A faint yellow glow appeared around the strange flower. It gradually gathered and condensed, forming a yellow ring above it, its outline indistinct and flickering in and out of view.
Yang Fan was a little excited. He quickly used his Soul Power to draw the Soul Ring toward him.
So this was a Soul Ring?
The Soul Ring that would make him a true Soul Master.
Yang Fan tried to calm himself. He scattered some powder nearby to repel wild beasts, preventing them from disturbing him while he absorbed the Soul Ring.
He wasn't too worried about human Soul Masters. After all, who among ordinary people would dare cause trouble right under Spirit Hall's nose? They'd be arrested as Evil Soul Masters on the spot.
The Douluo series was chaotic only during the era of The Unrivaled Tang Sect. In the other eras, there was rarely so much fighting and killing, and even then, it was usually over Soul Bones.
As for the chance of a hundred-year Plant-type Soul Beast producing a Soul Bone... all he could say was that it was about as likely as getting a jackpot on his first spin of a certain online game's loot wheel in his previous life.
Perhaps because he was a transmigrator, Yang Fan's spiritual power was quite strong. He didn't have Tang San's Purple Demon Eye cultivation method, nor the mental testing equipment from the Douluo III era, so he couldn't measure it precisely.
But he could achieve "a mind in tune with the world, thoughts reaching wherever his will led." Conservatively, his spiritual power was at least in the early Spirit Connection Realm.
So Yang Fan didn't think absorbing this hundred-year Soul Ring would be too difficult. In about an hour, he had fully assimilated it. From the information the Soul Ring passed on, he learned about the Soul Beast and the Soul Skill he had acquired.
The flower was called the Thousand-Change Myriad-Spirit Flower. Its name sounded impressive, but it wasn't very strong in battle. It had two core abilities: top-tier disguise and energy shaping.
Energy Shaping: It could freely transform the energy under its control into all kinds of shapes. It could make changes as sweeping as altering its overall form and life aura, or as subtle as precisely mimicking the Soul Power fluctuations of other Soul Beasts.
Perfect Disguise: With its talent for "energy shaping," it could easily disguise itself in the forest and blend perfectly into its surroundings. It could even imitate a powerful aura to scare away potential predators.
That was the real reason it was so rare and had survived for five hundred and ten years on the edge of the Soul Beast forest. It wasn't powerful; almost no one, human or Soul Beast, could actually find it.
The Soul Skill he had gained was also the Thousand-Change Myriad-Spirit Flower's core ability: Energy Shaping.
It was a Soul Skill with great potential. Whether he wanted to hide himself and quietly build up his strength or develop his Soul Skills in new ways, it suited him far better than a simple attack skill.
After all, a transmigrator's advantage lay in creativity, and Soul Rings offered little increase in combat strength ten thousand years ago. That was why forces with a decent foundation considered enhancement-type and special-effect Soul Skills the best choices in the early stages.
What delighted him even more than the Soul Skill was a heart-shaped red crystal in his sea of consciousness. His cheat had finally arrived.
By rights, his spiritual realm shouldn't have allowed him to possess a sea of consciousness, but this red crystal had made it possible. He immediately realized that it was probably a treasure no less valuable than the Blade of Life.
But he had no plans to figure out the treasure just yet. He hurriedly packed his things and left.
Developing his Soul Skill and researching the red crystal both required a quiet, safe environment. The Soul Beast forest didn't fit the bill, and his first Soul Skill had little direct combat value. It was best to leave for now.
It had been a week since he had obtained his Soul Ring. Yang Fan had returned to Shambhala Village two days ago, greeted the village chief, and gone straight into seclusion.
After two days, he still hadn't made much headway in developing his Soul Skill, but he had figured out the heart-shaped red crystal.
When he understood how to use it, he was both shocked and delighted.
The crystal was called the Heart of Eros, and it was suspected to be a remnant left behind after the God of Love's death. He remembered the original story describing Eros as a goddess of intense passion and feeling. But it seemed she had been betrayed by her true love, or something along those lines, and had cursed the world after her death.
That was why the children of destiny always faced one twist after another in their romances, with lovers parting through death, separation, or even loss of memory. It was practically par for the course.
