The Unusual Soft Bone Rabbit

Upon entering the Far North, Lin Yan took out a rough map. After briefly orienting himself, he raised a hand and pointed toward the eastern side of the ice plains. "Senior Sister, we're heading this way."

"Our target Spirit Beast lives in the area between the outer region of the Far North and the Core Zone."

Zhang Lexuan and Jiang Nannan nodded lightly. As they traveled, Lin Yan took the opportunity to give them a detailed introduction to their target.

The Frost Shadow Void Rabbit was a top-tier rabbit-type Spirit Beast that lived in the Far North. It was also the fourth Spirit Ring Lin Yan had chosen for Jiang Nannan. Its primary attribute was space, with ice as a secondary attribute, making it exceptionally rare.

The main reason he had chosen this Spirit Beast was its space attribute.

From the very beginning, the development path Lin Yan had set for Jiang Nannan had been toward the spatial domain.

In Lin Yan's opinion, it was rather unreasonable for the Soft Bone Rabbit to be classified as a "useless Martial Soul" on the same tier as Blue Silver Grass.

Just look at the original story—how varied and underhanded were Xiao Wu and Jiang Nannan's soul skills?

Charm, void, Teleportation, Invincible Golden Body, Gravity Control...

No matter how one looked at them, these soul skills should have had nothing to do with a Soft Bone Rabbit. If only Xiao Wu possessed such skills, it could be attributed to the special nature of her being a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast that had taken human form.

But Jiang Nannan had been the same in the original story. She could obtain whatever kind of soul skill she wanted, which could only mean that the root of the issue lay with the Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul itself.

To that end, Lin Yan had consulted historical records and investigated a large number of Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul possessors. He proposed a reasonable hypothesis that could explain this phenomenon—Nondirectional Martial Soul Mutation!

According to his research, among all possessors of the Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul with Innate Soul Power below Rank Five, none had ever obtained soul skills such as Invincible Golden Body or Gravity Control, which had absolutely nothing to do with the Soft Bone Rabbit, regardless of what Spirit Rings they absorbed.

Their Martial Souls displayed no difference from ordinary Soft Bone Rabbit Spirit Beasts, and the soul skills they gained were equally unremarkable and conventional.

According to Lin Yan's speculation, the upper limit of Innate Soul Power for ordinary Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul possessors should be no higher than Rank Five.

As for those whose Innate Soul Power exceeded Rank Five, their Martial Souls appeared unchanged on the surface, but had in fact already mutated. The mutation was simply invisible and nondirectional.

Ordinary Martial Soul mutations became completely fixed the instant the Martial Soul awakened.

However, Lin Yan's experiments had revealed that the Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul possessed a peculiar bloodline exclusivity. It naturally isolated other traits within its bearer's bloodline, preventing it from merging with those traits in a Soul Master's bloodline to complete its mutation.

Because of this, the Martial Soul mutation process, which should have ended completely the moment the Martial Soul awakened, became stalled because it could not merge with bloodline traits and change.

Thus, what ultimately awakened was still a seemingly unchanged Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul.

Yet just because the process had stalled did not mean the mutation that should have occurred had vanished. It had merely changed forms and temporarily gone dormant.

Its outward manifestation was that it granted the seemingly unchanged Soft Bone Rabbit unparalleled plasticity.

It was precisely because of this extreme plasticity that possessors of such Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Souls could obtain all manner of soul skills by absorbing different Spirit Rings.

At the same time, after a Martial Soul awakened, Spirit Ring absorption acted directly upon the Martial Soul itself and was not restricted by bloodline exclusivity.

Therefore, in theory, as long as one continuously absorbed several Spirit Rings with common traits and provided the dormant mutation with a clear direction, the interrupted Martial Soul mutation should be able to restart and complete itself under the guidance of the Spirit Rings.

But if one did not understand this, selecting Spirit Rings would become the point where problems were most likely to arise again.

If the first few attached Spirit Rings had mixed attributes and nothing in common, it would be like a road branching into several paths. The dormant mutation would lose its strong directional guidance and sink into silence once more.

And this silence should be a complete dead end. Unless one later encountered some heaven-defying opportunity capable of erasing the influence of the existing Spirit Rings, the Martial Soul mutation would most likely never be completed.

Some might wonder at this point: with such a special Martial Soul mutation mechanism, had no one ever noticed it throughout history?

If it had gone undiscovered for so long in another world, Lin Yan might have found that unreasonable. But this was Douluo Continent, damn it!

According to Lin Yan's hypothesis, because Jiang Nannan's first Spirit Ring had come from a Soft Bone Rabbit and had not set any direction for her subsequent Martial Soul mutation...

Then in theory, she could have chosen any direction back then to continue the mutation.

However, when Lin Yan had first proposed this hypothesis, he lacked concrete evidence and could not be certain that it was truly the case.

Although Jiang Nannan had been willing to trust his judgment, he was not some reckless fool. How could he possibly gamble with Jiang Nannan's future?

Thus, after careful consideration, he had settled on the spatial path for Jiang Nannan.

In the original story, Jiang Nannan had possessed spatial soul skills such as Teleportation, which was enough to prove that her Soft Bone Rabbit Martial Soul could obtain space-type soul skills.

That way, even if there were flaws in his theory and the Martial Soul mutation could not be restarted, following the path of a space-based agility attack Soul Master would still offer tremendous potential.

And judging from the changes in Jiang Nannan's Martial Soul after she absorbed her second and third Spirit Rings, Lin Yan was now ninety percent certain that his hypothesis was correct.

He even speculated that after she attached a third space-attribute Spirit Ring this time, Jiang Nannan's long-dormant Martial Soul mutation would be fully reactivated!

In other words, under normal circumstances, as long as the first three Spirit Rings shared a certain degree of commonality, they would be enough to restart the mutation.

Unfortunately, by the time Lin Yan met Jiang Nannan, her first Spirit Ring slot had already been wasted.

But the past could not be changed, while the future could still be pursued. It was not too late now!

While searching for the Frost Shadow Void Rabbit, Lin Yan finished explaining the Spirit Beast's traits and abilities to Jiang Nannan and the others. Seeing Zhang Lexuan hesitate as if she wanted to speak but held herself back, he asked, "Senior Sister, do you have any other questions?"

After hesitating briefly, Zhang Lexuan asked with some confusion, "Before coming here, I learned about Nannan's earlier soul skills."

"I'm curious. Why did you choose to develop in the direction of space instead of following the soul skill combination of Xiao Wu, the Soft Bone Douluo who became a god ten thousand years ago?"

Lin Yan smiled at her question and was about to explain when he saw Jiang Nannan look toward him with an inquiring gaze.

He gave a slight nod, and Jiang Nannan eagerly and proudly began explaining Lin Yan's hypothesis to Zhang Lexuan in detail.

After hearing Lin Yan's unprecedented theory, Zhang Lexuan's heart immediately churned.

Although Lin Yan's hypothesis had yet to be formally proven, with Jiang Nannan as a living example before her, only the final step remained before it could become a definite conclusion.

But what truly unsettled Zhang Lexuan was that, according to Lin Yan's hypothesis, did that not mean the legendary Soft Bone Douluo who had become a god ten thousand years ago had also taken the wrong path?!

At that moment, the sacred image of the First Generation Shrek Seven Devils that had been instilled in her since childhood seemed to suddenly develop a tiny crack...