The Mysterious Man in Black Mist, I'm Afraid You Won't Have This Chance!

Bibi Dong sat in the main seat, with Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo standing at her side.

Hu Liena had also changed into a clean set of clothes and stood behind Bibi Dong.

Ning Yuan was standing quietly below the dais as well.

Bibi Dong already knew about what had happened in Qingyuan Village, including the laboratory beneath the ancestral hall, the experiment notes, the imprisoned villagers and soul beasts, and the evil soul master who had finally been captured and brought back.

At that moment, Bibi Dong's delicate brows were tightly furrowed. Her fingertips tapped lightly on the armrest, and she remained silent for a long time.

Spirit Hall had been fighting the Holy Soul Cult for hundreds of years.

Each time, it seemed as if they had been wiped out to the last, but after a few decades, they would make a comeback.

The last great battle between Spirit Hall and them had probably been when Qian Daoliu was pope, right?

Only a few decades had passed, and they had emerged again.

From the looks of it, their experiments on artificially creating martial souls had already made major progress.

They absolutely could not be allowed to rise again.

Qian Daoliu failed to eradicate them completely, so I, Bibi Dong, swear I will uproot this cult!

She lifted her eyes and glanced at Ning Yuan below the platform.

Her gaze was filled with curiosity.

This boy's talent really was powerful!

At such a young age, his strength was actually greater than that of Hu Liena and the other two, who had been carefully nurtured for many years.

It seemed that recruiting him into Spirit Hall had been the wisest decision she had made.

She slowly rose, walked down the steps, and stopped in front of Ning Yuan, looking down at him from above.

"I remember your second soul ring was a nine-thousand-year Human-Faced Demon Spider."

"Yes."

"What levels were those synthetic beasts today?"

"The three closest to two thousand years could rival ordinary high-level Soul Ancestors in combat power."

Bibi Dong did not speak immediately.

She circled Ning Yuan once, her gaze sweeping over him again and again, as if she were redefining something.

A moment later, she stopped, and her tone suddenly became a little gentler than before.

"Rise."

Ning Yuan froze for a moment, then stood up.

Bibi Dong looked at him, and the faintest hint of a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. "You can fight even better than I imagined."

"Your first soul ring crossed the thousand-year threshold, your second soul ring approached ten thousand years, and now you can even face high-level combat power above your rank and retreat unharmed."

"Such a performance is enough for me to reassess your value."

Ning Yuan lowered his head slightly. "Your Holiness overpraises me."

"It is not overpraise." Bibi Dong turned and walked back to the main seat, then sat down.

"I originally planned to give you one year to build a solid foundation in the academy before letting you come into contact with these dangerous missions."

"But now it seems... I was being conservative."

She leaned back in her chair, her slender jade-like finger pausing lightly on the armrest.

"But what you showed today—I will have people pass down orders so they do not speak recklessly."

"This is your trump card. Do not expose it unless you have no other choice."

"I will respectfully remember Your Holiness's instructions."

Ning Yuan cupped his hands in return.

"From today onward, your resource quota will be raised by two levels."

"Your mission contribution point settlements will be doubled, and the items you need for cultivation can be exchanged at a fifty-percent contribution point discount."

Yue Guan and Ghost Douluo exchanged a glance, but neither spoke.

They knew that this was a declaration to everyone: Ning Yuan's status in the pope's heart was no longer that of a mere genius worth nurturing, but a core training target.

Ning Yuan bowed. "Thank you, Your Holiness."

Bibi Dong nodded slightly, her gaze carrying satisfied approval. "Withdraw. Rest well. There are more important matters waiting for you later."

After leaving the great hall, Ning Yuan returned to his room.

He locked the door behind him and began taking stock of the rewards from this trip.

First of all, he had finally unlocked the symbiote template—Agony!

Shriek was a popular symbiote character.

She was one of the five symbiotes artificially cultivated by the Life Foundation after being extracted from Venom.

In terms of blood relations, she could even be considered part of Venom's son's generation.

It was worth mentioning that symbiotes themselves had no gender.

The reason Shriek had a female appearance was because her host at the time was a woman.

