Terrifying Guess

Xuan Qing woke up at noon that day, pushed open the Space Gate, and walked out. He stretched his limbs, feeling completely refreshed.

Zi Ji heard the commotion and stepped out as well. "You're awake."

Xuan Qing nodded. "You've had a hard time these past few days. How are the old poison master and the others?"

The door to the adjacent room pushed open, and Dugu Bo stepped out, grinning.

"You finally woke up. I thought you were hibernating."

Xuan Qing rolled his eyes.

"Can't you wish me something better? Hibernating? Forget it, enough idle chatter. Let's go eat; I'm starving."

Dugu Bo turned his head and shouted toward another room, "Yan Yan, come out, time to eat."

The four of them went downstairs together, arrived at the hotel lobby, and found a table to sit at.

Xuan Qing was truly famished after not eating for three days, so he ordered a table full of dishes—chicken, duck, fish, and meat, all of it.

He began to wolf down the food, his eating style resembling a starving ghost reincarnated.

Just as he was eating, Ning Fengzhi and his group of three arrived again. Seeing that Xuan Qing had woken up, Ning Fengzhi's eyes lit up, and he walked over to greet him.

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

With his mouth stuffed with food, Xuan Qing's reply was muffled.

"Not bad, just a bit groggy. Have you eaten? If not, order a few more dishes."

Ning Fengzhi took the opportunity to climb the pole. "Waiter, add a few more signature dishes, put it on my tab."

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

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

"Sect Master Ning, there is a saying: one doesn't visit the temple without a cause. You've been here over a dozen times in the past few days; what exactly is the matter?"

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

"Isn't it because Rongrong is interested in you and wants to get to know you?"

"Cough! Ahem!"

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

"Sect Master Ning, can we stop joking? Even if spirit masters grow quickly and are considered adults by twelve or thirteen, I'm still three months away from being ten."

"Are you planning on having her be the old cow grazing on tender grass? Or do you want me, the tender grass, to be chewed by the old cow?"

As soon as these words were spoken, the lobby fell instantly silent.

The waiter, holding a tray of dishes, froze in place.

Other guests looked over, their expressions strange.

The smile on Ning Fengzhi's face stiffened, while the corners of Gu Rong's mouth twitched violently, wanting to laugh but not daring to.

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

Although she was only twelve or thirteen, compared to Xuan Qing... well, she really was the old cow.

Seeing the awkward atmosphere, Xue Qinghe quickly changed the subject. "Brother Xuan Qing, I heard from Chief Meng Shenji that your spirit power is incredibly dense and that he has never seen such a cultivation method. Could you enlighten us a little?"

Xuan Qing took a sip of soup to catch his breath, set down his bowl, and began to explain.

"Cultivating spirit power to a high level is essentially a process of transitioning from a gaseous state to a liquid, or even a solid state. The Title Douluo present here all have experience with this."

Gu Rong and Dugu Bo both nodded.

Indeed, before reaching the Title Douluo rank, their spirit power was like a flowing current; now, it was like a pond.

Because Dugu Bo possessed a Soul Core, one could say he was now like a small river.

"There are pros and cons to what I do. The downside is that the initial accumulation is slow, but the benefit is that there are no bottlenecks, and the further you go, the faster you cultivate."

"At the same rank, my solid-state spirit power is several times that of liquid-state spirit power."

Xuan Qing wasn't just spouting nonsense; at the very least, from level thirty-one until now, he hadn't felt a single bottleneck.

And right now, the spirit power within his body was in a non-Newtonian fluid state.

Xue Qinghe continued to press, "Solid-state spirit power? How does one cultivate that?"

"You compress it yourself. When you reach a breakthrough level, you suppress it hard and refuse to break through. As long as you can endure it, you compress it to death. The harder you compress, the better the effect."

"The space within the human body is limited. Once spirit power accumulates to a certain amount, you hit a bottleneck—for example, saving up a hundred points to break through from level thirty-seven to thirty-eight."

"I need two hundred or even three hundred points or more. The result of doing this from the very beginning is that my current spirit power reserves are at least six times that of a spirit master of the same rank."

Although his Azure Dragon Martial Soul was an ultimate attribute and the chaos attribute of the Qilin was higher-ranked than ordinary ultimate attributes, it didn't stop him from actively compressing his spirit power.

Xue Qinghe gasped, a cold intake of breath. More than six times! This spirit power was truly terrifying.

