That afternoon, at the Farack Royal Palace.
Feng Cang lay in an expensive rosewood rocking chair, holding a purple clay teapot and taking a sip from it every now and then.
He had just finished lunch. Now he was basking leisurely in the sun.
Xue Yao had left that morning.
Honestly, Feng Cang felt a little empty inside.
For the past six months or so, he had been living quite comfortably in the Farack Royal Palace.
But apart from eating and drinking, all he did was sleep. His bones were practically rusting.
He sighed and set the teapot on the small table beside him.
"I've got nothing to do anyway. What should I do?"
Feng Cang rubbed his chin.
With a thought, he opened the storage ring on his finger, looking for something to pass the time.
Amid a pile of odds and ends in a corner of the ring,
he spotted a shabby booklet, hastily bound together from a few sheets of paper.
It was the "Cultivation Insights" Xue Yao had given him before leaving the night before.
Feng Cang curled his lip.
"That boy Yao is wonderful in every way. He's just a little too old-fashioned sometimes."
"A brat of eight insisting on writing a wind-element cultivation guide for an old man like me. That's like showing off a big blade in front of Guan Yu."
He grumbled, but his actions told a different story. He pulled out the booklet.
He was bored anyway. He might as well read it like a picture book to kill time.
Feng Cang casually opened to the first page.
He took just one look.
"Clatter."
Feng Cang's hand jolted, and the purple clay teapot he had been holding fell straight to the ground.
His gaze locked onto the first line of the booklet.
It read: "Wind has no form or shape. Those who cleave the wind perish by fighting its force; those who follow the wind ride its waves."
He read on.
"Traditional wind-element Soul Masters forcibly cleave the airflow with their own Soul Power. This is a crude method."
"Airflow itself carries a specific vibration frequency. Find its slipstream layer and bring your Soul Power into resonance with it. This can reduce consumption by seventy percent and unleash three times the power."
Boom!
It was as if ten thousand bolts of thunder had exploded in Feng Cang's mind at once.
He sprang up from the rocking chair.
How was this some child's make-believe theory?
This was a god-tier theory that pointed straight to the source of the wind-element laws!
Feng Cang swallowed, his hands trembling as he continued turning the pages.
The booklet contained not only theory, but also detailed diagrams of the body's meridians.
A completely new route for circulating Soul Power was marked on them.
"The Gale Demon Wolf bloodline accumulates impure wind energy over many years. This causes meridian blockages and makes it difficult to break through the level-80 barrier."
"Circulate Soul Power according to this diagram. Use the Cyclone Method to purge the impurities. This will break the deadlock."
When Feng Cang read those words, every hair on his body stood on end.
Level 83.
He had been stuck at this damned level for twelve whole years!
He had always thought he had reached the limit of his talent. He had never imagined that his cultivation method had been wrong from the very start!
"I really was blind!"
Feng Cang abruptly raised a hand and slapped himself hard across the face.
"To think I tossed such a heaven-defying, priceless treasure into a corner of my ring like it was garbage last night!"
"I, Feng Cang, have wasted these seventy years of my life!"
Feng Cang clutched the thin booklet tightly.
"Guards!"
Several elite guards of the Feng Clan hurried in from outside.
"Patriarch, what are your orders?"
"Spread my command!"
"I am going into seclusion immediately! Even if the sky falls, even if Spirit Hall invades Farack City, no one is to come within ten paces of my room!"
"If anyone dares disturb me, I'll cleave him in two!"
Feng Cang transformed into a gust of azure wind and plunged straight into the secret chamber at the deepest part of the courtyard.
Inside the secret chamber.
Feng Cang sat cross-legged on the cold stone bed.
He took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down.
He opened the booklet and engraved the extremely complex route for circulating Soul Power into his mind.
Then he closed his eyes and began to move the Soul Power within his body.
At first, trying this completely new route felt extremely awkward, and sharp pain even pulsed through his meridians.
But he gritted his teeth and endured it.
Half an hour later,
a miracle happened.
He felt the impure Soul Power that had been congested in his body for years, hard as boulders, slowly begin to loosen.
Following that special "Cyclone Method,"
the impure Soul Power was crushed bit by bit, then expelled through his pores.
What remained was the purest, most concentrated azure wind element.
"So smooth... It's so smooth!"
Feng Cang roared inwardly.
It felt as if a sewer that had been clogged for more than a decade had suddenly been cleared completely!
