Horrifying Speculation

Xuanqing woke up around noon and pushed open the door. He stepped outside, stretched, and felt refreshed from head to toe.

Hearing the noise, Zi JI came out too. "You're awake."

Xuan Qing nodded. "You've worked hard these past few days. Where are Old Poison and the others?"

The door to the room next door opened, and Dugu Bo came out with a grin.

"You're finally awake. I thought you were going to hibernate."

Xuan Qing rolled his eyes.

"Couldn't you wish me well for once? Hibernate? Enough small talk. Let's go eat. I'm starving."

Dugu Bo turned and called toward the other room, "Yan Yan, come out. We're going to eat."

The four of them went downstairs together and found a table in the hotel lobby.

Xuan Qing was genuinely starving. He hadn't eaten for three days, so he ordered a whole tableful of food: chicken, duck, fish, and meat.

Then he dug in, eating like a starving ghost who'd clawed its way back from the grave.

While they were eating, Ning Fengzhi and the others arrived again. Seeing that Xuan Qing was awake, Ning Fengzhi's eyes lit up as he went over to greet him.

"Little friend Xuan Qing, did you sleep well?"

Xuan Qing's mouth was full, and his voice came out muffled.

"Not bad. I'm just a little groggy. Have you eaten? If not, let's order a few more dishes."

Ning Fengzhi seized the opening. "Waiter, bring us a few more of your signature dishes. Put them on my bill."

He led Gu Rong, Xue Qinghe, and Ning Rongrong over to sit down.

Xuan Qing put down his chopsticks, wiped his mouth, and looked at Ning Fengzhi. He got straight to the point.

"Sect Master Ning, as the saying goes, no one visits the Three Treasures Hall without a reason. You've come over a dozen times these past few days. What exactly is it you want?"

Ning Fengzhi smiled and pushed Ning Rongrong forward as an excuse.

"Well, Rongrong is interested in you and wanted to get to know you."

"Cough! Ahem!"

Xuan Qing nearly choked to death on his soup. He put down his bowl, his face full of exasperation.

"Sect Master Ning, come on, don't joke around. Even if Soul Masters grow up fast and are considered adults at twelve or thirteen, I'm still three months shy of turning ten."

"Are you planning to have an old cow eat young grass, or do you want me to be the young grass getting chewed up by an old cow?"

The moment he said that, the lobby fell silent.

The waiter froze in place, dishes in hand.

The other patrons turned to look, their expressions strange.

Ning Fengzhi's smile stiffened. Gu Rong's mouth twitched violently; he wanted to laugh but didn't dare.

Ning Rongrong wanted nothing more than to find a crack in the floor and crawl into it.

She was only twelve or thirteen, but next to Xuan Qing... well, she really was an old cow.

Seeing how awkward things had become, Xue Qinghe hurriedly changed the subject. "Brother Xuan Qing, Chief Meng Shenji told me that your Soul Power is incredibly profound. I've never seen anyone cultivate like you. Could you explain it?"

Xuan Qing took a sip of soup and caught his breath. Then he put down his bowl and began to explain.

"At higher ranks, Soul Power basically goes through a process of changing from a gaseous state to a liquid one, and even a solid one. The Titled Douluo here have all experienced it."

Gu Rong and Dugu Bo both nodded.

It was true. Before becoming Titled Douluo, their Soul Power had been like a current of air. Now it was like a pond.

Since Dugu Bo had a Soul Core, he could now be said to have a small river.

"My method has both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that it's slow to build up power at first. The advantage is that I won't encounter any bottlenecks, and the further I progress, the faster I'll cultivate."

"At the same rank, my solid Soul Power is several times greater than liquid Soul Power."

Xuan Qing wasn't making this up. At least since reaching level thirty-one, he hadn't felt a single bottleneck.

And the Soul Power within his body was now in a non-Newtonian fluid state.

Xue Qinghe pressed on. "Solid Soul Power? How do you cultivate it?"

"Just compress it yourself. When you're about to break through to the next rank, hold back and don't break through. As long as you can take it, compress it as hard as you can. The harder you compress, the better the effect."

"The space inside the human body is limited. Once Soul Power builds up to a certain amount, you'll hit a bottleneck. For example, after accumulating a hundred points, you break through from level thirty-seven to level thirty-eight."

"But I need two hundred, or even three hundred points or more. I've done this from the very beginning, and as a result, I now have at least six times as much Soul Power stored up as a Soul Master of the same rank."

Although his Azure Dragon Martial Soul had an Ultimate Attribute, and the Chaos Attribute of his Qilin was even higher than ordinary Ultimate Attributes, that didn't stop him from actively compressing his Soul Power.

