External Soul Bone! Blackwing Demon!

Ning Yuan's heart stirred slightly. He cupped his hands solemnly. "Thank you, Your Holiness."

It seemed Bibi Dong had been secretly sending people to protect him all along.

Ning Yuan would remember this kindness.

Bibi Dong waved her hand, signaling that he could leave.

When he returned to the Holy Son's courtyard, the butler, Old Chen, was already waiting at the entrance. Seeing him return, he hurried over and asked whether he needed to summon a healing-type Soul Master to take a look.

Ning Yuan waved him off and walked straight into the cultivation room, closing the door behind him.

The calming incense in the cultivation room had already been lit.

Thanks to Venom's formidable healing ability, Ning Yuan's injuries had mostly recovered by now.

Only then did he take the brocade box out of his Soul Tool.

The instant the brocade box opened, a dense dark-element energy, nearly tangible, surged out from within. The temperature throughout the cultivation room seemed to drop by several degrees at once.

Resting quietly inside was a jet-black External Soul Bone.

The Soul Bone was roughly the size of two adult palms and shaped like a pair of folded bat wings.

Its skeletal structure was clearly visible. The central bone was thick and sturdy, while fine bone spurs extended from both sides. The wing membrane was as thin as paper, a translucent dark purple, with a layer of cold phosphorescence flowing across its surface.

Most striking were the three curved bone spikes at the end of the skeleton. Each was about as long as an index finger, sharp as hooks, gleaming with metallic coldness under the light.

Upon sensing this aura, Ning Yuan's symbiote actually surfaced from beneath his skin in ripples of black. Venom had reacted to the thing.

[Huh?! This thing... smells pretty good!]

Venom poked half its head out from Ning Yuan's shoulder, its two huge eyes fixed firmly on the Soul Bone, practically drooling.

[Settle down. This is for absorption, not eating.]

[Venom knows! Venom means its scent. Its energy is kind of like Venom's! They're both dark-element! Little Ning Yuan, you've found a treasure!]

Ignoring Venom's fussing, Ning Yuan held the Soul Bone in his palm and examined it carefully.

Judging by its texture and energy fluctuations, this Soul Bone had come from a Shadow Bat Dragon with roughly eight thousand years of cultivation.

The Shadow Bat Dragon was an exceedingly rare abyss-element flying Soul Beast. Legend said that it lived in Shadow Gorge, deep within the Soul Beast Forest.

It possessed both the echolocation abilities of bat-type Soul Beasts and the formidable physique of dragon-type Soul Beasts. With its wings spread, it could reach eight meters across, and it flew in complete silence, like a ghost in the night.

This External Soul Bone had been formed from the most refined wing bone at the base of a Shadow Bat Dragon's wings. Black as ink, it carried a faint chill in his hand.

Yet the dark-element energy within it was astonishingly abundant, faintly resonating with the symbiote inside Ning Yuan's body.

Under the standard process for absorbing a Soul Bone, an External Soul Bone had to be fitted against the corresponding part of the body, then its energy guided by Soul Power into one's meridians to fuse with the skeleton.

Ning Yuan sat down cross-legged and pressed the black wing bone tightly against the area of his shoulder blades.

His Soul Power surged.

The wing bone suddenly shuddered.

Immediately afterward, a violent torrent of dark-element energy burst from the wing bone like floodwaters from a breached dam, spreading wildly along his spine!

The Shadow Bat Dragon's lingering will had not fully dissipated. It instinctively resisted this human who was trying to absorb it.

Ning Yuan let out a muffled groan, and a layer of cold sweat instantly formed on his forehead.

"This really packs a punch!!!"

This feeling was even more painful than absorbing a Soul Ring.

A Soul Ring's energy mainly acted upon one's Soul Power, but a Soul Bone's energy acted directly upon flesh and bone.

The sensation of having his body forcibly remade by foreign energy was like someone repeatedly scraping at his bones with a dull blade.

But at that moment, Venom moved.

The black Venom fluid flowed out from the depths of his flesh as if alive, wrapping around that violent dark-element Soul Power. Like a beast tamer, it forcibly pinned down the savage mass of energy.

Ning Yuan's heart stirred.

Venom was itself a dark-element symbiote, highly compatible with the Shadow Bat Dragon's energy.

Not only did the two fail to repel one another, they instead produced a strange fusion effect.

Venom enveloped the dark-element energy, taming it layer by layer before injecting it into the gaps in Ning Yuan's bones.

As a result, the pain of absorption was greatly reduced, while the efficiency of energy fusion became even higher.

Dark purple energy, like countless fine needles, densely pierced into the bones of his back. It extended continuously along the meridians on either side of his spine, taking root and merging with his original bone tissue.

The numb, aching sensation was like countless ants crawling and gnawing through his bone marrow.

But Ning Yuan's physical constitution had been repeatedly strengthened by the Venom symbiote, and he had also absorbed the nearly ten-thousand-year Man Faced Demon Spider Soul Ring.

Whether in terms of his meridians' endurance or the toughness of his bones, he far surpassed Soul Masters of the same rank.

About two hours passed.

The violent energy gradually calmed, replaced by a warm, comfortable sensation, as though he were soaking in a hot spring.

The shape of the wing bone gradually formed behind him, merging with his shoulder blades.