Ning Fengzhi hesitated for a moment but couldn't help asking.

"I wonder if you could tell us the method for absorbing spirit rings beyond one's limit?"

Xuan Qing glanced at him and shook his head. "What method could there be? Isn't it just physique and mental strength?"

"The reason soul masters cannot absorb a ten-thousand-year soul ring before reaching the Soul King rank is partly due to physical constitution, but more importantly, it is due to mental power. Ten-thousand-year soul rings contain a soul shock; if your mental power is insufficient, you will become an idiot."

Gu Rong frowned: "Mental power? What does that mean?"

It really wasn't their fault; in the past, their perception had always grown naturally alongside their cultivation level.

The idea that mental power required deliberate cultivation was something they had truly never considered.

Xuan Qing patiently explained: "This concept is a bit abstract. The perception of danger and the control over one's own soul power are both parts of mental power."

"Douluo Continent does not emphasize this aspect of cultivation; usually, soul power drives the growth of mental power. Many Soul Douluo stuck at level 89 are simply lacking that final bit of mental power."

"The most direct way to improve mental power is through a high-quality external soul bone for the head, but soul bones are far too rare."

Xue Qinghe eyes lit up: "Is there a cultivation method that doesn't require a soul bone?"

Xuan Qing nodded: "Yes! Simply put, it involves hovering between life and death. To put it more bluntly, if you don't push yourself, you will never know how great your potential truly is."

"There are also treasures that enhance mental power, such as Mermaid's Tears, which are the most effective."

Ning Fengzhi pressed: "Mermaid's Tears? Where can one buy them?"

Xuan Qing laughed: "To get those, you would have to go to the ocean, find a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast mermaid, and beat her until she cries. But as for the difficulty..."

He paused, thinking of a realistic scenario to illustrate: "Mermaids are mental-attribute soul beasts. With the advantage of the ocean, they can easily reach level 98, and that is not even accounting for the high-pressure environment of the deep sea that a soul master would have to resist."

"In terms of environment alone, the Star Dou Forest is like a nursery compared to the ocean."

"In conclusion: even if a Peerless Douluo went there, they would likely just end up as a side dish for the mermaid if they were even slightly careless."

Ning Fengzhi face changed completely, but he still refused to give up.

"Are there any other treasures for mental power on the continent?"

Xuan Qing thought for a moment: "They are almost all in the hands of those Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast in the Star Dou Forest. They have lived long enough that they must have collected quite a few treasures."

Gu Rong asked tentatively: "The Sky Azure Bull Python and the Titan Giant Ape? Do they have such treasures?"

Xuan Qing shook his head.

"Those two aren't qualified enough. You don't actually think that the Star Dou Forest only has those two Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, 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 countered with a question of his own.

"As the largest gathering place for soul beasts outside of the ocean, how could the Star Dou Forest have existed for so many years and only have two Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast?"

"That doesn't even compare to the number of human Title Douluo. Haven't you felt that something was wrong?"

The group looked at each other, stunned.

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

Xuan Qing continued: "I actually have a bold guess: that in the past tens of thousands of years, there must have been a massive catastrophe beyond our imagination."

"Otherwise, why have so many ancient exotic species almost completely disappeared?"

Dugu Bo suddenly remembered something: "For example, the Overlord Dragon mentioned earlier? I specifically looked up the records; although they are very vague, they did indeed exist."

Xuan Qing nodded: "Not just the Overlord Dragon. Don't forget the True Dragon and the True Phoenix—these two representative soul beasts. Everyone knows they existed, and the records are quite certain."

"But has anyone ever seen one with their own eyes? Not at all. What does that tell you?"

The group shook their heads, feeling a chill in their hearts.

What Xuan Qing was saying touched upon their blind spots.

Xuan Qing concluded: "It can only mean that in ancient times, there were irresistible natural disasters—tectonic plate shifts, mountains and rivers overturning, volcanic eruptions, and seawater flooding the land."

"In the face of such natural disasters, no matter how strong the soul beasts were, they could not have fought back, which is why they suddenly vanished."

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

Zi Ji, however, nodded. She had lived long enough to know exactly what Xuan Qing was talking about.

When she was young, behemoths like the Behemoth and the Saber-toothed Tiger had not yet gone extinct. They weren't exactly everywhere, but they were certainly not rare.