He stopped resisting the wind's force and instead made himself part of the wind.
The bottleneck, which had once been as still as dead water, began to crack.
One day passed.
Two days passed.
By noon on the third day,
the sky above the Farack capital suddenly changed.
The sky had been clear and cloudless. Then, without warning, fierce winds began to howl.
A thick layer of azure clouds gathered over the palace out of nowhere.
The clouds pressed lower and lower, forming a massive vortex of air currents.
The capital's commoners all looked up in terror at the strange phenomenon.
At the main palace hall,
King Xue Lang and Queen Gao Nianzhen hurried outside.
They stood on the steps, staring at the terrifying vortex above the Feng Clan's courtyard.
"What's going on? Such a powerful fluctuation of Soul Power!"
Xue Lang's expression changed drastically. He felt an oppressive force that made it hard to breathe.
Gao Nianzhen stared fixedly into the air with her beautiful eyes, her gaze filled with disbelief.
"It's Elder Feng!"
"He's breaking through! And judging by this commotion... it's definitely more than a single level!"
No sooner had Gao Nianzhen spoken than—
"BOOM—!!!"
A deafening crash erupted from the Feng Clan's courtyard.
A pillar of azure light shot straight into the sky!
A tall, lean figure surged up through the pillar of light.
It was Feng Cang!
He halted in midair and let out a long, exhilarated howl toward the sky.
"Awoooo—!"
His howl thundered across all of Farack City.
Two yellow, two purple, and four black.
Eight dazzling Soul Rings rose one after another from beneath his feet, pulsing up and down in the air.
Yet what shocked everyone most was the pressure of Soul Power radiating from his body.
He was far, far stronger than he had been three days ago!
"Level 85! I finally broke through!"
Feng Cang looked almost crazed in midair, tears and snot streaming down his face.
Twelve years! He had been stuck at level 83 for twelve whole years!
In just three days, by following a single cultivation route in Xue Yao's booklet,
he had not only broken through his bottleneck, but also unleashed years of accumulated power and jumped two levels!
He had gone straight from level 83 to the terrifying realm of level 85!
A mid-level Soul Douluo!
Now, even if he faced a level 87 or 88 powerhouse, he would dare to meet them head-on!
This was nothing short of a miracle!
Just as Feng Cang was celebrating wildly, he suddenly felt a strange stirring inside his body.
He whipped around and looked at the phantom of his Martial Soul behind him.
It was a Two-Headed Gale Demon Wolf.
But now—
the fur that had originally been azure was beginning to fade.
One by one, silver hairs as sharp as steel needles slowly grew along its back.
That wasn't all. The outlines of a third eye were faintly forming on each of its two heads.
Though neither eye had fully opened, they already exuded a fierce aura capable of destroying the heavens and earth.
Evolution!
The signs of Martial Soul Evolution!
Feng Cang's breathing stopped completely, and his body stiffened in midair like a stone.
On the Douluo Continent, breaking through in Soul Power was difficult, but at least there was a path to follow.
But Martial Soul Evolution was an extraordinary opportunity that could only be chanced upon, never sought! It required the absorption of supreme heavenly treasures to even have a chance of occurring!
Yet simply by regulating his Soul Power and purifying his wind-element bloodline, he had caused his Gale Demon Wolf to show signs of evolving toward a top-tier Martial Soul!
"Yao..."
Feng Cang murmured to himself, his lips trembling violently.
He abruptly descended from midair and slammed onto the courtyard's bluestone paving.
He didn't care about his status as a level-85 Soul Douluo, nor did he pay any attention to Xue Lang and his wife, who had hurried over to watch.
Feng Cang bent both knees and dropped to the ground with a thud.
Facing north, in the direction of Heaven Dou City, he knocked his head against the ground three times.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
His eyes blazed with the fervor of one who had found the Way in the morning and could die content by nightfall.
"Yao! You are the one who gave me a new life! The benefactor of my Feng Clan for generations to come!"
Feng Cang wept openly.
At that moment, what did a Soul Douluo's pride matter? What did his family's dignity matter?
To hell with all of it!
He finally understood.
Xue Yao wasn't just some genius. He was a god wearing human skin!
Even if Xue Yao now asked him to die, or ordered him to send the entire Feng Clan onto the battlefield, Feng Cang wouldn't even furrow his brow.
Because he knew that as long as they clung tightly to this lifeline,
one day, the Feng Clan would stand at the very pinnacle of the Douluo Continent!
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