Besides the difference in the final effect, Jiang He had also found the reason for the greater Soul Power consumption.
There were countless meridians of varying sizes within his body, but only a portion of them existed inside the Soul Ring!
And that portion consisted entirely of the meridians required by the First Soul Skill!
When Soul Power flowed through the Soul Ring, Jiang He did not need to painstakingly control or circulate it. He only needed to maintain the output of Soul Power, and it would travel through the meridians within the Soul Ring on its own before feeding the result back to Jiang He and enhancing his body.
Since there were no excess meridians, there was naturally no unnecessary expenditure during the circulation process.
After figuring this out, Jiang He studied the meridians within the Second Soul Ring.
However, the simulation inside the Second Soul Ring was even worse than that of the First Soul Ring.
That was because, when using the Second Soul Ring, Jiang He also had to infuse part of his Spiritual Power into it in order to use the Second Soul Skill perfectly.
Simulating the circulation of the Second Soul Skill already required traveling through many branch meridians. To keep his Soul Power from taking a wrong turn, Jiang He had to focus completely and observe with his Spiritual Power.
Now he also had to stuff some Spiritual Power into the meridians, making the consumption even greater!
And the final result was... the Soul Skill's power was drastically weakened. Jiang He even doubted whether the Soul Skill circulated within his body could stun Soul Grandmasters like Yu Tianheng. That was still an unknown.
However, after Jiang He's tinkering, the system had gathered more data on Soul Skills and Soul Rings, and even made some derivative deductions.
According to the system's deductions, the difference between Soul Ring skills of different ages should lie in these internal [meridians].
For example, Jiang He's current Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Skill contained meridians several times thicker than the branch meridians in his body, and there were quite a few of them.
His twenty-thousand-year Second Soul Ring had more and slightly thicker meridians inside it than the First Soul Ring, which was why its Soul Skill was stronger.
By that logic, Soul Rings older than twenty thousand years had to be even more complete and more robust.
Conversely, Thousand-Year Soul Rings had weaker meridians inside them, as well as fewer of them.
For hundred-year ones, there might even be only a tiny number of main meridians comparable to the branch meridians of the human body.
As for ten-year ones... in the original work, ten-year Soul Skills were practically no different from having nothing at all. They existed purely to pad out one's advancement. The meridians inside were probably vanishingly few and extremely fragile, which was why their Soul Skills were effectively powerless.
From this, it could be seen that a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Ring could contain two Soul Skills because it had two different sets of meridians within it, capable of circulating two Soul Skills.
Soul Bones should be similar. The older the Soul Bone, the more complete it was, the richer the meridians it could contain, and the greater the power of its Soul Skills.
At the hundred-thousand-year level, the meridians were probably identical to those of the corresponding part of the human body, except thicker and stronger, allowing them to support more powerful Soul Skills.
Furthermore, the system had observed that the meridians within Jiang He's First Soul Ring and those within his Second Soul Ring did not belong to the same sections. There was no connection between them.
Thus, the system deduced that the so-called seventh Soul Skill, Martial Soul Avatar, displayed such uniform effects in all Soul Masters because it enhanced the user while allowing the unrestricted release of the previous six Soul Skills until all Soul Power was exhausted.
Once a Soul Master reached the Soul Saint level and absorbed the Seventh Soul Ring, the meridians within that Seventh Soul Ring would integrate the meridians of the preceding six Soul Rings. With the Seventh Soul Ring's own meridians added as reinforcement, they formed a relatively complete set of meridians almost equivalent to those of a human body.
This set of meridians should act directly upon the Martial Soul, then work together with the Soul Master's own meridians to create two sets of meridians.
The two sets alternated with each other, allowing the Soul Master to consume less Soul Power while making their Soul Skills more powerful!
That was Martial Soul Avatar: it gave the Martial Soul its own meridians, allowing it to circulate them like a Soul Master and unleash its power to the fullest extent.
It simply lacked consciousness and a soul. Otherwise, the form of Martial Soul Avatar would have been summoning a Martial Soul companion...
But the standard top-tier configuration for ordinary Soul Masters was only two yellow, two purple, and two black rings.
Even at the Soul Saint level, it was merely two yellow, two purple, and three black. The meridians in all of them combined could not make up a complete set, so they could only rely on the integrating power of the meridians in the seventh Soul Skill to forcibly construct a complete set of [human meridians].
That was why everyone became weak for a period after using Martial Soul Avatar, and why the seventh Soul Skill had to be sealed for a while.
This forced patchwork damaged the meridians within all seven Soul Rings. The Seventh Soul Ring, as the integrating ring, suffered the greatest expenditure and could not be used for the next three days.
Only when a Soul Master reached the Title Douluo realm, with the meridians in all nine Soul Rings completely perfected, could Martial Soul Avatar directly construct a set of meridians acting upon the Martial Soul. They could then use Soul Skills freely until their Soul Power was exhausted, without any weakness as a side effect!
Looking at the system's analysis, Jiang He found it astonishing.
In the memories of his previous life, he had merely been someone who read novels. He rarely analyzed the things in those books seriously.
Now that the system had deduced it all, it suddenly seemed perfectly reasonable.
Moreover, the system had stated very rigorously that the uses of Soul Skills should not be limited to this.
After all, there were also rule-type and domain-type Soul Skills.
There had to be more to them than mere meridians.
It was simply that Jiang He did not currently possess or have contact with such things, so he could not analyze and determine exactly how they worked.
However, the system confirmed one thing for Jiang He.
That was, according to this principle, Jiang He really could create his own Soul Skills!
Although their power might not compare to Soul Skills obtained directly from absorbing Soul Rings, as long as he practiced diligently, the final results would definitely be satisfying!
After all, in the memories of his previous life, Tang San's so-called Tang Sect Martial Arts were still being used even in the later stages.
Those martial arts techniques were simply the form Soul Skills took after breaking free from Soul Rings!
With that confirmation, Jiang He even wanted to find an excuse to go to Nuoding City and trade blows with Tang San.
As long as he beat him up for a while, Tang San would eventually be unable to resist using those Tang Sect Martial Arts.
Then, with the system, he could sense the changes in the circulation of Soul Power within Tang San's body. After probing again and again, he would definitely be able to copy every last bit of it.
But that thought passed through Jiang He's mind in an instant.
After all, Tang San was not alone right now.
His father was silently watching over him from behind.
Who knew whether that drunkard would suddenly lose his head, see Jiang He bullying his son, and use his strength to bully the weak.
It was not as if he was incapable of doing such a thing.
With that in mind, Jiang He cast those impractical thoughts aside and turned to studying the creation of his own Soul Skills.
With the system's help, creating his own Soul Skills would be far less difficult for him than for other Soul Masters.
But that did not mean there was no difficulty at all.
At the very least, he needed a direction, then a rough framework for cultivation, before he could use the system to slowly trial and error his way forward.
It would be best if it was related to speed, since speed was the Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear's weakness.
In an instant, a thought surfaced in Jiang He's mind...
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