"Little Ji'er, would you like a little sister?"
A white-haired old man with a handsome, imposing face and dressed in a golden robe smiled as he held a baby who had just turned one month old.
"Great Enshrined, as the Pope, I have to handle countless affairs and truly can't spare the time. Besides, this Pope's heart holds all the lands under heaven. Taking care of a child is a trivial matter—just leave it to the servants."
The speaker was Qian Xunji. His brow furrowed deeply. Though he looked like a middle-aged man, he seemed more than ten years older than his father.
He had been Pope of Spirit Hall for less than two years, but he had already tasted the sweetness of power and grown thoroughly arrogant. The father and son, once closer than anyone, now seemed no different from strangers.
The old man was none other than the Great Enshrined of the Worship Hall, Qian Daoliu—the only normal Limit Douluo on the continent to have reached level ninety-nine.
He sighed deeply.
"Little Ji'er, you're becoming less and less like my son. I hope you'll become a worthy Pope. Never forget the teachings of our Angel ancestors: only the worthy and virtuous can win the hearts of others..."
Seeing Qian Xunji's strictly businesslike attitude, Qian Daoliu instantly switched into his role as the "Great Enshrined" and began lecturing him.
After recounting a host of the Angel God's glorious deeds from ten thousand years ago, Qian Daoliu's expression softened as a father. He said:
"Little Ji'er, aren't you going to ask where the child in my arms came from? Don't you want to know?"
"Father, I still have state affairs to attend to. Please forgive me. Yue Guan, show him out."
Chrysanthemum Douluo fidgeted awkwardly, but eventually stepped forward and extended a hand.
"Great Enshrined, this way, please."
Qian Daoliu shook his head, offered one last piece of advice, then left with the baby in his arms.
"I hope you won't get too stubborn and do something rash. A leader needs not only authority but compassion. Don't push the two empires too hard..."
"Yes, Father."
After leaving the oppressive Pope's Palace, Qian Daoliu rubbed his forehead helplessly.
"My foolish, love-struck little brother! Who knows who he takes after? He had a child and then washed his hands of her, dumping her on me while he went off traveling the world with his beautiful sweetheart!"
The baby in Qian Daoliu's arms was his younger brother Qian Daoyuan's daughter, Qian Xunqian.
With a name in the ABA format, the child was probably no ordinary person.
And sure enough, that was exactly the case:
Qian Xunqian was one of the many transmigrators who had come from Blue Star to Douluo Continent.
Qian Xunqian slowly opened her eyes.
"!"
"I finally figured out the youth-restoring potion!"
She was so excited her face turned red. In Qian Daoliu's eyes, she looked so alarmingly crimson that she nearly gave him a fright. She was as red as a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring—was something wrong with her?
He hurried off to find a physician.
"No, no! One percent thousand wrong!"
Qian Xunqian glanced around. The architecture resembled that of the Western Middle Ages, while transportation was still stuck in the feudal era, with horse-drawn carriages. This was bad!
"Could it be that what I made was a time-reversal potion?"
In the end, the mysterious power of metaphysics taught her the "truth of transmigration."
She watched as the pretty young woman before her summoned a detoxifying herb out of thin air, then released a green energy onto her. At last, she felt cool and comfortable.
Practice was the sole criterion for testing truth.
Qian Xunqian calmly accepted the fact that she had transmigrated.
In the blink of an eye, Qian Xunqian was three years old.
After making careful observations of society, she was certain she had transmigrated to Douluo Continent.
She had also pinned down the exact timing: the year she arrived was the same year Bibi Dong, the last ruler of Spirit Hall, was formally appointed as a Saintess.
In other words, the original story had yet to begin.
"Heh heh heh, it's time to seize the initiative, claim the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, beat Tang San, wipe out the Shrek Seven Monsters, unify the continent, and lead Spirit Hall to the peak of life! But there's plenty of room for error. I haven't even awakened my Martial Soul yet, so there's no need to rush."
Just like in her previous life, her thirst for knowledge and scientific research rivaled Tang San's lust for the Sun Rabbit.
What's more, she was surprised to find that after arriving in Douluo Continent, her eyes had been different ever since birth. Books that had once taken her a whole day to get through now took only two hours, and she never forgot a thing.
"Could my Martial Soul be my eyes?" Qian Xunqian wondered.
"That can't be right. My irresponsible father is a member of the Angel Family and possesses the divine-grade Six-Winged Angel Martial Soul. My Martial Soul should be the Six-Winged Angel too."
"If I have Twin Martial Souls, one being my eyes, then its quality should be close to that of the Six-Winged Angel. At the very least, there shouldn't be too much of a gap. But what kind of eyes could compare to the Six-Winged Angel?"
"There's another possibility: the Six-Winged Angel underwent a mutation, and a single eye was left behind in the Angel Spirit as my Martial Soul, while the Six-Winged Angel mutated into... eyes?"
Qian Xunqian couldn't help drawing in a sharp breath. Surely this mutation couldn't be a beneficial one.
"Am I going to have to sit at the same table as Master Yu Xiaogang?"
She shook her head hard to break off the train of thought, shrugged, and said with a smile,
"Who knows? But that's a problem for 'tomorrow.' After all, tomorrow is a new day! As for today, time to build a clever mind and a strong body!"
After finishing a day of disciplined training, she took a bath and lay in bed. Qian Xunqian's mind started racing again, never resting for a moment.
"I still need to think about the future. If something goes wrong with my Martial Soul, I can fall back on my theoretical knowledge and follow Master Yu Xiaogang's path! But I'm no fame-seeking fraud like him."
"If I'm going into theory and research, I need to produce something worthwhile."
"What is Soul Power?"
After three years of field observation in Spirit City—that is, closely watching the daily cultivation routines of more than a hundred Spirit Hall students and witnessing tens of thousands of Soul Fighting matches—
she reached the following conclusion:
Soul Power was a type of energy unique to this world, filling all of Douluo Continent.
Soul Masters could store Soul Power in their Martial Souls and release it when necessary.
That raised a question: as containers for storing Soul Power, Martial Souls naturally came in different sizes.
Obviously, as a Soul Master's level increased, the capacity of their Martial Soul—the container for Soul Power—would increase accordingly.
At the same time, she had noticed that some high-quality Martial Souls had a greater innate Soul Power capacity than low-quality ones. With every level gained, they also gained more capacity than lower-quality Martial Souls.
That was why, when Soul Masters were the same level, the one with the higher-quality Martial Soul had a greater advantage.
These were all indisputable facts. After studying the matter from every angle, she eventually arrived at a question ordinary people would never pay attention to—
Innate Soul Power.
According to common knowledge, Innate Soul Power largely determined the potential of a Soul Master, and even a person's entire life.
Innate Soul Power was often linked to the quality of one's Martial Soul. The Innate Soul Power of high-quality Martial Souls was generally greater than that of low-quality ones.
And if someone had no Innate Soul Power, that meant they would never be able to cultivate in their entire life.