Yang Fan took a deep breath and strode toward the white peony. With every step closer, he felt a strange, sorrowful aura wash over him.
He stopped before the white peony and slowly crouched, gazing at its blood-red petals. Unbidden, the face of the person dearest to him rose in his mind.
Every night, Lan Yin sat beside him in the secret chamber, her smile as refreshing as a spring breeze... After spending several years together, Yang Fan considered her the person closest to him.
"Pure sincerity, with an undistracted heart..."
Yang Fan took a deep breath. Soul Power surged through his body, driving his blood to circulate. He bit through the tip of his tongue, then spat out a mouthful of heart's blood infused with pure Soul Power. It landed precisely on the flower's blood-red petals.
But the instant the blood touched them, a host of figures suddenly appeared in his mind: Na'er, Tang Yuehua, Leng Yaozhu, Dugu Yan, Ning Rongrong... Most absurdly, even the little girls Xu Xiaoyan and Xue Ke, whom he had met only once, seemed to flash past.
Just then, the Heart of Eros in Yang Fan's Sea of Consciousness seemed to sense something and resonated faintly with the Lovesick Heartbreak Red.
With a soft hum, the white peony, which had been blooming quietly, began to tremble violently the moment it touched his heart's blood.
The red threads on its petals seemed to come alive, greedily drinking in the drop of vital essence and glowing with a dazzling golden-red light.
The next second, the Lovesick Heartbreak Red broke free of the Wu Jue Stone on its own. Like a fluttering butterfly, it drifted lightly into Yang Fan's palm.
"So I really do have the makings of a scumbag..."
Yang Fan muttered under his breath. Even Dugu Bo, a Titled Douluo, didn't hear him. After all, besides watching Yang Fan, he was keeping an eye on his granddaughter and Ye Lingling, too.
"Just as I thought. You fell in love with my Yanyan at first sight!"
Dugu Bo folded his arms across his chest, his dark green eyes full of teasing amusement and understanding.
He looked Yang Fan up and down, then couldn't resist ribbing him. "No wonder you've been running to Heaven Dou Royal Academy every other day since the Crown Prince Coming-of-Age Ceremony. So that's where your real interest lay!"
Dugu Bo was convinced that the Lovesick Heartbreak Red, a flower of true love, could never lie.
He also reviewed what he'd learned about the boy from his earlier investigation. Tang Yuehua was gentle and refined, but her talent was too ordinary for her to amount to much. Ning Rongrong of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect was clever and mischievous, and Yang Fan clearly treated her as nothing more than a little sister.
With those two ruled out, only his own granddaughter, Dugu Yan, remained. She was close in age to Yang Fan and possessed a bold, valiant bearing. A young hero and a peerless beauty falling in love at first sight was only natural.
"Back then, my son and daughter-in-law were just like that... Sigh~"
At the thought, a trace of melancholy passed through Dugu Bo's eyes, usually so full of mischief and world-weariness. He couldn't help letting out a quiet sigh.
Meanwhile, Yang Fan stood there with an impassive expression, but at last the weight lifted from his heart.
Luckily, he had the Heart of Eros, a power of purest love and sincerity, to fool the Lovesick Heartbreak Red's recognition test. Otherwise, he might have missed out on such an Immortal Herb.
Yang Fan was about to consume the Immortal Herb when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Dugu Bo beside him, head bowed and eyes clouded with loneliness.
After a moment's hesitation, Yang Fan didn't immediately consume the Lovesick Heartbreak Red. Instead, he took a specially made jade box for preserving precious herbs from his Soul Tool and carefully stored the flower inside.
Then he walked over to Dugu Bo and spoke softly. "Senior, are you grieving again over the Jade Phosphorous Serpent Venom afflicting your family? Actually... I may have a way to resolve your hidden worry once and for all."
"Senior Dugu, whenever it's cloudy or rainy, do you feel an itchy, numb sensation around your ribs that gradually grows worse and lasts for more than an hour, striking once at noon and again at midnight? And late at night, around the third watch, do you feel needle-like pain on the crown of your head and the soles of your feet, followed by whole-body convulsions lasting at least half an hour?"
