After that, Luo Chen took Luo An'an to search the Sunset Forest.
By sheer luck, they found the first Soul Beast they needed: a Spirit Light Butterfly!
Dugu Bo had naturally come along too. The arrogant Old Poison claimed, "I've got nothing better to do, so I might as well see what all the fuss is about." But from the moment they set out, he'd been clearing the way with his poisonous miasma, and every Soul Beast within a hundred meters had fled in advance. Riding on the back of the Blazing Wolf, Luo An'an asked curiously, "Grandpa, why did all the little animals run away?"
Dugu Bo's face remained expressionless. "Maybe I look scary." Luo An'an studied his face seriously, then said in her childish voice, "You're not scary. Your beard's just a little green." Dugu Bo's mouth twitched, and he said nothing more.
The hunt was simple and brutal. Luo Chen first disrupted the Spirit Light Butterfly with a mental attack, then had Ghost Vine bind and restrain it. Finally, he handed Luo An'an a dagger and had her strike the butterfly in the head, killing it in one blow. A Yellow Soul Ring rose from the Spirit Light Butterfly's corpse and circled above Luo An'an's head.
The little girl sat cross-legged and began absorbing her first Soul Ring. The milky-white glow of the Dream-Weaving Immortal Garment mingled with the Soul Ring's yellow light, and the process lasted nearly half an hour.
They couldn't find the second Soul Beast in the Sunset Forest. Its ecosystem was a little poorer than that of the Star Dou Great Forest, so Luo Chen had to take Luo An'an to the Star Dou Great Forest to look for a Morning Dew Flower Spirit. Plant-type Soul Beasts were relatively easy to find; once you knew their habitat, you could almost always find a whole cluster of them, like Blue Silver Grass.
At last, Luo Chen found a Morning Dew Flower Spirit of a suitable age in the Star Dou Great Forest.
Her First Soul Ring skill was "Spirit Light Protection," which gathered light into a little gauzy cap above her head and increased her resistance to mental attacks. Her Second Soul Ring skill was "Dream-Weaving Clear Dew," which condensed a dewdrop that could dispel poison, stop bleeding, and ease fatigue.
From then on, Luo An'an was a Two-Ring Soul Grandmaster. Once everything was taken care of, Luo Chen wanted to send her to school. He was about to begin traveling the continent. In truth, although he had been in Douluo Continent for many years, he still didn't know it very well. He wanted to use this time to complete some research.
After returning to Heaven Dou City, Luo Chen sent his little sister straight to the junior division of Heaven Dou Royal Academy. Meng Shenji made the arrangements personally: she would board at school and come home on weekends. She didn't cry on the first day or the second. On the third night, she stood at Luo Chen's door clutching her pillow, eyes brimming with tears, and said, "Brother, I want to go home." Luo Chen sat with her the whole night. The next morning, she happily went off to school again.
Luo Dashan and Lin Xiaomei opened a new stew-and-fish restaurant in Heaven Dou City, and it did even better than their one in Hailun City. Luo Chen used his power over time to heal some of Luo Dashan's old injuries and hidden ailments, so he no longer walked with a limp. Life was as plain as boiled water.
At last, a month after Luo An'an started school, Luo Chen set out on his travels. He visited border towns throughout the Heaven Dou Empire, ducked into blacksmith shops, Soul Tool workshops, and medicinal-herb markets, learning forging from old blacksmiths, extraction from old apothecaries, and the principles of Soul Tools from some down-on-their-luck scions of old families. His goal was clear: to make Gulu Balls.
In the first year, he made his first batch of prototypes from ordinary metals and low-grade Soul Tool materials. The success rate was less than one in ten, and the Soul Beasts he captured could break free of the Gulu Balls' control in just three days. A whole room piled up with failures.
Half a year later, he finally found a way forward. Making Gulu Balls required three core materials: space-attribute ore to compress their size, mental-attribute crystals to establish a mental link, and a stable energy carrier to keep them running. After spending nearly half the resources in Meng Shenji's signet ring, he finally produced the first batch of usable ones.