Xue Qinghe sucked in a breath. More than six times! That amount of Soul Power was truly terrifying.

Ning Fengzhi hesitated, but in the end couldn't help asking.

"Would you be willing to tell us how to absorb Soul Rings beyond the limit?"

Xuan Qing glanced at him and shook his head. "There's no special method. It just comes down to physical constitution and mental strength."

"The reason Soul Masters can't absorb Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings before becoming Soul Kings is partly their physical constitution, and partly their mental strength. A Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring causes Soul Shock. If your mental strength isn't enough, you'll turn into an idiot."

Gu Rong frowned. "Mental strength? What do you mean?"

It wasn't their fault. As their cultivation grew, so did their perception. That was all they had ever known.

The idea that mental strength needed to be cultivated deliberately had never even crossed their minds.

Xuan Qing patiently explained. "It's a little abstract. Sensing danger and controlling your own Soul Power are both parts of mental strength."

"Douluo Continent doesn't pay much attention to cultivating this aspect. Mental strength grows along with Soul Power, and many Soul Douluo stuck at level eighty-nine are just missing that little bit of mental strength."

"The most direct way to improve mental strength is with a high-quality Head Spirit Bone, but Spirit Bones are far too rare."

Xue Qinghe's eyes lit up. "Is there a way to cultivate it without a Spirit Bone?"

Xuan Qing nodded. "There is! Simply put, you hover on the brink of life and death. To put it more bluntly, if you never push yourself, you'll never know how much potential you have."

"There are treasures that can improve mental strength too. Mermaid's Tears are the most effective."

Ning Fengzhi pressed him. "Mermaid's Tears? Where can we buy them?"

Xuan Qing smiled. "You can only get those by finding a Hundred-Thousand-Year Mermaid in the sea and making her cry. But as for how difficult that is..."

He paused, then came up with a realistic example. "Mermaids are Mental Attribute Soul Beasts, and they can draw on the sea's advantages. Reaching rank ninety-eight is no problem for them, and that's not even counting the fact that a Soul Master would have to withstand the crushing pressure of the deep sea."

"Just comparing the environments, Star Dou Forest is like an infant next to the sea."

"To sum it up: even if a Peerless Douluo went there, one careless move and they'd end up as an extra dish for the mermaids."

Ning Fengzhi's expression changed completely, but he still refused to give up.

"Are there any other treasures that can improve mental strength on the continent?"

Xuan Qing thought for a moment. "They're almost all in the hands of the Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts in Star Dou Forest. They've lived long enough, so they must have collected plenty of treasures."

Gu Rong cautiously asked, "The Sky Azure Bull Python and Titan Giant Ape? Do they have treasures like that?"

Xuan Qing shook his head.

"Those two aren't qualified. You don't think they're the only two Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts in Star Dou Forest, do you?"

Ning Fengzhi was stunned.

"What do you mean? Aren't they the King of the Forest and the Emperor of the Forest?"

Xuan Qing, in turn, asked them a question.

"Star Dou Forest is the largest gathering place for Soul Beasts apart from the ocean. It's been around for so many years. How could there be only two Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts?"

"That's fewer than the number of human Titled Douluo. Doesn't that strike you as strange?"

They looked at one another, stunned.

They had never thought about this before, but now that Xuan Qing had pointed it out, it really did seem strange.

Xuan Qing continued. "I actually have a bold guess. Sometime in the past tens of thousands of years, a massive disaster beyond our imagination must have occurred."

"Otherwise, why would so many ancient species have all but disappeared?"

Dugu Bo suddenly remembered something. "Like the Tyrant Dragon that person mentioned earlier? I made a point of looking up the records. They're vague, but it really did exist."

Xuan Qing nodded. "It wasn't just the Tyrant Dragon. Don't forget the True Dragon and True Phoenix, those representative Soul Beasts. Everyone knows they existed, and the records are unequivocal."

"But has anyone seen one with their own eyes? No. What does that tell us?"

Everyone shook their heads, feeling a chill creep over them.

What Xuan Qing was saying touched on the limits of their knowledge.

Xuan Qing summed up. "It can only mean that some irresistible natural disaster occurred in ancient times: tectonic plates shifted, mountains and rivers were overturned, volcanoes erupted, and seawater flooded inland."

"Faced with such a natural disaster, no matter how powerful the Soul Beasts were, they would have been powerless to fight back. That was why they vanished without a trace."

Everyone, including Dugu Bo, was shaken by Xuan Qing's speculation.

Zi JI, however, nodded. She had lived long enough to know what Xuan Qing meant.

When she was young, beasts like Behemoths and Saber-toothed Tigers had not yet gone extinct. They weren't everywhere, but there had certainly been plenty of them.