Three-Eyed Demon Fox

"Is our target a fox this time?"

"If we don't come across any rabbits."

Hearing Nuoding Dean and Jiang Jiu talking, Xiao Wu blinked.

If Little Jiu wanted a Charm Soul Skill, then of course she'd enthusiastically recommend all kinds of foxes.

Leopards weren't the only ones who ate rabbits. Foxes did, too.

Hmm, thinking about it carefully, there were far too many things that could eat Soft Bone Rabbits like them!

Still, there'd be enough to fill all of Little Jiu's Soul Ring slots. That was a good thing, too.

Once they entered the Soul Hunting Forest, the group's easygoing mood changed, and they began to stay alert.

But since they'd been here several times already, they were still much more relaxed than before.

This was Jiang Jiu's third time in the Soul Hunting Forest. He was no longer completely in the dark. Since entering, he'd been able to name every Soul Beast he encountered and identify its cultivation.

Teacher Xiao Wu was great. No need to say more.

So when it came to choosing a Soul Skill, Jiang Jiu had no qualms about copying Xiao Wu's approach.

Charm was already a good control-type Soul Skill. The brief daze it inflicted on an enemy gave Xiao Wu and Jiang Jiu enough time to unleash a burst of attacks and finish them off. Though with their current physiques, they could also smash an opponent of the same rank head-on.

On the other hand, Jiang Jiu also valued Charm's Mental Attribute.

He was hit by Xiao Wu's Charm every day. If he wanted to temper his mental strength, and Xiao Wu used Charm every day, couldn't she try to work out how to use mental strength?

If one day he could use the technique of "Charm" through his own mental strength alone, without relying on a Soul Ring, he'd have made it.

In a sense, "Charm" was a shortcut to exploring how to use mental strength.

If he couldn't figure it out at the second or third ring, he could keep studying it once his Soul Power and mental strength were higher. With a Charm Soul Skill that he used often, wouldn't he be better able than others to understand the existence of mental strength and how it worked?

Jiang Nannan's gravity control was good, but mental strength was the foundation of one's attributes. Soul Power, mental strength, and physical strength—the three in one were the right way to go.

As for whether using Charm felt awkward, it was actually fine.

Charm was just its name. Based on Jiang Jiu's own experience of being hit by the Soul Skill, he simply froze. It didn't make him leer like a pig, much less give him strange hallucinations or ideas.

And his eyes turning pink wasn't a problem either. When Jiang Jiu used Martial Soul Possession, his own light was that color. It was just a manly color.

"That's enough for today."

Jiang Jiu was looking for a fox-type Soul Beast between four hundred and seven hundred years old. The range was far narrower than it had been for his First Soul Ring, so there was no doubt this Soul Hunting trip would turn into a long campaign.

So this time Jiang Jiu and the others had brought tents, and Tang San had packed plenty of food in his Storage Soul Tool.

Once again marveling at how convenient Storage Soul Tools were, Jiang Jiu began helping to set up the tents.

Naturally, Tang San took care of laying down the snake-repellent powder. After three years of refining his formula, Tang San's powder worked far better than the one Yu Xiaogang used.

At night, as before, Nuoding Dean and Yu Xiaogang—the two adults—took turns keeping watch, while Jiang Jiu and the others slept in the tents.

"It's only been a little while, and there'll soon be three Soul Grandmasters among them. They're all genuine Little Monsters." Nuoding Dean felt as if that little fellow Jiang Jiu blocking his way had happened only yesterday. In the blink of an eye, Jiang Jiu was already at level twenty. What would he be like by the time he graduated?

"They really are all exceptionally talented, and so mature, too."

Yu Xiaogang wasn't in a hurry to rest, so for now he chatted with Nuoding Dean.

"Mature... Right, Xiaogang, did you notice the drawing Jiang Jiu was holding? You could tell at a glance that the little girl wrote the characters. All three of them have their own strengths."

"Sometimes I wonder what I was doing when I was nine. Their talent is despair-inducing, and they work so hard, too. They're only nine!"

Yu Xiaogang fell silent, his heart a tangled mess of feelings: darkness, struggle, things he couldn't speak of to anyone.

"Xiaogang, what do you expect from them?" Nuoding Dean suddenly turned to look Yu Xiaogang straight in the eye.

"I naturally hope they do well."

"Is that so? I've taken quite a liking to that kid Jiang Jiu."

"He's Tang San's sworn elder brother now."

"Is that so? Sigh."

With a sigh, everything fell silent again.

After several more days of searching, they'd already spent longer in the Soul Hunting Forest this time than the previous two visits combined.

They did encounter fox-type Soul Beasts during that time, but they were either too young or already in the thousand-year range.

What did they do when they encountered a thousand-year-old fox?

Run, of course. What else, fight it?

Never mind whether Nuoding Dean, a Soul Ancestor with a Tool Martial Soul, could beat a thousand-year-old Soul Beast. Even if the group could win together, Jiang Jiu wouldn't dare risk absorbing its Soul Ring.

Who knew what kind of physical strength was required to absorb a Soul Ring? What if it depended on the strength of one's meridians? That would be a disaster.

Jiang Jiu couldn't be sure whether his increased strength had also strengthened his meridians.

Until he could quantify the age of the Soul Ring his body could absorb, Jiang Jiu wouldn't mess around. The optimal Soul Ring configuration, aside from the ninth black ring, was more than enough.

"It's incredible that we came across such a rare thousand-year-old Soul Beast..." Yu Xiaogang said, panting.

"There can't be many thousand-year-old Soul Beasts in this Soul Hunting Forest. Looks like we've already gone pretty deep."

Nuoding Dean's attention, however, was on Jiang Jiu and the other two.

Not a single one of them is ordinary.

They were all running, but the three of them weren't even red in the face or out of breath. They'd left Yu Xiaogang, a level-twenty-nine Soul Grandmaster, in the dust.

The legend of Jiang Jiu's morning runs really wasn't an exaggeration. Judging by how he'd looked just now, he hadn't even exerted himself much. Nuoding Dean felt like he might not be able to outrun him himself.

"Little Jiu, I think your Soul Ring may be within reach," Xiao Wu said just then, as if she'd been pondering something.

"You noticed something?" Teacher Xiao Wu had been keeping this to herself!

"Little Jiu, did you recognize what kind of thousand-year-old fox that was just now?"

"A Three-Eyed Fox, a Three-Eyed Fox just over a thousand years old." It was on Jiang Jiu's Soul Hunting list, too. If he absorbed its Soul Ring, he had a good chance of getting a Charm Soul Skill.

"Right, but that wasn't an ordinary Three-Eyed Fox—or rather, what lies behind it isn't ordinary."

"Not ordinary?"

Yu Xiaogang and the others looked over, too.

"Mm. I don't think it's the boss of this territory. There's someone else at the top." Xiao Wu explained her theory.

She called it a theory, but she was becoming more and more certain.

"You mean the Soul Beast I need to find for my Soul Ring is the boss of that thousand-year-old Soul Beast?" Jiang Jiu pieced together Xiao Wu's reasoning.

"That's right!"

Jiang Jiu thought about it, and then something came to mind.

"Three-Eyed Demon Fox?"

"Right. It's the most suitable Soul Beast for you, Little Jiu. It has a Mental Attribute, and its age is right, too."