The Soul Hunting Town nearest to the Star Dou Great Forest was even smaller than Notting City. Most of its buildings were made of wood and packed earth, and looked extremely crude.
Yet the town was bustling, and Soul Masters made up a remarkably large proportion of its population. Soul Masters dressed in all kinds of clothes could be seen everywhere on the streets.
Flender and Lin Mo didn't linger in the town. They passed straight through and headed for the Star Dou Great Forest, a hundred li away.
After about a day's journey, the well-formed road had vanished completely.
They had entered the bounds of the Star Dou Great Forest.
After entering the Star Dou Great Forest, Flender didn't rush to search for Soul Beasts in the Outer Zone. Instead, he continued deeper into the forest.
Flender led the way, with Lin Mo following behind. Like Flender, he kept quiet.
After about half a day, the number of Soul Beasts appearing around them began to increase noticeably.
Lin Mo had seen a Hundred-Year Scale Armor Beast crouched beside a pool. They'd also encountered a group of Wind Baboons with a hundred years of cultivation, leaping from tree to tree.
There were more than a dozen of them.
Flender led Lin Mo straight around them.
These Soul Beasts were all far too young to meet Lin Mo's needs.
A while later, Lin Mo looked at the lush greenery around him and felt a pang of helplessness.
He had been traveling through the Star Dou Great Forest for quite some time. Under Flender's guidance, the two of them had already gone quite deep into the forest.
Judging by the strength of the Soul Beasts roaming nearby, they had undoubtedly passed beyond the Outer Zone at the forest's edge and reached the Mixed Zone.
To be precise, they should be near the border between the Mixed Zone and the Outer Zone.
The Soul Beasts that appeared here had clearly reached a higher level of cultivation.
High-level Hundred-Year Soul Beasts and thousand-year Soul Beasts had become the mainstay of this area.
Most of the Soul Beasts they'd encountered nearby had a hundred or a thousand years of cultivation. Now and then, they'd glimpsed a ten-thousand-year Soul Beast in the distance.
Flender's Cat Eagle Martial Soul was exceptionally good at scouting. Each time, before a Soul Beast could discover them, Flender had already led Lin Mo far away.
"All right, this should do."
Flender stopped on the branch of a giant tree and looked down at Lin Mo.
Lin Mo climbed up onto the branch and stood beside Flender. From this height, they could see a relatively open area below.
"Lin Mo, since even Xiaogang doesn't know what your Martial Soul is, I can't offer much good advice about finding a Soul Ring for you. I can only make some suggestions based on what you've shown me."
Flender looked at Lin Mo and asked seriously, "Are your requirements for the Soul Beast still the same as what you told me before?"
Flender's expression was grave.
Finding a suitable Soul Ring for a Soul Master was no joke, especially for a student in Lin Mo's unusual situation.
Even Yu Xiaogang couldn't identify Lin Mo's Martial Soul. In these circumstances, choosing the wrong Soul Ring could have serious consequences.
Rather than choosing one for Lin Mo, it would be better to let him follow his own instincts.
Lin Mo nodded and repeated his requirements:
"I need a Soul Beast with a focus on strength and a high-quality bloodline. At the very least, it should be something like a Great Strength Gorilla or a Diamond Baboon.
"If we can find a Titan Giant Ape, even better."
The Second Soul Ring was a crucial foundation for him. He couldn't settle for less.
Naturally, the higher the quality of the Soul Beast, the better.
The higher a Soul Beast's bloodline quality, the better the Soul Skill it could provide.
Hearing Lin Mo's words, Flender's mouth twitched.
This kid really had the gall to make such outrageous demands.
A Great Strength Gorilla was one thing. Among strength-type Soul Beasts, it was only moderately above average.
A Diamond Baboon was another matter entirely. It was a true top-tier strength-type Soul Beast. An adult Diamond Baboon could smash a small hill to pieces with one punch.
As for a Titan Giant Ape, that went without saying.
Even a ten-thousand-year one was enough to make a Titled Douluo take a detour.
Of the Soul Beasts Lin Mo had mentioned, only the Great Strength Gorilla was relatively ordinary. The Diamond Baboon and Titan Giant Ape were both at the very pinnacle of the Soul Beast food chain.
Soul Beasts of this caliber weren't easy to kill, even if they'd only lived a thousand years.
Seeing Flender's expression, Lin Mo scratched his head and smiled, putting on an honest, harmless look.
Flender grew furious at the sight, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Lin Mo was a student he'd set his heart on. What else could he do?
Lin Mo, for his part, was perfectly calm.
He'd been invited to join Shrek Academy on the condition that he'd get the best possible thousand-year Second Soul Ring. As the academy's dean, Flender couldn't very well hold back.
Besides, Lin Mo didn't think his demands were all that unreasonable.
His Body Martial Soul wasn't particularly picky about the type of Soul Beast. It only needed to be a strength-type Soul Beast with a high-quality bloodline and a suitable age.
He wasn't like the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, which absolutely required draconic Soul Beasts. A draconic Soul Beast with lightning attributes would be even more suitable for them.
Every direct descendant of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan had to hunt a draconic Soul Beast for each Soul Ring. That was what you called picky.
Draconic Soul Beasts were rare to begin with, and they still had to find ones of the right age. The difficulty was countless times greater than what Lin Mo was asking for now.
Lin Mo considered himself quite easy to please.
Besides, he had already toned down his demands considerably when he'd first laid them out.
In fact, if he could choose, the best and most compatible Soul Ring for his Body Martial Soul would come from a Soul Beast like the Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff.
The Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff had once ruled over its own territory even in ancient times.
It was a beast-king-level existence.
The Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff was said to be the progenitor of all dog-type Soul Beasts. There were even legends that it was the ancestor of all lion-type Soul Beasts.
It possessed incredible strength from birth, along with its own Domain: Domination!
It was famous for fighting with reckless abandon. Once it entered battle and activated its Domination Domain, its attack and defense would surge, it would feel no pain, and the power of all its abilities would increase by more than fifty percent.
What's more, its defining trait was that it never fought to a draw. It fought to the death!
For this very reason, the Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff had enemies everywhere and could barely survive in the world of Soul Beasts. That was what
ultimately led to its extinction.
The Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff's bloodline quality was absurdly high, and it was no exaggeration to say that its physical strength was unmatched among Soul Beasts of the same rank.
If he could hunt a thousand-year Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff, the quality of his Second Soul Ring would reach a terrifying level.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he could obtain the most outrageously powerful thousand-year Soul Skill in the history of the Douluo Continent.
Unfortunately, this thing was far too absurd.
Never mind that the Golden-Haired Lion Mastiff had long been extinct. No one could say for sure whether any were still alive in this era.
Even if there really were one, Flender might not be able to defeat it, even if it had lived only a thousand years.
If they ran into one, he and Flender might be the ones turning tail and running.