"Xue-jie, I can still absorb Soul Spirits normally."
Inside the soul-guidance car, Shen Yue sat in the driver's seat, driving the two little ones to the Spirit Pagoda. Naturally, they were there to obtain Soul Spirits for them both.
Shen Nanxun leaned back in the rear seat, eyes closed as he dozed, his consciousness immersed in the Sea of Consciousness.
Qian Renxue stretched and answered lazily, "Although we're your Soul Spirits, we're still different from ordinary Soul Spirits. You can naturally absorb Soul Spirits just like the ordinary Soul Masters of your era. You just can't add Soul Rings. But it can still help you a little."
"Then what type should I choose?"
"Holy attribute would be best. Light attribute would do in a pinch."
Qian Renxue crossed her legs, looking rather pleased as she said:
"Just perfect. I'm also in need of a little slave to serve tea and water."
"..."
"Xue-jie, seriously, can you be a little more proper?" Shen Nanxun rubbed his forehead helplessly, then gave a couple of light coughs and leaned closer, wearing a somewhat ingratiating smile. "Can we discuss something?"
Qian Renxue's lazy pose against the seat didn't change, but her pale purple eyes narrowed slightly. "Go on."
She had a feeling Shen Nanxun was up to no good.
Shen Nanxun's smile grew even more sincere, and he hurriedly praised her. "Look at you, Xue-jie. You're the mighty Angel God, a renowned Deity, widely traveled and learned, versed in both the past and present..."
"Stop. If you have something to say, say it. Don't butter me up." Qian Renxue cut off the flattery he was about to continue with.
Shen Nanxun dropped his smile and turned serious. "I'd like to ask you to help me study mecha design."
Qian Renxue sat up straight and folded her arms, lifting her chin slightly as she gave a soft snort.
"You want me to study mecha design so you can free up your hands to study forging, is that it?
"Shen Nanxun, you've really got a fine little scheme worked out. I'm the Angel God, not your study companion."
"Xue-jie, you can't put it like that." Shen Nanxun explained, "If I study mecha design by myself, I'll fall behind in forging. If I study forging, then I won't be able to keep up with mecha design. When the time comes, either I won't be able to make Battle Armor, or it won't be strong enough. Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Most importantly, I'm not afraid of embarrassing myself, of course. But if I have a Soul Spirit like you, an Angel God, and still turn out this mediocre, wouldn't that tarnish the Angel God's reputation?"
"Xue-jie, think about it. Really think about it."
Qian Renxue still wasn't falling for it, her eyes cold. "That kind of reverse psychology won't work. No matter what you say today, I'm not agreeing."
Her resolve was firm.
"So you're really that determined?"
"I have to be."
"Can't we negotiate?"
"Absolutely not!"
Shen Nanxun ground his teeth and rolled his eyes. "Fine. I was going to buy five spicy rabbit heads every day, but now it looks like... Tsk..."
"Ahem." Just then, Qian Renxue, who had been so resolute a moment earlier, gave a light cough and kept her chin raised. "It's not entirely impossible, but I want ten spicy rabbit heads."
"Deal!"
Shen Nanxun agreed instantly.
Qian Renxue was taken aback, then realized what had happened, looking heartbroken.
"I asked for too little!"
Returning from the Sea of Consciousness, Shen Nanxun opened his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting in satisfaction.
If he'd known spicy rabbit heads worked so well, he would've brought them up earlier and spared himself the haggling. But in the end, Xue-jie was just hard-mouthed and soft-hearted. Otherwise, she wouldn't have helped him for the sake of those rabbit heads alone.
The timing was just right. As he came back to himself, the car pulled up in the plaza in front of the Spirit Pagoda in North Sea City.
Waiting at the entrance to the Spirit Pagoda was Su Jiuyin, who had awakened Na'er's Martial Soul last time.
"Jiuyin, I told you before, you didn't have to wait for us at the entrance yourself."
Shen Yue walked up and affectionately linked arms with her. The two had always been close friends.
Su Jiuyin smiled. "How could I? Yue'er brought your younger brother and sister here in person. Of course I had to greet you myself."
As they chatted, Shen Yue led the two of them inside the Spirit Pagoda.
"Are the Soul Spirits ready?"
"Of course."
Su Jiuyin led them to a heavily secured room on one of the upper floors.
The sky-blue room was filled with a sense of technology, its entire space decorated in blue and white. Soul Spirit balls floated all around them, each displaying an image of the Soul Spirit inside.
At the very center stood several transparent glass columns, each with a Soul Spirit ball suspended inside. These Soul Spirit balls were clearly more important than the others.
Shen Yue stopped and asked, "Xiao Xun, Na'er, is there a type of Soul Spirit you want? You can tell us."
"Anything with dragon blood will do." Naturally, Na'er wanted a Soul Beast with dragon blood, preferably a draconic species.
