Soul Beast Looks

"Here, what about this one?" Lu Mingfei asked expectantly.

"Too ugly." Huang Fei was expressionless.

"You have to judge soul rings by their looks too?"

"When I don't like the look of you, I call you ugly too. It has nothing to do with soul rings. I simply find it disgusting."

Huang Fei flicked her sleeve. "Come on. Don't waste time."

Lu Mingfei could only obediently follow, silently lighting a candle for that Ice Dragon Beast whose looks had been rejected.

Back when he was at Cassel College, Nono often said his taste was terrible. Now even soul beasts were being discriminated against for their appearance. This world was too cruel.

When the next soul beast appeared, Lu Mingfei nearly thought he was looking at some kind of chimera.

It was a giant python with wings. Its wings were feathered like a bird's, while its Serpent Form was covered in golden scales.

It coiled around an ancient towering tree, its cold vertical pupils fixed tightly on the two people passing below.

"Winged Golden-Scaled Serpent, fifteen hundred years old."

Huang Fei lifted her chin. "It cultivates both wind and poison attributes. If you absorb its soul ring, there's a high chance you'll gain a poison-type skill and the ability to fly."

"That sounds pretty useful!"

Lu Mingfei was already getting anxious. "Lady Huang Fei, we've been walking for half the day, and you haven't liked a single one. How long am I supposed to wait for this soul ring?"

Huang Fei turned around, her purple eyes fixed on him with a trace of frustrated disappointment. "Lu Mingfei, do you know what your biggest problem is right now?"

"Uh... not being handsome enough?"

"It's that you don't understand your own martial soul well enough."

Huang Fei poked his chest with a finger. "Your martial soul is the Black Dragon King, the supreme bloodline of the dragon race.

To you, ordinary soul beast soul rings are like...

Like serving fried rice from a street stall at an imperial banquet. Does it belong there?"

"But... fried rice is pretty tasty too," Lu Mingfei muttered.

"Shut up and follow me."

So Lu Mingfei shut up again and obediently followed Huang Fei deeper inside.

They encountered two more millennium soul beasts along the way.

One was a giant thunder python wrapped in crackling arcs of lightning.

The other was a gigantic dragon silkworm whose threads could slice through rock.

Huang Fei did not even spare them a second glance as she walked straight past.

Lu Mingfei was beginning to question his life.

When he carried out missions at Cassel College, he could at least cheat a little and blow the enemy apart with one shot. If that failed, Lu Mingze was there to cover him.

But now, as a soul master, he could not even secure a soul ring. Who would believe that if he told them?

And Huang Fei's standards were far too picky. This one would not do, that one would not do. It was like a blind date—she had to find one that was tall, handsome, rich, and overseas-educated...

Wait, soul beasts probably did not care about that.

As Lu Mingfei's thoughts ran wild, the mist ahead suddenly thinned, and his view abruptly opened up.

He noticed that the dark red rock beneath his feet had turned deep brown. The air was filled with a strange, sweetly fishy scent. It smelled neither like blood nor flowers, but rather like...

The distinctive scent of some large predator's territory.

Huang Fei suddenly stopped.

Lu Mingfei nearly crashed into her back and hurriedly stopped himself. "What is it? Something happening?"

Huang Fei did not answer. Her gaze was locked onto the entrance of a valley littered with jagged rocks ahead.

Strange boulders were piled there like the back of some enormous beast lying prone on the ground. Dark purple moss and unfamiliar low shrubs grew from the cracks.

And at the center of the rocks, a huge figure had its back to them, its head lowered as it gnawed on something.

Lu Mingfei followed her gaze and was instantly startled.

What kind of monster was that?

That thing had the body of a bull, yet it was definitely not a bull.

Its entire body was covered in dark golden fur that gleamed with a metallic sheen in the dim light.

Most bizarrely, its face...

Lu Mingfei narrowed his eyes and looked carefully, only to discover that it had no normal facial features.

Its eyes grew beneath its armpits. Two dark green eyeballs were set into its ribs, turning without blinking.

The teeth jutting from its mouth were tiger fangs, sharp and densely packed, interlocking above and below. Combined with that oddly proportioned mouth, they made it look both ferocious and absurd.

Most exaggerated of all were the pair of massive bull horns atop its head, curving more than halfway around.

The tips gleamed with an icy light, and their surfaces bore natural patterns resembling ancient totemic symbols.

At that moment, it had its head lowered, tearing at some prey with those tiger fangs. Yet the eyes beneath its armpits calmly swept the surroundings, as though the vision from its ribs meant it did not need to turn its head to see everything.

Countless images flashed through Lu Mingfei's mind before finally settling on a fragment of an old memory...

He seemed to have read a description of this thing somewhere.

The Book of Mountains and Seas?

"Taotie..."

Lu Mingfei muttered, "That's a Taotie, right?"

Huang Fei abruptly turned to him, surprise flashing through her eyes. "You know it?"

"Uh, just guessing."

Lu Mingfei scratched his head. "A sheep's body, eyes beneath its armpits, tiger fangs, human-like claws, and bull horns... It sounds a little like the Taotie described in the books. But wasn't the Taotie in those books just one huge mouth? This thing has a body too!"

"That was merely an error born from the evolution of legends."

Huang Fei's voice carried irrepressible excitement. "The true Taotie is a son of the Dragon God, one of the nine sons born to the dragon.

Later generations passed falsehoods from mouth to mouth and simplified its image into a vicious beast that was nothing but a mouth. In truth, Taotie has a complete form.

It was only because its greatest trait was its boundless greed for food that people gradually forgot what it truly looked like."

Lu Mingfei looked at the monster in the distance, devouring its meal with relish, and suddenly felt a chill run down his back. "You mean... this thing is a dragon's son?"

"More precisely, it is the hybrid descendant of a Taotie and a rare bovine soul beast. It is called a Taotie Divine Bull."

Huang Fei's eyes gleamed. "Look at its horns. Those are traits of bovine soul beasts. But its dark golden fur, its eyes beneath the armpits, and its tiger fangs and human-like claws are all manifestations of the Taotie bloodline."

Lu Mingfei tried hard to process this information. "So it's not purebred!"

"Whether it is purebred is not important. What matters is that it has divine dragon blood in its body!"

Huang Fei grabbed Lu Mingfei's wrist, gripping so hard that he nearly cried out. "Lu Mingfei, do you know what this means?

Although this Taotie Divine Bull has only cultivated for a little over a thousand years, Taotie's divine dragon blood flows through its veins. Its true combat power is enough to rival an ordinary soul beast over two thousand years old!"

"That strong?" Lu Mingfei sucked in a cold breath. "Won't it just slap me to death?"

"With me here, it can't slap you to death."

Huang Fei released his wrist. Her tone had returned to calm, but the excitement in her eyes could not be concealed.