Ordinary Balls used simple materials and could be produced in small batches. He could reliably make twenty a month on his own.
The Intermediate Gulu Ball, which could awaken a Martial Soul at level thirty, could also be produced in small batches, but its materials were more expensive, and its output was only about a third of the Ordinary Ball's.
For the time being, other types of balls couldn't be mass-produced. Tide Balls required sapphires, Dark Balls required an extract made from the marrow of shadow-type Soul Beasts, and Slow Balls required powdered spacetime crystals. Luo Chen made a few of each to keep in reserve.
At level forty-eight, the awakening of his fifth Soul Ring brought a completely new type of ball. Luo Chen called it the Life Ball. Its interior was infused with gentle life energy, making it ideal for capturing nature-type or healing-type Soul Beasts. Its core material was a rare ore called Life Core. It took Luo Chen half a year to find a single piece, enough to make only one ball.
His research into symbiotes went more smoothly than his work on Gulu Balls.
The mass of venom he'd drawn out of Dugu Bo had grown quite a bit over the past two years. It could change shape, shrinking into a fist-sized ball or unfolding into a silver-purple cape as thin as a cicada's wing. When wrapped around Luo Chen, it wasn't uncomfortable at all; it fit him perfectly. It could communicate with him telepathically, though only vaguely: hungry, sleepy, happy, unhappy. Luo Chen named it Chu, since it was the first, but Luo An'an had also given it a nickname: Little Black.
After that, he began trying to create more symbiotes. He used the power of time alongside energies of different attributes, attempting to replicate Chu's birth. After dozens of attempts, most of them failures, he finally succeeded twice.
The second was born in Gengxin City. While cultivating the power of space, Luo Chen absorbed the abundant metallic energy contained in the city. He used the power of time to gather the metallic energy, then infused it with a wisp of a Soul Beast's life essence. Three days later, a pale-gold, jelly-like symbiote was born. It was extremely quiet, spending all day curled up asleep, but its senses were remarkably sharp. It could transform into a sturdy weapon. Luo Chen named it Wu.
The third was born beside a stream outside Heaven Dou City. By chance, he found the abandoned remains of a Tide Ball, which still held some energy from a water-element gemstone. He extracted the water-element energy and used the power of time to catalyze it for three months. At last, a translucent, jellyfish-like symbiote took shape. It liked damp places and could heal wounds. Luo Chen named it Di.
Chu, Wu, and Di: three symbiotes.
They could attach themselves to him in battle. When Chu attached itself, it formed silver-purple armor over Luo Chen's body and could release poison—not just Jade Phosphor Serpent Poison, but also a new, mutated toxin. When Wu attached itself, it could transform into a sturdy weapon or metallic armor with even greater defensive power. When Di attached itself, it could heal Luo Chen automatically. It had defensive abilities, but no offensive ones. The three couldn't attach themselves to him all at once, but he could switch between them in battle.
They weren't Soul Beasts or Soul Spirits. They were entirely new forms of life, created by Luo Chen himself with the power of time and different kinds of energy. Their minds were linked to his, and they shared his thoughts. They didn't yet possess full intelligence, but they had feelings.
Perhaps one day, their level of life would leap forward, and they would truly become a species of their own.
In the spring two years later, Luo Chen stood on the hill behind Heaven Dou Royal Academy, gazing down at the whole city.
Several neat rows of Gulu Balls were lined up in the space inside his signet ring: Ordinary Balls, Intermediate Balls, Tide Balls, Dark Balls, Slow Balls, and Healing Balls. He had made every one of them himself.
The symbiotes rested quietly beneath his skin.
He took out his Pocket Watch and opened its cover. The third mark was glowing fully, and the fourth had begun to flicker. The God of Time's Third Trial was almost here.
He closed the Pocket Watch and turned to head down the hill.
It was time to go home...
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