Third Soul Skill: Explosive Command

By the time Zhang Yang came to, the other three had already returned to normal.

Although they occasionally cast awkward glances at Zhang Yang on the way back, he didn't notice.

Standing at the edge of the Star Dou Forest, all four of them let out a long breath.

Soul Beasts here were no more than a hundred years old. With their strength, that meant they were completely safe.

The four slowed their pace, and Xie Yue asked curiously, "Zhang Yang, do you want to test out your third Soul Skill here?"

Hu Liena chimed in, "Yeah. Here, you don't have to worry about disturbing any powerful Soul Beasts."

"You want to watch me try it here? Sure." Zhang Yang nodded.

He raised the M14. Three Soul Rings—two yellow and one purple—appeared beneath his feet.

Looking down at the Soul Rings, Zhang Yang nodded with satisfaction. "This looks much better."

Two yellow Soul Rings had been too monotonous.

After loading a fresh drum magazine, Zhang Yang aimed at a tree fifty meters away and pulled the trigger.

"Pfft!"

A soft sound rang out as a patch of bark flew off, and a spray of fine wood chips burst from the point of impact.

Xie Yue quickly calculated in his head. "That doesn't sound right. I remember it being much louder before. After absorbing the Soul Ring, even the sound has gotten much quieter."

Xie Yue was right. The attachment slot Zhang Yang had just unlocked was for the muzzle, and the appearance attachment he'd chosen was the Dead Silence Suppressor.

If he'd been modifying the gun in the game, Zhang Yang would never have put a Dead Silence Suppressor on the muzzle, because it lowered the rate of fire for fully automatic weapons.

But once he brought it into the real world, his reasoning was clear.

Of all the suppressors available for the M14, the Dead Silence Suppressor reduced gunfire noise the most.

To protect his ears and make his attacks harder to detect, the Dead Silence Suppressor was a must.

After the ordinary attack, the Second Soul Ring beneath Zhang Yang's feet lit up.

Second Soul Skill: Armor-Piercing Declaration

Zhang Yang raised his gun again. The red dot of the VMX Frameless Sight settled steadily just below the first bullet hole.

"Pfft!"

Another spray of fine wood chips flew out.

From a distance, the results of the two shots looked much the same.

Zhang Yang then canceled the armor-piercing effect on the next four bullets granted by his Second Soul Skill.

Next came the third Soul Skill he had just obtained.

Third Soul Skill: Explosive Command

The purple Soul Ring beneath Zhang Yang's feet lit up, and a surge of violent Soul Power instantly enveloped the M14 in his hands.

Zhang Yang aimed at the tree trunk and gently squeezed the trigger.

"Bang!"

The gunshot boomed, and a tongue of flame burst from the muzzle. At the same time, a bullet shot out and struck the distant tree trunk in an instant.

A blaze erupted before the four of them. Sparks flew, and smoke billowed upward.

The visual effect was far more dramatic than that of ordinary or armor-piercing bullets.

Lowering the muzzle, Zhang Yang walked up with Xie Yue and the others.

As they drew closer, the smell of burning smoke, tinged with sulfur, filled their noses. Then they saw the most striking feature: an explosion crater about the size of a wok.

That crater had been caused by a single bullet from Zhang Yang's third Soul Skill.

All around the unlucky tree, countless sparks had landed on the grass, while wisps of smoke curled into the air.

Yan sucked in a sharp breath. "Th-that was all from one shot?"

Zhang Yang nodded. "My third Soul Skill is called Explosive Command. While it's active, it infuses my attacks with unstable Soul Power.

"When my attacks hit an enemy, this causes a violent explosion inside or on the surface of the target, dealing damage over an area..."

As Zhang Yang spoke, a faint rustling sound reached their ears.

The four immediately looked toward it and spotted a Datura Snake about four hundred years old.

In the dense grass, the Datura Snake stared at Zhang Yang and the others with its cold, green, triangular head. Every so often, it flicked its tongue with a hiss.

At that moment, Zhang Yang discreetly raised the M14's muzzle. His First and Third Soul Rings lit up at the same time.