Aside from having the same super strength, stamina, regeneration, and other abilities as Venom, Shriek also possessed other powers.

She could release large numbers of tendrils to whip or entangle enemies.

She also had sonic attack abilities.

Shriek could even control her biological energy to form wings and fly.

It could be said that she strengthened the mobility and long-range attack capabilities Venom had always lacked.

Moreover, an unlocked template only provided the abilities of that template. It would not unlock that template's personality.

So Venom himself would not be affected.

When Ning Yuan looked at the panel again, the progress bar had returned to zero, and the gray portrait had stopped pulsing.

Ning Yuan could not help but yearn for more. The first template he had unlocked was one like Shriek; he wondered what template he would unlock next time.

Carnage?

Toxin?

Strictly speaking, the symbiote god Knull counted as a symbiote too, right?

And All-Black the Necrosword also counted as a symbiote.

Would those two be unlocked later as well?

Next, he discovered that after he unlocked the Shriek template, his soul rings had also undergone a mutation.

Ning Yuan released his two soul rings.

He watched as the colors of the two soul rings became even deeper.

The second soul ring in particular had basically turned black.

If one did not look carefully, they would think it was a ten-thousand-year soul ring.

So this change was also brought about by unlocking a new symbiote template.

Previously, Ning Yuan had been in the middle of battle the whole time, so he had not noticed this.

Every time he unlocked a new template, each of Ning Yuan's existing soul rings would gain some additional age. The later the template was unlocked, the greater the increase in age would be.

"In that case, is it possible that every one of my soul rings might reach the hundred-thousand-year level in the future, or even the million-year level?"

It seemed that unlocking more templates in the future was still the proper path.

Next was the fact that after the battle, Venom had devoured the soul beast's brain, increasing his body's strength by another twenty percent.

If he faced Yan now, Ning Yuan was confident that with his bare fists alone, he could beat him black and blue.

Not only that, even the progress bar for the symbiote template had risen to 3%.

However, after unlocking one template, raising the progress bar from now on had become more difficult.

After taking stock of all this, Ning Yuan fell into thought again.

The Holy Soul Cult. Evil soul masters.

He had not expected that the group that only appeared on a large scale in the second part of the original work would already have appeared by now.

Was this the butterfly effect caused by him, a transmigrator?

Although his talent was strong now, it was not strong enough.

Just one Holy Soul Cult organization already made him feel a sense of crisis, let alone Tang San and the other sect forces later on.

To be honest, these past few days, his mindset had gotten a little inflated.

He was a transmigrator, his talent was extremely high, and he was familiar with the original plot. Shouldn't everything have gone smoothly once he started making his way?

Today had taught him a lesson. Never get carried away at any time.

One had to know there was always someone better, and a sky beyond the sky!

"No point thinking so much. Right now, I just need to train like crazy, and that's it!"

At the same time, beneath the ancestral hall in Qingyuan Village.

A figure completely shrouded in a cloud of black mist stood before an empty cage.

The smell of blood in the air had not yet dispersed. The ground was scattered with traces left by the fight and fragments of experimental equipment. The entire stronghold was a complete mess.

As the figure looked at everything before him, he was clearly furious.

The aura that erupted from him in an instant sent everything around him tumbling every which way.

He had only gone out for a day to take care of a few things, but when he came back, he found his home had been robbed!

Inside were experimental records he had spent a long time researching.

"Spirit Hall..."

His voice was hoarse and low, as if squeezed out from deep in his throat.

The closest people to this place were from Spirit Hall. If not them, then who else could it be?

It seemed this place had already been exposed. He could not stay for long.

The man raised his head and looked around.

The iron cages that had held the test subjects were now as empty as mocking mouths.

The stronghold he had spent months setting up had been uprooted overnight.

He clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking.

"Not bad..."

He took a deep breath and muttered in a low voice, "I'd like to see who exactly had the nerve to touch the Holy Soul Cult's things."

He turned and walked toward the secret passage deep inside the stronghold.

"Don't let me find you..."

"Once I know who you are, I'll make you into my most satisfying test subject."

Just then, an icy voice came from the darkness.

"Revenge? I'm afraid you won't get the chance!"