A Ten-Thousand-Year First Ring!

Outside.

Yue Guan watched Yang Jian sitting on the ground, trembling nonstop, his heart filled with a tangled mess of emotions.

Regret, worry, lingering fear—countless emotions intertwined, throwing even this Title Douluo who had lived nearly a century off balance.

How could he have been so careless?

A child who had considered even a two-thousand-five-hundred-year Titan Giant Ape too weak—

How could he possibly have been satisfied with an eight-thousand-year soul ring?

He should have realized it long ago. This brat had set his sights on that ten-thousand-year Titan Giant Ape from the very beginning.

Yue Guan gritted his teeth.

If something really happened to Yang Jian... he did not dare think any further.

Just then, Yue Guan's pupils suddenly contracted.

He saw Yang Jian's trembling body gradually still, while his complexion slowly returned to calm.

As a Title Douluo with nearly a century of cultivation experience, Yue Guan naturally knew what that meant.

He had endured the soul impact of the ten-thousand-year Titan Giant Ape.

The first wave, and the most dangerous one.

Once he got through that wave, the subsequent soul impacts would only grow weaker and weaker.

As long as Yang Jian did not get himself killed, absorbing this ten-thousand-year soul ring was practically a certainty.

"He did it..."

The regret and lingering fear on Yue Guan's face were quickly replaced by an expression of utter disbelief.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, only to find his throat painfully dry.

A ten-thousand-year first ring.

And a ten-thousand-year soul ring from a Titan Giant Ape, at that.

Yue Guan took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, but the corners of his mouth still curled upward uncontrollably.

Good kid. He had really done it.

The look in his eyes as he watched Yang Jian quietly changed.

If he had previously only regarded Yang Jian as a talented junior who needed looking after, then now, what he saw in this child was a pillar who could support Spirit Hall for the next several decades, perhaps even a century.

He did not even dare imagine how powerful Yang Jian would become in the future with a ten-thousand-year first ring.

Perhaps surpassing Bibi Dong was entirely possible.

"What?!"

Hu Liena stood to one side, her mouth having remained open since earlier.

She watched Yang Jian go from violent trembling to gradual calm. She watched that black soul ring circle after circle merge into his body. She watched Yue Guan go from shock and fury to immense relief...

Everything was simply too unbelievable.

She was twelve years old and had studied in Spirit Hall for a full six years. She had believed she understood the world of soul masters well enough.

But now, Yang Jian had shown her with facts that those so-called ironclad laws might never have applied to certain people in the first place.

The maximum age limit for a first soul ring was four hundred and twenty-three years?

Hu Liena recalled the Ten Core Theories of Martial Souls. She had once believed every word in it without question.

Yet now, Yang Jian's first soul ring was ten thousand years old.

And it was a ten-thousand-year soul ring from a Titan Giant Ape!

The gap was so vast that it was enough to make one despair.

Hu Liena looked at the thin little figure seated cross-legged on the ground. The emotions in her eyes gradually shifted from shock and disbelief into something complicated that she could neither name nor understand.

Just how had this guy done it?

He was clearly only six years old. Three months ago, he had clearly been a sallow, undernourished commoner child, yet now he had accomplished something no one in the history of the entire continent had ever done.

Hu Liena silently made up her mind.

After they returned to Spirit Hall, she had to find a chance to properly question this junior brother of hers.

She wanted to know just how many secrets Yang Jian was still hiding.

One day and one night.

Yue Guan and Hu Liena remained where they were, never leaving even a single step.

The first ray of morning sunlight fell.

Yang Jian finally opened his eyes.

His entire body gave off a faint, barely perceptible pressure.

It was the aura brought by a ten-thousand-year soul ring.

Yang Jian rolled his neck and rose from the ground.

He lowered his head to look at his hands, clenched his fists, and felt the surging power within him.

His physical strength had increased by roughly another third from its original foundation. A faint pale-golden sheen flowed beneath his skin, his muscle definition had become sharper, and every inch of flesh contained explosive power.

That was only a secondary benefit.

What truly satisfied him was the leap in his soul power.

He had broken through directly from level ten to level sixteen.

The soul power contained within a ten-thousand-year soul ring was simply too vast, especially since it was the soul ring of a Titan Giant Ape. During absorption, he had done his best to suppress it and use most of the energy to temper his body. Otherwise, given the quality of this soul ring, reaching level nineteen directly would not have been a problem.

But the drawbacks of doing that outweighed the benefits. With an unstable foundation, the road ahead would only become narrower and narrower.

He did not need speed. He needed stability.

"So you still know how to wake up?"

A cold voice suddenly came from beside him.

Yang Jian turned and saw Yue Guan with a stern face and a gloomy expression.

"Uncle Yue..."

"Hmph, don't call me Uncle!" Yue Guan cut him off immediately, his tone harsh. "Do you know what you did?"

"A ten-thousand-year soul ring!"

"You dared absorb a ten-thousand-year soul ring as your first one!"

"Do you think your life is too long?"

Yang Jian opened his mouth, but before he could explain, Yue Guan continued berating him. "What if something had gone wrong?"

"Do you think everything would be fine just because you endured the soul impact?"

"Rampaging soul ring energy, meridians unable to bear the strain, soul power backlash... any one of those could have taken your life."

"Even if you were confident, couldn't you have said something beforehand?"

"Did you have to pull this stunt of acting first and reporting afterward?"

Yang Jian listened quietly. Only after Yue Guan finished did he lower his head and honestly admit his mistake. "Uncle Yue, I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

Seeing his sincere attitude, more than half of Yue Guan's anger dissipated.

He snorted and looked Yang Jian up and down. The corner of his mouth twitched, and in the end, he could not stop a faint smile from appearing.

"Enough, stop pretending to be pitiful." His eyes were full of curiosity. "Tell me, what is your first soul skill?"

At those words, Yang Jian raised his right hand.

The Three-Point Double-Edged Saber appeared.

At the same time, a soul ring as black as ink rose beneath his feet.

The black soul ring slowly revolved, radiating a suffocating pressure.

Hu Liena instinctively took half a step back, but her eyes remained fixed on that soul ring without blinking.

A ten-thousand-year first ring...

It was her first time seeing such a heaven-defying configuration.

"My first soul skill is called Titan Transformation."

Yang Jian gripped the Three-Point Double-Edged Saber tightly and activated his soul power.

The black soul ring abruptly lit up, and a savage force erupted from within him.

His physique did not change.

But his aura underwent an earth-shaking transformation at that moment.

"Titan Transformation increases strength by three hundred percent, defense by one hundred percent, and attack by one hundred percent after activation."

Yang Jian withdrew his soul skill and gave a simple introduction.

Yue Guan nodded slightly. "A boosting-type soul skill... an extremely powerful effect."

"Combined with the weight of the Three-Point Double-Edged Saber itself, ordinary Soul Ancestors would probably not even dare receive one of your strikes head-on."

"And the greatest advantage of boosting-type soul skills is that they can remain useful all the way to the Title Douluo level. Unlike those attack-type soul skills, whose power becomes insufficient in the later stages."

Yang Jian nodded. This was also what satisfied him.

Having cultivated the Eight-Nine Mysteries, he was destined to defeat enemies with his physical body in the future.

Any flashy attack soul skills would be of very limited help to him.

Rather than pursuing those impractical long-range attacks, it was better to push strength and defense to their limits.

With one slash, anything could be resolved.