With a bang, a crater blasted open where the Datura Snake had been.

The snake, which had been hissing and flicking its tongue moments ago, was reduced to a short stump of tail. The violent explosion hurled it more than thirty meters away.

A yellow Soul Ring then floated up from beside the tail.

As the saying went, even a centipede kept twitching after death. Snake-type Soul Beasts were especially tenacious.

Even after they died, their bodies could keep thrashing for a long time as their nerves fired. Their Soul Rings, too, took a long time to appear.

But after taking one of Zhang Yang's explosive bullets, the Datura Snake's Soul Ring had appeared at once. That was enough to show how terrifying the area damage from this third Soul Skill could be to living creatures.

The Soul Ring dimmed. Zhang Yang continued as if nothing had happened. "Where was I? Oh, it deals damage over an area."

"Also, because the Soul Ring came from a Molten Heart Stone-Throwing Ape, the explosion scatters tiny bits of lava. Those sparks on the ground were ignited by the lava."

"But that effect is, at best, better than nothing."

Xie Yue studied the tree trunk and said seriously, "It's incredible that a single Thousand-Year Soul Ring of around twelve hundred years can produce such power.

"Zhang Yang's Martial Soul can be called the strongest weapon-type Martial Soul, even surpassing the Clear Sky Hammer."

Yan and Hu Liena nodded in deep agreement.

Xie Yue's praise wasn't exaggerated.

If Yan unleashed his third Soul Skill at full power and blasted this tree, he might even blow it clean in half, making his attack far more powerful than Zhang Yang's.

But the difference was that Zhang Yang had achieved this with just one shot.

What if Zhang Yang held down the trigger?

The continuous, violent explosions would unleash power that far surpassed Yan's third Soul Skill.

Zhang Yang smiled smugly at Xie Yue's praise.

These locals didn't know, but Zhang Yang knew perfectly well that while the shot was powerful, it was beyond what a twelve-hundred-year Soul Ring should be capable of.

This was the power of a twenty-three-hundred-year Soul Ring.

That was right. As soon as he finished absorbing his third Soul Ring, Zhang Yang had gone straight to the Gun Modification Bench and increased its age to 2,281 years.

That was the limit his body could currently handle.

In fact, he could now raise the ages of his first two Hundred-Year Soul Rings to 2,281 years as well, becoming an unprecedented Soul Elder with three purple Soul Rings.

But doing that would be like broadcasting his unknown secret to all of Spirit Hall through a megaphone.

Zhang Yang naturally wouldn't do something that brought him nothing but trouble.

So he had only slightly raised the ages of his two Hundred-Year Soul Rings, to 888 years. That boosted their power while keeping their appearance a pure yellow.

A yellow Soul Ring aged nine hundred years, after all, showed a faint purple tint.

So, to play the fool and catch the tiger, Zhang Yang had chosen to stay just below the visible threshold.

After musing over it, Zhang Yang looked again at the two bullet holes above.

The third Soul Ring was a major hurdle for Soul Masters. Once they crossed it, their strength underwent a tremendous transformation.

In the bullet hole from the ordinary attack at the top, the metal bullet had sunk deep into the trunk. The straight bullet path had been blackened by the heat from friction, and measured at least sixty centimeters.

The bullet hole in the middle, made by the armor-piercing bullet from the Second Soul Skill, looked much the same as the one from the ordinary attack. However, its path was an astonishing four times deeper, reaching two meters and forty centimeters.

A bullet hole two meters and forty centimeters deep was astonishingly powerful. After all, the toughness of lignin was no joke.

Living tree trunks also held a lot of water, and their fibers had some resilience. Making a hole like that in a living tree was even harder than in a dead stump.

Zhang Yang was very satisfied with the results of those shots.

If he ran into the Rock Mountain Lord again, he was confident that even without using his Second Soul Skill, his ordinary attacks would be enough to pierce straight through it.

The difference between a level-thirty Soul Grandmaster and a level-thirty-one Soul Elder was that great.

And in a hidden corner beyond anyone's notice, a ghostly shadow watched the four of them closely.