the entrance. It read: "Unyielding Soul Spirit. Extremely dangerous. Unauthorized personnel are forbidden to approach."
There was no suspended nutrient fluid inside. Instead, dense soul-conduit restraint chains filled the room. Each chain was as thick as a wrist, engraved with countless soul-conduit runes, and they held the enormous phantom of a Soul Beast firmly suspended in midair.
It was a lion, jet-black all over, its mane not fur but a whole ring of burning, dark-red flames.
Its limbs were as thick as iron pillars, and its claws dug into the floor. Even bound by the chains, it remained poised to pounce at any moment.
Its eyes were deep red. They held none of the bloodthirsty madness one might expect, only a heavy, stubborn defiance that would rather die than yield.
"The Destruction Lion Mastiff."
He Zhiqiu's voice rang especially clearly in the quiet corridor.
"Two thousand years of cultivation, a rare Soul Spirit. Dark attribute, assault type. According to the Spirit Pagoda team that captured it, more than a dozen people surrounded it, but it would rather smash its own Soul Core than bow its head."
"This Soul Spirit was even found near the Far North. It's astonishing. In this day and age, there are still Soul Beasts outside the Core Circle."
"Unyielding Soul Spirits are the rarest kind in the Spirit Pagoda's Soul Spirit stores. Most unyielding Soul Beasts choose to self-destruct in the end, so those captured intact are few and far between."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Mu Ye and Zhen Hua.
"This Destruction Lion Mastiff has been locked up here for nearly two years. Six Soul Masters of Soul Ancestor rank or higher have tried to fuse with it, and all of them failed."
"Unyielding Soul Spirits are different from ordinary Soul Spirits. They refuse to be tamed by any Soul Master, and their battles take place in the Sea of Consciousness, where they fight as spiritual bodies."
"If the fusion fails, not only will the Soul Spirit dissipate, but the Soul Master's spiritual power will also suffer severe backlash. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this young friend take the risk."
Zhen Hua furrowed his brows. He stood before the glass and studied the two dark-red glimmers in the Destruction Lion Mastiff's eyes, then turned to Lin Qingzhou.
"The chance of fusing with an Unyielding Soul Spirit is too low. And since the battle takes place in the Sea of Consciousness, Mu Ye and I can't help from the sidelines. If it tears through your defenses on the spiritual level, the result won't be a few cuts and bruises. Your spiritual power could collapse."
"I can try."
Lin Qingzhou's gaze passed over Zhen Hua and Mu Ye, fixing squarely on the black lion mastiff bound by the chains.
Locked up for two years, it had rejected six Soul Masters and would rather self-destruct than submit. Its nature was just like the law of survival he had learned in those Ruins of the Divine War.
You could die, but you couldn't bow your head.
He Zhiqiu opened his mouth to say something, but Mu Ye raised a hand to stop him.
Mu Ye watched Lin Qingzhou for several seconds. The corner of his mouth curled up again, and he turned to He Zhiqiu. "Open it. The kid says he wants to try, so let him try. If anything goes wrong, I'll take responsibility."
He Zhiqiu hesitated, but in the end, he nodded and pressed the release button on the control panel.
The soul-conduit restraint chains clattered as they fell from midair, dissolving into specks of blue light before they hit the floor.
Freed from its restraints, the Destruction Lion Mastiff landed on all fours, shaking the floor of the entire storage room.
It shook off the soul-conduit energy still clinging to its mane, then slowly raised its head. Its two dark-red eyes locked onto Lin Qingzhou, who stood at the entrance.
Its pure spiritual body floated before Lin Qingzhou, then suddenly shot into his mind. Lin Qingzhou sat down cross-legged in response, beginning the absorption in earnest.
The storage room, the chains, the glass walls, Mu Ye and Zhen Hua standing behind him—all of it twisted and vanished like water caught in a whirlpool.
In their place was a boundless void of darkness. There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above his head, only the floating sensation of standing on cotton.
The air was thick with the scorching stench of sulfur. Each breath scraped his throat dry.
In the Sea of Consciousness, a lion stood opposite him.
It wasn't a translucent phantom like a Soul Spirit usually was. This was a fully solid spiritual body, every strand of its mane ablaze.
The Destruction Lion Mastiff was a full size larger in the Sea of Consciousness than it had been outside. Its limbs were thick as pillars of cast iron, and dark-red flames ran along its spine all the way to the tip of its tail.
It stared fixedly at Lin Qingzhou without immediately pouncing. But the low growl grinding up from deep in its chest said everything.
Its strength was beyond question.
That delighted Lin Qingzhou. After all, the stronger it was, the greater the rewards he would reap after absorbing it.
He could grow stronger all the faster—and have a better chance of bringing Na'er back to life.
The Destruction Lion Mastiff lunged.
There were no moves, no Soul Skills, no fancy footwork in a battle inside the Sea of Consciousness. The instant two spiritual bodies collided, it became the most primitive clash of wills.
When the mastiff's forepaw landed on his shoulder, a scorching mental assault tinged with destruction poured straight into the depths of his consciousness, as if someone had crammed an entire volcano into his brain.
