Soul Rings Could Still Level Up!

As the sun set, the outline of Saint Soul Village came into view.

Old Jack stopped at the village entrance, gave the two of them a few instructions, then headed toward the village chief's home with his hands behind his back.

Without even saying goodbye, Tang San turned and ran toward his family's blacksmith shop. Ever since that bizarre time freeze last night, an uneasy feeling had lingered in his heart. Now, all he wanted was to see his father, Tang Hao, as soon as possible and get some answers.

Chen Xuan, on the other hand, was in no hurry.

With both hands in his pockets, he strolled leisurely along the village dirt road, greeting a few elderly villagers as he passed.

The door of the blacksmith shop at the village entrance was left ajar.

Tang San shoved it open.

There was no sound of hammering inside. The forge had long gone cold, and the air carried a lonely chill.

"Dad?" Tang San called out.

No one answered.

He quickly entered the inner room. A note was pinned to the table. Tang San picked it up, and the handwriting on it was wild and scrawled.

Tang Hao had left.

He had left a letter telling Tang San only to study diligently under the Master and not to look for him.

Tang San clenched the note until his knuckles turned white. His nerves, already stretched taut by Chen Xuan's probing, snapped completely at that moment. He stood blankly in the empty room as an overwhelming sense of loneliness swallowed him whole.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the village.

Chen Xuan pushed open the wooden gate to his family's courtyard.

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound of hammering shook the air.

In the courtyard, a broad, dark-skinned man stood bare-chested, swinging a massive iron hammer down hard upon a red-hot chunk of metal. Sweat streamed down his sturdy muscles, gleaming beneath the setting sun.

This was Chen Xuan's father in this life, Chen Tiezhu.

An ordinary blacksmith with no martial soul and no soul power, who had supported Chen Xuan for six years through sheer strength.

"Dad, I'm back." Leaning against the doorframe, Chen Xuan called out.

Chen Tiezhu paused mid-swing and turned his head.

When he saw Chen Xuan, the man grinned, flashing a mouthful of white teeth. He casually tossed the hammer to the ground, grabbed the rag draped around his neck to wipe away his sweat, and strode over.

"You little brat, you've grown taller." Chen Tiezhu's fan-sized palm landed on Chen Xuan's shoulder, making him grimace.

"Easy. You'll rattle my bones apart." Chen Xuan rubbed his shoulder.

"Go on, go wash your hands. There's stewed meat in the kitchen. We were waiting for you before eating." Chen Tiezhu gave Chen Xuan a shove, then turned back to clean up the forge.

Dinner was simple: a huge bowl of stewed wild boar and several coarse flour buns.

Father and son sat at the stone table in the courtyard, eating until their mouths shone with grease.

"No one bullied you at that Nuoding Academy place, right?" Chen Tiezhu asked casually as he gnawed on a bone.

"No." Chen Xuan took a huge bite from a bun. "Everyone's quite friendly. The students get along very well."

Thinking back to Tang San greeting him with poisoned Bone-Piercing Nails earlier that day, Chen Xuan felt that "getting along very well" was an exceptionally precise description.

"That's good." Chen Tiezhu nodded. "Oh, right. At the awakening ceremony last time, what did Old Jack say you awakened? Some stones?"

Chen Xuan set down his chopsticks and rummaged through his pocket.

He pulled out a smooth pebble and placed it on the stone table.

"This." Chen Xuan said.

Chen Tiezhu took the pebble, tossed it lightly in his hand, then rubbed its surface with his thumb.

"Huh, it's pretty heavy." Chen Tiezhu glanced at the chopping board nearby, picked up a somewhat chipped kitchen knife, and fiercely scraped the blade against the pebble twice.

Screech!

Sparks flew.

Chen Tiezhu ran his thumb over the blade, and his eyes lit up.

"Good stuff! This stone's hard enough. It'd make a perfect whetstone." Chen Tiezhu stuffed the pebble into his own pocket. "It's mine. I can use it for smithing tomorrow."

Chen Xuan smiled.

"Keep it and use it slowly. I've got more."

After dinner, Chen Tiezhu cleaned up the dishes and returned to his room early to sleep. Before long, earthshaking snores drifted out.

Chen Xuan returned to his tiny room.

The room was small. Aside from a hard wooden bed and a broken cabinet, there was nothing else.

Chen Xuan shut the doors and windows, then sat cross-legged on the bed.

The night was deep and still.

He closed his eyes and began to sense the power within his body.

Peak rank-nine soul power.

Only a hair's breadth away from rank ten.

Under the rules of Douluo Continent, the cultivation system of soul masters was an absolute iron law. Once soul power reached the rank-ten bottleneck, one had to hunt a soul beast and absorb a soul ring. Only the power of rules brought by a soul ring could break through the bottleneck and allow a soul master to continue leveling up.

Yu Xiaogang regarded this iron law as sacred, and Tang San believed in it without question.

Without absorbing a soul ring, soul power would remain forever stuck at rank ten, unable to advance another step.

Chen Xuan ran through this theory in his mind.

Soul masters needed soul rings because their martial souls were flawed. They could not form a complete cycle of power on their own and had to borrow the rules of soul beasts to complete themselves.

But those shitty rules had no authority over the Light-Shadow Stone.