"Perfect. The North Sea Spirit Pagoda has an Iron-Armored Tyrant Dragon, a hundred years old. It's a draconic species, and its attributes lean toward dominance. It should pair well with your spear Martial Soul."
As she explained, Su Jiuyin operated the screen, bringing up an image of the Iron-Armored Tyrant Dragon along with its attributes and detailed information.
Na'er nodded in satisfaction and grinned.
"Little dragon, you're so cute."
"What kind of taste is that?" Shen Nanxun muttered from the side. There wasn't a single thing about the Iron-Armored Tyrant Dragon that could be called cute; the whole thing was just a hunchbacked dragon.
But he had forgotten that Na'er was essentially the Silver Dragon King. It was only natural for her to feel that way when she saw one of her dragon kin.
"What about you, Xiao Xun?"
Naturally, he went by the types Qian Renxue had mentioned earlier. "Holy or light attribute. If you have... an Unyielding Soul Spirit, I wouldn't mind taking that either."
Holy attribute was certainly good, but an Unyielding Soul Spirit was even more worth a try.
Shen Yue pinched his cheek, exasperated. "What are you thinking? The Spirit Pagoda barely has any Unyielding Soul Spirits to begin with. They're almost never given to outsiders."
"We have one. We do."
Almost as soon as Shen Yue finished speaking, Su Jiuyin cut in.
"???"
It wasn't only Shen Yue—even Shen Nanxun was a little stunned. He'd just mentioned it offhand, and there really was one.
Xun wants it, Xun gets it.
Su Jiuyin didn't explain, instead leading them farther into the room. She entered a password and adjusted the parameters.
An image appeared on the screen. It showed a golden rabbit about the size of an adult. It looked just like an ordinary rabbit, except that its entire body gleamed gold and it had a sunlike mark on its forehead.
"The Sky-Light Rabbit. An Unyielding Soul Spirit. It's also the only rabbit-type Unyielding Soul Spirit among the Soul Beasts of the Douluo Continent collected by our Spirit Pagoda. It's an extremely rare combination of holy and light attributes, so it suits you very well."
"A rabbit type?" For some reason, the first things Shen Nanxun thought of were spicy rabbit heads and the Soft-Bone Charm Rabbit.
Still, he wondered whether this Sky-Light Rabbit would taste good as a spicy rabbit head.
Su Jiuyin nodded slightly. "The Sky-Light Rabbit isn't particularly powerful in individual combat, but it's extremely rare. It's a mutated species produced by a Moon Rabbit and a Light-Tail Rabbit."
"They're fiercely spirited. Unlike other rabbit Soul Beasts, which are very fond of mating and reproducing, every Sky-Light Rabbit only ever finds one mate in its life and has only one litter of offspring. That's why there are so few of them. They also have an incredibly strong sense of family and would rather die than abandon their mate or offspring. That's why it became an Unyielding Soul Spirit."
Not only powerful Soul Beasts could become Unyielding Soul Spirits. One as fiercely spirited and unyielding as the Sky-Light Rabbit could qualify, too.
Shen Nanxun took another look at the stubborn Soul Beast on the screen. "I'll take this one."
It matched his attributes and was an Unyielding Soul Spirit. He had no reason not to choose it.
Once they'd chosen their Soul Spirits, all that remained was absorption. The Spirit Pagoda had naturally prepared special rooms for that purpose.
Su Jiuyin reminded him, "An Unyielding Soul Spirit's spirit remains after death. Its will is unbroken and its soul extraordinarily resilient, so it's very difficult to make one submit. Ordinary Soul Masters have to pay a much greater price than usual to form a Soul Spirit Contract with an Unyielding Soul Spirit. Even though it suits you very well, you should still think carefully. If you can't adapt and force the absorption, you'll inevitably suffer a severe backlash. It could even put your life in danger."
"But you can try using your spiritual power to build a bridge with it and see how willing it is to accept you."
"It's fine. I'll absorb it directly."
Shen Nanxun was decisive.
Su Jiuyin didn't say anything about his determination. She knew her best friend's family well; they were all incredibly stubborn.
When they made up their minds about something, they didn't back down. But they were all very rational, and most of their choices turned out to be the right ones.
Shen Nanxun sent his spiritual power into the Soul Spirit ball, guiding a wisp of the Sky-Light Rabbit's spiritual power into his Sea of Consciousness.
The moment Shen Nanxun's consciousness touched the pale golden glow, a clear voice rang out in his Sea of Consciousness.
"This rabbit will never submit! Human, don't even dream about it!"
The Sky-Light Rabbit's voice was emphatic, but since she was female, it was soft and didn't sound very threatening.
"You're sure about that?" Shen Nanxun's expression was a little strange, but he didn't show any particular hostility.
"This rabbit would rather die than submit!"
