Feng Xiaotian, Remember This: Overwhelming Force Defeats All Techniques! Ten

Before long, an antidote pill was placed in Feng Xiaotian's mouth. Moments later, he regained consciousness and looked at Dugu Lin with a face full of shock and uncertainty.

"Are you all right now? The antidote I gave you was refined by my grandfather. It works very quickly."

Feng Xiaotian opened his mouth, then gave a bitter smile. "I'm fine... What kind of poison was your second soul skill? It was so powerful!"

"My second Soul Ring came from an over-eight-thousand-five-hundred-year-old Mutated Red-tailed Triangle Snake."

"Eight thousand five hundred years!"

Feng Xiaotian cried out, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

After all, his second Soul Ring was only seven hundred and twenty years old! Dugu Lin's second Soul Ring had a lifespan more than ten times greater than his!

Heavens have mercy... How could the gap between people be this enormous?

Dugu Lin said with a smile, "Junior Brother, I admit that in today's spirit battle, I was clearly inferior to you in technique and combat experience! But I still won in the end! Do you know why?"

Without even thinking, Feng Xiaotian said, "Your poison was too strong! I only inhaled the tiniest bit."

"That's right! My poison can even kill a Soul King! So, what lesson did you learn from this battle?"

"A lesson? What lesson?"

What Feng Xiaotian envied now was the more than eight-thousand-five-hundred-year lifespan of Dugu Lin's second ring. His mind was filled with thoughts of how Dugu Lin had absorbed such a high-level Soul Ring!

How could he possibly grasp any lesson from it?

Dugu Lin's expression turned solemn. "Remember this. The first lesson my grandfather told me to teach you is this: before absolute strength, no amount of schemes or tricks, no amount of technique, is of any use! As long as your fist is hard enough, one force can defeat ten techniques!"

"One force can defeat ten techniques?" Feng Xiaotian pondered the words seriously.

Dugu Lin continued, "During the fight, I found your combat techniques exceptionally refined. Unfortunately, under my poison, you had no ability to resist at all! But think about it—if your Soul Power reached level thirty, if you had a stronger Soul Ring, more abundant Soul Power, and more powerful soul skills to support you, would I still have been able to poison you so easily?"

"Uh... probably not!" Feng Xiaotian believed that if he were a three-ringed Soul Elder, he would definitely have reacted faster and avoided Dugu Lin's poison.

"That is what it means for one force to defeat ten techniques! In battle, pure technique cannot accomplish much! Without a powerful Soul Power Level to support it, even the most exquisite technique is merely a castle in the air, unable to withstand a single blow!"

"Unable to withstand a single blow?" Feng Xiaotian murmured.

Dugu Lin smiled. "That's right! Rather than waste time studying those techniques, or even Self-Created Soul Skills, you might as well focus on increasing your Soul Power!"

"Increase my Soul Power cultivation?"

"Of course! Think about it. By the time you've wasted your time developing a Self-Created Soul Skill, I'd have seized the time to cultivate and gained another Soul Ring! Would your Self-Created Soul Skill be stronger than my Soul Ring skill?"

Both openly and implicitly, Dugu Lin was urging Feng Xiaotian to place the focus of his future cultivation on Soul Power. As for Self-Created Soul Skills, whether he had them or not was unimportant.

On Douluo Continent, everyone thought this way!

Soul Rings could grant soul skills anyway, so why waste time researching Self-Created Soul Skills? Wasn't that just a complete waste of time, something only an idiot would do?

Only a self-important genius like Feng Xiaotian would stubbornly go his own way!

To put it bluntly, Feng Xiaotian simply had not been beaten down by reality yet!

At that moment, Feng Xiaotian felt that his teacher, Dugu Bo, had truly gone to great lengths for him. Right after accepting him as a disciple, Dugu Bo had pointed out the mistakes in his cultivation focus and direction. Feng Xiaotian was deeply moved.

"Brother, Junior Brother, let's meditate on our Soul Power together!"

Seeing that the battle between the two had ended, Dugu Yan happily ran over.

Meditating on Soul Power was time-consuming, but it was also a cultivation task that had to be maintained every day.

The three of them and the snake sat on prayer mats in front of the thatched hut.

Feng Xiaotian asked in surprise, "Dugu Lin, is your Jade Phosphorous Serpent meditating on Soul Power too?"

"Yes."

"Hiss—" Feng Xiaotian sucked in a breath and cried out, "Your Jade Phosphorous Serpent can meditate on Soul Power too! Is this an External Spirit? That's incredible!"

"Pfft—" Beside him, Dugu Yan could not hold it in and burst out laughing.

Feng Xiaotian scratched his head in confusion. "What is it? If your Martial Soul can cultivate too, doesn't that mean your cultivation speed is twice that of everyone else?!"

"Ah..."

Dugu Lin glanced at the Jade Phosphorous Serpent and sighed inwardly. Somewhat troubled, he explained, "For some reason, after only a short while... my Jade Phosphorous Serpent falls asleep!"

"As-sleep?"

Feng Xiaotian stared at him in astonishment.

"Yes..."

Dugu Lin sighed, then took out a piece of Double-Horned Strange Snake flesh from his storage soul tool and fed it to the Jade Phosphorous Serpent. "Perhaps this is a flaw of an External Spirit. Or perhaps the lack in its origin makes it prone to fatigue and drowsiness. So my grandfather found a lot of snake-type soul beast meat for it to eat, hoping to make up for its deficiency."

For the time being, unable to determine why the Jade Phosphorous Serpent was always so sleepy, Dugu Lin could only use this clumsy method and feed it.

If there was still no way to solve it in the end, he could only try finding an Immortal Herb.

An External Spirit could eat food, so it should be able to eat an Immortal Herb as well!

But the problem was that the External Spirit and Dugu Lin were one entity. The medicinal effects of the Immortal Herbs Dugu Lin had consumed were also present within the Jade Phosphorous Serpent. If the Jade Phosphorous Serpent ate an Immortal Herb, the effects would clash! The final result of feeding it an Immortal Herb would likely be disappointing.

"A Martial Soul can really eat!"

Beside him, Feng Xiaotian watched in amazement as the Jade Phosphorous Serpent slowly swallowed the Double-Horned Strange Snake flesh, meditated while digesting it... and then fell asleep.

Time passed day by day.

Members of Feng Xiaotian's family were pulling strings to search for his whereabouts, and the entire clan was run ragged.

As a genius with an Innate Full Soul Power mutated Martial Soul, Feng Xiaotian had plenty of people in the clan who could teach him how to cultivate. He did not lack teachers at all. Thus, the Feng Clan cursed that powerful expert who had left behind a note and taken away their clan's genius for several days.

Dugu Bo paid no attention to outside affairs. He calmly traveled back and forth between Heaven Dou City and the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, teaching his grandson, granddaughter, and disciple their daily cultivation and combat experience. He also found poisonous insects, scorpions, and the like for them to soak in medicinal baths.

At the same time, the uproar over the third prince's death gradually subsided.

The second prince, Xue Luochuan, was severely punished, while the matter of the eldest prince, Xue Qinghe, inheriting the position of crown prince was placed on the agenda.

As for Dugu Bo, he received another ten-thousand-year power-type leg Spirit Bone! It was compensation from the Heaven Dou Imperial Family to Dugu Bo.

Therefore, as for who the true culprit behind the third prince's death was, and whether the final truth had actually been uncovered, no one besides the investigators, Xue Ye, and the others would ever know.