Chen Xuan raised both hands.

A crimson glow appeared out of thin air above his upturned left palm.

A deep blue radiance rippled out beneath his downturned right palm.

In front of his chest, an emerald-green light slowly gathered.

Flame Bow.

Water Armor Shield.

Wind Eagle Crossbow.

Three epic weapons floated around Chen Xuan's body at once. The cramped room was illuminated brightly by three colors of light, yet not a trace of heat leaked out.

The soul power inside Chen Xuan completely boiled over.

Rather than circulating his soul power along any established meditation route, he directly severed the conventional cultivation path.

Guided by his will.

Fire, water, wood.

Three of the five elements.

Water generated wood, and wood generated fire.

The deep blue Water Armor Shield trembled slightly, and an incomparably pure water-element energy surged through the meridians in Chen Xuan's right hand and into his body. Rather than charging about wildly, this energy precisely found the wood-element energy emanating from the Wind Eagle Crossbow.

The instant the two came into contact, the wood-element energy surged explosively.

Immediately afterward, the strengthened wood-element energy flowed through his meridians and crashed headlong into the fire-element energy of the Flame Bow in his left hand.

Boom!

An incredibly muffled shock rang out from within Chen Xuan's body.

The three powers connected end to end, forcibly constructing a faint cycle of the five elements within Chen Xuan's meridians.

Pain.

An intense swelling pain spread through his entire body.

This was not a cultivation method of this world at all. The power generated by the five-element cycle was far too domineering, and Chen Xuan's meridians were nearly split apart from the strain.

Driven along by this power, his rank-nine soul power began to rise madly.

Very soon, it reached the threshold of rank ten.

An invisible barrier stood before it. This was the shackle of Douluo Continent's rules. Without a soul ring, no one could pass through it.

Chen Xuan gritted his teeth, cold sweat covering his forehead.

"Stupid rules." Chen Xuan forced out the words through clenched teeth.

He had no intention of stopping.

The five-element cycle suddenly accelerated. Water generated wood, wood generated fire, endlessly cycling onward.

That domineering power transformed into a sharp blade and stabbed fiercely at the invisible barrier.

Crack.

An exceptionally crisp sound of shattering rang out in Chen Xuan's mind.

The rules shackling Douluo Continent had shattered.

No soul beast sacrifice. No soul ring absorption.

The instant the barrier broke, the soul power within Chen Xuan's body underwent a qualitative leap.

Rank eleven!

The violent power instantly calmed. The five-element cycle closed perfectly and slowly circulated within his body.

Chen Xuan abruptly opened his eyes.

A faint film of five-colored light surfaced over his skin. As the light and shadows flowed, it carried an incomparably ancient and pure pressure. That pressure existed for only an instant before quickly withdrawing into his body.

It worked.

Chen Xuan let out a long breath.

He clenched his fist, and his joints crackled like popping beans.

His physical strength had improved by more than one level. His physique, already far beyond that of children his age from years of blacksmithing, had now become absurdly powerful.

Even more terrifying was the leap in his senses.

Sitting on the bed, Chen Xuan did not even deliberately listen.

He could hear the rhythm of Chen Tiezhu's breathing amid the snores from the next room.

He could hear a cricket rubbing its wings in the grass at the corner of the courtyard.

He could hear the subtle changes in airflow caused by the night wind brushing over the roof tiles.

There was no need for soul rings or hunting soul beasts. The five-element rules inherent to the Light-Shadow Stone could completely form their own system and forge a path independent of the soul master system.

Yu Xiaogang's theories had become nothing more than a pile of waste paper to Chen Xuan.

If he ever had the chance to establish his own force, this cultivation method that did not rely on soul beasts would absolutely overturn the entire continent's order.

Chen Xuan rolled his neck, preparing to put away the three weapons floating around him.

Just then.

A faint sound came from the dirt road outside the courtyard.

Crack.

It was the sound of a dead branch snapping underfoot.

The sound was extremely soft. If Chen Xuan had not just broken through to rank eleven and greatly enhanced his hearing, he would never have noticed it.

Chen Tiezhu's snores still thundered on.

Chen Xuan stopped moving.

Who would be lurking beneath the courtyard wall outside a blacksmith shop in the middle of the night?

And after stepping on that branch, the footsteps had stopped at once. The other party was clearly extremely cautious, perhaps even professionally trained.

Chen Xuan did not move.

He remained seated cross-legged on the bed, while the Flame Bow, Water Armor Shield, and Wind Eagle Crossbow around him continued to glow.

He pushed his hearing to its limit and extended it outward.

Outside the courtyard wall.

That person's breathing was faint, its rhythm deliberately slowed.

The person had not left. Instead, they pressed against the wall and slowly moved toward the window of Chen Xuan's room.

A peeping intruder.

Chen Xuan narrowed his eyes.

Was it Tang San? Or someone else?

Tang San had already intended to kill him on the way back to the village today. Given that brat's personality, sneaking over at night to probe his background was entirely possible.

Chen Xuan's right hand moved slightly, and the Wind Eagle Crossbow dropped into his palm.

Emerald-green light gathered in the crossbow's bolt groove.

Outside the window, that breathing stopped less than half a meter away.

Then, a long, thin blowpipe silently pierced through the window paper.