Ning Yuan opened his eyes and took a deep breath.

He could clearly feel that something had appeared on his back.

It was like a pair of invisible arms, hidden within the muscles and bones beneath his shoulder blades, ready to be summoned at any moment.

With a thought—

Whoosh—!

A pair of dark-purple bat wings with a wingspan of nearly three and a half meters abruptly unfurled from his back!

They instantly filled the entire cultivation room.

He looked like a demon incarnate.

Those bat wings were not a mere Soul Power projection, but something between physical matter and energy.

Their bones were black as ink, while the membranes were translucent dark purple, their edges flowing with a layer of cold, ghostly fluorescence.

When the wings spread, even the atmosphere in the cultivation room changed. A faint abyssal aura filled the air.

Ning Yuan lightly flapped his wings, and his body rose effortlessly from the floor.

He could feel that these wings not only granted him the ability to fly, but also gave him dual affinity for darkness and wind.

The Shadow Bat Dragon wing bone granted him three core abilities.

First, silent flight. The Shadow Bat Dragon's wing structure was unique; it produced no sound of rushing air as it moved through the atmosphere.

Combined with Venom's stealth abilities, Ning Yuan could carry out aerial ambushes in complete silence.

Second, shadow affinity. After absorbing this soul bone, his perception and control over dark-attribute energy had greatly improved.

When fighting in darkness or at night, his speed and attack power would receive additional boosts.

Third—and most crucially—enhanced synergy with the symbiote.

Ning Yuan's thoughts shifted again.

A layer of black symbiote fluid suddenly surfaced across the dark-purple bat wings on his back.

Venom crawled up the wing bone through his meridians of its own accord, wrapping the entire pair of bat wings in a thin black membrane.

Dark-purple patterns faintly emerged across the membrane.

He could feel that when Venom fused with the wing bone, both the wings' strength and toughness were greatly enhanced.

[Hahahaha! Venom can use these wings too! We can fly now! It'll be even easier to catch Soul Beasts and eat their brains later!]

Venom writhed excitedly within Ning Yuan's body.

[Can you think about anything else?]

[No! Haven't you noticed? Venom and this bone are a perfect match! They're both dark attribute! This bone strengthens Venom, and Venom can strengthen this bone too! We'll be able to fly through the sky and beat people up, then dive down from above and bite their heads off... Ah, just thinking about it gets me excited!]

Ning Yuan could not be bothered with it and retracted the bat wings.

"Black wings... the form of a great demon."

"They look exactly like a certain Fourth Espada..."

"Since you look like this, I'll call you Black-Winged Great Demon."

The energy fed back during the soul bone absorption process had not been idle either.

That mass of pure Soul Power coursed through his meridians and poured into his dantian, pushing his Soul Power Level to twenty-nine.

He was now only one suitable target away from obtaining his third soul ring.

He rose to his feet and stretched his body.

After breaking through to level twenty-nine, his physical abilities had clearly improved across the board once more.

The cultivation room was too cramped to properly test his newfound soul bone abilities. He needed to find somewhere else to try them out.

Just as he was thinking that, a rapid set of footsteps sounded outside, followed by the voice of Old Chen, the steward. "Your Highness, Saint Hu Liena, Young Master Xie Yue, and Young Master Yan request an audience."

Ning Yuan opened the door and saw all three of them standing outside in a row, their expressions anxious.

Hu Liena was the first to rush over. She looked him over several times from head to toe, and only sighed in relief after confirming that he was unharmed. Her voice carried obvious lingering fear.

"We heard about it after we got back! Li Henian, the person in charge of the Great Soul Arena, brought people to block you? What happened?"

Xie Yue also frowned, his tone unusually grave. "That man was a Soul Douluo. How did you get away?"

Ning Yuan smiled and stepped aside, gesturing for them to enter. "It's nothing. Elder Chrysanthemum Douluo arrived in time and dealt with it for me."

"Elder Chrysanthemum Douluo made a move?" Yan's eyes widened. "Then what about Li Henian?"

"He died," Ning Yuan said lightly.

"He died?"

The three fell silent at once, then exchanged glances.

"You..." Hu Liena shook her head, a helpless smile on her face. "You really can turn every danger into safety."

Xie Yue's brows relaxed, and a faint smile appeared at the corner of his lips. "It's fine as long as you're okay."

After a pause, he added, "But next time you go to the Great Soul Arena, remember to tell us beforehand. Don't just rush in by yourself."

Yan nodded repeatedly from the side. "Yeah, yeah, yeah! Bring us along next time! At the very least, we can cheer you on or something."

Over the past few days, two pieces of news had spread across the Douluo Continent like a virus.

First, an unparalleled genius had emerged from Spirit Hall's Great Soul Arena.

A two-ring Soul Master had advanced to Purple Gold Fighting Soul in less than two months.

The other was that Li Henian, the person in charge of Spirit City's Great Soul Arena, had vanished without explanation.

Forces from all sides were investigating and speculating. Who exactly was this person called Daredevil?

Yet he seemed to have appeared out of thin air. Not a single piece of information could be found about him.

Notting City, Notting Junior Soul Master Academy.

Tang San sat by the window.

"Daredevil... Purple Gold Fighting Soul..."

He murmured the words, his brows drawing tighter and tighter.

"...Impossible."