First Millennium Soul Ring

The wind and snow whipped Xue Qinghe's cloak, sending his hair flying back and revealing his handsome yet expressionless face.

His gaze was deep, churning with many things.

Scrutiny, shock, a wariness even he himself had not realized, and an emotion that was difficult to define.

That emotion lingered longest in his eyes, as though a question that had troubled him for years had suddenly found an unexpected answer.

Xue Qinghe and Snake Lance stepped out from behind the snow ridge.

Li Hanche heard the footsteps and let out a breath of relief.

All the pain, exhaustion, and injuries seemed to flood over him at once, as though a gate had been thrown open.

Every muscle trembled, every bone screamed, and every wound announced its presence in the sharpest way possible.

"Big Brother. This one."

After saying that, his body swayed.

He toppled sideways. Before he could fall, Xue Qinghe had already reached out. His hand firmly caught Li Hanche by the shoulder.

When Xue Qinghe's palm covered his shoulder, it felt wet and warm.

It was blood, seeping from the wound on his shoulder where the bone claw had torn him open, staining Xue Qinghe's palm.

Xue Qinghe lowered his head and looked at his bloodied palm.

In the frigid air of the Far North, the blood rapidly cooled, changing from warm to icy, from bright red to dark crimson.

His fingers curled slightly, as though feeling that change in temperature.

No one knew what Xue Qinghe was thinking at that moment.

Snake Lance Douluo wrapped the final loop of bandage around Li Hanche's chest and tied a knot at his side.

The entire process was clean and efficient.

He put the remaining bandages and medicine back into his pack, rose to his feet, and let his gaze rest briefly on Xue Qinghe's bloodied hand before looking away without a word.

"Young Master, the wounds have been treated. You can begin absorbing the soul ring."

Xue Qinghe withdrew his hand into his sleeve and nodded.

Li Hanche sat up. The movement pulled at the wound in his chest, making him hiss as his brows twisted together, but he still gritted his teeth and crossed his legs.

Once settled, he did not begin immediately. Instead, he closed his eyes and adjusted his breathing.

The Frost Heaven Record began circulating first.

When the chill flowed through his wounds, it brought piercing cold, but it also loosened the muscles around them, dulling the sharp pain into a heavy ache.

His breathing gradually steadied, his inhalations and exhalations long and even.

Then the restorative power of the Mind-Clarity and Nature-Seeing Art and the Nine-Turn Tyrant Body Art began to work.

His condition was adjusted to its peak. He had done all he could.

He opened his eyes and looked at the soul ring floating above the Ice-Armored Dire Bear's corpse.

Li Hanche raised his right hand, palm up and fingers slightly spread.

As if sensing his summons, the soul ring slowly rose from above the Ice-Armored Dire Bear's body, tracing a heavy arc through the air as it flew toward him.

The closer it came, the heavier the pressure became.

When the soul ring was less than a foot away, the air seemed to solidify, pressing down until even his breathing stalled.

Two thousand one hundred years of Soul Power was an entire mountain to a six-year-old child.

The moment the soul ring touched his palm, purple light exploded.

A vast, nearly berserk surge of Soul Power poured in through his palm and rushed up the meridians in his arm.

It was not a gentle stream. It was a burst dam.

His meridians violently expanded and contracted beneath the impact, bringing waves of tearing pain.

Sweat instantly beaded on Li Hanche's forehead.

Before the beads could slide down, they froze into tiny grains of ice in the bitter cold, clinging to his brow bone.

The Soul Power continued upward, surging past his elbow, past his shoulder, and into his chest. When that external force struck his broken ribs, the pain abruptly intensified tenfold.

His body went rigid, his teeth grinding audibly as his nails dug deep into his palms.

Fresh blood seeped through the bandages on his back, staining a patch of the white cloth pale red.

Xue Qinghe stood two steps away, watching it all.

His expression was calm, as if he were watching something he had long expected. Yet the fingertips of the bloodied hand hidden in his sleeve tightened slightly.

The moment the Soul Power surged into his dantian, the true contest began.

Time slowed.

One hour. Two hours.

Li Hanche's body suddenly shuddered.

A complete tremor, erupting from within.

It was as if something inside him had been utterly shattered, or as if something had been reforged anew.

A purple soul ring slowly rose from beneath his feet.

His first soul ring had been successfully absorbed.

Li Hanche sat cross-legged, feeling the earth-shaking changes within his body.

The total amount of Soul Power in his dantian had surged tremendously. If it had once been a small stream, it was now a river beginning to take shape.

As his Soul Power flowed through his meridians, it was no longer light and ethereal. It now carried a weighty substance—the improvement in Soul Power quality brought by fusing with a millennium soul ring.

Level fifteen.

He had gone from level ten, skipping eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, directly to level fifteen.

The Soul Power bestowed by a millennium soul ring and his cultivation arts far exceeded the scope of a century soul ring.

Information about his soul skill naturally surfaced in his mind, like an instinct engraved within the soul ring itself. It only took a thought to activate it.

He did not try it immediately. This was neither the time nor the place.

Xue Qinghe's voice came from beside him.

"Level fifteen."

Li Hanche raised his head.

Xue Qinghe stood two steps away, his expression still calm.

"A two-thousand-one-hundred-year first soul ring. Your Soul Power rose five levels in a row. You really did it. The first case on the Douluo Continent."

The first thought that arose in Li Hanche's heart upon hearing those words was not pride.

He thought of the webnovels he had read before transmigrating.

The protagonists started out with first soul rings that were tens of thousands of years old. Some even had hundred-thousand-year soul rings.

The male lead of some neighboring novel had a million-year first soul ring from the start, and after absorbing it, he could even communicate with a soul beast in a space of consciousness. His two thousand one hundred years would not even qualify as an entry requirement in those stories where immortals battled one another.

He almost could not stop himself from saying it aloud.

Of course, he did not.

A transmigrator's basic virtue was knowing what could be said and what had to rot in his stomach.

He merely grumbled inwardly, then suppressed those messy thoughts.

He raised his head and looked at Xue Qinghe.

"Big Brother, this is only my first soul ring."

Xue Qinghe looked down at him.

"For my second soul ring, I want to challenge a ten-thousand-year one."

The snow valley fell silent.

Xue Qinghe looked down at the child covered in bloodstained bandages, with dried blood still on his face, and remained silent for a long time.

He turned to look at Snake Lance Douluo.

Snake Lance Douluo was looking at him as well.

The gazes of the two mighty experts, both capable of walking sideways across the Douluo Continent, unexpectedly showed the same expression—one difficult to describe with words.

It was not shock. Ever since Li Hanche had fought two millennium soul beasts alone, their threshold for shock had been raised to an abnormal height. It was the helplessness of I can't respond to that.

Xue Qinghe withdrew his gaze. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, nothing came out.

He merely reached out and patted Li Hanche on the head.

"A ten-thousand-year one can wait until you reach level twenty."