Pain! It was nothing like the feeling of being torn apart by aftershocks in the Ruins of the Divine War.
The pain in the ruins had been physical; even after being reduced to pieces, he could still pull himself back together. Spiritual pain was something else entirely. It felt like being peeled open alive, all his memories and emotions spread out on a table for his opponent to tear into.
The mastiff dug up all sorts of things from his mind. A rainy night, Na'er curled up and shivering on a street corner.
A blacksmith's shop, where he swung a hammer against a glowing-hot billet, sparks spraying across his face. Each memory it dragged out came with an even more violent mental assault from the mastiff. It was searching for weakness. Any hesitation or fear could become the opening it needed to tear him apart.
Damn it, what the hell is this Soul Beast? How can it create illusions? Does it have a Mental Attribute too?
Lin Qingzhou couldn't help groaning inwardly. The illusion was too real, every inch of it stirring the pain in his heart.
Lin Qingzhou gritted his teeth. He didn't shout or struggle. He simply stood his ground, nailing his spiritual body to the void as he faced the lion. He had lived long enough.
Across two lifetimes, he had been abandoned twice and spent his entire life clawing his way up from the bottom. He had died tens of thousands of times in the Ruins of the Divine War.
His spiritual strength had been tempered by countless deaths, not bestowed by talent. The Destruction Lion Mastiff could dig up every bit of his pain, but it couldn't dig up a single thing that could truly break him.
Because he had already weathered all of it. Every last bit.
He wouldn't retreat, and the mastiff couldn't advance.
The stalemate went on for an unknown length of time. In the Sea of Consciousness, time had no meaning.
The Destruction Lion Mastiff began attacking less often. Dark-red flames still burned in its eyes, but its stubborn defiance was giving way to a more complicated emotion.
It had tried to break the human's spiritual body with pain, only to find that the man's suffering ran deeper than any Soul Master it had ever encountered—and yet he still wouldn't fall.
Then a deeper, more ancient aura began to seep from the depths of Lin Qingzhou's spiritual body. Purple-gold patterns appeared across its surface, exactly like those released by his End-of-All Martial Soul in the real world, only purer this time.
That aura belonged neither to Soul Power nor to bloodline. It came from the core of the End-of-All Divine Realm's ruins: the fragments of law left behind after the gods fell, the Power of End that had destroyed an entire plane.
Even a faint wisp of it was an unbearable pressure to the Soul Beast's consciousness within the Sea of Consciousness.
The Destruction Lion Mastiff's pupils contracted sharply. At last, it recognized the aura on the human before it—the one that had unsettled it to the bone.
It wasn't the suppression of a dragon bloodline. It was something from a higher dimension.
It was one of the toughest Unyielding Soul Spirits, and it would rather die than bow its head to a natural enemy. But faced with the End, whether it bowed was no longer its decision to make.
Lin Qingzhou took a step forward. This step marked the beginning of his counterattack.
He held his five fingers loosely above the mastiff's brow. He didn't use force; he simply pressed his will against it. It wasn't crushing it. It was speaking to it.
"Follow me." His voice echoed through the Sea of Consciousness, calm and resolute—not a command, nor a plea. "I won't mistreat you."
The Destruction Lion Mastiff looked up at him, one last trace of struggle roiling in its dark-red eyes. It had never bowed to any Soul Master in its life. It had been trapped for two years and fought off six challengers.
But now, beneath the power bearing down on its consciousness, it felt for the first time that bowing its head wasn't shameful. There was nothing to resent.
It hadn't been conquered. It had been given an answer it was willing to accept.
The lion mastiff lowered its head. The dark-red flames in its mane slowly faded, their blazing glow softening into a gentle, dark light.
It stretched out its rough tongue and licked the back of Lin Qingzhou's spiritual hand. By the laws of the Sea of Consciousness, that single lick meant the contract was sealed.
A streak of white light split the dark void down the middle, and the entire world faded like a curtain being torn away.
When Lin Qingzhou opened his eyes, he found himself still standing in the storage room, frozen in the middle of a step forward.
The Destruction Lion Mastiff's body was turning into dark-red specks of light. Starting with its mane and ending at the tip of its tail, its enormous form broke apart into countless tiny particles.
The light particles didn't dissipate. They flowed up his arm, slipped into his skin, and found their places within the Soul Power meridians in his body.
A purple Soul Ring slowly rose from beneath his feet. It was his First Soul Ring, from the Destruction Lion Mastiff.
The Soul Ring was dark purple. A silver-flecked phantom of a mane flashed briefly along its inner edge, as though the lion had branded its mark onto his Martial Soul.
Mu Ye leaned against the doorframe, unable to hide the curve of his grin. Zhen Hua unclenched the hand he'd been gripping, revealing a faint indentation in his palm.
"Shouldn't we test that kid's spiritual power again?"
Mu Ye spoke at his leisure, his tone carrying a teasing note of irreverent humor. "I suspect the previous machine didn't have a high enough range."
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