Yang Fan delivered the words smoothly. No one knew how many times he'd practiced that line in his spare time over the past few years.
Finally! He'd gotten to say that iconic line.
Any transmigrator who came to the Douluo Continent and didn't say it was missing a soul!
"That's right. It's a drawback of our Jade Phosphor Snake Martial Soul. Anyone who possesses it will struggle to survive the Martial Soul Avatar stage as a Soul Sage unless they avoid absorbing poison-type Soul Rings as much as possible. Even then, the poison in the Martial Soul keeps growing stronger as one's cultivation rises. If I hadn't been fortunate enough to find this place, I doubt I'd have lived to see today."
Dugu Bo nodded in confirmation, then asked, "So how do you plan to solve it?"
Yang Fan didn't keep him waiting. "I have three methods. The first treats the symptoms but not the root cause. The poison inside you can be forcibly extracted and concentrated in a Soul Bone. Soul Bones are relatively independent of their Soul Masters, yet closely connected to them, making them ideal poison sacs. But it mustn't be a Head Soul Bone or a Soul Bone in the torso, where the vital organs are. If the poison ever got out of control, the consequences would be unthinkable."
Dugu Bo considered it for a moment and thought it was indeed a good idea. Unfortunately, Soul Bones were exceedingly rare. Even he possessed only one, a ten-thousand-year Head Soul Bone.
"The second is a middle-ground approach. There are many Immortal Herbs here, so perhaps we could concoct an antidote. But the herbs involved would certainly be precious. It might work for a few people, but it wouldn't be a long-term solution."
Dugu Bo nodded. That was true. These herbs might indeed counteract the poison, but given how potent the toxin of their family's Martial Soul was, even a remedy would require herbs of exceptional age and quality.
"The last method involves a Soul Core. I've heard you've already made some progress down that path, Senior, but haven't truly solved the problem."
Yang Fan paused, looking at Dugu Bo with admiration.
In an era like Douluo I, when the concept of Soul Cores didn't exist, Dugu Bo had explored the method of forming a poison pill. His talent was truly astonishing.
"I once read about an ancient art in a fragment of an old text. It was called a 'Soul Core.'"
Yang Fan took a deep breath and began to drop the real bombshell.
"It's a special cultivation method created by the ancients through imitating Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts. When a Soul Master reaches the Titled Douluo realm, both their mental power and Soul Power undergo a qualitative leap. At that point, they can imitate Soul Beasts, using powerful mental strength as a guide to compress the Soul Power within their bodies, transforming it from liquid to solid and condensing it into a core!"
As he spoke, Yang Fan's voice suddenly rose, filled with a confidence that belonged to another era. "Your Jade Phosphorous Serpent Emperor is a top-tier poison-type Martial Soul. You can use the poison pill within your body as a foundation, refine it completely, and form a true poison-type Soul Core! Once the Soul Core takes shape, it won't just absorb and transform your Martial Soul's poison perfectly, eliminating the backlash once and for all. It will also bring about a world-shaking transformation in your poison arts and send your combat power soaring!"
Still, Yang Fan held something back. Just as with forging, it was best to keep advanced methods like Isotopic Resonance with Dual Soul Cores and Yin-Yang Complementarity with Three Soul Cores to himself. Even a single Soul Core was already a generation-defying advantage in this era.
At first, when Dugu Bo heard the words "ancient secret art," his eyes held a trace of doubt. If such an extraordinary method really worked, why hadn't it been passed down through the long river of history?
But as Yang Fan patiently explained its central principles—"transforming liquid into solid," "compressing mental power," and "refining the poison pill"—the disdain in Dugu Bo's eyes vanished completely.
In its place, a light grew brighter and more fervent by the moment!
"Using the poison pill as a foundation... turning liquid into solid..."
Dugu Bo murmured to himself, frozen in place as though struck by lightning. The bottleneck that had plagued him for decades seemed, with one casual remark from Yang Fan, to have finally pierced the last layer of paper.