Shen Nanxun merely turned his head slightly and glanced toward the golden branch deep in his Sea of Consciousness.
The Sky-Light Rabbit followed his gaze. Her ears abruptly stiffened, and her amber eyes widened.
A golden-haired woman sat on the golden tree. A holy attribute even more powerful than hers swept over her, mixed with an exceptionally special... divinity!
It was a presence no Soul Beast could ever hope to gaze upon. After all, the ironclad rule that Soul Beasts couldn't become gods had been passed down across the Douluo Continent for countless millennia. The last Soul Beast to try to become a god had been the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King.
The overwhelming holy attribute, combined with that divinity. And most absurd of all, the human woman radiating that divinity was holding a...
Rabbit head!!!
The Sky-Light Rabbit's demeanor changed completely. She dropped to her knees and bowed, crying, "This little rabbit bows to you eight times over!"
Shen Nanxun gave her a thumbs-up. "Nice turnaround. And you didn't even tell me!"
Qian Renxue gave a lazy yawn, then waved her hand. "Come on. Give me a shoulder massage, then rub my legs."
And so the so-called Unyielding Soul Spirit obediently—and almost obsequiously—massaged Qian Renxue's shoulders.
"Come on, seriously. Where's your unyielding spirit? Where's that iron will?"
The Sky-Light Rabbit's answer: What's pride worth? My life and future matter more.
Meanwhile, in the outside world.
"Jiuyin, an Unyielding Soul Spirit can't be easy to get, right?" Shen Yue knew all too well how valuable Unyielding Soul Spirits were, especially since this wasn't even at the Spirit Pagoda Headquarters.
And an Unyielding Soul Spirit whose attributes matched him so well—everything seemed just a little too convenient.
"Mm. A major figure from the Spirit Pagoda personally had someone deliver it."
Su Jiuyin lowered her voice. "And you should know who it is. She has some connection to your Xiao Xun, too."
"You mean... her!"
Shen Yue's expression shifted. She knew exactly who Su Jiuyin meant, but that person had never directly approached Shen Nanxun—or the Shen Family—to discuss the matter.
She hadn't expected that person to have kept watching over them. And looking at this now, she must have done some investigating, too.
Otherwise, how could the match have been this exact?
They hadn't talked for long when Shen Nanxun came out of the Soul Spirit absorption state.
"That fast?" Su Jiuyin was astonished. By rights, considering its age and its unyielding nature, Shen Nanxun's Soul Spirit should have been harder to absorb than Na'er's, and taken longer, too. She hadn't expected him to be the first to finish.
It had taken less than five minutes.
Shen Nanxun could only shrug helplessly. "Can't help it. She wasn't very 'unyielding.'"
The kind of yielding that meant bending the knee.
She'd hit the ground as fast as he did whenever he got in trouble and faced Ye Li—maybe even faster.
In Na'er's Sea of Consciousness, the Iron-Armored Tyrant Dragon wasn't an Unyielding Soul Spirit, but it was still stubborn. It had originally planned to fight this human for three hundred rounds before anything else.
That was until it saw the enormous silver dragon...
Su Jiuyin saw the three of them out of the Spirit Pagoda, unable to keep from remarking, "Looks like the Shen Family has produced two more rare talents."
Na'er's absorption had been a little slower than Shen Nanxun's, but still very fast overall. It was nothing like the normal absorption process for other Soul Beasts.
That was enough to prove that both of their spiritual powers were exceptionally strong.
The four of them walked onto the plaza in front of the Spirit Pagoda, where they saw a colossal statue looming before them. It was the founder of the Spirit Pagoda, Spirit Ice Douluo Huo Yuhao.
"Spirit Ice Douluo had seven Soul Spirits, all at least Ferocious Beast level."
Su Jiuyin pointed at the seven Soul Spirits carved around the statue and said, "It's a pity that Soul Beasts are dwindling and their hatred of humanity is even greater than it was ten thousand years ago. There can never be another Spirit Ice Douluo."
"With the advent of Artificial Soul Spirits, perhaps someday our technology will let us create Soul Spirits ten thousand years old or more." Shen Yue's outlook was more optimistic.
Su Jiuyin said nothing more. She knew very well that the Spirit Pagoda had long since strayed from the founder's original vision.
It was just that, as someone from the Spirit Pagoda, there were some things she couldn't say aloud.
Na'er stood beside Shen Nanxun and murmured, "Soul Beasts..."
Shen Nanxun wasn't particularly moved. Huo Yuhao was no big deal. Other people could envy his Soul Spirits, but he didn't need to.
His five god-level Soul Spirits completely outclassed Huo Yuhao's Ferocious Beast Soul Spirits.
Perhaps there would never be another Spirit Ice Douluo Huo Yuhao in this world, but there could be another Shen Nanxun.
Before you continue