A Fleeting Thought on Soul Skills

Each feather blade was coated in viscous, black Evil Fire.

Tie Lei had nowhere to dodge and could only swing his bear claws in a desperate attempt to defend himself.

Puff, puff, puff!

The sound of sharp blades piercing flesh rang out incessantly.

Dozens of feather blades instantly bypassed his defenses and embedded themselves into his body.

The moment he was struck, Tie Lei let out a miserable shriek.

The Evil Fire on the feather blades brought with it a searing agony, as if ten thousand ants were gnawing at his bones.

As long as the Evil Fire remained unextinguished, this pain that reached straight to the marrow would not subside.

Tie Lei flew into a rage, enduring the agony as he charged toward Su Ming, determined to trade injury for injury.

Su Ming stood his ground, raised his right hand with fingers pressed together, and triggered the second stage of his second soul skill.

"Retract!"

A vast number of black feathers that had missed and pinned into the ground were instantly pulled back, flying in reverse.

Along their return path, the remaining feather blades struck Tie Lei with pinpoint precision once more.

In an instant, an energy vortex formed by the black feathers locked Tie Lei firmly in place, triggering an absolute binding effect.

Unable to move a muscle, Tie Lei could only roar wildly amidst the pain of his marrow being devoured.

Finally, Su Ming looked at the deep purple third soul ring on his body.

The five-thousand-year soul ring shone brilliantly, and an aura of annihilation instantly enveloped the entire arena.

All of the extreme evil energy was compressed into Su Ming's right palm in a single moment.

"Third soul skill, Evil Phoenix God-Slaying Slash!"

Su Ming's expression was blank as he swung his palm downward through the air.

A black reaper's light slash, condensed entirely from extreme evil energy, tore through the void.

This strike lacked the flashiness of area-of-effect bombardment, concentrating all its destructive power into a single line.

The light slash swept across the void, carrying a potent soul-tearing effect.

Boom!

The final Rock Giant Bear defense on Tie Lei's body was instantly shattered and pulverized the moment it touched the light slash.

The black light slash, radiating an aura of death, tore through the air and stopped abruptly just an inch from Tie Lei's throat.

The residual extreme evil energy from the slash split the solid rock ground behind Tie Lei in two, leaving behind a bottomless, pitch-black chasm.

Tie Lei's eyes were vacant.

Although the slash had stopped, the soul-tearing effect it carried had nearly caused his sea of consciousness to collapse entirely.

Thud.

Tie Lei collapsed limply onto the arena floor, completely broken by fear.

"I... I surrender!" Tie Lei shouted with his final ounce of strength.

The referee snapped out of his shock and raised his right hand: "Su Ming wins!"

The onlookers were stunned.

Su Ming's combat was far too clean and efficient.

So clean that it was beyond what should be possible at this soul power level.

After the first match ended, Su Ming did not linger at the scene, nor did he continue to watch the tournament; he returned directly to Spirit Hall.

Inside his room, Su Ming sat cross-legged on a soft couch, recovering his consumed soul power while reviewing the battle with Tie Lei in his mind.

Although he had won the match easily by relying on the continuous suppression of his three soul skills, Su Ming's brows furrowed slightly.

He knew very well that while he currently had no rivals among those at his level, his methods were too singular once he faced higher-level opponents.

He currently possessed only three soul skills: his first was for control and sustained damage, his second for area-of-effect attacks, and his third for single-target burst damage.

If he encountered an enemy who countered his attributes or his skill mechanics, his rigid fighting style would easily reveal flaws for the opponent to exploit.

Su Ming looked at his hands and muttered to himself: "My methods are still too few; I must increase the variables in my attacks."

To increase combat power without relying on soul rings, soul bones and self-created soul skills were the most direct methods.

Soul bones were hard to find and had an abysmal drop rate, so that was out of the question.

That left only self-created soul skills, but creating a brand-new skill from scratch was incredibly difficult, requiring not only vast amounts of time but also immense luck.

"If self-created soul skills are too difficult, then wouldn't fine-tuning and altering my existing soul skills be much easier?"

He began to analyze his soul skills one by one in his mind.

First was his first soul skill, Evil Fire Chaos Origin.

This skill released a pure black, void-like flame with viscous properties, and its underlying core logic lay in attachment and subsequent consumption.

This type of flame possesses no fixed physical form by nature, making it extremely difficult to force any rigid changes to its shape or attack trajectory.

Forcing a change in its form would only weaken its inherent burning and devouring effects.

Conclusion: fine-tuning is not feasible.

Second Spirit Skill, Evil Phoenix Falling Feather Kill.

When this spirit skill is unleashed, it instantly releases thousands of black feather blades. These blades contain a complex internal energy balance and come with an extremely precise secondary retrieval and binding mechanism.

This is a large-scale area-of-effect skill. If one were to attempt to intervene and adjust the trajectory of these feather blades from the outside, it would be incredibly easy to disrupt the original energy balance, causing the blades to lose control and explode in mid-air, rendering even the secondary binding effect completely useless.

The second spirit skill is also a bit difficult.

Finally, Su Ming's gaze locked onto his third spirit skill, Evil Phoenix God-Slaying Slash.

The structure of this spirit skill is the most pure.

It is a single-target cutting beam that compresses all of his extreme evil energy into a single line, possessing immense destructive power and extreme speed.

Furthermore, its activation method is simple and lacks such complexity.

Su Ming sat on the soft couch, deep in thought.

The current attack trajectory of the Evil Phoenix God-Slaying Slash is a straight line. If I want to make its lethality even stronger, what should I do?

Make the volume of the light slash larger?

No, increasing the volume means the energy would be dispersed, which would instead lower the core cutting power.

What if, while keeping the volume constant, I added a high-speed rotation effect to the light slash as it is fired?

Su Ming's eyes brightened slightly.

An ordinary blade can only cut through objects, but if a blade were to spin frantically at thousands of revolutions per second, it would become a terrifying saw blade.

High rotation brings not only stronger penetration but also a more devastating physical tearing effect, and its armor-piercing capability would increase exponentially.

Additionally, besides rotation, it seems possible to attempt to split this single light slash into many in an instant, thereby sealing off all of the enemy's evasion routes.

Su Ming felt this direction was feasible.

Su Ming stood up immediately.

He knew that relying solely on blind exploration could easily lead to problems; he had to find theoretical support.

Half an hour later, Su Ming arrived at the core area of the Spirit Hall Library Pavilion.

Relying on the badge identifying him as a named disciple of the Pope, the elder guarding the pavilion did not stop him, allowing him to enter the floor where advanced spirit power control techniques were stored.