In his previous life, people had even joked that perhaps the Dragon God's death had been caused by Eros's curse taking effect.
The Heart of Eros had a single function, but it was incredibly powerful: time travel.
But traveling through time wasn't easy. Only by finding true love could one earn the chance to travel through time for half a year.
Had Eros turned evil after her death? Did true love have to endure endless torment, while only a scumbag could truly inherit her legacy?
There was also a way to make the effect permanent: complete the Heart of Eros. Its fragments were scattered across the three great treasures of Douluo Continent: the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, the Valley of Love and Emotion, and Dragon Valley.
But rather than saying the fragments of the Heart of Eros were scattered across those places, it might be more accurate to say the Heart of Eros had created the three great treasures.
Lovesick Heartbreak Red and the remains of the Ice and Fire Dragon Kings; the Dragon Clan Graveyard; the place of Eros's trials, or perhaps where she had fallen. In his previous life, he had wondered how all those things could be such a coincidence. Yet even after Tang San had been reincarnated again and again, he still hadn't filled in this plot hole.
It seemed the story had brought in something like a cosmic will... He wasn't sure, since he had only read the first three Douluo books carefully. He couldn't get through the little Dragon God's story, let alone the second-reincarnation Tang San, who had already maxed out his shamelessness.
Because of the Heart of Eros, Yang Fan had slightly revised his original plan for rising to prominence.
Originally, he'd planned to do what other fanfic protagonists did: go to Nuoding City or Spirit Hall, or cling to Qian Renxue.
After gaining his first Soul Ring, his Monocle Martial Soul had improved in quality. Its original ability to see through things had grown stronger, giving it the potential to appraise them. It hadn't fully developed this characteristic yet, but he suspected that by his second Soul Ring, he might gain a classic cheat like an appraisal skill.
But even without reaching the level of an appraisal skill, his current powers of observation and analysis already made him exceptionally capable. In Nuoding City, he could get books unavailable to commoners from Grandmaster, as well as study Tang San's techniques and Xiao Wu, the human-shaped Soul Beast.
Spirit Hall also valued research talent. Otherwise, how could Grandmaster, with his half-baked knowledge, and Bibi Dong, who hadn't yet gained real power, have obtained so many confidential materials to study? Likewise, Qian Renxue was someone who valued talent and had access to Spirit Hall's knowledge networks.
Without the Heart of Eros, those would have been perfectly ordinary starting points for a transmigrator. But now that he had a chance to travel through time, why should he limit himself to this era?
Weren't the Soul Tools, Soul Spirits, and necromancy of Douluo II worth exploring?
Were the Battle Armor mechs and other secondary-profession systems of Douluo III really so bad?
And the interstellar era of Douluo IV was even more enticing.
And all of it required one thing: true love.
He was ten years old. Under ordinary circumstances, finding true love would be far too difficult. Even on Douluo Continent, where children matured early, few people would truly fall in love with a child his age.
But one group was an exception: Soul Beasts.
The shapeshifting Soul Beasts of Douluo Continent were one and all pure-hearted and easy to fool... Ah Yin, Xiao Wu, Qiu'er, Gu Yuena, Lan Fozi, and the rest were all hopeless romantics. Some were simply innocent and gullible; others fell in love at first sight. They were practically angel investors for the Heart of Eros.
With his current strength, Xiao Wu was out of the question. If he tried to steal her from Tang San, Tang Hao would probably catch his scent that very day.
That man was no pushover. He had pioneered the method of luring Soul Beasts with love and making them sacrifice themselves.
He seemed to love Ah Yin deeply, but in reality, he was terrified she might come back to life. He imprisoned her in a dark, sunless cave and even cut off the Blue Silver Grass around her, preventing her from sending a message to the Blue Silver King and reviving herself.
It was only after Tang San inherited the Blue Silver Emperor's legacy and gained the confidence to return to the Clear Sky Sect, the greatest sect on the continent, that Tang Hao followed Tang San's advice and moved Ah Yin to the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well to speed up her revival.
With Xiao Wu ruled out, only one candidate remained in this era.
That was Ah Yin.