Six Years Later, I Want You to Go Undercover

Spirit Hall Holy Son Palace, cultivation chamber.

Ning Yuan slowly opened his eyes.

Dim, cold light from the fluorite hanging from the chamber's vaulted ceiling fell across his face, which had long since shed every trace of childishness.

The scrawny, sallow look twelve-year-old Ning Yuan once had was already nowhere to be seen.

Six years of cultivation and repeated tempering of his body by the symbiote had raised his height to nearly one meter ninety. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and even as he sat motionless, a silent explosive power lay dormant beneath the lines of his muscles.

He glanced at the panel floating before him.

[Symbiote Template: Currently unlocked—Venom (main template), Agony, Mimicry.]

[Soul Power Level: 58.]

He lowered his head again and looked at the cluster of soul power light hovering in his palm like a staff.

With a thought, five soul rings slowly rose from beneath his feet. Their true configuration was—purple, black, black, black, black.

His first soul ring had originally been thousand-year purple, but after two age-limit enhancements from unlocking new templates twice, it had already transformed into a pitch-black color close to ten thousand years.

If outsiders saw this soul ring configuration, they would probably go mad on the spot.

At the five-ring Soul King level, all five soul rings were over ten thousand years old—let alone in Spirit Hall, such a thing had never appeared in the entire history of Douluo Continent.

The corner of Ning Yuan's mouth tugged faintly, and his will moved again.

A layer of black fluid like rippling water emerged from beneath his skin and brushed over the five soul rings.

In the eyes of outsiders, the colors of the five soul rings rapidly changed into the standard yellow, yellow, purple, purple, black.

Mimicry Template. This was the second Symbiote Template he had unlocked when he was seven.

Mimicry did not possess any direct combat-boosting ability, but it could allow the symbiote to simulate the appearance and aura of things it had seen.

It had taken months of repeated debugging before he finally perfected the soul ring disguise to the point where it could pass for the real thing.

"Six years," he said in a low voice.

[Six years! Venom hasn't eaten a fresh brain in six whole years! Do you know how Venom has lived these six years? Venom watches you sit there meditating every single day. You've bored Venom into depression! Do you know what depression is? It means Venom looks at everything now and feels no spark at all!]

Venom poked half its head out from his shoulder, rolling the whites of its eyes high, wearing an expression as if life held no more meaning.

[And who was it that ate the brain of that thirty-thousand-year Crypt Demon Spider during the last soul hunt?]

[That was the only decent meal in six years! Six years! Little Ning Yuan! Count it! More than two thousand days! Venom only got one full meal! Are you trying to starve Venom to death and then inherit Venom's Ant Credit Pay?!]

[You don't have Ant Credit Pay.]

[Venom doesn't care! Venom wants to eat! Venom wants to fight! Venom doesn't want to watch you meditate anymore!]

Ning Yuan did not reply.

He stood up and loosened his muscles and bones.

His bones gave a string of fine, crisp cracks, while his muscles rippled beneath his skin like flowing water.

Over these six years, Ning Yuan's physical strength had already been cultivated to the point where it could rival a seven-ring Soul Sage specialized in defense.

As for weaknesses and resistances, his aversion to sound waves and flames still existed, but over these six years he had deliberately tempered his tolerance again and again through life-and-death battles in the Great Soul Arena. Now, ordinary flame attacks could no longer exert any substantial suppression on him.

From two rings to five rings, from a fishing village child who had just entered Spirit Hall to the current Holy Son of Spirit Hall, he had not slacked off for a single day in six years.

It was worth mentioning that when he was seven, he had participated in the previous Continental Advanced Soul Master Tournament.

That had been a request Ning Yuan had taken the initiative to make to Bibi Dong.

"I need true practical combat experience."

Bibi Dong agreed. She secretly arranged a team identity for him and did not publicly release the news that the Holy Son was participating.

In that elite tournament, Spirit Hall's representative team fought all the way into the top four, ultimately suffering a narrow defeat in the semifinals.

But the experience Ning Yuan accumulated on the stage was far more solid than half a year of meditation inside Spirit Hall.

No one knew who he was, and no one had seen his true face.

The Martial Soul he revealed on the stage had always been a vague mass of black fluid, using tentacle entanglement and short-distance acceleration as its main methods. Not the slightest shadow of "Venom" could be seen.

That participation had also brought an unexpected gain—through the support-type disguise of the Mimicry Template, he had verified one tactical concept: he could appear on the battlefield at a critical moment in the identity of a "support soul master," misleading every opponent's eyes and informants.

He had waited five years for this setup.

Five years was not a long time.

The power structure among Spirit Hall's upper ranks had quietly changed over these six years.

Yue Guan's aura had grown much steadier, making him seem like an entirely different person from six years ago. Following the path Ning Yuan had proposed—"using flesh and blood as soil for a Plant-type Martial Soul"—he rooted the Singular Velvet Sky Chrysanthemum into his own body and used his Martial Soul to nourish his flesh. Over six years, he broke through bottleneck after bottleneck, and now he had already stepped into the realm of a rank ninety-seven Super Douluo. Nor had he monopolized this result; instead, he studied it together with Ghost. Although Ghost Douluo could not directly use the cultivation route of a Plant-type Martial Soul, he drew from Yue Guan's experience the idea of tempering his Martial Soul's origin, and likewise broke through to rank ninety-six.

At the level of a Super Douluo, the difference of a single rank often required ten years or even longer of bitter cultivation. With just a few casual words, Ning Yuan had saved the two Title Douluo several decades of time.

Yue Guan and Ghost both remembered this favor.

And Bibi Dong's attitude toward Ning Yuan had also quietly deepened over the years. At first, it was appreciation, and later, high regard. By these last two years, there had already been something beyond an ordinary master-disciple relationship in her gaze—she saw in Ning Yuan something she had never seen in anyone else: loyalty that did not depend on promises, and talent that did not rely on showing off.

She treated him with a closeness almost like that of her own son. And Ning Yuan had never once disappointed her.

That day, at the Pope Palace.

When Ning Yuan stepped into the hall, Bibi Dong was sitting sideways on the throne, her fingertips resting on the armrest, her gaze fixed on a map in the center of the great hall.

A map of the Heaven Dou Empire's territory.

"You're here." Bibi Dong lifted her eyes. Her tone was a little gentler than usual, but in those deep purple eyes, there was still her customary coldness and unfathomable depth.

Ning Yuan cupped his hands. "Your Holiness."

Bibi Dong did not beat around the bush. She went straight to the point.

"I have a mission for you."

She rose, walked down the steps, and stopped before the map, tapping her finger on the location of Heaven Dou City.

"The crown prince of the Heaven Dou Empire, Xue Qinghe—is Qian Renxue."

She said it very softly, yet the words weighed as heavy as a thousand jun.

Ning Yuan's heart jolted hard. Of course he knew this. In his previous life, he had read the original work. When Qian Renxue was nine, she had used a soul bone secret technique to disguise herself as Xue Qinghe, the fourth prince of the Heaven Dou Empire, and had been lurking there for nine years now. But he could not show that he knew. At this moment, he had to display the shock of hearing it for the first time.

His pupils contracted slightly, his breathing paused for half a beat, and then he quickly adjusted, lowering his voice a little. "Qian Renxue... someone from the Grand Worship's line?"